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Rachel Cohen

Essay in New Yorker Online, Thinking about art while sheltering

Essay in New Yorker Online, Thinking about art while sheltering

Berthe Morisot, Woman in a Garden, 1882-3. Art Institute of Chicago. Detail photo 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, is up this week.

"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..."

You can read the complete essay in the New Yorker here:

What We Miss Without Museums by Rachel Cohen