Perhaps it was – but as is too often the case, I had something else to do. Perhaps it was a story I should consider investigating, she suggested. She’d heard rumors about a large collection of unseen Bohrod work still in storage. Two months ago, when I attended the public reception for the opening of “Small Arms – Children of Conflict: Photographs by Michael Kienitz ” at the Chazen Museum of Art, I had an opportunity to talk with a woman I’d attended grade school with (and who had subsequently opted to attend Wisconsin High School while I opted to attend Madison Central High School) and somehow the conversation drifted into a discussion of Aaron Bohrod and why Madison seemed to have forgotten about him – why, for instance, there had been not recent exhibition of his work. In addition, I truly admired Aaron Bohrod’s paintings. Although I don’t recall ever meeting Neil, I knew where he and his family lived because the Bohrod house on the shores of Lake Monona was near the home of some of my cousins. Or perhaps because Neil Bohrod attended Wisconsin High School, as did many of my friends. I never forgot about Bohrod, perhaps because a friend’s parents owned several of his paintings. In 1984, Sue Ann Kendall recorded an oral interview with Aaron Bohrod for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In 1995, for instance, The Wisconsin Academy Review published an illustrated article about the art of Aaron Bohrod, as well as that of his son Neil and Neil’s wife, Ruthanne Bessman. In the years since then, Madison seemed to forget about Bohrod, although this is perception, not reality. In 1966, the Madison Art Center hosted “Aaron Bohrod: a retrospective exhibition, 1929-1966” and the University of Wisconsin Press published Bohrod’s autobiographical, “A Decade of Still Life.” And in 1967, one of his paintings graced the cover of “Compositions for Cooking,” a collection of recipes compiled by the Women’s Committee of the Madison Civic Music Association. In 1963, Bohrod painted a portrait of Conrad Elvehjem, the thirteenth president of the University of Wisconsin, for whom the Elvehjem Museum of Art was named. There was a time during the late 1960s, when Aaron Bohrod’s trompe l’oeil painting seemed ubiquitous – at least in Madison, at least in my still-then relatively small universe.īohrod was the University of Wisconsin’s artist-in residence from 1948 to 1973. The Wisconsin Union purchased it that same year and it is part of its permanent collection. In 1963, one year following the death of his dear friend and the illustrious thirteenth president of the University of Wisconsin, Conrad Elvehjem, Aaron Bohrod painted this work.

Reflection painting madison wi