What does it mean to love in a time of turmoil? Looking to the Middle Ages for answers to life’s puzzles can seem quaint or artificial, and yet medieval culture offers a way of thinking about love that still speaks to the present.

Without naming your job, tell me something you say over and over again at work: 'Your dislike of an artwork does not negate the fact that it is art.'

Getting my Phillis Wheatley stamps yesterday made me want to focus on her today. Her frontispiece in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) was drawn by Scipio Moorhead, a Black artist who was trained by his enslaver. #BHM

On behalf of historians, please don't wait.

HYBRID LECTURE! "The Fabrication of Borders: Tailoring and Cartography in Early Modern Europe," Emanuele Lugli, Stanford U. & the 2025-2026 SIMS + Center for Italian Studies Fellow in Italian MSS Studies #medievalsky February 12 @ 5:15pm EST More details and RSVP here: https://bit.ly/4qkdSoN

Posts from Minneapolis residents read like they'll be read in voiceover in a Ken Burns-like doc one day

Gleichschaltung (German): "the act, process, or policy of achieving rigid and total coordination and uniformity (as in politics, culture, communication) by forcibly repressing or eliminating independence and freedom of thought, action, or expression"

This is a silly-beautiful ukiyo-e print by Utamaro of two women with a baby (1793). One woman makes a silly face at the baby who peek-a-boos from behind a screen.

unsay that story

I'm starting to question the legitimacy of the FIFA Peace Prize.

Charles White, Love Letter III, 1977.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Bad Government, 1338–40, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

This was our rainy day film at school - seen it 100 times or more and it is always beautiful.

Elizabeth Catlett & Alberto Beltrán, Untitled (Composition for a Peace Poster), c. 1950 www.artic.edu/artworks/222...

Maybe, just maybe, a university degree was not/is not solely about social mobility or jobs, but about learning, experimenting, expanding your mind with the close study of the world. Having to continually argue the above point is exhausting, but I'll never stop.

Nearly full moon at sunset. Ombre sky with a pink cloud floating nearby.

Since 2018, The Getty has been supporting some of the (imo) most exciting art history out there: The African American Art History Initiative. Search all the projects here: www.getty.edu/projects/afr...

day one in mamdani’s new york

"For too long those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty." - Mayor Mamdani.

When Rebecca Solnit asks you to turn a thread into an essay, you fucking do it. jessica.substack.com/p/cbs-news-f... bsky.app/profile/rebe...

I have to admit, I also always had kinda the wrong idea about Norman Rockwell until I saw the piece "Murder in Mississippi" as a teen in art history class

These in-between days give me time to watch excellent stuff like this: A short documentary on Charles White as a teacher. If you have 18 mins, this is a treat. youtu.be/ZEYuIf-22jA?...

Scientists in Britain say ancient humans may have learned to make fire far earlier than previously believed, after uncovering evidence that deliberate fire-setting took place in what is now eastern England around 400,000 years ago. https://to.pbs.org/3KUcGsH

Edward Ruscha, PRETTY EYES, ELECTRIC BILLS, 1976 https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1078457

Currently obsessed with this huge Lyotard pastel on vellum (c.1756). His wife, Marie Fargues in 'Turkish Dress' at Rijksmuseum.

'Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.' Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, 1894.

prolonged and exhausting

Jenny Holzer, DODDOACID, 2007, (ironically) National Gallery of Art Washington D.C. 🖤

Redacted Centerville, SD

It's your birthday, Duane.

Robert Fludd, redacted

James Rosenquist, President Elect, 1960-61/1964

We are, in fact, not running out of good ideas. There are no short cuts to new ideas, but late-stage capitalism wants 'em quick and is palpably desperate to rip all full, meaningful time from us to feed its machine.

A great day out with @sarahj.bsky.social visiting the Tate Modern permanent collection on her excellent ‘Demystifying the Tate Modern’ course( @citylit.bsky.social ).

The government of Jamaica has set up a portal for contributing to official relief efforts. I will update this thread if anything analogous opens up for Haiti, Cuba, or the DR supportjamaica.gov.jm

Good morning from Berenice Abbott, Jean Cocteau and this robot mannequin head (1927)

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion. As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.

Gordon [sic] Under Medical Inspection https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2012.78

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Today: researching Anneke van der Freer (1902-1956), part of the De Nieuwe Zakelijkheid (New Objectivity) in Amsterdam, staunch anti-fascist and feminist. Self-Portrait, 1938

Ed Ruscha, Norm’s, La Cienega, on Fire, 1964. Or, more to the point: Ed Ruscha, Norms on fire, 1964.

A 2 🌟 review, in which, the critic's entire argument hinges on his anger that the British Museum has collected contemporary prints. Even though the British Museum has always held the national collection of prints & drawings, including the contemporary. Critics should sorta know this stuff.

Dorothea Tanning, A Mi-Voix, 1958 https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1123439

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

One of my favourite artworks ever. 'We are a product of the time. . .'

I know Rothko's art is marketed transcendent and spiritual, but I've always felt his colour fields are rage (barely) assuaged by methodical touch. That he painted these to trap rich 'bastards' as they stuffed their faces makes me love the paintings even more.

Great read, and this quote grabbed my attention "In Walker’s treatment, sections of man and horse have been cut apart and resoldered together in a tangle of hooves, haunches, bridles and necks, the parts more or less recognizable but the whole an entirely new, unsettled being." Siddhartha Mitter

Hot potato! We are all Claes Oldenburg's Baked Potato, Thrown in Corner, under Light Bulb (1965) in the NYC heat today. 🥔☀️

Sonia Delaunay, Robe simultanée, 1913 and the artist wearing her creation (via @labnf.bsky.social)

When a bookshop is at the heart of a neighborhood it is the owner who made it so. Sad news in South London.