Eliana Willis

A rarely seen work by the great Italian artist Caravaggio (1571–1610), the master of chiaroscuro who helped usher the Renaissance into the Baroque period, is coming to Florida for an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. The canvas, titled Boy Bitten by a Lizard, is the star of a show featuring 40 paintings by the Caravaggisti, as the renowned artist’s followers have come to be known.
“It’s really fascinating to see the enormous impact of this single revolutionary artist,” Stanton Thomas, the MFA St. Petersburg’s chief curator, told me.
Titled “In Caravaggio’s Light: Baroque Masterpieces from the Fondazione Roberto Longhi,” the exhibition is drawn from the holdings of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, an institute founded in 1970 by Italian art historian Roberto Longhi (1889–1970). A leading Caravaggio scholar, Longhi is credited with rehabilitating the artist’s reputation after a long period during which Baroque art was decidedly out of fashion. Flying in the face of popular opinion, Longhi recognized the power of Caravaggio’s dramatically lit images, with all of the emotion and psychological intensity bound up in the realism of his canvases.
“During the 19th century, and even before that, Baroque painting was seen as overdramatic and in poor taste,” Thomas said. “And with Caravaggio, who was so peripatetic and just not very well understood or documented up until that point, Longhi recognized the quality of the paintings. And then he was able to do the archival research to discover more about Caravaggio’s life, and also to reattribute things to Caravaggio himself. So he’s really the person who single-handedly revived the career of this extraordinarily influential artist.”
Valentin De Boulogne, Denial of Saint Peter (ca. 1615–17). Courtesy of Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence, Italy.
An Art Historian Who Collected What He Studied
While Longhi was helping restore Caravaggio’s rightful place in the pantheon of art historical greats, he and his wife, fellow art historian Anna Banti, were also buying forgotten masterpieces of the era. Their collection is technically open to the public at the foundation’s Florence headquarters, where it can be visited by appointment, but has remained largely unseen by American audiences.
The last time Boy Bitten by a Lizard was in the U.S. was in 2012, at Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum. Before that, it was 1940. And the larger Longhi collection has never had a dedicated outing in this country. (The show previously traveled to Poland and France, but this is its first time off the continent.)
Caravaggio, Boy Bitten by a Lizard (1593–94). Collection of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence.
There is another autograph version of the work at London’s National Gallery, but this is a rare opportunity for American audiences to see the dramatic composition without taking a Transatlantic flight.
“We’ve all had that moment where something really uncomfortable suddenly happened to us.
It’s an amazing gesture—the young man is pulling his shoulders back and recoiling, with this look of shock and pain on his face. And it’s so true to life. I think that it still compels people to look at it centuries later because it is so realistic,” Thomas said. “Enhancing that is that beautiful light, the figure emerging from the shadowy recesses, this wonderful contrast between the shadows and the very pale skin. And then you get an even greater sense of luminosity because of that wonderful little still life where the lizard’s been hiding and the extraordinary vase.”
The MFA St. Petersburg exhibition will actually feature at least two original Caravaggio paintings, with Boy Bitten by a Lizard being joined by two copies of Boy Peeling Fruit, an early composition by the artist that he is believed to have painted multiple times while training in the workshop of artist Giuseppe Cesari (1568–1640). (Earlier this year, a Baroque art expert claimed to have found the earliest known version of the work, and by extension, the first known painting by Caravaggio.)
At the MFA, one will be on loan from a private collection in Rome, and the other is from Longhi’s collection—when he originally bought it, the art historian thought it was an autograph Caravaggio, but he later identified it as a copy. The foundation stands by that opinion, but it is more generally accepted as the real deal.
“Our understanding of Caravaggio has evolved since then, thanks to new technical examinations and better understanding of the artist and his career. One of the most exciting things about this exhibition is the chance to compare two versions,” said Thomas, who strongly suspects Longhi might have been right the first time. “I’m billing the show as two-and-a-half Caravaggios!”
Caravaggio, Boy Peeling Fruit (ca. 1593). Opinions vary on whether this work is an original or a copy. Courtesy of Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence, Italy.
Why Is Caravaggio So Important? 
Today, Caravaggio is one of art history’s biggest names, with any potential discovery of a new work by the artist making headlines around the world. Earlier this year, a blockbuster exhibition in Rome, “Caravaggio 2025,” brought together 24 examples of his work, and had to extend its run to meet audience demand.
An authenticated Caravaggio has not hit the auction block in modern times, according to the Artnet Price Database—although a purported rediscovered second version of his Judith Beheading Holofernes was snapped up by a private buyer ahead of a planned 2019 auction where it was expected to fetch up to €150 million ($171 million).
Another painting, originally attributed to a follower of another Baroque artist, was set to be auctioned in Spain in April 2021, until it was identified as a Caravaggio. The work, Ecce homo (1604–05), subsequently went on view at the Museo del Prado Museum in Madrid and sold last year to a British collector for €36 million ($39 million).
“In many ways, I see Caravaggio as the Baroque spirit,” Thomas said. “He’s the first person to really look to the street to find models who were from the lower classes. They were prostitutes and beggars, and that gives us sudden realism to his work. And of course, there’s the tenebrism. There’s that incredible lighting, as if a flashbulb on an old-fashioned camera went off. All of a sudden you see these wonderful shadows with these faces, these gestures emerging from the darkness. And this was something that people hadn’t seen before.”
Carlo Saraceni, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (ca. 1615–20). Courtesy of Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence, Italy.
An Artist Who Inspired Many Who Followed
We only know of one artist who studied formally under Caravaggio, a mysterious painter known as Cecco del Caravaggio. But because so many of Caravaggio’s works were public commissions, in some of Rome and Naples’s most important churches, his work became widely influential.
“One of the things that’s fascinating about the Caravaggisti is that it wasn’t just people in Rome and Naples.
Artists were traveling to Rome from all over Western Europe, particularly the low countries, both Holland and Belgium, but also France, as well as Spain. And they would come and see Caravaggio, and then they would travel back to their own countries and spread [his influence] further,” Thomas said.
That dissemination across Europe is clearly illustrated in the exhibition. From Caravaggio’s native Italy, there is Carlo Saraceni’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes, from about 1610 to 1620. From the Netherlands, there are a pair of dramatic religious scenes by Matthias Stomer (ca. 1600–after 1652). And from France, there is Valentin de Boulogne’s (1591–1632) The Denial of Saint Peter, from about 1620.
“It shows that moment just a few hours after Christ has been arrested and Peter is shaken and he denies him. It’s this amazing image of accusation and self-doubt,” Thomas said.
Jusepe Ribera, San Bartolomeo (1613). Collection of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence.
The show also features five paintings of the apostles from a series by the Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) that Thomas called “shockingly contemporary in their directness, in their realism, and in their absolutely profound emotional content.”
Particularly striking is his depiction of Saint Bartholomew (San Bartolomeo), from about 1613. De Ribera has painted the apostle and martyr, who was flayed alive, as an old man holding up his skin, with his face clearly shown.
“In the other hand, he holds a hunter’s knife. And it’s a very specific type of knife, which shows that Ribera did his homework,” Thomas said. “And the saint has this extraordinary look on his face, looking directly out at the viewer. It looks much more like a portrait than an image that would be used for worship. It’s one of the most profound, gritty, modern things that I’ve seen that belongs to the Baroque. It’s extraordinary.”
Reza Aramesh, Study of the Head as Cultural Artefacts (2023). Private collection. Photo: courtesy of the artist and Datan Gallery.
Thomas has also organized a companion exhibition, “Baroque Continuum,” that illustrates how that influence has continued throughout the centuries to the present day. Among the artists featured is contemporary Iranian sculptor Reza Aramesh (b. 1970), who makes classically inspired works in bronze and marble.
“The three pieces by Reza I’ve borrowed are severed heads, and they look like martyred Roman Catholic saints from 1600,” Thomas said. “They’re unbelievably beautiful and powerful and go great with an exhibition which features Judith and the Head of Holofernes. It ties in very nicely to further illuminate how Caravaggio impacted the history of art and continues to do so today.”
“In Caravaggio’s Light: Baroque Masterpieces from the Fondazione Roberto Longhi” will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg, Florida, October 25, 2025–March 22, 2026. 
“Baroque Continuum” will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg, Florida, October 18, 2025–March 22, 2026 More

More than 500 years after his death, Raphael continues to enthrall new generations. Though he is best known for world-famous masterpieces like The Sistine Madonna, the Renaissance master produced over 500 works that are scattered across the globe. Next year, more than 200 will travel to the Met in New York for the first-ever comprehensive U.S. exhibition dedicated to Raphael.
“The seven-year journey of putting together this exhibition has been an extraordinary chance to reframe my understanding of this monumental artist,” said curator Carmen Bambach, of the Met’s drawings and prints department. “It is a thrilling opportunity to engage with his unique artistic personality through the visual power, intellectual depth, and tenderness of his imagery.”
Raphael, The Sistine Madonna (1512–13). Photo: VCG Wilson / Corbis via Getty Images.
Visitors to “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” will be taken on journey from the artist’s early life in Urbino to his triumphant emergence as one of the greats of the High Renaissance in Florence. There, he competed against rivals like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo for the most prestigious commissions before moving to the papal court in Rome, where he led a busy workshop in realizing hugely ambitious projects, including the Raphael Rooms at the Vatican. His prolific career was cut tragically short in 1520, when he died of an illness at the age of 37.
The landmark exhibition will open at the Met’s Fifth Avenue location on March 29, 2026, running through June 28, 2026. It will feature some of Raphael’s more celebrated achievements alongside much rarer, lesser known pieces, providing a sweeping insight into every element of his varied practice. Audiences will appreciate the breadth, clarity, and harmony of his vision thanks to a wealth of preparatory sketches, large-scale paintings, tapestries, and decorative objects.
Raphael, Self portrait (1506–08). Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria delle Statue e delle Pitture. Gabinetto fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi – Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e del Turismo.
Incorporated into the show’s chronological structure are a series of overarching themes that will unite its treasures and demonstrate the uniqueness of Raphael’s ideas. Rich historical context will piece together the cultural and intellectual worlds that the artist inhabited in Rome and Florence, as well as his notable contributions to the debates of his day.
“Visitors will have an exceptionally rare opportunity to experience the breathtaking range of Raphael’s creative genius through some of the artist’s most iconic and seldom-loaned works from around the globe–many never before shown together,” promised the Met’s director Max Hollein.
Raphael, Alba Madonna (c. 1511). Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Among the highlights will be The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Alba Madonna), one of the paintings that will have traveled the shortest distance from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This painted tondo from around 1511 has moved between distinguished European collections, including those of the Spanish Dukes of Alba and Nicolas I of Russia, who passed it on to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. It is exemplary for its idealized, classical interpretation of the gentle Madonna, and will be reunited with preparatory drawings that now belong to the Museum of Fine Arts in Lille, France.
More artworks have been loaned from a long list of leading international museums, including the the British Museum and National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris, the Galleria Borghese and Vatican Museums in Rome, the Uffizi in Florence, the Prado in Madrid, the Albertina in Vienna, and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
Curator Carmen Bambach previously worked on the celebrated blockbuster exhibition “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer” at the Met in 2017. The once-in-a-lifetime offering pulled in huge visitor numbers, over 700,000, making it one of the museum’s all time most visited exhibitions. More

Nature can be an instructive guide for overcoming technological barriers. In 1969, the American engineer Otto Schmitt coined a term to describe the practice of science pulling from nature’s source code, biomimetics. The word might have been new with Schmitt creating an electrical circuit based on the neural systems of squids, but the inclination was centuries old. One early proponent was Leonardo da Vinci, whose own approach to biomimetics abound in the polymath’s notebooks.
Human flight was a particular fascination. From the 1480s to the 1490s, Leonardo turned to birds for inspiration, hoping to circumvent the limitations of human strength by understanding wings and their flaps. Alas, the weight of the mechanical devices Leonardo conjured up proved too cumbersome and so he turned from flapping to gliding wings. The flying devices were called ornithopters and are best illustrated in the Codex Atlanticus through a group of red chalk and ink drawings that detail wing joints and the system of straps necessary to tie man and machine together.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus laid out his pursuit of human flight. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
Ultimately, human flight took another shape with the advent of first propeller and later jet engines, but the team at Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise, central France, has brought Leonardo’s flying machine to life in a device made of wood, rope, and canvas. It hangs above visitors as the dramatic culmination of “Biomimicry: Taking Inspiration from Nature,” an exhibition that draws a line from Leonardo to contemporary engineers and shows the instructive genius of nature. The 500-year-old drawing itself sits in a low-lit niche beneath the ornithopter.
Amboise is where Leonardo spent the final three years of his life. Shortly after ascending to the throne in 1515, Francis I invited Leonardo to France to serve as the king’s leading painter, engineer, and architect. Enticed by a generous pension and the promise of creative freedom, Leonardo accepted and settled in the 15th-century château, which was a short walk from the king’s own Château d’Amboise. Ever since opening to the public in the 1950s, Clos Lucé has celebrated this connection and in recent years has held exhibitions on Leonardo’s relationship with perfumes, anatomy, architecture, and unfinished paintings.
Installation view of “Biomimicry”. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
As the myth of Icarus shows, Leonardo did not invent biomimetic and in the centuries long gap before the practice was granted a name, nature proved recurrent a font for human creation. In the 16th century, German armor adopted metal plates taken from rhinoceros hides and British shipbuilders designed hulls that took on the shape of fish.
With the Industrial Revolution and the development of wrought-iron and steel, analyzing bone structures helped engineers optimize load-bearing. The cantilever bridge, for one, looked to the spine of a bison. Using photography to study the movements of birds frame-by-frame brought the likes of Otto Lilienthal and Clément Ader ever closer to cracking the secrets of flight.
The modern world teems with examples. Velcro drew from burdock seeds, Japan’s bullet trains looked to kingfishers, airplanes adopt the properties of shark skin, and robotics companies use animal anatomy as a starting point.
Engraving of a rhinoceros by Albrecht Dürer. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
Armon was inspired by rhinoceros hide in the 16th century. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
“This exhibition offers a timely opportunity to reflect on our relationship with the living world and our place within it,” Clos Lucé said in a statement. “The solutions provided by nature to a host of problems allows us to conceive of technology in a paradigm less focused on domination and more on collaboration and harmony.”
As “Biomimicry” shows, Leonardo did the same. To demonstrate a body’s mechanics, he created a suit of armor whose arms moved through a system of gears, pulley, and springs. He later repeated the trick with a lion, one Clos Lucé has recreated and placed alongside its contemporary counterparts including Solo 12, a quadruped, and Romeo, a humanoid robot, both designed by one of France’s national robotics centers.
Plants and insects were inspirations too. His vertical flying machine emerged from a close study of dragonflies, the ring of dandelion seeds provoked his idea for an aerial sphere, and the winged seeds of lime trees fed into his concept for an aerial screw (hence the name helicopter seeds). Today, researchers have followed Leonardo’s lead by developing micro-drones that mimic the body and wingspan of dragonflies, though as was the case in for his flying machines in the 15th century, weight remains a problem.
Installation view of “Biomimicry”. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
Clos Lucé also dips into less direct translations. There’s the avant-garde bird-inspired dresses of Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, a research base designed to drift with ocean currents that mimics the skeleton of a seahorse, and the biomechanical sculptures of François Delarozière. They’re proof that art, as well as science, can find an eternal source in nature.
“Biomimicry: Taking Inspiration from Nature” is on view at the Château du Clos Lucé, 2, rue du Clos Lucé 37400, Amboise, Val de Loire, France, June 7–September 10, 2025. More

In the 1920s and 1930s, monumental grottoes sprang up along the roadsides of the American Midwest, becoming a folk-art phenomenon. These outdoor sculptural marvels were colorful and dazzling, made of concrete embellished with a head-spinning array of materials, including seashells, broken perfume bottles, reflectors, marbles, colored glass, and geodes. These assemblages became popular ways for attracting visitors to the grounds of Catholic churches throughout the region—but they also cropped up on the front lawns of everyday people.
Midwest grottoes, as they are known today, were many things at once: pilgrimage site, folk art, immigrant invention, patriotic expression, roadside attraction, and celebration of local geology. For over a century, these regional grottoes have inspired artists and the faithful who visit these places of communal prayer, care, and creativity.
This kaleidoscopic, ornate and long-overlooked art form is now having a major moment of reconsideration, thanks to a fascinating new exhibition entitled “A Beautiful Experience: The Midwest Grotto Tradition” at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, WI (on view through May 10, 2026).
Madeline Buol, untitled (Seven Sorrows of Mary) (ca. 1948). John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection, gift of Robert and Lisa Klauer and Kohler Foundation Inc. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
“The grotto and the grotto aesthetic are really important to a ton of artists in our collection,” said Laura Bickford, collections curator at JMKAC, who curated the exhibition along with assistant curator Chava Krivchenia. JMKAC is the only institution in the world focused on the preservation of artist-built environments, which are often large-scale and outdoors. “These grottoes are an essential starting point aesthetically, culturally, and philosophically.”
The eye-opening exhibition brings together a grotto by Madeline Buol, one of the only women working in the tradition, rosettes (which are smaller fragments) from important grotto sites, along with ephemera, along with contemporary responses to the grotto tradition by artists E. Saffronia Downing and Stephanie H. Shih.
Religious Roadside Attractions
Grottoes have roots in European pagan traditions going back centuries. “They were based around natural landscapes like caves or reflective pools, which were places for prayer or reflection,” explained Krivchenia.
Over time, however, people began to bring objects with religious or spiritual significance to these spaces, creating shrines, frequented by visitors for moments of prayer. These shrines ultimately became a common aspect of Catholic tradition.
Midwest grottoes emerged in communities of German Catholic immigrants. “These immigrants included those hoping to become pastors, too, as there was a seminary right outside of Milwaukee,” Krivchenia explained.
Father Mathias H. Wernerus, Holy Ghost Park (the Dickeyville Grotto), Dickeyville, WI, ca. 1920–1931. Photo: John Michael Kohler Arts Center Artist Archives.
Priests often spearheaded these Midwest grottoes with support from their community, and “A Beautiful Experience” includes rosettes and ephemera from several of such locations. One of the earliest and most influential grottoes in the Midwest was the vision of Paul Dobberstein, a German immigrant to Milwaukee, who enrolled at the city’s St. Francis Seminary in the 1890s.
After recovering from a bad case of pneumonia, the priest pledged to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary. He began assembling rocks and boulders at his parish. Dobberstein and numerous volunteers together constructed the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa. Reaching back to European traditions in which grottoes were often adorned with shells and rocks, Dobberstein’s brings together a massive array of semiprecious stones and minerals, including petrified wood, malachite, azurite, agates, geodes, jasper, quartz, topaz, calcite, stalactites, and stalagmites. It sprawls over acres, making the largest-known grotto of its kind.
“These grottos are interesting from a material culture perspective and also geology. There are a lot of locally occurring stones that are specific to Midwest geology and time and glacial activity,” Krivchenia added.
Father Mathias H. Wernerus, Holy Ghost Park (the Dickeyville Grotto), Dickeyville, WI ca. 1920–1931. Photo: John Michael Kohler Arts Center Artist Archives.
Dobberstein’s sprawling grotto inspired a flurry of grotto-making across the region in its wake. In Dickeyville, WI, a priest by the name of Father Mathias Wernerus was instrumental in the construction of the Dickeyville Grotto and Shrines between 1924 and 1930. While Dobberstein’s grotto centered on organic materials, the Dickeyville Grotto is a testament to the industry of the region, and includes car reflectors, broken porcelain heirlooms, materials gifted by parishioners, and a bevy of gearshift knobs donated by Henry Ford to the shrine. The Dickeyville Grotto also embodies the unique blending of patriotism and religion that the grottoes unified. Two columns, one on either side of the grotto’s entrance, bear the words “Religion” and “Patriotism” along with a mosaic of an American flag.
“These grottoes are rooted in religious tradition, so you see imagery that has to do with the Stations of the Cross or biblical stories,” said Krivchenia “But, at the same time, German immigrants and Catholics were trying to show that they could have loyalty and commitment to the Church as well as to the U.S. at a time when that was questioned.”
The title for the exhibition “A Beautiful Experience” comes from a brochure advertising the Dickeyville Grotto, as well. While the Catholic diocese sanctioned the construction of the grotto, the funding and maintenance costs had to be self-funded. Much of that came from donations from roadside visitors in an era when interstate highways were a new and exciting development. “Building these grottoes coincided with the rise of the automobile and highways and this idea of taking a road trip, as well as the widespread availability of concrete,” explained Krivchenia.
A Woman in the Spotlight
Anchoring the exhibition is the work of Madeline Buol, one of the few known women builders in the Midwest grotto tradition. “A Beautiful Experience” marks the first-ever public presentation of her monumental 13-piece grotto made at her home in Dubuque, Iowa.
The artist, who was born in 1902, was a devout Catholic who ran a beauty and barber shop with her husband Frank in Dubuque, Iowa. Inspired by other grottoes in the Upper Midwest, she began building a grotto in her yard in 1946, which she worked on, in various capacities, for 15 years. After her death, Buol’s grotto was acquired by JMKAC, which conducted extensive conservation on her works.
Madeline Buol in 1952. Courtesy of the John Michael Kohler Art Center.
“We know that Buol visited both the Dickeyville Grotto and the Grotto Redemption in Iowa, and was really inspired by these acts of faith,” said Krivchenia.
“Buol was not a recognized artist nor working among other women grotto builders, yet she dedicated years to creating monumental works in her own yard,” added Bickford.
Buol’s grotto sculptures range from two feet to over eight feet tall and combine both industrial and organic materials in a unique synthesis. Her works nod to the Dickeyville Grotto, including a smaller replication of the Dickeyville Grotto’s patriotic entrance. Her grotto also includes sculptural forms in the shape of rosary beads.
“A Beautiful Experience” offers a look inside Buol’s unique artistic approaches and reflects decorative trends as well as her own life and home.
“Madeline Buol wrote to the Fathers at the other grottoes for material and technical advice. We know through writing and her autobiography that she went through trial-and-error processes,” said Krivchenia. “The fact that these are in as good a condition as they are, after spending multiple decades in Midwestern winters shows the ingenuity and technique that she was able to cultivate.”
Madeline Buol, untitled (center grotto), ca. 1948; concrete, stones (including quartz, granite, and metamorphic and igneous rocks from glacial outwash), marbles, shells, glass, ceramic, metal, and plastic. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection, gift of Robert and Lisa Klauer and Kohler Foundation Inc. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
While JKMAC focuses on the conservation of such artist-built environments, here the institution is careful to present the work so that the techniques Buol experimented with are more visible, including areas where she added shells as supports in the concrete, as well as baking tins she used to create small additions during the cold winter months.
“What I appreciate the most about her work is that you’re always noticing these moments of care and humor,” said Krivchenia. “She had a huge affinity for seashells. Throughout her sculptures, you’ll notice shells with holes in them. In the Midwest, there was a button factory that would punch out the buttons from shells and then throw the rest of the shells back in the river. So it’s just one of those moments where you’re seeing industrial design or household kind of trends and histories alongside this individual style and aesthetics.”
Stephanie H. Shih, Toy Building (1915–1939), 2025; mixed media. Courtesy of the artist. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
The exhibition also features works by contemporary artists E. Saffronia Downing and Stephanie H. Shih inspired by Midwest grottoes. Shih has created an elaborate porcelain grotto based on the Toy Building, a pagoda-style building that stood in downtown Milwaukee from 1913 to 1939, and housed a buffet, a billiards hall, and more. The building was a testament to a now-vanished Chinese immigrant population in the city. In conceptualizing the work, the artist crowdsourced tchotchkes relating to the Chinese diaspora from the public; these now adorn the building’s roof and serve as an imaginary grotto for these unknown immigrants. Downing, meanwhile, looks at grottoes through the specificity of the Midwestern geology, through sourcing clay and material from the region to create her sculptures, and offering deeper insights into the natural history of the region.
The curators see a lasting and continually important role for grottoes over a hundred years after the folk art first emerged in the Midwest. “The creation of grottoes is a way of place-making and creating a space for community to come together for reflection and belonging,” said Krivchenia, “but also to experience some kind of awe.” More

Study the resumes of 20th-century American artists, and you’ll start to notice that most of them have one thing in common: the Art Students League, which has instructed some 200,000 students since its founding in 1875. Now, the New York art school on West 57th Street is celebrating its 150th anniversary with an exhibition that celebrates that often overlooked role in American art history, with works by famous alumni and instructors including Alexander Calder (1898–1976), Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), and Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) to name just a few.
“When you look at a history of American art, or even Modern and contemporary art, it’s more a question of who didn’t intersect with the League,” Esther V. Moerdler, assistant curator at the school, told me. “But so many people come to the League and they’re like, ‘I walk by you every day, and I had no idea you were here!’”
It was a group of artists at the National Academy of Design who broke away to form the Art Students League after the academy started phasing out its life drawing classes. (Radically for the time, the school let women draw from life from day one, and required that both men and women be represented on its board.)
The League is an atelier, which means it doesn’t offer a degree program. (Classes are not even graded.) There is open enrollment—entrance requirements were abolished in 1902—allowing artists of any age or skill level to take classes for as long or short a time as they desire. This can create special bonds with instructors.
Tony Smith, Spitball (1970). Collection of the Art Students League, New York.
The League Has Influenced Generations of Artists
The sculptor Tony Smith (1912–1980), for instance, represented here by a small granite work from the school’s collection, spoke of classes with Vaclav Vytlacil (1892–1984) as having proved invaluable in teaching him to think about volume.
“Even though Tony took a painting class here, he was able to take something from his short time with Vytlacil and carry it over into incredible sculptural practice,” Moerdler said. “There’s a closeness that you get through a place where you choose your own adventure in a way that you’re not able to get necessarily elsewhere.”
“Shaping American Art: A Celebration of the Art Students League of New York at 150” at the Art Students League of New York, with Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblage work Untitled (Kabal American Zephyr), 1983, at center. Photo: courtesy of the Art Students League of New York.
Moerdler curated the show with Ksenia Nouril, the League’s former gallery director (now assistant director of the international program at New York’s Museum of Modern Art). The pair dove deep into the archives to try to tell the school’s wide-ranging story, which includes everyone from the designer of the Oscar statuette, Cedric Gibbons (1890–1960), to comic book legend Will Eisner (1917–2005), neither of whom made the final cut for this show.
They ultimately settled on 87 works, mostly drawn from the school’s nearly 3,000-piece collection, supplemented by 20 key loans, like a Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) assemblage sculpture from the artist’s foundation, crafted around a metal chair.
The Art Students League home at 215 West 57th Street, ca. 1940. Photo: courtesy of the Art Students League, New York.
The curators initially wanted to do a show of 150 artists—one for each year since the founding—but wall space proved a limiting factor.
Even the final whittled-down list required taking over not only the main exhibition gallery, but also the walls of the lobby, the registration office where current students (including actor Mark Ruffalo) still enroll for classes today, and the school café, where Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)—another noteable alumnus not represented in the exhibition—once worked.
Thomas Hart Benton, Sunday Morning (1934). Collection of the Art Students League, New York. ©T.H. and R.P. Benton Trusts/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York City.
A Historic Discovery—and a Youthful Rivalry
Pollock’s teacher while at the League, Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), offers one of the show’s most exciting moments, with a rediscovered landscape with a family in front of a church. Here, it’s exhibited for the first time ever.
“We received it in the mail going on two years ago,” Moerdler said. “It’s a newly authenticated Benton that we’re really excited about.”
The Art Students League building. Photo: by Rudy Bravo, courtesy of the Art Students League of New York.
The painting came with a letter explaining its provenance: Benton made the painting as part of the instruction of a class at the League, and gave it to a student, who passed it along to her neighbor. The neighbor’s daughter later inherited the work and sent it to the school, which has worked to authenticate and restore the previously undocumented work, now slated to be part of the upcoming Benton catalogue raisonné.
The curators have teased out other fascinating stories, like the portrait of a young Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) by Eugene Edward Speicher (1883–1962), displayed next to a prize-winning still life she painted during her time at the League. Both artists were studying under William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), but it was O’Keeffe’s painting that had won best in class, which apparently didn’t sit well with Speicher.
Eugene Speicher, Portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe (1908). Collection of the Art Students League, New York.
“The story goes that Eugene had also won some prizes for portraiture, and he kind of accosted Georgia in a stairwell here at the League. He told her that she’s beautiful, and she’d make a great model, but he’s going to be the famous artist, and she’s going to go off and teach art in some girls’ school. And so if she wants to be remembered, she should pose for a picture for him,” Moerdler said. “Speicher did have a nice career—but who do we remember today?”
Throughout the exhibition, certain juxtapositions underscore just how formative arts education could be for young artists. O’Keeffe’s painting, of a dead rabbit, shows the influence of William Merritt Chase on her early work. O’Keeffe’s painting is installed next to Chase’s still life of a fish from the same year, which shares a muted palette and other compositional similarities.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Dead Rabbit and Copper Pot (1908), and William Merritt Chase, Fish Still Life (1908), in “Shaping American Art: A Celebration of the Art Students League of New York at 150” at the Art Students League of New York. Photo: courtesy of the Art Students League of New York.
A Who’s Who of American Art History
While Donald Judd (1928–1994) is best remembered for his Minimalist sculpture and furniture, his foundation has loaned one of his lithographs from the early 1950s for the exhibition. The work may depict one of the studio spaces at the League.
“You can see in it the stark lines of space that would later characterize the Minimalist forms that he would produce. You see already in his student works from when he was studying here the beginnings of that thought process,” Moerdler said.
Audrey Flack, A Brush with Destiny (2023). Courtesy of Hollis Taggart, New York.
The show’s impressive artist list ranges from leading 19th-century landscape painter Winslow Homer (1836–1910) to recently deceased masters Audrey Flack (1931–2024) and Richard Mayhew (1924–2024), who actually gave his last interview to the League shortly before his passing last fall at age 100. (Flack’s colorful painting in the exhibition is full of art history Easter eggs, like Pollock splattering paint, while Mayhew is represented by a hazy landscape in dark green tones.)
Surprises await around every corner, such as two beautiful silver gelatin prints of New York in the 1920s and ’30s by Berenice Abbott (1898–1991)—even though the school has never offered classes in photography. Those images hang in the café with other works on paper, such as a lithograph by famed New Yorker cartoonist Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003).
Richard Mayhew, Untitled (1967). Collection of the Art Students League, New York.
Lesser-known artists also have their moments, such as the former model Iria Leino (1932–2022), who lived for decades in obscurity in a Soho loft on Greene Street, leaving behind hundreds of unseen works. The abstract Finnish painter finally got her first solo show last fall, at New York’s Harper’s Gallery, which came with a glowing New York Times write-up.
“There’s a way in which the show could have been just the people who you would expect to see. But we wanted to challenge that,” Moerdler said. “We have names who were more recognized during their lifetimes than they are now, and people who are important to the League internally, like Frank Vincent Dumond [1865–1951], who was a very impactful instructor.”
Russel and Mary Wright, American Modern Chutney Tumbler, American Modern Stack Server, and American Modern Seafoam Pitcher (1938–59). Photo: courtesy of Manitoga/The Russel Wright Design Center.
The exhibition also illustrates the League’s influence beyond painting and sculpture. A trio of dishware pieces from industrial designers Mary Wright (1904–1952) and Russel Wright (1904–1976) comes from the designers’ American Modern collection, the most widely sold line of ceramic dinnerware in U.S. history. The couple’s work is on view along with a gouache work on paper depicting Serbian war refugees by their Art Students League teacher, Boardman Robinson (1876–1952), a politically engaged artist who Moerdler credits with getting the Wrights to think about social issues.
“Russell and Mary were involved in the Good Design movement, which valued affordability, usability, durability, and beauty—having something that was accessible to everybody at any price point, so everyone could bring something beautiful into their home,” Moerdler said. “What I enjoy about that is how the instructor influences the student and how the student, in turn, shapes America and how we think about the home.”
Hildreth Meière, Self Portrait (1943); John Ahearn, Bill Rice (1979); Steven Cartoccio, Notorious B.I.G. Gold Variant (2024); and Ivan Gregorovitch Olinsky, Portrait of an Artist (1930) in “Shaping American Art: A Celebration of the Art Students League of New York at 150” at the Art Students League of New York. Photo: courtesy of the Art Students League of New York.
Women Play a Huge Role in the League’s History
Also telling a fascinating story is a 1943 self-portrait in oil of Hildreth Meière (1892–1961), who had a thriving career as an Art Deco muralist and mosaicist working in public buildings. The painting shows her at work on one of her large-scale commissions, such as the facade of New York’s Radio City Music Hall—one of 100 buildings across the U.S. that she helped decorate.
“Her work is all over the city, but you might not know her name,” Moerdler said.
“Shaping American Art: A Celebration of the Art Students League of New York at 150” at the Art Students League of New York. Photo: courtesy of the Art Students League of New York.
Another woman artist who learned her craft at the league and remains a quiet fixture of the New York landscape is the sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973), whose work in the exhibition is a small but lifelike bronze of a yawning tiger. A few years ago, the city launched an initiative to erect statues of historic women, after realizing there were only five such public monuments in New York. Huntington, it turns out, had created the very first one, of Joan of Arc for Central Park, in 1915.
“Before that, every statue of a woman had been an allegory or a mythological figure. So it was a big milestone for the city,” Moerdler said. “Highlighting these women artists who we might not know, but whose work we know and walk by all the time, and making sure that those voices are heard, that was important to us.”
Art Students League class, ca. 1905. Art Students League records, 1875-1955. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
In some ways, the League is the same way—an institution perhaps so deeply embedded in American art history that it is easy to overlook, a foundation on which generations of artists have built their careers. And if New York has long been a beacon for artists, the League has been their refuge, offering instruction to both natives and transplants, such as Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) and Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), two more names who could have easily featured in the show.
“We wouldn’t have the League without the city,” Moerdler said. “And we like to think of ourselves as one of the best-kept secrets here.”
“Shaping American Art: A Celebration of the Art Students League of New York at 150” is on view at the Art Students League, 215 West 57th Street, New York, New York, May 29, 2025–August 16, 2025. More

One of the undisputed greats of English literature, the celebrated novels of Jane Austen, including Pride and Prejudice and Emma, have continued to resonate with new generations. The English writer’s six classics put the experiences of women front and center in narratives that are governed by the strict social and moral codes of Regency-era England. Yet, despite its specific context, Austen’s wit and incisive observations about human nature have seen her work continually re-read and readapted for film, theatre, and television.
This summer, Austen is the subject of several transatlantic museum exhibitions marking 250 years since her birth, in 1775. As well as spotlighting the novelist’s now iconic characters and storylines, these shows aim to reveal new sides to her masterpieces and bring together an array of art and memorabilia that is testament to their enduring popularity.
The Morgan Library and Museum in New York City is making full use of its rich collection of Austen’s correspondence and manuscripts, begun by J.P. Morgan’s son Jack in the 1920s, to stage “A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250.” The landmark survey, which also includes additional loans from 15 institutions, traces Austen’s story from her earliest attempts to establish herself to her eventual international renown, focusing on her cultural impact in North America. It is on view through September 14.
Install view of “A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250,” Morgan Stanley West Gallery. Photo: Janny Chiu, 2025, © The Morgan Library & Museum.
Celebrations in the U.K., meanwhile, are largely concentrated in Austen’s home county of Hampshire, to the south-west of London. These range from a Regency Ball in Winchester on August 16 to the exhibition “Beyond the Bonnets: Working Women in Jane Austen’s Novels,” which reveals the lives of everyday women in Georgian Hampshire and tours the region until February 2026. At Jane Austen’s House, the cottage where she lived in the small village of Chawton, “Austenmania!” is a tribute to her enduring appeal across screens big and small. It runs through January 4, 2026.
An Enduring Legacy
Austen’s books pull the viewer into high society in late Georgian England, revealing its charms while offering a wry commentary on its social conventions. But what about Austen herself? Visitors to “A Lively Mind” at the Morgan will learn how the writer was supported in her ambitions by her family but still needed perseverance to defy the limiting gender expectations of her day. A sense of her character shines through from letters to her older sister Cassandra while contemporary artworks build up and image of her world.
Jane Austen, Emma, volume two. Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1816. Image courtesy of Goucher College Special Collections & Archives, Alberta H. and Henry G. Burke Collection.
Even in Austen’s lifetime, her impact would reach far beyond the quaint villages she called home. The Morgan exhibition includes four of the first U.S. editions of Emma, which was printed in Philadelphia in 1816, a year before Austen’s death. The influence of Austen’s most famous lines is demonstrated by the inclusion of Amy Sherald’s 2019 painting A Single Man in Possession of a Good Fortune, the title of which quotes the Pride and Prejudice opener.
The exhibition also revels in one lesser aspect of Austen’s creative output, that of her elegant sense of style. It will include fashion plates, a turquoise ring, and a reproduction of her silk pelisse coat, featuring an oak leaf motif pattern in yellow over gold ground. The 1814 original is currently on view until October 20 at City Museum in Winchester, England where visitors can also see two of the novelist’s purses and her personalized ivory spool case.
Installation view of “Austenmania!” at Jane Austen’s House, 2025. Photo: Luke Shears, courtesy Jane Austen’s House.
In the 20th century, Austen’s legacy multiplied across new media, most notably film and television. This was never more true than in 1995, a year that saw four beloved Austen adaptations that remain fan favorites to this day. The BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth, the same broadcaster’s Persuasion, the feature film Sense and Sensibility, starring Emma Thompson, and Emma-inspired chick flick Clueless!  are all the subject of “Austenmania!” Viewers can marvel over scripts, production notes, press cuttings, and merch, either in person or online.
Women in Georgian Britain
Austen’s many female protagonists, from the Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice to Emma Woodhouse of Emma, Anne Elliot in Persuasion, and Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, have won the hearts of millions of readers. But what about the women in the background? The centerpiece of the Hampshire Cultural Trust’s program of events is the exhibition “Beyond the Bonnets,” on view at the Gallery at the Arc in Winchester through November 2. It tours to the Willis Museum in nearby Basingstoke from November 12 until February 22, 2026.
W.H. Pyne, Women are employed performing a variety of domestic tasks. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.
The exhibition brings together audio vignettes from the novels, extracts from Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra, newspaper clippings, and 65 archival domestic objects to spotlight some of the novel’s more minor characters, including business owners and women in service roles like housekeepers and governesses. Their stories–and those of real women who the Austens encountered in day-to-day life–offer a glimpse into the precarious reality of making a living for the many women who were not born into England’s upper classes.
Examples of these real, everyday women who visitors will encounter include Mrs. Mary Martin of Basingstoke, who ran a local public inn and later a draper’s shop, and Ann Freeman of Alresford, who supported herself after her husband’s death through a successful glazing business.
“The exhibition brings together a multitude of Hampshire voices–Austen’s distinctive and wry voice, the voices of individual working women from all around her and the echoes of their lives found in collections and archives,” said “Beyond the Bonnets” curator Kathleen Palmer. “Visitors will discover unexpected and rich real-life histories of Georgian Hampshire in parallel with enjoying the acute observation of Austen’s own words.”
“A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250” is on view at the Morgan Library and Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, June 6–September 14, 2025.
“Beyond the Bonnets: Working Women in Jane Austen’s Novels” is on view at the Gallery at the Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester SO23 8SB, United Kingdom, July 26–November 2, 2025; and at the Willis Museum, Market Place, Basingstoke RG21 7QD, United Kingdom, November 12, 2025–February 22, 2026.
“Austenmania!” is on view at Jane Austen’s House, Winchester Road, Chawton, Hampshire, Alton GU34 1SD, United Kingdom, January 22, 2025–January 4, 2026. Find out more about Hampshire Cultural Trust’s program for Jane Austen 2025 here. More

Most people consider flies vermin, pests they are loath to see in the house. For Los Angeles artist John Knuth (b. 1978), they’ve become collaborators—and no fewer than one million of them helped create the paintings for his current show, “Hot Garden,” at New York’s Hollis Taggart Downtown.
It was a dirty windowsill that first inspired Knuth to start thinking about flies in the context of art, way back in 2005. Flies digest their food through regurgitation, leaving behind tiny specks wherever they land—markings that you may have overlooked in your own home, but that fortuitously captured Knuth’s eye.
“I realized that each of those flyspecks is a painting. That’s a deposit of a pigment on a surface,” he told me.
Inspired by the artistic potential of these humble creatures, Knuth set out to explore it, embarking on a creative journey that would change the course of his career—and forge a veritable army of tiny assistants.
John Knuth, Red Sky in the Morning (2025). Photo: Evan Walsh, courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
How Do Flies Make Art? 
Visitors to the exhibition were able to see Knuth’s process with the flies for themselves. Inside a custom-built enclosure in the gallery, there were hundreds of thousands of insects on hand for the opening, buzzing and busily working their magic on a suite of small sculptures.
“It was such a great night,” gallery partner Paul Efstathiou told me. “People were freaking out.”
“They added so much energy to the show,” Knuth agreed. “There’s a real awe moment to it, seeing that many flies in one place.”
Flies finishing the “sculpture garden” in “John Knuth: Hot Garden” at Hollis Taggart Downtown. Photo: courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
The flies, whose lifespan is just a few weeks, eventually died out—Knuth had to go back to L.A., and Efstathiou was not up to raising a new generation from maggots on his own—but the art they left behind speaks to Knuth’s unique process.
Knuth orders fly larvae by the thousand, letting them hatch in environments strategically stocked with canvases. (He spent thousands of dollars on the flies for this show; the finished works are priced between $700 and $20,000.)
John Knuth, Hot Garden (2025). Photo: Evan Walsh, courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
Knuth has returned to this kind of work periodically over the past 20 years—especially after the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art approached him in 2013 about doing a video on the fly paintings for its still-nascent YouTube channel. It got over 100,000 views, a big viral moment by the standards of the day, and one that led to multiple gallery shows and even landed Knuth a mention in a book, Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects.
“I can say that moment in 2013 is what really made my career happen,” Knuth said. “The fly paintings literally helped me buy my house.”
John Knuth with his flies, working on two paintings. Photo: Ian Byers-Gamber.
Art Responding to Personal Tragedy—and Climate Crisis
Now, those same paintings are helping Knuth; his wife, interior designer Taylor Jacobson; and their five-and-a-half-year-old son, Mateo, as they look to move forward in the months following the Eaton Fire. The family was among the thousands of people in Altadena, many of them artists, who lost their homes in the blaze.
“The hard part was losing my entire history and losing my entire archive,” Knuth said. “Every artist has this dream that one day the Hammer or whatever will do our retrospective, right? So it was crushing, losing 25 years of work.”

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The paintings and sculptures in “Hot Garden” are the first that he’s made in the aftermath of the disaster, a kind of literal rebirth for the artist in the wake of a climate change-fueled disaster.
A particularly hopeful moment comes in a work that incorporates a painting by Knuth’s son, who has grown up making art side by side with his dad. Titled Mateo Knuth, the best painter in the family, the work is a sweet tribute to their relationship, melding childhood innocence and the beauty of nature.
John Knuth, Mateo Knuth, the best painter in the family (2025). Photo: Evan Walsh, courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
The “sculpture garden” that the flies helped paint on site at the gallery includes fragments pulled from the ashes of Knuth’s home from his collection of work by other artists. His friend, Chet Glaze, even contributed a new work, a small wooden pyramid clad in sheets of copper. And then Knuth also fabricated miniature versions of famous pieces in nearby museums that were threatened by the fires, including The Thinker by Auguste Rodin and Little Dancer by Edgar Degas.
“The Getty Villa was on the edge of burning. The fires reached two miles from the Norton Simon. None of those spaces are safe,” Knuth said. “We think of museums as being forever. And these fires taught me that nothing is forever.”
John Knuth, Edgar Degas, The Fourteen Year Old Dancer (2025). Photo: Evan Walsh, courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
Another piece in the show is a fly painting executed on a copy of the New York Times article interviewing Altadena artists about the destruction of their homes in the fire. The headline quotes Knuth—“This Is Our Pompeii”—but the text is partially obscured by a plethora of tiny red and blue flyspecks. (It’s one of two works in the show that have been purchased by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.)
A large diptych, titled January 7, also alludes to the date of the fire, and is inspired by the ominous clouds of smoke in the sky as Altadena went up in flames. The artist thinks of these paintings as “distorted landscapes.”
John Knuth, This is our Pompeii (2025). Photo: Evan Walsh, courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
The Surprising Beauty of Fly Vomit
Harnessing the power of flies in the name of art took some trial and error. For one thing, it’s almost inevitable that the flies escape from Knuth’s makeshift painting studios.
The artist has lost deposits on studio spaces due to infestations, and his wife isn’t all too keen on the process either. “It drives her crazy,” he said. (Thankfully, Knuth has developed a more effective enclosure system, keeping the fly colonies inside a large camping tent while they work.)
John Knuth’s fly painting set up. Photo: courtesy of the artist.
But even more important than controlling the environment was perfecting the paintings themselves.
“The first paintings I made with the flies, they’re all brown. I was feeding them Taco Bell and McDonald’s,” Knuth said. “After a while I realized, those are cool conceptual art pieces, but they’re not great paintings. They’re intriguing objects, but they don’t entice your eye.”
“John Knuth: Hot Garden” at Hollis Taggart Downtown. Photo: courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
So Knuth began feeding his flies acrylic paint mixed with sugar water. The results were far more vibrant and visually interesting. (And, he’s pretty sure, still won’t get him into trouble with PETA, as his flies are living normal lifespans and remain sexually active.)
“I’ve really pushed the fly works to this point of being transcendent, beautiful paintings,” Knuth said of the resulting works, which he considers a kind of abstract pointillism.
John Knuth, Untitled (2025). Photo: Evan Walsh, courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
Each piece is a true collaboration, an underpainting made by Knuth complemented by a flyspeck overlay, sometimes made by several generations in varying colors, the density of marks radiating out from the carefully placed food sources.
“All the compositions are very planned out,
 very intentional,” Knuth said. “There are some unknowns in terms of how the flies are going to react, but I do a lot of sketches and preparatory paintings to create each of the paintings. So they’re not just random.”
John Knuth, The Spark (2025). Photo: Evan Walsh, courtesy of Hollis Taggart Downtown, New York.
His dream would be to turn the entirety of the spiraling, white-walled rotunda of New York’s Guggenheim Museum into one giant fly painting—created in front of visitors, with museum-goers walking through swarms of flies making their mark on the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed landmark.
“I live with the flies,” Knuth said. “I’d like other people to have that experience.”
“John Knuth: The Hot Garden” is on view at Hollis Taggart Downtown, 109 Norfolk Street, New York, New York, through August 16, 2025. More

When the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) opened its cavernous East London Storehouse in May of this year, it promised visitors a radical new cultural experience, offering an up-close view of conservators at work and immediate access to its archive of more than half a million works.
Soon afterwards, Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, stopped by V&A East for a tour, taking in the largest Picasso in the world and watching on as museum staff photographed collection items for the online archives. Middleton, who studied history of art at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, praised the museum’s transparency and the opportunity for the public to access the museum’s “historic” and “eclectic” collection.
It now appears that the royal V&A patron may also have been scoping out some objects to place within her very own exhibition, titled “Makers and Creators,” which the museum calls a mini display. Middleton has played curator selecting nine works that span art forms and the globe.
Installation view of “Makers and Curators,” a mini display curated by Kate Middleton at V&A East. Photo: David Parry / V&A.
Front and center in Middleton’s gridwall and glass display is a fairy costume designed by Oliver Messel for the Royal Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty. It was Messel’s most enduring production running for 15 years with the fairy costumes a mélange of English, Spanish, and French styles from the 17th and 18th centuries. The tutu and its accompanying headdress features morning glories, Messel’s favorite flower, with their flowers and leaves woven together with golden-brown thread for branches.
Resting against the back wall is a hand quilted bedcover that was made in Wales in the 1830s. Nearby is A Woman Holding a Marguerite (ca. 1880–90), a painting by the American-born, Paris-trained painter George Henry Boughton. Also known as La Penserosa, “the thoughtful one” in Italian, it’s one half of a pair that explores the introverted and extroverted sides of a woman’s character. Here, Boughton presents innocence, faith, and curiosity in the form of a modestly dressed figure contemplating a daisy. A fun visual play arrives directly below with the sculpted stone hands of Clemence Dane, a pioneering 20th-century English novelist and playwright.
The mid-20th century sculpture by Clemence Dane alongside George Henry Boughton’s painting, on view in “Makers and Curators,” curated by Kate Middleton at V&A East. Photo: David Parry / V&A.
Below are two items related to Beatrix Potter, the children’s illustrator and author best-known for creating the world of Peter Rabbit. The first is a small watercolor and the second is a childhood photograph album that belonged to her father, turned to a spread of family photographs.
Rounding out “Makers and Creators” is a Qing dynasty porcelain vase crafted in the Imperial kilns of Jingdezhen, China, and a set of 15th-century earthenware tiles from a church in southern England. Resting outside is a three-panel screen crafted by William Morris’s eponymous design firm in the first decade of the 20th century drawing out the flowers from Middleton’s selection.
The Princess of Wales visiting the V&A East Storehouse in early June. Photo: Getty Images.
“A collection of objects can create a narrative, both about our past and as inspiration for the future,” Middleton wrote in the text accompanying wall the mini display. “This display celebrates our past makers and creators and illustrators how much historic objects can influence fashion, design, film, art, and creativity today.”
This is far from Middleton’s first curatorial outing. In 2022, she selected a group of images for the major exhibition “Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography” at London’s National Portrait Gallery, which featured in a Patron Trail. Earlier this year, she launched an interactive installation at the same museum, intended to support the social and emotional development of young children. More