I went to Québec City in the summer of 2018 to cover Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist. I had never been to Québec City before, and I had not been away from the children for two nights in a row. Our daughter was then six, and our son three and a half. Both Québec City and the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (MNBAQ) were built with French models in mind, and then also built to be of a different place. So the buildings and collection [...] more

Yesterday, looking at pictures of Beauford Delaney’s Untitled , 1965, I noticed a kind of ochre in the corner that I hadn’t remembered being part of the palette. It's down in the lower right corner, near the rosy orange, under the diagonal of green. Beauford Delaney, Untitled, 1965. Art Institute of Chicago. Photo Rachel Cohen. I have also been going through Morisot paintings this week, and her self-portrait, with its ochre, came into view. [...] more

A daughter at the window is poignant. She is here with you, in the interior, but she is thinking of what lies beyond. Berthe Morisot, Cottage Interior, 1886. Musée d'Ixelles. Photos Rachel Cohen. Berthe Morisot painted and drew her daughter Julie probably several hundred times. There are masterpieces of Julie as a baby with her wet nurse, as a toddler swinging her foot in a chair, as a little girl with her father in the garden. [...] more

At the MFA right now, a trio of Degas portraits are not to be missed.  They can be stumbled upon in a narrow blue-green corridor on the second floor, next to the sealed off construction zone that is normally Impressionism.  It is as if three of the finest musicians – one at the beginning of his career, one at the end – happened to all be passing through a town on the same night and to have the idea of playing some chamber music – and you happened to be staying at the hotel and to walk [...] more