Auguste Rodin’s *The Kiss*, 1882

I know that this is a sculpture of sexual love, of a story of an affair and a pair meant to wander together in hell, but I can’t help but see love at every angle. The tenderness of his hand around her hip, her arms thrown, carefree and trusting, around his next, toes curled in a passion that forever and only exists between them.

Museums are cool

The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia 💡

Poplars, Claude Monet, 1891

Self-Portrait by Jacopo Robusti, called Il Tintoretto

Italian, c. 1546-1548

oil on canvas

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Wharton Esherick - Museum 

Spiral Staircase, 1930

#MonochromeMonday :

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (French, 1803-60)

The Rat Who Withdrew from the World, c.1847

Charcoal w/ stumping & white opaque watercolor on wove paper

on view at Philadelphia Museum of Art

“This drawing illustrates a fable about a rat who chooses to retire from the troubles of the world, taking up residence in a ball of cheese. Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps draws the moment in the tale when deputies of ‘Ratopolis’ visit the recluse in hopes of receiving his assistance in their ‘warfare against the cat.’

Decamps's choice of subject may have been prompted by his own growing sense of disillusionment with the French art establishment. His potential sympathy with a reclusive rodent offers an alternative, if surprising avatar for a French artist of the 1800s.”

Purple silk dress, ca. 1900, English.

By Liberty & Co.

Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Sunflowers, Vincent van Gogh, 1889

Oil on canvas 36 ⅜ x 28 in. (92.4 x 71.1 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Hsiao Chin, Rose Fried Gallery, New York, NY, December 19, 1967 – January 13, 1968 [Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA]

Gabriel Orozco

Black Kites Perspective (front horizontal, right and left). 1997-08

Have you heard of “adultification bias?” The term refers to the reality that, in the United States, Black youth are often treated as adults, enduring heightened surveillance, punishment, and violence. For Black girls, living at the intersection of race and gender oppression makes them particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse.

In “Consecration to Mary,” shown here, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter (@isisthasaviour) intervenes in an egregious act of adultification, inserting herself as a protective presence into a historical artifact. Shielding a young Black girl from predatory gazes, Baxter indicts both the photographer Thomas Eakins and the legacies of photography, which have been historically weaponized in the oppression of Black people. Presenting a selection of opened and closed daguerreotype cases, Baxter leaves visible three photographs. In two, the artist shifts the critical narrative to the lived experience of the subject in Eakins’ 1882 images. The third photograph—a school-age portrait of the artist herself—links Baxter’s own experiences with these histories of societal abuse. As part of the exhibition Ain’t I a Woman, this photo series complicates our understanding of the prison system by showing that the root causes of incarceration are inextricably tied to the systematic oppression in our public and personal histories.    

Experience this multipart photographic work as well as Baxter’s rap documentary Ain’t I a Woman, up through August 13.

🔗 https://bit.ly/AintIAWomanBkM

📷 Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Consecration to Mary, 2021. Giclée print on metallic paper in a tintype frame. © Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter → Installation view, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter: “Ain’t I a Woman,” on view January 20 - August 13, 2023, 2023. Brooklyn Museum (Danny Perez).

Three Puppies by Maruyama Okyo

Happy 4th of July Fireworks from Philadelphia 🇺🇸🎆

The Moorish Chief, Eduard Charlemont, 1878