Art historian Daphne Deeds’ essay Alfred Maurer: The First American Modern educates the reader about modernism and connects in a style that is both erudite and accessible.

The beauty of Nicolee McMahon’s Arte of Now: Practice of Immediacy in the Arts lies in the wisdom of creativity itself, a wisdom demonstrated 30,000 to 40,000 years ago when Homo sapiens painted prehistoric rock art (parietal art) on the walls of caves. Realistic and extinct animals, handprints, abstract dot paintings, and geometric shapes graced the cave walls, evidence that our ancestors had evolved a brain capacity that began at least 200,000 years ago. Neuroscience shows that humans are “wired to create” and use their whole brain to do so.