A painting I have been thinking about this week is John Constable’s The White Horse , which is a painting I used to love at the Frick Museum and to visit regularly for many years. At that time, the Frick did not allow pictures, and I never took them anyway, and so I have no detail photographs of the kind I now use to go back and look, and can only reproduce here this distant internet picture. [...] more

An essay of mine on lines from Jane Austen and Gwendolyn Brooks that keep me company on walking days in quarantine and during Black Lives Matter is up at Lit Hub today. https://lithub. com/on-jane-austens-politics-of-walking/ In the piece I've continued to think about the wonderful sculpture of Gwendolyn Brooks by Margot McMahon, with the collaboration of Nora Brooks Blakely that is here in our neighborhood. A entry of mine about the sculpture is in my art notebook at: https://rachelecohen. com/blog/The_Frederick_Project/c/851 [...] more

This morning we walked with the children in a preserve south of Cleveland. There were stone steps that allowed you to climb up and down along the river which fell over slate ledges in striated curves. [...] more

Today I want to think about public art. Art that I can still go visit, that anyone can still go visit, even though all the museums are closed. Often vulnerable and often unprotected, and also, beautifully, always there. Even in the dark of night, in snow, in a pandemic. In our neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, there is a masterwork at the 56th Street Metra Underpass. It is called Childhood is Without Prejudice , and it is one of the few surviving murals by William Walker, who was a [...] more