Marni Kessler

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!

💔

🥁 Announcing the Public Domain Image Archive! 🥁

We are v excited to share our new sister-project, the Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA), a curated collection of 10k+ out-of-copyright historical images, all free to explore and reuse: pdimagearchive.org @pdimagearchive

Same!

On Moss, Rock, Lichen, and Survival “Moss. Roots” by Ivan Shishkin Lately, I’ve been looking at the life cycle of moss. I found myself instantly lost in a thicket of botanical terminology—from...

"...as we move into this grim season, we must think like [subarctic moss], survive like this, grow like this: like the hardy + unregarded things that make do with little + less. The things that cultivate the wasteland, and make it soft + green for those who need it; that bloom like rust on rock..."

Title page for a web resource on French wallpaper design, featuring the collection title set atop a triangular geometric pattern

A fantastic web publication from RISD about French wallpaper design! risdmuseum.org/art-french-w...

Das Bild zeigt eine Winterlandschaft mit mehreren Bäumen, von denen einige kahl sind und andere noch wenige Äste haben. Im Bild sind zwei Personen zu sehen: ein Kind mit einer orangefarbenen Jacke und einem roten Ballon und ein Erwachsener in einer blauen Jacke und roten Stiefeln, der hinter einem Baum steht. Zudem läuft ein Fuchs im Schnee in der Nähe des Kindes. Schneeflocken fallen überall in der Szenerie. In der Mitte des Bildes steht ein Zitat von Rilke: "Und jetzt empfangen wir das neue Jahr, voll von Dingen, die noch nie gewesen sind."

And now we welcome the new year.
Full of things that have never been.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

What a wonderful way to start the new year! Can’t wait to see it in print!

A black and white photo of two two girls playing the board game at a table with a Chanukiah (Menorah) with four candles burning

Berlin, Germany, 1930s, two girls playing the board game "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht" (still popular in the German-speaking world), sitting next to a Chanukiah (Menorah) lit for the the third night of Hanukkah. Published in the Jewish newspaper CV-Zeitung on November 29, 1934. #chanukah #hanukkah