Marni Kessler

Stephanie Porras on Book Reviews Podcast Episode · The Academic Publishing Podcast · 10/21/2025 · 54m

Your podcast/conversation on book reviews is also excellent! It’s so thoughtful and clear, and I’ll be assigning it to grad students podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Discomfort Food An intricate and provocative journey through nineteenth-century depictions of food and the often uncomfortable feelings they evokeAt a time when chefs are ce...

What a lovely idea! Mine seems somehow even more appropriate than usual on Thanksgiving! www.upress.umn.edu/978151790880...

We are losing a true publishing genius, someone who could stay focused on the thinking and writing that is our purpose, while innovating in forms and the university press break-even form of business.

CFP: Connecting Ecocritical Art Histories (Cambridge, 8-10 Apr 26)

https://arthist.net/archive/50721

Oh, you would have loved it! Sorry you didn’t get to see it in person, but delighted that you got to hear about it from Jodi! We were supposed to take a last walk through it together yesterday, but unfortunately she had a last minute unmissable meeting.

Detail of of watercolor painting of goat willows by Hilma af Klint

Detail of watercolor painting of yellow star of Bethlehem by Hilma af Klint

Detail of roots of watercolor painting of lily of the valley and water avens by Hilma af Klint

One last visit to see the gorgeous Hilma af Klint:What Stands Behind the Flowers@MoMA before it closes next week. It’s still about the searching roots & fragile petals for me. But these goat willows with their nearly translucent faces overlaid w pin-sized dabs of yellow! Just wow!

You might try Nineteenth-century Art Worldwide. www.19thc-artworldwide.org

Yes! Such an amazing show! For me, her representation of roots was especially revelatory. Each one so fragile yet so tough.

Hilma af Klint “Violet Blossoms”

Det. Hilma af Klint “Violet Blossoms”

Hilma af Klint: Various roots, stems, and lily of the valley and water avens blossoms

Hilma af Klint det. Of Ferns”

Astonished as I look and look at every gorgeous watercolor in the Hilma af Klint show @MoMA. Just the right amount of pigment barely held by fragile graphite filaments and slivers of unfilled paper to represent intricately searching roots, gossamer petals, and slender stems.

Detail of Edgar Degas’ Landscape with Smokestacks

Spent Fri in the study room @artinstitutechi.bsky.social thinking about industrial smoke, Prussian blue, and extraction in Degas’ knockout Landscape with Smokestacks

3 women in front of Gustave Caillebotte’s painting Le Pont de L’Europe.

A detail of Gustave Caillebotte’s Boulevard Seen From Above.

A detail of Gustave Caillebotte’s Le Pont de l’Europe.

Such a joy to see the magisterial “Gustave Caillebotte:Painting his World” exh @artinstitutechi.bsky.social on Sat with 2 beloved former grad students. The show is full of clever juxtapositions that inspire new thoughts. But I’ll never tire of the grids and veils that structure many of his works.

Congratulations, Anne (and to Cary, too)! It looks fantastic!

Check out the special section of NCFS that Cary Hollingshead-Strick and I co-edited—“Fueling the Nineteenth Century"! It was so great working with all these wonderful authors!🔥🚂⛴️🌲

www.ncfs-journal.org/current-toc

Edmund de Waal: “The Ragpicker's Way” The writer and potter on archives as places of memory, instability, and trespass—from porcelain shards to a derelict house in London.

“Archives are not confined to buildings. They are places, streets, hillsides as much as card indexes.”

Edmund de Waal, the writer and potter, gathers what’s scattered across time and terrain, new today in TYR. yalereview.org/article/edmu...

Oh, happiest of birthdays to you, John! And what a great picture of your lovely parents. The swirl of your mom’s skirt lifted by the breeze and your dad’s “pretty good line”-beautiful for you to think about on this day!

What a wonderful essay! Still thinking especially about “The rain, like rain, continues to fall” and that last line: “…those things so like the world but not the world”

How great! Congratulations, Hannah!

JOB: Curator for Research, Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas

https://arthist.net/archive/49266

This is fantastic news, Maud! And what a fabulous cover! No doubt the words inside are equally amazing! Can’t wait to read them. 💕

Chez Marianne for falafel.

Glad I did!

Thanks so much, @johnmkuhn.bsky.social! True, the Nelson-Atkins has real strengths in 19th-c French art. I bet you would notice some familiar works at most major museums. It means so much to know that what we studied in that class still reverberates for you!

Oh, wow! Thank you for noticing and passing along this lovely compliment, @nancyum.bsky.social!

Oh, this is such tragic and shocking news. My heart breaks for Julia’s family, close friends, and colleagues. I’ll always remember her as she was when we were in grad school—smart, outspoken, and thoughtful.

Grateful to you for writing it!

Drawing of leaves and flowers by Friedrich

Painting by Friedrich of spruce trees in snow

Moved by the Friedrich exhibition @ the Met. Delicately drawn clutches of leaves & blooms and spruce needles quieted by the softest snow. He understood deeply the aliveness of nature.

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: NCFS Unbound 5 Episode 4: Rebecca Powers with Anne O'Neil Henry. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting. Rebecca Powers discusses her new book Balzac on the Barricades with Anne O'Neil Henry

The next NCFS Unbound is Friday 2/28! Anne O’Neil-Henry will interview Rebecca Powers about her new book, Balzac on the Barricades. Link below! #FrHistory 🗃️

southalabama.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Looking forward to presenting “Aerial Intimacies: Edgar Degas’ Ironers, Coal Smoke, and Chemicals” tomorrow (Wed) @ 4:30pm @ CAA 113th Annual Conference

Delighted to see that @francescaberry.bsky.social’s whip-smart new book on Vuillard is out!