Rachel Cohen

An essay I wrote for the New Yorker online, about missing museums, and making my own remembered museum in the time of quarantine. With paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Berthe Morisot, and William Walker.

From the essay:

"Museums know the desires of our hands. That is why they have so many “Do Not Touch” signs, so many guards to caution us back. The special presence of paintings comes from their being at once untouchable and viscerally evocative of touch..."