Savannah’s Telfair Academy: Classical Casts, Impressionism and the Bird Girl

Housed in an 1818 Regency-style mansion, the Telfair Academy is the oldest art museum in the South. A can’t-miss stop in Savannah for art lovers, history buffs and fans of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

The Telfair Academy sits on the east side of Telfair Square, and is a short walk from West Broughton Street.

There’s just something about Savannah, Georgia: the moss-draped live oaks, the historic squares, and the beautiful architecture always draw us back. It’s a living, breathing city that honors its past while still looking toward the future.

Wally and I had visited Savannah many times before — wandering through the artsy, emerging Starland District, strolling up and down Broughton, and popping into the SCAD gift shop more than once. This time though, we decided to visit the Telfair Museums, which included the Telfair Academy and the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters. 

When we arrived at the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, we were greeted by the towering sculptures of Phidias, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Rubens. Hewn from limestone by Austrian sculptor Viktor Tilgner, each figure stands seven feet, six inches tall. Their commanding presence at the entrance to the stately edifice set the perfect tone for what awaited us inside.

We ascended the steps of the central porch and purchased our tickets at the museum gift shop, which included admission to all three museums: the Telfair Academy, the Jepson Center & Telfair Children’s Art Museum , and the Owens-Thomas House.

Portrait of Dr. George Jones by Rembrandt Peale, 1834

The History of the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences

The story of the South’s oldest public art museum begins with the death of Mary Telfair, the last surviving member of one of Savannah’s most prominent antebellum families. When she passed away on June 2, 1875, at the age of 84, she entrusted her Regency-style residence and its contents, along with a generous portion of her personal fortune, to the Georgia Historical Society. Her will stipulated that the home be converted into an institution dedicated to introducing art and culture to the public.  

Fun fact: Mary Telfair’s bequest establishing the Telfair Academy preceded the idea for New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art by just one month, which was conceived by a group of men in Paris on July 4, 1866.

But instead of opening its doors, the house stood silent, caught in legal limbo for nearly a decade. Distant relatives challenged her will, alleging that she was not of sound mind. The dispute dragged on until it reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately upheld her wishes in Jones v. Habersham in 1883.

With the legal hurdles cleared, the Society’s board appointed the academically trained Carl Ludwig Brandt as the museum’s first director. A German-born painter who had crossed the Atlantic in 1852, Brandt was a trusted friend of Mary’s younger sister, Margaret Telfair Hodgson. In 1874, she commissioned him to paint a portrait of her late husband, William Brown Hodgson. That painting was unveiled at the 1876 dedication ceremony for Hodgson Hall, which Margaret had built in her husband’s memory to house the Society’s collections and library.  

Perhaps it was this connection that convinced the board, and Brandt found himself tasked with the daunting job of converting the home into a cultural institution. He was given $20,000 (about $640,000 today) and passage across the Atlantic to procure works that would shape the museum’s permanent collection: engravings, oil paintings, full-scale plaster replicas of classical statuary, and casts of the Parthenon frieze and east pediment.

When Brandt returned, the board brought on architect Detlef Lienau to enlarge and adapt the home for its new purpose. Lienau removed the original staircase, raised the roofline, expanded the skylight, and effectively doubled the building’s size. Where the garden and former slave quarters once stood, he added a sculpture gallery at street level, topped by a rotunda to showcase the works Brandt had acquired in Europe.

On May 3, 1886, the former family residence officially reopened as the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, marking a bold new chapter in Southern cultural history as the first museum in the United States to be founded by a woman.

Entrance Hall and Octagon Reception Room

The entrance hall of the Academy bears little resemblance to the original house. Lienau replaced the pine floors with marble and widened the passage to allow guests to move freely through what had once been a private residence. Today, the central corridor displays a range of works — from Harriet Hyatt Mayor’s 1915 bronze sculpture Art and Science to notable examples of 20th century American and French Impressionism and beyond.  

Three Shack Landscape by Hughie Lee-Smith, 1947

Hughie Lee-Smith’s haunting surrealistic painting Three Shack Landscape depicts three weathered shacks — one dark brown, one red and one green — standing along a desolate, rocky shoreline beneath heavy blue and gray clouds. A burst of light cuts through, illuminating the dunes and stones around them, while in the foreground a lone pole with a twisted wire juts toward the sky, heightening the sense of isolation.

Lee-Smith was born in Eustis, Florida in 1915 and spent part of his youth in Atlanta before moving to Ohio, where he graduated from the Cleveland School of Art in 1938. After a brief stint in the Navy stationed on the Great Lakes Naval Training Center during World War II, he briefly taught art in South Carolina before settling in Detroit, where economic opportunities for African Americans were more abundant. 

Lee-Smith moved to New York City in 1958, where he taught at the Art Students League. In 1967, he reached a milestone as the second Black artist to be elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design.

Le port de la Rochelle by Gaston Balande, 1949

French impressionist painter Gaston Balande’s Le port de la Rochelle captures a lively view of the harbor in La Rochelle, a historic seaport on France’s Atlantic coast. Painted around 1949, the piece reflects the influence of Paul Cézanne, particularly in his exploration of color, line, and form. Rather than relying on traditional perspective and chiaroscuro, light and shade techniques that defined Western art since the Renaissance, Balande used these elements to create depth and solidity. 

Marketing by Robert Gwathmey, 1943

Robert Gwathmey was an American social realist painter known for his depictions of rural life in the American South, particularly the plight of African American sharecroppers. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1903, Gwathmey was deeply influenced by his experiences and observations of the South. In 1944, he spent time working alongside sharecroppers in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, to better understand their lives and challenges. 

Like his contemporaries Jacob Lawrence and Ben Shahn, Gwathmey developed an abstracted figurative style. He utilized bold geometric shapes, flat planes of vibrant color, and minimal shading to convey his social commentary. This approach emphasized form and composition over naturalistic detail, giving his works a powerful and visually striking impact. 

Jerry by Emma Cheves Wilkins, 1944

Octagon Reception Room

At the front of the Academy is the Octagon Reception Room. Once a traditional period room, it’s been reimagined to host the exhibition One Museum, Many Facades: Telfair Through the Ages. The walls still feature a rare, surviving example of early 19th century trompe-l'œil wood graining, a highly realistic, illusionistic painting technique that was popular when the mansion was built in 1818. 

The room’s sparse décor makes the portrait of Jerry Dickerson above the fireplace mantle all the more special. Savannah artist Emma Cheves Wilkins painted it around 1942, shortly before Dickerson’s retirement after more than 25 years as a janitor at the Academy. This work captures him in his recognizable work attire: a collared shirt, tie, pin, apron and feather duster in hand. He lived in the basement offices, the former slave quarters and carriage house for the mansion.

After leaving the Octagon Reception Room, we passed the former Dining Room, which was undergoing restoration. Continuing down the hall, we came upon a set of staircases with ornate iron railings.

The view of the Sculpture Gallery from the top of the stairs reveals a subtle distinction in the flooring. The lighter-colored area on the marble floor marks the spot once occupied by a fountain installed in 1966 and removed in 1973. 

The Sculpture Gallery

One set of stairs leads to the upper level, while the other descends into the Sculpture Gallery. We took the latter, and the moment we entered, my eyes were drawn to the dramatic plaster cast of Laocoön and His Sons — a copy of the famous Hellenistic masterpiece, which dominates the center of the gallery. Discovered in Rome in 1506 and now housed in the Vatican Museums, the sculpture depicts the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus, locked in a desperate struggle against deadly sea serpents.

When it first opened, the gallery displayed more than 70 plaster cast reproductions of classical sculptures, including the colossal Toro Farnese, which depicts the myth of Dirce, a cruel queen who was tied to a wild bull and dragged to her death by Amphion and Zethus for their mistreatment of their mother, Antiope.

There’s an unverified rumor that sometime in the 1970s, an Academy curator hosted a “sledgehammer party,” where guests were invited to destroy several of the institution’s large plaster casts. While it makes for a colorful story, there’s no proof to support it.

What almost certainly did happen is less dramatic: artistic tastes changed, and as the museum acquired more original works, the collection was gradually reduced, and in some cases destroyed, due to the high cost of maintaining them.

Pudicita, 1st century BCE (cast made before 1893)

Many of the works now displayed on the walls of the Sculpture Gallery were acquired through the efforts of Julius Garibaldi “Gari” Melchers, an American artist who served as the Academy’s fine arts advisor after Brandt. During his tenure, he acquired more than 70 works for the permanent collection, including many of the museum’s most treasured American Impressionist and Ashcan School paintings.

Stuyvesant Square in Winter, by Ernest Lawson, 1907

Brooklyn Bridge in Winter by Childe Hassam, 1904

After returning from Paris in 1889, American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam frequently turned his attention to New York City as a subject of his art. The city’s dynamic urban life provided ample inspiration for his work. In Brooklyn Bridge in Winter, Hassam employs pastel colors, a high vantage point, and broken brushstrokes — formal elements characteristic of Impressionism. This style, which he adopted during his time studying in Paris, emphasizes capturing the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. Like the French Impressionists, Hassam was committed to portraying contemporary subjects drawn from daily life, and New York’s vibrant streets offered him endless material.

Vespers by Gari Melchers, 1892

Vespers contains all the hallmarks of  Melchers’s early work: rural Dutch subject matter, a vibrant and colorful palette, and a keen interest in decorative pattern and texture. In this painting Melchers portrays Dutch villagers as hardworking, strong, and devout, tapping into a nostalgic yearning for traditional rural life during a time of rapid industrialization. The painting was originally owned by Walther Rathenau, an industrialist, writer and politician from Berlin who helped found the German Democratic Party.

Landscape grouping, with Shaghead by George Wesley Bellows and By the River by István Boznay, 1913 

Lingering Snows by Willard Leroy Metcalf, 1924

In this panoramic view of mountains and a stream, Willard Leroy Metcalf captures the serene beauty of a New England spring. The painting showcases his signature Impressionist style, characterized by subtle harmonies of green and purple tones that evoke the gentle light of the season. This relatively large canvas was likely painted on site in Woodstock, Vermont, on the Ottauquechee River. Metcalf employs quick, textured brushstrokes, allowing the canvas to show through, to define the trees and left shore. Thicker paint applied with a palette knife in a blend of salmon and lime represents the sky, while soft, lightly mottled colors depict the river, the right shore, and the deep blue mountain shadow. Most striking is the irregular patch of snow resting in the upper right mountain dale, its whiteness matched only by the reflected white clouds in the river.

The Rotunda Gallery

We made our way back up the stairs and into the Rotunda Gallery: a breathtaking, spacious two-story room designed by Brandt and Lienau to emulate the grandeur of a 19th century European salon. Artworks in this style are hung close together on the walls, as opposed to being spaced out individually. 

Grouping featuring works by Adolf Lüben, Robert Seldon Duncanson, George Majewicz and Guido Von Maffei

Look up, and you’ll see four paintings by Brandt positioned at the cardinal points of the gallery. Each work depicts a master of one of the four primary art forms, according to his view: Apelles for painting (west), Iktinos for architecture (north), Praxiteles for sculpture (east), and Albrecht Dürer for printmaking (south). The inclusion of three Ancient Greek artists reflects the late 19th century reverence for classical art and culture.

The Black Prince at Crécy by Julian Russell Story, 1888

Brandt purchased the impressive The Black Prince at Crécy from the artist Julian Story in 1889. Brandt acquired the painting with his own funds and donated it to the museum upon his death. The dramatic work portrays the aftermath of the Battle of Crécy during the Hundred Years’ War, and contrasts the historic figure of the Black Prince (the Prince of Wales) with the lifeless body of the fallen King John of Bohemia, highlighting the clash of heroism and tragedy on the battlefield.

La Parabola by Cesare Laurenti, 1895

Cesare Laurenti was born near Ferrara, Italy, but spent most of his life in Venice — the setting of La Parabola. In Laurenti’s day, German artists nicknamed the work Lebensbrücke, or Bridge of Life. 

In a letter to Brandt, Laurenti explained that the painting was meant to reflect the course of human life, “the race toward pleasure, until clouds of weighty thoughts and sorrow come to disturb the serenity of the young soul.” 

The first part of the scene is a lively celebration: two young men invite a group of young women to join in songs and laughter. At a doorway, a suitor representing Love kisses a girl’s cheek as she steps inside. 

But the mood soon darkens. The same girl, now pensive, appears behind a window, her youth already fading. The scene then shifts to the entrance of a church, where “poor suffering souls seek relief.” Here, Laurenti wrote, “one can see the man, who, clad in priestly garments, represents Faith.”

Jour de régates, Menton (Regatta Day, Menton) by Alfred E. Stevens, 1894

A view of the upper gallery, with a plaster casting of part of the frieze from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece

Second Floor Galleries 

Upstairs, the rooms that once served as the Telfair family’s bedrooms were converted into galleries and feature works from the Academy’s permanent collections as well as temporary exhibitions. To make space for hanging art, original features like windows and fireplaces were covered up, leaving wide, uninterrupted walls for display.

The first two galleries held the ongoing exhibit Craft Along the Coast and included works from Telfair’s permanent collection that date from the 18th to the late 20th centuries. The first gallery presents examples of woodworking, ceramics and painting, while the second focuses on Savannah’s silversmithing traditions. Both galleries tell stories of markets and craft legacies, helping to draw lines of continuity through a dynamic history.

Old City Market by Augusta Denk Oelschig, 1950

Savannah native Augusta Denk Oelschig painted Old City Market, a lively portrayal of the City Market building that occupied Ellis Square from about 1872 to 1953. In the scene, the market pulses with life: Shoppers, vendors, produce stands and even animals are in motion across the square. 

When the building was razed in 1954, the loss galvanized the community, and helped spark the creation of the Historic Savannah Foundation the next year, which continues to protect and preserve the city’s historic architecture. 

In 1947, during a trip to Mexico, Oelschig met muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, whose work left a lasting impression on her. Inspired by the political and social themes in their art, she returned to Savannah with plans for a mural depicting the history of Georgia. Intended for the Savannah High School, her drafts included imagery of Ku Klux Klan members whipping African Americans and a reference to a politician later associated with the the Klan. Unsurprisingly, the school’s conservative officials rejected the proposal.

Savannah by Andrée Ruellan, 1942

In Savannah, Andrée Ruellan captures the view of the river seen between buildings and down a cobblestone ramp that leads to the wharves. The painting’s small figures (including a man with a cane and a vendor with children) evoke the quiet, everyday life of the waterfront rather than a bustling port. 

Savannah’s riverfront historically relied on ramps (Barnard, Bull, Abercorn, Lincoln, etc.) down to River Street and its wharves, which is exactly the kind of setting Ruellan sketched. The waterfront was also a center for local craft traditions; Savannah has a documented history of woodcarving and walking-stick makers.  

The iconic Bird Girl. Her outstretched arms don’t actually symbolize the weighing of good and evil — the shallow bowls in her upturned hands were intended to hold water and birdseed. 

The Bird Girl of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Fame

I was especially intrigued by the gallery featuring Before Midnight: Bonaventure and the Bird Girl. It showcases artwork from Bonaventure Cemetery, including the famous statue. 

Created in 1936 by Sylvia Shaw Judson, a sculptor from Lake Forest, Illinois, Bird Girl was first exhibited in 1938 at the Art Institute of Chicago under the title Girl With Bowls. Judson originally cast six versions, one in lead and five in bronze, but later stated that only four bronze casts were ever made. 

One of the original bronzes was purchased by Savannah native Lucy Boyd Trosdal and installed in her family’s plot in Bonaventure Cemetery, where it was affectionately nicknamed “Little Wendy.”

For decades, the statue remained largely unnoticed — until photographer Jack Leigh captured its haunting image at dusk for the cover of John Berendt’s bestselling nonfiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, thrusting “Little Wendy” and the city into the national spotlight. Concerned about the crowds it began to attract, Trosdal removed the statue from the cemetery and loaned it to the Academy, ensuring it would be protected for future generations.

Fun fact: Jim Williams, the central figure in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, wasn’t just a successful antiques dealer and historic preservationist — he also served as president of the Telfair Academy.

An iron gate fragment from Bonaventure Cemetery hangs on the wall. 

Bonaventure by Louis Bouché, 1969

Bonaventure Cemetery by Henry Clernewerck, 1860

Plaster bust of the Academy’s first director, Carl Brandt, by John Walz, 1891

Stay Awhile: Interiors in Art 

The last gallery featured a selection of paintings from the Academy’s permanent collection that focused on interior settings. 

Rather than emphasizing a specific narrative, the labels beside each painting encouraged visitors to form their own interpretations of the works. 

The Lacemakers by Walter MacEwen, 1900

In The Lacemakers, three seated Dutch women are engaged in tatting the edges of a large piece of white fabric. Behind them, a man stands by a window, smoking a pipe and staring at the woman on the left, who seems lost in thought. The palette is dominated by muted, silvery tones, enlivened by the bright red bodices of two of the women and the tiny potted flowers on the windowsills.

A native of Chicago, Walter MacEwen had originally planned to pursue a career in business, but an unexpected event changed the course of his life.

When a destitute painter asked MacEwen for a small loan, the artist left his paint and brushes as collateral. He never returned to collect them, and MacEwen began to experiment with the abandoned materials.

By 1877 he had departed for Europe, where he studied under Frank Duveneck at the Royal Academy in Munich, and later at the Académie Julian in Paris. By the mid-1880s, MacEwen had established studios in Paris and Holland spending sixty years in Europe before returning to the United States in 1939. 

Café Fortune Teller by Mary Hoover Aiken, 1933 

The style of Café Fortune Teller evokes elements of American scene painting, characterized by its focus on everyday life and its narrative quality. The work was completed on the island of Ibiza prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and depicts the artist reading her own fortune amidst the bustle of a café. In 1936, Mary Hoover met the Savannah-born poet Conrad Aiken, whom she married in 1937. Her later works included portraits of famed author T.S. Eliot and British painter Edward Burra, and she also had solo exhibitions at the Telfair in 1964 and 1975.

Wally and I visited on a weekday and spent about 90 minutes exploring the galleries and browsing the gift shop. Admission for adults was $30, valid for seven days from the date of purchase and offers access to all three museums. –Duke

Telfair Academy Visitor Information

Hours of Operation

Open Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  
Closed on Tuesdays  

Admission Fees

Tickets grant unlimited access to all three Telfair museums (Telfair Academy, Jepson Center and Owens-Thomas House) for seven days from the date of purchase. 

Adult: $30  
Senior (65+): $27  
Active military (with ID): $27  
Student (ages 13 to 25, with ID): $20  
Child (ages 6 to 12): $10  
Child (5 and under): Free  

Accessibility and Visitor Services

Wheelchair accessible: Yes. Entrance is on the south side facing President Street (with nearby accessible parking and elevator access).  

Sketching: Allowed with pencil only; sketchbooks no larger than 8½ by 11 inches. No easels or sitting on the floor.  

Photography: Non-flash photography is permitted for personal use unless otherwise posted. Tripods, selfie sticks, lights and other gear are prohibited.  

Checkroom policy: Bags larger than 11 by 14 inches must be checked. Laptops and luggage are not accepted.  

Strollers: Restricted in the historic Telfair Academy and Owens-Thomas House but welcome at the Jepson Center.  

Why You Should Visit the Telfair Academy

Historical significance: Established in 1886, it’s one of the first public art museums in the U.S. and the first in the South.  

Architectural beauty: A Regency-style mansion designed by English architect William Jay (built 1818 to 1820).  

Collections and highlights: 19th and 20th century American and European art, restored period rooms, decorative arts and the famed Bird Girl statue.  

Telfair Academy 

121 Barnard Street 
Savannah, Georgia 31401
USA

 

The First Homosexuals at Wrightwood 659: Rewriting Art History With a Queer Lens

This powerful global exhibition traces the emergence of queer identity through more than 300 artworks — at a time when LGBTQ+ visibility matters more than ever.

Peace 1 by Zhang Huan, 2001

When Wally and I heard about The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869–1939 at Wrightwood 659, we were immediately intrigued. We had missed the first iteration, which ran in 2022. This new presentation promised to be larger in scale, and suggested something truly ambitious — a visual journey recontextualizing art history by presenting a wide range of works through a queer lens. 

This exhibition is especially important because it comes at a perilous time when LGBTQ+ voices are increasingly under attack across political and cultural spheres. In the face of bans, restrictions on school curricula, and renewed efforts to limit or erase queer visibility, The First Homosexuals reclaims that space by affirming that queer identity has an enduring, complex and creative legacy. 

““The First Homosexuals” is especially important because it comes at a perilous time when LGBTQ+ voices are increasingly under attack across political and cultural spheres. ”

I was reminded of Masculin/Masculin, a provocative exhibition Wally and I saw at the Musée d’Orsay in 2013. Drawing primarily from European painting and sculpture, the show turned the traditional male gaze on its head — shifting the focus from the female form, so often idealized in art, to the male nude. By presenting works from 1800 to the early aughts, the show invited viewers to reconsider the male body, not just as a symbol of strength or virility but as an object of desire.

While Masculin/Masculin traced the idealization of the male body in European art, it didn’t place those depictions within the broader context of queer history. The First Homosexuals at Wrightwood 659 takes that next step, expanding the lens across five continents and inviting viewers to consider queerness as something shaped by history, society and culture — often coded, but always present. 

The First Homosexuals included more than 300 works by 125 queer artists from 40 countries.

Its point of departure is 1869, when Karl-Maria Kertbeny, an Austrian-Hungarian writer and activist, introduced the term “homosexual” anonymously in a German pamphlet advocating reform of Prussian sodomy laws — a linguistic turning point that shifted same-sex love from act to identity. 

You’ll definitely need to book ahead (and book early) when you see a show at Wrightwood 659.

Our Arrival at Wrightwood 659 in Lincoln Park

After breakfast at one of our favorite spots, the Bourgeois Pig, Wally and I strolled up the leafy stretch of Wrightwood Avenue in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. We were surprised to find a modest four-story red brick façade at 659. But the small group forming outside and a sign promoting the exhibition reassured us that we were in the right place.

The modern concrete building attached to the exhibit space is actually the home of one of the cofounders of Wrightwood 659.

I initially assumed the gallery’s entrance was through the modern concrete cube next door — but that was actually the private residence of media entrepreneur and philanthropist Fred Eychaner and his husband, Danny Leung. Eychaner is the founder of the Alphawood Foundation, a charitable organization, and cofounder of Wrightwood 659.

Inside, a docent greeted us in the light-filled atrium and explained that the building was constructed in the 1920s as an apartment complex. Despite its external appearance, the interiors have been stripped and radically reimagined by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.

A historic apartment building was reimagined as a striking modern art gallery.

Architect Tadao Ando transformed the interior with his minimalist design.

We stood in awe of the space’s understated tranquility. Ando preserved the outer walls, which are clad in irregular, weathered Chicago common brick, an earthy contrast to the interior’s sleek geometric simplicity. 

In the far corner, an Escher-like concrete staircase begins its ascent. More than just a functional connector between levels, it serves as a kind of contemplative path, guiding visitors upward in a calm, deliberate rhythm. It’s a signature Ando gesture: structure becoming experience, architecture becoming journey.

Dance to the Berdash by George Catlin, 1837

Before the Binary: Origins of Queerness

The exhibition unfolds gradually across three floors and eight thematic sections, beginning with “Before the Binary.” This gallery sets the stage for the installation’s sweeping journey, inviting viewers to reconsider how same-sex love and gender diversity have been expressed and celebrated throughout history, long before  queer identity emerged in the form we recognize today.

Prior to the subjugation brought by European colonization, many non-Western cultures regarded same-sex behavior as a fluid part of life rather than a fixed identity. This changed dramatically with the arrival of colonial powers, who introduced prejudices and legal systems and cultural prejudices that criminalized same-sex relationships. Along with this intolerance came a new binary: homosexual and heterosexual — categories rooted in 19th century European science and psychology. These labels spread globally reshaping how people understood desire, identity and themselves.

George Catlin’s painting, Dance to the Berdash, depicts a ceremonial dance performed by the Sac and Fox Nation honoring a “two-spirit” individual. The term berdache, used by Catlin, is an outdated and derogatory French term historically applied to two-spirit people. 

In his journals, Catlin describes the scene as “very funny and amusing,” and expresses bewilderment where a “man dressed in woman’s clothes … driven to the most servile and degrading duties” would be celebrated and “looked upon as medicine and sacred.”

Despite his evident bias, Catlin’s work offers a rare glimpse into the deeply spiritual and cultural roles that two-spirit or third-gender individuals have historically held in many Native American communities.

Portrait of Chevalier d'Eon by Jean Condé, published by John Sewell in a 1791 issue of The European Magazine

The Chevalière or Chevalier d’Éon (1728-1810), was an early gender-nonconforming figure and a French diplomat, spy and soldier. 

In 1755, while presenting as a man, d’Éon was sent to Russia disguised as Mademoiselle Lia de Beaumont to persuade Empress Elizabeth I of Russia to ally with France against England and Prussia. From 1777 onward, d’Eon lived publicly as a woman and was officially recognized as such by King Louis XVI.

In this print, d’Éon is portrayed as a middle-aged woman wearing a dark dress with a chemisette, a lace cap and the star of the Order of St. Louis, an honor awarded for distinguished military service and espionage.

As evidence of the shifting political and cultural landscape of the era, d’Éon spent much of her adult life in London, where her gender identity was the subject of constant speculation. It was even the subject of a court trial declaring d’Éon to be a woman, though a surgeon later attested on her death certificate she had “male organs.”

Anacreon and Cupid by Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1824

Bertel Thorvaldsen’s neoclassical Anacreon and Cupid depicts the Ancient Greek poet Anacreon being struck by Cupid’s arrow, causing the older man to fall in love with the youthful god of love. The relief is inspired by Anacreon’s text, Ode III, which ends with Cupid flying away, satisfied he can still attract love with his arrows, while the poet is left alone with his longing. 

The term homosexual didn’t yet exist, and art about the classical past enabled the representation of same-sex eroticism under the guise of historical reference. 

The artist’s nearby ink and graphite sketch literalizes the erotic element of the sculpture, portraying Cupid fondling the poet’s groin. 

In Ancient Greece, the ideal same-sex relationship was seen as one between an older man and a teenage boy. This kind of relationship was tied to ideas about teaching the younger generation how to be good citizens. Same-sex desire was accepted — but only in ways that supported the male-dominated social system.

Portrait of Rosa Bonheur by Anna Klumpke, 1898

Portraits: Icons and Outlaws

“Portraits” features artists who dared to make homosexuality visible long before it was safe or legal to do so. 

American artist Anna Klumpke’s tender pastel portrait captures her partner, Rosa Bonheur, in the final years of the celebrated French painter’s life. The two met in 1895, when Klumpke was 39 and Bonheur was 73. They soon moved in together, and their relationship endured until Bonheur’s death in 1899.

Rosa Bonheur was one of the most renowned animal painters of the 19th century. An independent woman and openly lesbian, she famously obtained official permission from the Paris police to wear men’s clothing — a permit she justified by explaining that traditional women’s attire was impractical for working in stables and slaughterhouses, where she sketched animals for her work.

By the way, there’s a delightful bar, Rosa Bonheur, in Paris, named after this icon. 

Retrato de un Anticuario (Portrait of an Antiquarian) by Robert Montenegro, 1926

Roberto Montenegro’s 1926 portrait of antiques dealer Chucho Reyes is rich with visual codes that still resonate in queer iconography today — a limp wrist, a tilted chin and a wry smile. In the foreground, a silver ball subtly reflects the artist’s own face, a quiet but unmistakable act of self-insertion and queer affirmation.

An early figure in the Mexican muralist movement, Montenegro often pushed against the boundaries of revolutionary aesthetics. In a mural for the Secretaría de Educación Pública in Mexico City, his depiction of a nude, androgynous Saint Sebastian drew criticism for being out of step with official nationalist values. 

Montenegro was ultimately compelled to repaint it. In his private commissions, however, he enjoyed greater artistic freedom — freedom he fully embraced in this intimate and symbolically coded portrait.

Portrait of James Baldwin by Beauford Delaney, 1944

In this vibrant portrait, Beauford Delaney depicts the 20-year-old African American author James Baldwin before the writer’s rise to literary fame. Delaney renders Baldwin’s face in expressive strokes of green, yellow and purple, capturing not just likeness but inner light. The two men, both openly gay and trailblazing artists of color, shared a profound, formative bond. 

Baldwin regarded Delaney as a mentor and father figure. Reflecting on Delaney’s influence, he wrote, “The reality of his seeing caused me to begin to see.” 

Though Baldwin would become a powerful voice in the civil rights movement, his open sexuality often left him marginalized within the movement’s leadership.

He went on to become one of the most influential gay writers of the 20th century, penning such landmark works as Giovanni’s Room (1956).

Profile of a Man With Hibiscus Flower (Felíx) by Glyn Philpot, 1932 

This intimate portrait features Felíx, a French Caribbean model who sat for the British artist Glyn Philpot several times in 1932. The composition, with its flattened perspective and floral motif, recalls Paul Gauguin’s canvas Jeune Homme à la Fleur, evoking themes of sensuality and exoticism. While the painting echoes colonial-era visual tropes, Philpot’s broader oeuvre is distinguished by its empathetic and often dignified representations of Black subjects, challenging the stereotypes prevalent in early 20th century European art. 

Le Bal élégant, La Danse à la campagne (The Elegant Ball, The Country Dance) by Marie Laurencin, 1913

Relationships: Intimate Worlds

The section titled “Relationships” explores the personal and social dimensions of queer lives. From Marie Laurencin’s sensual and playful female imagery to Andreas Andersen’s portrait of his younger brother and his friend, their works reflect the sheer diversity and joy of queer intimacy. 

La Danse (The Dance) by Marie Laurencin, 1919

Marie Laurencin (1883-1956), a French Cubist, created an idiosyncratic body of work that excluded men and placed women at the center, something truly revolutionary considering that she worked in Paris, in an environment dominated by male artists. A member of Pablo Picasso’s gang, Laurencin’s unique take on Cubism is particularly evident in The Elegant Ball, The Country Dance, a fragmented and angular portrayal of two women dancing front and center. 

The canvas The Dance illustrates Laurencin’s departure from Cubism and marks the development of her own visual language, one that embraces a softer, more fluid style in which women’s bodies seem to merge and dissolve into one another. Laurencin’s dreamlike, ethereal compositions represent a feminist counterpoint to the stylistic tendencies of the male-dominated Cubist avant-garde.

Interior With Hendrik Andersen and John Briggs Potter in Florence by Andreas Anderson, 1894

The Norwegian painter Andreas Andersen depicts his younger brother, Hendrik and their friend, American painter John Briggs Potter, when the trio were living together in Florence in 1894. To our modern eyes, this is a stunning image of a homosexual relationship — but the reality is that men of this era didn’t think that loving or having sex with other men was abnormal or put them into a sexual category. 

Potter, who eventually married a woman, was close to Isabella Stuart Gardner of the eponymous Boston museum. The exact relationship between Hendrik and Potter isn’t known, though Potter was painted by a number of known queer painters and himself painted portraits of handsome men.

Sueño marinero (Sailor’s Dream) by Gregorio Prieto, 1932

Gregorio Prieto was a member of the influential Spanish cohort known as the Generation of ’27, alongside the poet

Federico García Lorca. While his work is well known in Spain, it hasn’t received the recognition it merits. 

Prieto’s two paintings exhibited at Wrightwood exemplify his use of the mannequin as a surrealist trope. Prieto employed mannequins as a metaphor for homoerotic love. Indeed, Sailor’s Dream seems to insinuate the act of oral sex, while Full Moon implies stimulation by hand.

Le Sommeil de Manon (Manon’s Sleep) by Madeleine-Jeanne Lemaire, 1907

Changing Bodies, Changing Definitions: Redefining Beauty 

The exhibit then pivots to “Changing Bodies, Changing Definitions, where we witness how the nude evolved in art in relation to shifting conceptions of sexuality. In the 19th century, artists often depicted ambiguously gendered adolescents — but by the early 20th century, those figures gave way to striking portraits of well-muscled men and women. Romaine Brooks’ androgynous nude of her female lover sits alongside Tamara de Lempika’s muscular female nude. 

The French novelist Marcel Proust and his lover, Reynaldo Hahn, referred to Madeleine-Jeanne Lemaire as Maman, or Mother, acknowledging her centrality to queer relationships and networks. Lemaire hosted a regular salon well attended by homosexuals, including Proust, Hahn and others such as Sarah Bernhardt, whose work is also featured in this exhibition.

The close-knit queer relationships that defined Lemaire’s social circle also come through in her painting. While many of her female contemporaries avoided overt eroticism, Lemaire’s Manon’s Sleep presents a nude figure who is neither orientalized nor classicized, her sensuality left unapologetically unframed by allegory or genre.

The recently discarded clothes in the left-hand corner appear to take the shape of a female figure lounging in a chair, perhaps watching the nude woman sleep. Lemaire’s soft color palette, decadent textiles and languid figure also seem to emulate Rococo aesthetics, perhaps in a nod to the genre’s own scenes of erotic subversion.

Nackte Schiffer (Fischer) und Knaben am grünen Gestade (Naked Boatmen [Fishermen] and Boys on the Green Shore by Ludwig von Hofmann, 1900

Ludwig von Hofmann enjoyed a prominent career as a painter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the time, Germany — newly unified — looked to Ancient Greece as a cultural model, embracing public nudity as a sign of health, virtue and classical refinement. This free body culture (abbreviated as FKK in German) encouraged public nudity as a sign not of prurient interest, but of health and moral virtue.

Segregated from urban homosexual culture by questions of class and occupation, this image of nude boys and men, while undeniably homoerotic, works hard to de-emphasize its inherent suggestive qualities through a committed attention to labor.

Wrestlers by Thomas Eakins, 1899

Thomas Eakins, celebrated along with Winslow Homer as two of the finest 19th century American painters, here produced a study for an even bigger painting of a gymnasium featuring, among other scenes, two young men wrestling.

While depicting an actual wrestling move, the painting allows two men a moment of full-body contact that escapes inscription as homosexual. They are, moreover, curiously relaxed, even inert, in what is ostensibly a battle for dominance.

Nu Assis de Profil (Seated Nude in Profile) by Tamara de Lempicka, 1923

Tamara de Lempicka’s seated nude exists in a space of gender nonconformity, much like the artist herself. The figure’s heavily muscled body and tanned face suggest a masculine presence, perhaps shaped by outdoor labor, while the visible breast and porcelain skin point to a more traditionally feminine traits. The body is angled away from the viewer so as to heighten this sense of indeterminacy.

After moving from Poland to Paris in 1918, Lempicka gained recognition for her Art Deco portraits of glamorous, androgynous figures. Her style and subjects reflect her social circle, which included queer women like the writers Vita Sackville-West and Colette, and her own experiences as an openly bisexual woman.

Venus and Amor by Gerda Wegener, 1920

History: Echoes of Antiquity 

One of the most powerful sections, “History,” features works that portray an idealized classical past as an alibi to depict homoerotic imagery. Hans Von Marées’ Five Men in a Landscape feels suspended in a timeless queer utopia, while Rupert Bunny’s muscular Hercules takes on both dragons and sexual subtext. 

Venus and Amor is Gerda Wegener’s vision of lesbian Arcadia. In her uniquely Art Deco style, Wegener depicts a garden populated by the Three Graces, Cupid and Venus, the latter helping Cupid draw his bow. Cupid is represented as distinctly nonbinary, with rosy cheeks and nascent breasts. Like the figure of Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Wegener seems to suggest Cupid’s mischievous nature is connected to his gender transgression. 

When this canvas was completed, Wegener was so popular in France that the government bought three of her works for the Louvre, which are now in the Centre Pompidou collections. 

Sadly, she spent her later years in poverty and died in 1940, shortly after Nazi Germany invaded Denmark.

The Joy of Effort by Robert Tait McKenzie, 1912

Robert Tait McKenzie was a Canadian physician, educator, athlete and sculptor who became director of athletics at the University of Pennsylvania. He donated hundreds of bronze homoerotic images of athletic young men to UPenn, where many are still on display. 

He was a key figure in sports medicine and rehabilitative medicine, designing prosthetics for wounded soldiers. He extolled the value of exercise early, especially for those who worked primarily with their minds. Despite the undeniable homoeroticism in his work, he was married, as the norms of his time dictated.

Cumulonimbus by Kotaro Nagahara, 1909

Kotaro Nagahara (1864-1930) was one of the early innovators of yōga, or Western-style painting, in late 19th-century Japan. The relatively conservative style of his male nudes (note the lack of visible genitals) may reflect the impact of the “nude debate” (ratai ronso) in Japanese art circles in the 1890s. The influence of Western nude painting fueled an intense debate among Japanese artists about the nature of propriety and indecency, and some yoga painters like Kuroda Seiki caused controversy for displaying nude paintings to the public. In this cultural atmosphere, it’s not surprising that Nagahara took a more discreet approach here in obscuring the figure’s genitalia.

Slaves by Gabriel Morcillo, 1926

Colonialism and Resistance: Imported Shame, Native Pride

But art is never just about aesthetics. In “Colonialism and Resistance,” the exhibition explains how Western imperialism often coded queerness as foreign or degenerate, while simultaneously fetishizing it. A pernicious side effect of colonialism was that Western suppressive ideologies on homosexuality were imposed on conquered lands — many of which went from respecting same-sex relations to writing homophobic laws into their legal codes. 

Gabriel Morcillo’s painting Slaves is a striking example of how Orientalist aesthetics were often used to veil overt homoeroticism. Like many artists of his era, Morcillo employed the exoticized imagery of the so-called “East” to explore themes of male beauty and sensuality, subjects that were daring and even dangerous to depict in the 1920s and early ’30s. He later experienced both the favor and the fallout  of political affiliation: Between 1950 and 1955, he was commissioned by dictator Francisco Franco to paint several portraits, both standing and on horseback. With the arrival of Spain’s democratic Transition, Morcillo was classified as a Francoist, and his work largely vanished from art history books, despite its considerable artistic merit.

L’après-midi (In the Afternoon) by David Paynter, 1935

David Paynter’s In the Afternoon offers a rare and quietly radical vision of male intimacy in early 20th century South Asian art. Born in 1900 in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), Paynter was known for merging Western classical techniques with South Asian subjects, often weaving subtle references to same-sex desire into his work.

In this painting, two young men share an intimate gaze, one delicately holding a flower — echoing the sensuality of Gauguin’s Polynesian women but recast through a defiantly queer lens. The image stands in quiet resistance to colonial-era moral codes that had, by that time, already begun to reshape attitudes toward sexuality across South Asia.

Before the British imposed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 1861 — which criminalized “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” — many Asian cultures held more fluid and nuanced understandings of gender and sexuality. Paynter’s work gestures toward that precolonial cultural memory, reclaiming tenderness between men as both natural and beautiful.

La Danza (Dance) by Elisàr von Kupffer, 1918

Beyond the Binary: Gender, Reimagined

Finally, “Beyond the Binary” delivers what may be the show’s most revelatory section. Featuring more than 60 works, it draws direct connections between early queer and trans identities. 

Among the highlights is one of the first self-consciously trans representations in art: Gerda Wegener’s 1929 portrait of her spouse Lili Elbe. 

This section also includes paintings from the Elisarion, a utopian queer villa in Switzerland. One of these images is believed to depict the first same-sex wedding scene in art history.

Elisàr von Kupfer, who preferred to be called Elisarion, founded a spiritual movement he named Clarism, which rejected the gender binary as a perversion of divine will. Proud of his own feminine physical features, von Kupfer adorned his temple in Minusio, Switzerland, with paintings of similarly androgynous and nonbinary figures. While von Kupffer was a pioneer in challenging gender and sexual norms, he was also a white supremacist, and his work was influenced by Aryanism. He sought to engage Adolf Hitler in correspondence, though there is no evidence that the dictator ever replied. 

In von Kupffer’s utopia, gender was fluid and inclusive — but race, clearly, was not. His example shows how radical views in one realm did not necessarily extend to others.

Untitled (kuchi-e [frontispiece] with artist’s seal Shisen) by Tomioka Eisen, 1895

This image was made as an illustration for the novel Sute obuna, an adaptation of the mystery novel Diavola (1885) by the British author Mary Braddon. From the 1880s onward, many European mystery stories were translated into Japanese and adapted to Japanese contexts. This could have the effect of producing unique and humorous juxtapositions between the Japanese characters and their Western mannerisms, as seen in this moment of unexpected male intimacy. Tomioka Eisen was a prolific illustrator during the Meiji Period, trained in ukiyo-e methods. He also produced a small number of erotic works, which were circulated privately.

Lili med fjerkos (Lili With a Feathered Fan) by Gerda Wegener, 1920

Lili With a Feathered Fan by Gerda Wegener depicts her husband, Einar Wegener (who later became Lili Elbe), holding a green feather fan. The painting is significant as an early example of transgender representation in art, created during a period when Lili was beginning to express her gender identity more openly. 

Lili first emerged in 1904 when Gerda asked Einat to pose in women’s clothing after one of her female models failed to show up. This moment marked the beginning of a public and private transformation. In the early ’20s, Lili began living more fully as a woman, and in 1930 she underwent one of the first known gender-affirming surgeries. 

Their relationship inspired the 2015 film The Danish Girl. Tragically, Lili died in 1931 from complications following the final stages of her surgeries. 

Peter (A Young English Girl) by Romaine Brooks, 1923

Romaine Brooks’ work from this period captures early 20th century lesbian life, with portraits of friends, lovers and fixtures of the queer world she inhabited. Here, Brooks depicts the nonbinary British artist known as Gluck, who also went by the name Peter. Gluck insisted on being addressed as “Gluck, no prefix, suffix or quotes” — rejecting any gendered association with their identity.

Amazing architecture, powerful art, dedicated docents and a relaxed, uncrowded flow make Wrightwood 659 well worth a visit.

Wrightwood 659 Does It Right 

Wrightwood 659 intentionally limits the number of visitors and requires timed-entry tickets purchased in advance. This keeps exhibitions intimate and uncrowded, allowing visitors to reflect deeply without distraction.

The First Homosexuals brings together more than 300 works by 125 queer artists from 40 countries, drawn from over 100 museums and private collections around the globe. Each loaned piece contributes to a sweeping, multifaceted narrative of queer identity, resilience and creativity. 

A quiet nook with a view at Wrightwood 659

Wally and I were struck not only by the scale of the exhibition, but by the obvious care with which it was assembled. Every element — from the curation of individual works to the flow of the galleries — felt deeply considered, designed to honor the artists, their histories and the communities they reflect.

We had the added privilege of visiting on a day when docents were present, enriching the experience with personal reflections and deeper context about the artists and their work. Their stories added an intimate, human layer to an already powerful presentation. –Duke

Wrightwood 659

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10 Divine Ways Roman Women Were Deified

From mimicking gestures to fertility-loaded iconography, these imperial women followed a set of rules to prove they were literal goddesses. 

Vibia Sabina, looking every bit the empress — and maybe the goddess. Hadrian gave her honors in death…if not warmth in life.

Questionable hairdos, divine mimicry and the occasional eagle ride to the afterlife — being an imperial woman in Ancient Rome came with flair. Drawing from You Look Divine: Deifying Women in the Roman Empire, a lecture by archaeologist C. Brian Rose at the Art Institute of Chicago, I’m breaking down how Rome turned its empresses into literal goddesses.

A select few imperial women didn’t stop at empress; they were turned into goddesses after death, in a process called apotheosis. And Rose didn’t just walk us through Roman history — he charioted us straight to the heavens. Through sculpture, coinage and other dramatic iconography, here are the most divine highlights.

Apotheosis of Antoninus Pius and Faustina, where the imperial couple ascends to the heavens atop the wings of Eternity

How to Become a Goddess (in Ancient Rome)

1. Ride an eagle — or Eternity herself — into the heavens. 

When an empress died, art often showed her literally taking off for the heavens. The preferred transportation? The oldest Roman custom was to depict the soul carried up by an eagle, symbolizing the late empress’ apotheosis (ascension to godhood).

There was another method of transport, though: On the monumental Column of Antoninus Pius, for example, Faustina the Elder, wife of Antoninus, is shown being whisked heavenward by none other than a winged figure of the personification of Eternity (often depicted as a woman but here as a man), with two eagles in tow. Talk about traveling in style!

In short, if you wanted to advertise that a Roman woman became a goddess, you put her on a first-class feathered flight straight to the stars.

Julia Domna as Ceres, goddess of grain — serving up imperial fertility with a side of wheat

2. Recycle the pose of a goddess, become a goddess. 

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — and in Rome, it was a fast track to divinity. Empresses would borrow the bodies of goddesses (at least in marble). 

Statues of imperial women often copied the poses and symbols of deities so closely that only the heads and inscriptions differed. Julia Domna, for instance, had a statue in Ostia holding wheat and poppies, just like Ceres, goddess of agriculture. In fact, her statue’s body was so generic-goddess that another statue of Empress Sabina used almost the exact same body with a different head and hairdo. 

Drusilla, Caligula’s sister, favorite — and, if whispers are to be believed, something more. After her death, he made her a goddess.

3. Get deified by a doting brother (thanks, Caligula!). 

Sometimes it’s all about who your family is. If your brother happens to be emperor and is just a tiny bit obsessed with you, you might skip the whole virtuous life part and go straight to goddess. 

Case in point: Caligula and his sister Drusilla. When Drusilla died in 38 CE, Caligula was so heartbroken (and unhinged) that he had the Senate declare her a goddess. He bestowed on her the name Diva Drusilla Panthea, meaning “the Divine Drusilla, the All-Goddess.” 

She was the first woman in Roman history to be officially deified by an emperor’s decree.  It didn’t hurt that Caligula fancied himself a living god, too — nepotism at its peak. 

Drusilla’s fast-pass to Mount Olympus shows that in Rome, having a god-maker in the family (even a certifiably crazy one) could trump all other qualifications.

Built for Faustina, rededicated to Antoninus — this temple is what happens when a Roman emperor can’t quit his empress, even after death.

4. If you’re really special, you get a temple of your own. 

When an empress was truly exceptional, the Romans gave her the ultimate posthumous honor: a temple on prime real estate. Think of it as the architectural equivalent of landing the cover of Vogue, but for eternity. 

Faustina the Elder was the first to score this distinction. After her deification, Emperor Antoninus Pius built the Temple of Faustina in the Roman Forum in 141 CE, complete with a grand colonnade and priests offering sacrifices in her name.

Julia Augusta (Livia) rocking the nodus — a hairstyle so serious it doubled as a public statement: “I’m chaste, powerful and one step from godhood.”

5. Be so virtuous, your hairstyle becomes a symbol of moral purity.

In Roman iconography, a woman’s hairstyle shouted her values to the world. Take Livia Drusilla, Augustus’ wife and the first First Lady of Rome. She pioneered the “nodus” hairstyle — a pudgy roll of hair over the forehead with the rest tied in a bun. 

It looks simple, but it spoke volumes. By choosing the nodus style, Livia presented herself as the embodiment of traditional Roman feminine virtues like pudicitia (modesty) and pietas (duty). 

That conservative ’do was basically a halo of humility. And it caught on: Women across the empire copied it for two or three generations, signaling that they too were modest, dutiful matrons. 

Faustina the Younger paired with Juno Lucina, goddess of childbirth — because bearing heirs was a divine duty and a full-time job

6. Fertility becomes your superpower. 

In the Roman imperial playbook, making imperial babies wasn’t just family planning — it was practically a divine service. An empress’ ability to bear children (preferably future emperors) was glorified as a literal superpower that kept Rome strong. 

Many empresses obliged, but Faustina the Younger outdid them all. She and Marcus Aurelius had at least 14 children (yes, 14), including two sets of twins. 

Her prolific motherhood was celebrated far and wide. Upon one daughter’s birth, the mint issued coins depicting Faustina as Juno Lucina, goddess of childbirth. The message was clear: The empress isn’t just having babies, she’s basically a fertility goddess herself. 

Imperial artists would show empresses with a cornucopia to symbolize fruitfulness — and the longer the better. Sometimes a woman was so fertile, she’d be deprived with a double cornucopia. 

Faustina the Younger as Venus and Marcus Aurelius as Mars — Rome’s ultimate power couple, cast as the gods of love and war

7. Victory and motherhood were a package deal. 

In the Roman mindset, a great empress could multitask on a cosmic level. She wasn’t just Mother of the Imperial House; she could be Mother of the Army, too. 

The idea was that an empress’ virtues off the battlefield (loyalty, fecundity, stability) magically contributed to victory on the battlefield. It sounds like a stretch, but the Romans leaned in. 

Faustina the Younger even got an official title for it: Mater Castrorum, “Mother of the Camp.” In 174 CE, she accompanied Marcus Aurelius to war in the wilds of Central Europe. The honorific implied that Faustina’s motherly care extended to the Roman army, boosting their morale and, by extension, Rome’s victories. 

Faustina the Elder had courier guilds renaming themselves after her and stage performers dedicating altars — all while she was still alive. Beyoncé who?

8. Gain a cult following (literally) in the provinces. 

If you really wanted a head start on divinity, it helped to have people worshipping you before you died. 

In the eastern provinces of the empire, where imperial cults were all the rage, communities sometimes treated the empress as a living goddess — with the emperor’s blessing, of course. This was savvy PR: It spread loyalty and flattered Rome’s rulers. 

Faustina the Elder enjoyed this rockstar status. In her lifetime, a courier guild in Ephesus renamed itself after her, and over in Puteoli, Italy, a group of stage performers (the scabillarii, who used foot clappers to keep rhythm) went so far as to dedicate an altar in her honor while she was still alive. 

Essentially, Faustina had fan clubs doing daily devotions to her across the empire. Incense, altars, maybe even occasional sacrifices — all for the living empress. 

These provincial admirers weren’t saying she was on par with Jupiter or Juno (let’s not get crazy), but they were laying the groundwork for her eventual deification.

By the time Faustina died and was officially consecrated as Diva, half the empire was already used to treating her as divine. 

Galba had no dynastic ties, so he borrowed some cred — appearing on a coin with Livia as Diva Augusta, Rome’s eternal empress.

9. Coins acted as your dynastic propaganda. 

Silver denarius of 69 CE: the deified Livia (Diva Augusta) standing with scepter and patera on the reverse. If you wanted to spread a message in ancient Rome, you stamped it on a coin. 

Imperial women found had their new goddess status broadcast through pocket change across the empire. Every coin was like a tiny billboard screaming, “The imperial family is sacred and stable!” 

One dramatic example: in 68–69 CE, during a chaotic civil war, Emperor Galba desperately needed legitimation. So what did he do? He minted coins showing Augusta Livia — wife of Augustus, long dead and deified — on the reverse, with the legend “the divine Augusta.”

By flaunting the protection of Grandma Livia’s divine spirit, Galba hoped to borrow her clout and calm everyone’s nerves about his usurpation. 

Living empresses appeared on coins with allegorical goddesses (Fecunditas, Pietas, Venus Victrix and the like) to nudge the public toward certain conclusions (e.g., “She’s as fruitful as a goddess!” or “She’ll bring victory!”). 

To Roman eyes, Faustina the Younger was more than marble. She was a living presence — painted, perfumed and draped in cloth like the goddess she had become.

10. Your statues get painted and perfumed. 

Those ghost-white marble busts we see in museums? In Ancient Rome, they were painted in full color and sometimes even scented to smell divine. 

Romans treated the images of their gods (and deified emperors or empresses) almost like living beings. Recent research reveals that many Greco-Roman sculptures were not only brightly painted, draped in real cloth, and adorned with jewelry, and even doused in perfumes and fragrant oils. 

So imagine walking into a temple of the deified Empress Faustina: You’d see a statue of her with rosy skin tones and gilded accessories, maybe with her hair painted the rich brown of the real Faustina. The statue might be wearing an actual diadem on her carved marble curls. And the air would be thick with the scent of imported incense or floral oils anointing the statue’s surface. 

Roman statues were multisensory experiences; they looked alive and even smelled “heavenly.” This was all part of maintaining the illusion (or reality, to believers) that the deified woman’s spirit was present and watching. If you were deemed a goddess, you got the full spa treatment for eternity. By

In the end, the Romans believed the gods got around to everyone deserving. An empress could ascend swiftly on a funeral pyre’s eagle, or slowly on the wings of her lasting reputation – either way, divinity was destiny for the worthiest of Roman women. –Wally

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The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Breathtaking Artistic Oasis in Boston

A Venetian-style palazzo — the scene of an infamous unsolved art heist — houses eclectic art and lush seasonal gardens. 

The courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was designed to evoke the ambiance of a 15th century Venetian palace.

I was flicking through Instagram (something I do way too often), and my finger stopped mid-scroll on a stunning palazzo. “Italy?” I thought. “Maybe India?” 

Nope. It was the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — in Boston, of all places.

Boston?! I’d be there the next day for work. It felt like fate.

“Isabella Stewart Gardner’s will specified that nothing could be moved, ensuring her vision stayed exactly as she intended.”

Gorgeous tilework in the Spanish Cloister — nearly 2,000 tiles from 17th century Mexico, that is

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Hidden Gem in the Heart of Boston

Boston has its usual suspects when it comes to tourist spots: Fenway Park, the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall. But have you heard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?

It’s not usually the first stop on a Boston itinerary, but it absolutely should be. Tucked into the city’s Fenway neighborhood, this museum feels like a secret treasure waiting to be discovered. And, believe me, it’s worth it — from its jaw-dropping architecture to its captivating art (and even its unsolved mystery).

The Veronese Room is named for the grand painting on its ceiling, The Coronation of Hebe, attributed to Paolo Veronese and his studio, painted in the 1580s.

The Tapestry Room features 10 Flemish tapestries.

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a rule-breaker, a collector and someone who knew how to make an impression.

Take her grand parties: She once attended a symphony in a white headband that simply said, “Oh, you Red Sox” in bold letters. She was as bold as her taste, building her museum as a Venetian-style palazzo (originally called Fenway Court) right in Boston and filling it with treasures from around the world.

“Years ago I decided that the greatest need in our country was art,” she once said. “So, I determined to make it my life’s work if I could.” 

Mission accomplished. 

In the Chinese Loggia, Stewart Gardner placed a statue of the Madonna and child opposite a Buddhist stele to spark contemplation about shared spiritual themes.

Walking through the museum feels like wandering through the home of someone fabulously wealthy and wildly eclectic. You’ll spot everything from a Rembrandt self-portrait to Japanese lacquered boxes, all lovingly placed as Isabella herself arranged them over a century ago.

A Roman mosaic floor featuring the head of Medusa that was crafted between 117 and 138 CE takes center stage in the courtyard.

The Infamous Art Heist: Mystery in 81 Minutes

The Gardner Museum holds the title for the greatest unsolved art heist in history. The story is something straight out of Hollywood.

It all began in the early hours of March 18, 1990. Two men dressed as Boston police officers buzzed at the museum’s doors, claiming they were responding to a disturbance. The night guards, unsuspecting, let them in.

Big mistake.

“The Gardner Museum holds the title for the greatest unsolved art heist in history.

On March 18, 1990, two men dressed as Boston police officers strolled out of the museum with over $500 million worth of art.”

The “officers” handcuffed the guards, duct-taped their mouths, and left them in the basement. Over the next 81 minutes, they raided the galleries, carefully cutting 13 priceless works from their frames. They strolled out with art worth over $500 million, including:

• Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee (his only seascape)

• Vermeer’s The Concert, valued at $250 million

• Manet’s Chez Tortoni

• A Chinese gu (ancient ceremonial vessel)

• A bronze eagle finial from a Napoleonic flag

When the guards were finally freed, the thieves — and the art — were long gone.

To this day, the empty frames hang in their original spots as a silent reminder of the loss. The museum still offers a $10 million reward for information, but the case remains cold.

Intrigued? Check out the Netflix docuseries This Is a Robbery, which dives deep into the mystery of the stolen masterpieces.

A portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner by John Singer Sargeant depicts the remarkable woman as a pagan goddess.

Isabella Stewart Gardner: The Original It Girl

Born in 1840, Isabella wasn’t your typical socialite. After her son Jackie died young, followed by miscarriage in her 20s, she fell into depression — until her doctor prescribed travel. That single recommendation changed her life.

Isabella and her husband, Jack, explored the world, visiting Egypt, Italy and Japan. Along the way, she discovered a passion for art, collecting everything from tapestries to ancient manuscripts.

Back in Boston, she became known for her unconventional style. She defied the strict social norms of the time, pairing pearls with turbans at baseball games and opening her home to artists, writers and musicians.

The Blue Room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum offers an intimate glimpse into Isabella’s personal world, showcasing her close connections with contemporary artists and intellectuals.

A lion attacking a man forms the base of a column in the North Cloister, from 12th century Tuscany.

The works in the Tapestry Room came from Brussels, Belgium and were created in the mid-16th century.

Her museum was her life’s crowning achievement, built in 1903 to house her collection and inspire the public. Even in death, she had the last word: Her will specified that nothing could be moved, ensuring her vision stayed exactly as she intended.

A view of the modern wing

The Museum Today: Tradition Meets Modernity

In 2012, the museum unveiled its sleek new Renzo Piano-designed wing, adding modern flair while preserving Isabella’s original palazzo. The various rooms include: the Dutch Room, Rafael Room, Tapestry Room, Titian Room, Veronese Room and Gothic Room. 

Wandering from room to room feels less like visiting a museum and more like stepping into Isabella’s home — because, in a way, you are. Each space is curated exactly as she intended, as if she’s just stepped out, leaving you to explore her private collection of treasures from around the world.

The new space hosts concerts, lectures and temporary exhibits, creating a dynamic blend of old and new.

The courtyard itself might be the most beautiful work of art here. This statue is believed to represent Persephone, the goddess of spring who became queen of the underworld.

And while the art is breathtaking, don’t overlook the ever-changing courtyard. Seasonal displays like orchids, hydrangeas and chrysanthemums transform the space into a living masterpiece.

Grab a bite at Café G in the new wing of the museum.

Café G

Upon arriving at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, I was famished and made a beeline for Café G, the museum’s onsite eatery. The sleek, glass-enclosed space was designed by Renzo Piano, offering serene views of the surrounding gardens — a tranquil setting to relax before delving into the museum’s treasures.

The menu features dishes that highlight seasonal, local and organic ingredients. 

The Raphael Room features Italian Renaissance art.

A Museum Like No Other  

Whether you’re an art lover, a history buff or just someone looking for a little magic in Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a must-see. It’s a time capsule, a mystery and a testament to one woman’s indomitable spirit. –Wally

At the end of the Long Gallery in the Chapel hangs a High Gothic stained glass window titled Scenes From the Lives of Saint Nicasius and Saint Eutropia, crafted around 1205 for the Soissons Cathedral in France.

The Deets: Plan Your Visit

Hours:

• Wednesday to Monday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

• Thursdays: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

• Closed: Tuesdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day

Admission:

• Adults: $20

• Seniors (65+): $18

• Students with ID: $13

• Free: Members, children under 18, and anyone named Isabella (yes, really!)

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

25 Evans Way
Boston, Massachusetts
USA

Las Setas de Sevilla FAQ: Seville’s Wooden Wonderland

Everything you need to know about the futuristic mushroom marvel Metropol Parasol in Plaza de la Encarnación.

One minute you’re walking down one of the shopping thoroughfares of Sevilla, Spain, and the next you come upon a plaza with mesmerizing, undulating woven wooden structures that look like a grove of gigantic mushrooms. It’s as if you’ve stepped into a fairy tale (or a Dr. Seuss book).

That’s exactly why this quirky sculpture, officially named Metropol Parasol, will always be known as Las Setas, or the Mushrooms, to locals and tourists alike. (Sort of like how no one calls the iconic silver sculpture in Chicago by its real name, Cloud Gate — it’s the Bean.)

“It’s as if you’ve stepped into a fairy tale (or a Dr. Seuss book).”

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about Las Setas.

Why is Las Setas called Metropol Parasol?

Las Setas (aka Setas de Sevilla) is officially named Metropol Parasol. “Metropol” highlights the sculpture’s urban significance and integration into Sevilla’s cityscape, while “Parasol” refers to its umbrella-like structure, which provides much-needed shade in the scorching Andalusian climate.

What is the history of Las Setas in Seville?

The history of Las Setas de Sevilla begins with the need to renovate la Plaza de la Encarnación, which had become neglected. (You’d never know it now, as it’s surrounded by boutique shops and restaurants.) 

In 2004, an international competition was held to redesign the square, and German architect Jürgen Mayer’s innovative wooden structure took the prize. 

The project, completed in 2011, aimed to revitalize the area by combining modern architecture with the preservation of historic Roman ruins found during construction.

Las Setas de Sevilla is more than just an architectural wonder; it’s a lesson in urban transformation. It’s about taking risks, breaking molds and creating spaces that blend the old with the mind-bogglingly new. Sevilla’s got its historical charms — but Las Setas shows it’s also got its finger on the pulse of modern innovation. The once-sleepy Plaza de la Encarnación is now wide awake. 

When was Las Setas built? How long did it take to build?

From groundbreaking in 2005 to its grand opening in 2011, Las Setas’ journey was more of a marathon than a sprint. What accounted for the delays? Blame it on the unexpected yet fascinating archaeological finds beneath its feet. Turns out, building over centuries-old ruins isn’t exactly a walk in the park.

What are the architectural ruins below Las Setas de Sevilla?

Beneath the whimsical wooden canopy of Las Setas lies a treasure trove of ancient history. As the construction for this modern marvel began, builders unearthed significant archaeological ruins, revealing Sevilla’s layered past. 

This subterranean wonderland, known as the Antiquarium, showcases remnants from the Roman Empire, including mosaics, pottery and foundations of buildings dating back to the 1st century CE. Visitors can also glimpse traces of a 12th century Islamic Almohad house, bridging Sevilla’s Roman and Moorish eras.

What inspired the design of Las Setas?

Imagine what would happen if the vaults of the Seville Cathedral and local ficus trees had a baby. That’s Las Setas for you — a unique design that not only catches the eye but also connects nature to urban life.

Mayer wanted the sculpture to be not only striking but functional. “How do you approach a space that’s supposed to become the revitalized heart of a city?” he asked in 032c magazine. “The biggest asset that one can have, for three quarters of the year, is shade. So we tried out different geometric ideas, and in the end we decided on these circular elements that counter and respond to the variables of the square in a flexible way. It doesn’t seem rigid.”

What is Las Setas made of?

Las Setas de Sevilla is made of laminated timber. It holds the honor of being the world’s largest wooden structure, crafted of pine from Finland and coated with polyurethane for durability. 

The intricate honeycomb design consists of wooden lattices draped over columns. More than 3,400 wooden and concrete pieces were fit together like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.

Who knew a bunch of wood planks could look so cool?

How much did Las Setas cost to build?

The construction of Las Setas de Sevilla cost about 100 million euros — ballooning significantly from its original €86 million budget. This substantial investment covered the innovative design, the use of high-quality laminated timber and the various facilities housed within the structure, including an archaeological museum, a market and event spaces.

Can you go to the top of Las Setas in Seville?

Yes, you can go to the top of Las Setas.

An elevated 380-yard (350-meter) walkway allows you to saunter around and through the parasols, offering dizzying views of Sevilla’s classic rooftops and plazas. The walkway culminates at the topmost mushroom cap, almost 80 feet (24 meters) high, featuring a viewing platform where you can pretend you’re royalty surveying your kingdom below.

Visitors can access this area via elevators housed in the concrete columns of the structure.

How can I buy tickets for Las Setas de Sevilla?

Ready to explore this mushroom wonderland? Tickets to visit the top of Las Setas start at €5 (free for kids under 6), with options to add a sprinkle of virtual reality or a dash of audio guide to your experience for €3 each. 

You can buy them online, or onsite in the lower level.

What are the opening hours of Las Setas?

Las Setas de Sevilla is open from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., making it the perfect spot for both early birds and night owls. Just keep in mind it’s closed on major holidays — because even mushrooms need a day off.

Where to eat at Las Setas?

The dining options at and near Las Setas de Sevilla are as eclectic and exciting as the structure itself. Here’s a rundown of some spots that range from casual bites to more refined dining:

1. La Mala Brunch: Located right under Las Setas, this gem serves up Mediterranean and healthy bites for a casual brunch or tapas session. Think avocado toast (with oversized wooden mushrooms).

2. Ibericos Vera: Right inside the Mercado de la Encarnación, this stall offers traditional Spanish tapas. Good for a quick, delicious bite.

3. Cervecería La Sureña: Serving up cuisine from the South of Spain, this bar is great for an affordable lunch or evening drinks with a killer view.

4. Tropiqual: Tired of tapas? If you’re craving sushi or steak, this upscale option works for when you’re feeling a bit fancy.

5. La Gorda de Las Setas: Offering Mediterranean and Spanish dishes, this spot is perfect for enjoying tapas with a side of architectural awe.

6. LaSanta: A short walk from Las Setas, this spot serves international and Mediterranean dishes in a casual setting.

7. Burro Canaglia Bar & Resto: Dishes up Italian food in a stylish atmosphere. Perfect for when you’re wanting pizza or pasta.

8. Patio San Eloy: A casual bar serving tapas. Great for a budget-friendly yet tasty meal.

9. Doña Encarna: This chic spot offers traditional local fare that’s even better than your abuelita makes.

10. Virgen Coffee: The best place to grab a quick coffee break, making some of the best lattes in Seville.

11. Tablao Flamenco Las Setas: Combine your meal with a show. Enjoy live flamenco performances along with signature cocktails and traditional Andalusian flavors for an immersive cultural experience.

What’s there to do at Las Setas besides enjoying the view?

Really, Las Setas de Sevilla is a cool urban square to hang out in, people-watch or read on a bench. Children ride bikes and clamber about the small playlot. 

But beyond its spectacular views, Las Setas is a treasure trove of history with the Antiquarium, where ancient Roman and Moorish artifacts are displayed. Tickets are €2.

And don’t miss the light show — a nightly spectacle that turns the structure into a glowing piece of rainbow-hued art.

Where is Las Setas located in Seville?

Las Setas is in the Plaza de la Encarnación, a central square in Sevilla. It’s about a 10-minute walk due north of the cathedral. 

What events are held at Las Setas in Seville?

Las Setas hosts a variety of events throughout the year, including cultural performances, art exhibitions, concerts and markets. The elevated plaza and the shaded areas below are versatile spaces used for different types of public and private events, making it a vibrant community hub in Sevilla.

Why was Las Setas controversial?

Las Setas didn’t sprout superfans overnight — it also grew a fair share of controversy. Critics argued that its modern design clashed with Sevilla’s historic aesthetic. Plus, the project’s high cost — rumored to hit the €100 million mark — didn’t sit well in a country there the economy was taking a siesta. 

And the local Muslim community thought the Mushrooms looked a bit too phallic for their tastes. 

Despite the initial pushback, Las Setas has ripened into a beloved icon of the city, showing that even the most divisive fungi can find their fan base. 

Las Setas: Sevilla’s Fungal Fantasia

So, there you have it — Las Setas in a nutshell. It’s weird, wonderful and unapologetically Sevilla. Whether you’re a history buff, an architecture enthusiast or just someone in search of the perfect Instagram backdrop, Las Setas is a can’t-miss spectacle. –Wally

 

Mansions, Monuments and Museums of the Plaza de Jerónimo Páez in Córdoba

While exploring the historic quarter of Córdoba, Spain, admire the Palacio de los Páez de Castillejo and Casa del Judío before you stop in the archaeological museum.

It’s easy to understand why Córdoba’s entire historic quarter earned its UNESCO World Heritage Site designation in 1985. As Wally and I explored the narrow cobblestone streets of la Judería, the city’s former Jewish quarter, our wanderings led us to charming plazas that opened up to reveal historic homes and restaurants with inviting outdoor seating, where you can sit and relax with the locals. 

Among these squares is Plaza de Jerónimo Páez, named after a descendant of the influential Cordobesan family responsible for the Renaissance-style Palacio de los Páez de Castillejo and the equally historic Casa del Judío. Having endured years of neglect, the plaza was renovated in the 1990s, when the archaeological museum was expanded.

During the city’s era of Roman occupation, known as Corduba at that time, this square served as the entertainment district, boasting one of the largest theaters in the empire. The partial remains of this historic structure are now displayed beneath the modern Archaeological and Ethnological Museum of Córdoba, located next to the atmospheric 16th century Palacio de los Páez de Castillejo.

From palace gardens to private residence to school to museum, the Palacio de los Páez de Castillejo has had a rich history.

Palacio de los Páez de Castillejo

What initially caught our attention as we walked through the square was the gloriously decayed sandstone façade of the Palacio de los Páez de Castillejo family — aptly named, considering their surname, Castillejo, translates to “Little Castle” — which is essentially what this home was.

A pair of life-size marble korai, female figures dressed in long tunics, and a Corinthian capital with acanthus leaves creates a striking vignette.

This lovely Roman mosaic includes motifs such as interlaced Solomon’s knot, vines, pomegranates and crescent-shaped pelta shields.

One of the many beautiful Mudéjar-style niches with scalloped arches within the palace courtyard — and the equally dashing Wally. 

The residence was renovated in the 16th century by Luis Páez de Castillejo and stands on the grounds of what were once the gardens of Ybrahim Ben Nacer Alfaqui’s palace. In 1538, he commissioned the prominent Spanish architect Hernán Ruiz II to oversee the redevelopment of the main courtyard, Renaissance-style façade and sculpted railing of the main staircase. Ruiz II collaborated with his father, Hernán Ruiz the Elder, on the contentious construction of the Capilla Mayor within the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba.

The silhouettes on the cloth added a modern art feel to this area of the courtyard.

Besides serving as the Páez de Castillejo residence, the building was used as a school at the end of the 19th century, known as the Polytechnic Academy. And in 1959, it became the Archaeological and Ethnological Museum of Córdoba.

This impressive sculpture, known as the Thoracata of Córdoba and named after a type of Roman battle armor, depicts the massive torso of a hero — possibly Aeneas in his escape from Troy — wearing an intricate breastplate adorned with a pair of griffins.

Its exterior is similar to Ruiz II’s work on the Puerta del Puente, the principal gateway to the Roman Bridge in town, and, like the monument, was designed in the style of a triumphal arch. Among its notable features are a pair of porticos supported by Doric columns, with heroic figures positioned between them. Above the entablature, classical figures hold the family coat of arms. This imagery aimed to immortalize the Páez de Castillejo family as the living embodiment of discipline, loyalty and self-sacrifice to the people of Córdoba. 

This staircase features a sandstone railing designed by Hernán Ruiz II as well as a Roman mosaic depicting rearing horses drawing a chariot.

Be sure to go through that gorgeous gateway — it’s free and only takes a short while to stroll around the courtyard.

Initially, Wally and I stood there, gawking and uncertain about entering, but after we saw a man speaking to the guard stationed at the entrance, we decided to ask about the building. The guard informed us that it’s an extension of the modern archaeological museum and welcomed us to take a look around the interior courtyard. We walked around the first courtyard, which is dedicated to Roman archaeology, including mosaics and sculptures. However, unlike the adjacent institution, the artifacts on display here are not clearly marked.

Although it’s not open to the public, the exterior of Casa del Judío is worth pausing to take a look at.

Casa del Judío

Over the centuries, the enigmatic building located across from the Palacio de los Páez de Castillejo has been inextricably linked to the Castilian royal family and the generations of noble lineages connected to them, including the Sousa, Haro, Armenia and Cárdenas families.

Originally a Mudéjar palace, the stately manor is also called the Palacio del Duque de Medina Sidonia, or the Palace of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. For, it was within these walls that the bastard son of Juana de Sousa and Henry II of Castile, Enrique de Castilla y de Sousa, aka the first duke of Medina Sidonia, was born.

While eating at La Cavea, we spotted a cool couple in front of the Casa del Judío.

Although it’s not open to the public, you can still admire its ceramic-tiled roof, vibrant fuchsia bougainvilleas and square tower with a hipped roof enclosed by a latticework screen. To the left of the doorway, sheltered by greenery, is a bronze bust perched atop a marble plinth immortalizing the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (39-65 CE), better known in English literature as Lucan. 

Lucan was the nephew of the philosopher-statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger). He attracted the favorable attention of the Roman emperor Nero but conspired with Gaius Calpurnius Piso in a scheme to assassinate Nero and install Piso as his successor. Ultimately, its failure led to Lucan’s arrest and his subsequent suicide at the age of 26. 

Today the home is more commonly referred to by locals as la Casa del Judío, or in English, the Jew’s House, in reference to Elie J. Nahamias, a Judeo-Greek businessman and its most recent owner, who passed away in 1994. Nahamias was a descendant of the pre-exile Sephardic communities that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula and assembled an impressive library of printed books and manuscripts spanning six centuries of Jewish history. His collection is held by the Library of the Alliance Israélite Universelle based in Paris, France. And although the property is privately owned by his children, you can still admire its beautiful exterior.

A cute location and a good option if you want a snack or drink while visiting the archeological museum — but otherwise you can find better food elsewhere in town.

Café-Bar La Cavea

The center of the square is taken up with a casual resturant, with tables placed under the shade of trees (with white umbrellas an additional barrier from the heat when needed), all sitting amid broken remnants of Roman columns. When we stopped by, there was live music, with a performer taking up station by the fountain.

Beware choco! Although our Spanish friends say it’s actually good, this one was rubbery and flavorless. If you really want to cringe, do a search for “cuttlefish.”

While the café gets points for its setting, the food didn’t impress us — especially since we ordered calamari but where told they had choco instead, which is very close. Imagine our dismay when we discovered that it not only looked like and and was practically the size of a bleached, deflated football, it tasted like one, too. (Wally had also made the mistake of Googling what cuttlefish look like, which didn’t do him any favors). I was recovering from heat stroke, so he choked down as much choco as he could before giving up.

Detail of an intricately carved Mudejar relief featuring sebqa work, a decorative technique characterized by the repetition of geometric and vegetal forms.

Hidden Gems

Our wanderings through the historic Plaza de Jerónimo Páez offered glimpses into Córdoba’s rich history, through its ruins, artifacts and storied mansions. This square is no longer the bustling entertainment district it was when it was home to one of the largest theaters in the Roman Empire. But it still captivates visitors with its antique structures and inviting energy. Be sure to admire your surroundings before you head into the archeological museum, which is worth visiting. –Duke

Plaza de Jerónimo Páez

 

Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba: Local Artists Through the Ages

Looking for things to do in Córdoba, Spain? Take a detour at the Cordoba Museum of Fine Arts and explore the city’s historic and artistic legacy.

The Cordoba Fine Arts Musuem is unassuming but provides an educational diversion for an hour or so. One gallery is dedicated to the works of sculptor Mateo Inurria and his works, including Les Tres Edades de la Mujer (The Three Ages of Woman) from 1923.

While looking for things for Wally and me to do beyond the remarkable Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, I stumbled upon an image of a room featuring a vibrant yellow totemic sculpture. The picture, which intrigued me, was from the Turismo de Córdoba website and was one of the galleries inside the Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba (Cordoba Fine Arts Museum). 

Colt Fountain in Plaza del Potro is an homage to the livestock that was once sold here.

Plaza del Potro: Where Livestock (and Sex) were Sold

The modest museum is tucked into a courtyard off the Plaza del Potro (Colt Square) and a short walk from where we were staying at Los Patios del Pañuelo. While commonly called a square, the plaza has evolved over time and is now a rectangle that stretches down to the Guadalquivir River. It contains two monuments: a fountain crowned with a sculpture of a rearing colt (hence the “potro” in its name), balanced atop a pineapple-shaped vase, and a statue of the archangel San Rafael, the city’s patron saint. 

Fun fact: Once a bustling hub for livestock traders, artisans and travelers, the square included the Posada de Potro (Colt Inn), a medieval brothel that was frequented by celebrated Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes. The author mentions the inn in his novel Don Quixote, referring to it as a “den of thieves.”

Sadly, the inn (a nicer way of saying whorehouse?), has since closed. Today, the storied property is home to the Centro Flamenco Fosforito, a small museum dedicated to renowned singer, Antonio Fernández Díaz, aka Fosforito, and the art of flamenco. 

To reach the museum, Wally and I went through a passage on the exterior of the former Franciscan Hospital de la Caridad (Charity Hospital), where the words “Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes” are carved in stone above the doorway. Once inside, we found a peaceful courtyard with a fountain surrounded by orange trees and a pair of busts. One pays homage to the museum’s first director, painter Rafael Romero Barros, while the other honors novelist, diplomat and politician Juan Valera. 

You enter the museum courtyard through the arched doorway seen here, underneath the fancy writing.

Andalusia is filled with charming courtyards, and this one doesn’t disappoint, with its beautiful stonework paths.

The museum’s collections span centuries and encompass paintings, drawings, sculptures and engravings by Cordoban artists from the 16th to the 21st century. 

After purchasing our entrance tickets, we noticed the bronze head of Gonzalo Fernández, the “Gran Capitán,” attributed to sculptor Mateo Inurria. 

Fernández earned his nickname “the Great Captain” by leading successful campaigns during the Conquest of Granada and the Italian Wars while serving the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella.

Cabeza de Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba para el Monumento al Gran Capitán (Head of Gonzalo Fernández of Córdoba for the Monument to the Great Captain) by Mateo Inurria, 1915

Notice how the head of this statue is marble while the rest of it is bronze? The original metal head can be found in the Fine Arts Museum, though we’re not sure what prompted this odd decision.

Fun fact: This is the original head of an equestrian monument in la Plaza de las Tendillas, the town’s main square. For some reason, it was replaced by a head sculpted from white marble, in contrast to the rest of the figure.

You can start your exploration of the museum by turning left into the room covering the Baroque period and seeing religious art reappropriated by the government.

The Baroque in Córdoba 

We began our tour of the museum in Room IV, which held a number of impressive ecclesiastical works made at the height of Baroque painting in Córdoba. During this period, artists like Antonio del Castillo y Saavedra embraced naturalistic realism, employing chiaroscuro—the use of light and dark to emphasize the emotional narrative in their works. 

Inmaculada Concepción (Immaculate Conception) by Juan Antonio de Frías y Escalante, 1667

El Sacrificio de Isaac (The Sacrifice of Isaac) by Antonio del Castillo y Saavedra, circa 1650

The majority of these artworks were acquired from convents during La Desamortización, a period from 1835 to 1868, when the Spanish government seized monastic properties belonging to the Catholic Church, turning them into “national assets,” which were then sold at public auction to the highest bidder.  

One of the most coveted artistic projects after 1600 was the creation of 24 paintings for the altars of the cloister at the Franciscan Convent of San Pedro el Real by Antonio del Castillo. These canvases depict episodes from the life of Saint Francis de Assisi. In the museum’s painting, the scene depicts an angel holding the newborn saint above a baptismal font. 

Bautismo de San Francisco de Asis (Baptism of Saint Francis of Assisi) by Antonio del Castillo y Saavedra, circa 1664

Fun fact: The oil painting is signed “Non fecit Alfar” (Alfaro didn’t do it). This signifies that Castillo won the commission over his competitor, Juan de Alfaro y Gámez. How delightfully petty!

Bendición Sánchez by Julio Romero de Torres, 1904

The 18th and 19th Centuries in Córdoba 

The next gallery we visited contained works from the 18th and 19th centuries, predominantly featuring local landscapes, portraits and still lifes by the museum’s founder, Barros. 

Bodegón de Naranjas (Still Life With Oranges) by Rafael Romero Barros, 1863

The Baroque style eventually yielded to Rococo, and around 1775, in the wake of the Lisbon earthquake, it shifted once more, leading to a wave of local artists embracing Romanticism. Around this time, the Escuela Provincial de Bellas Artes was established, and within its walls, Barros emerged as a prominent figure. 

Barros assumed a dual role as both director and mentor to a group of art students, including Tomás Muñoz Lucena, Rafael Hidalgo de Caviedes and Inurria. Among them were his sons, Enrique, Rafael and Julio Romero de Torres.

Un Recuerdo de África, Novia Sefardí (A Memory of Africa, Sephardic Bride) by Rafael Romero Barros, 1878

Columbus Leaving the Mosque by Rafael Romero Barros, 1886

The painting Columbus Leaving the Mosque by Rafael Romero Barros was inspired by a poem by the Duke of Rivas titled “Romance of a Great Man.” It depicts Columbus leaving the Mosque-Cathedral after prayer and encountering his future mistress, Beatriz Enríquez de Arana, for the first time. According to legend, she brought Columbus to her home to protect him from mocking children who regarded him as a madman for seeking royal backing for his voyage to the New World.

We were pleasantly surprised to discover there was quite a large collection of modern art as well.

Art in the Modern Era: 20th Century and Beyond

Throughout the 20th century, local artists changed their styles to suit prevailing tastes, shifting from Realism to Modernism to Regionalism. They drew inspiration from contemporary artists like Rafael Botí, Pedro Bueno and Ángel López, who delved into Impressionism and Fauvism. In contrast, individuals like Antonio Rodríguez Luna and Alfonso Ariza embraced avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Abstraction and Expressionism.

Sin Título (Untitled) by José Duarte Montilla, 1981

El Cante (Flamenco Song) by Julia Hidalgo Quejo, 2005

La Fuente del Patio del Museo (The Fountain in the Museum Courtyard) by Rafael Botí Gaitán, 1990

Mujeres Vela (Sail Women) by Antonio Rodríguez Luna, 1945

A key figure among this group of artists was the sculptor Inurria. The museum has a room dedicated to his works.

Un Náufrago (A Castaway) by Mateo Inurria, 1890

While exploring the gallery, I was captivated by a peculiar painting by Ginés Liébana. His dreamlike piece Buenas Mujeres para ser Caballos (Good Women to Be Horses) was painted in 1979. Liébana creates a surreal scene by combining elements: a woman’s head adorned with a flower-covered hat on a horse’s body. He integrates local landmarks, such as the rearing colt of the Plaza del Potro and the figure of the Archangel Rafael, into this otherworldly landscape.

Buenas Mujeres para ser Caballos (Good Women to be Horses) by Ginés Liébana, 1979

Fun fact: Liébana contributed his distinctive style to Cántico, an avant-garde artistic magazine led by poet Ricardo Molina. The publication used poetry and illustration to challenge the status quo during the Franco dictatorship. 

Faded religious frescos and graffiti scribbled by hospital patients line the staircase.

Stairway to Heaven: Frescoes and Graffiti

The staircase leading to the upper floor includes graffiti that most likely was the work of hospital patients. One of these is a labyrinth with seven concentric circles surrounding a central point—visible beneath a monochromatic mural of Saint Jerome. 

On the rear wall, a religious scene depicts Christ on the Cross between the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist. Flanking this central image is Saint Jerome, clutching a stone for beating his breast in penitence, and Saint Francis of Assisi in prayer. 

El Retablo de la Flagelación (Altarpiece of the Flagellation of Christ), circa 1500

Gothic and Renaissance Art in Córdoba 

The Gothic movement gained popularity in Córdoba in the late 14th century. However, it wasn’t until the 15th century that painters’ guilds flourished, distinguishing Córdoba from other Andalusian cities, such as Sevilla and Granada.

This environment was conducive to establishing major workshops by artists, including Alonso Martínez, Pedro de Córdoba, Jorge and Alejo Fernández, and Baltasar del Águila. Under the reigns of Charles V and Phillip II, local art underwent a transformation, departing from Gothic influences and embracing new expressions of Renaissance humanism. This worldview focused on the nature and importance of humanity that originated from the study of classical antiquity.

Here you can see an altarpiece from the chapel of a hospital founded in the 14th century by alderman Antón Cabrera and his wife, Beatriz de Heredia. The facility closed down in 1837. 

El Retablo de la Flagelación (Altarpiece of the Flagellation of Christ) is a superb example of the Córdoba school’s work and showcases the unknown artist’s adept use of Renaissance techniques. The composition of the figures reflects the Northern European style, popularized through engravings, and the panel as a whole draws inspiration from a similar painting produced by the German artist Martin Schongauer around 1480. 

Its side panels depict Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Anthony of Padua on the right, and Saint Anthony Abbot and Saint Francis of Assisi on the left, each with their distinctive iconography.

Fun fact: The artwork was initially misattributed to Alonso de Aguilar due to the mistranslation of a document accompanying the piece when it was acquired by the museum in 1866. 

Retrato de Joaquín y Rafael Mir de las Heras Niños (Portrait of Joaquin and Rafael Mir de las Heras Children) by Enrique Romero de Torres, 1905

A Life Fit for a Museum

The final gallery featured the exhibition Museum Worthy Life, dedicated to painter Enrique Romero de Torres (yes, the entire family had serious skills). After his father, Rafael, passed away in 1896, Enrique stepped up to run the museum as the director and curator. His responsibilities for the next 30 years kept him from dedicating himself entirely to painting. But under his direction, the renovations and expansions of the museum were carried out, with him paying for part of the works and donating, along with his brothers, paintings by his father. 

Take a quick lesson in local art history at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba, from Baroque to modern.

Listen, there are a lot of things you’ve gotta do in Córdoba, including La Mezquita, the Alcázar and the Palacio de Viana (not to mention taking a picture of the Roman Bridge). But if you have some free time, I recommend visiting this museum. Admission is only 1.50 euros (about $1.60) and is free to EU passport holders. The curation of each gallery is well thought out, ensuring an easy and enjoyable experience. Plus it’s a cool experience that will expose you to the artistic talents of Córdoba. –Duke

Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba 

Plaza del Potro, 1
Centro, 14002
Córdoba
Spain

 

Why Vitellius, the Little-Known Roman Emperor, Haunts Artistic Masterpieces

The legendary glutton pops up in numerous works of art throughout the centuries. Renowned classicist Mary Beard unravels the mysteries behind Vitellius’ ubiquitous appearances in artworks and sheds light on the significance of his portrayal. 

Most people nowadays aren’t familiar with Emperor Vitellius — but he was once well known as a depraved glutton.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Emperor Vitellius — he ruled the Roman Empire for just eight months in 69 CE during the civil wars that followed the overthrow of Nero. 

But despite his brief reign, Vitellius left a lasting impression — though not necessarily a positive one. Of course, that’s nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to Roman emperors. 

Like many of his cohorts, Vitellius was known for his vices, particularly his gluttony. His signature dish, the Shield of the Goddess Minerva, was a concoction that included livers of pipefish, peacock brains, flamingo tongues and lamprey innards. Umm, I’ll pass, thanks. 

Not surprisingly, the adjective “Vitellian” was once commonly used to describe something that was over-the-top and outlandish.

In addition to his gluttony, Vitellius was reputed to be a sadist, quoted as having said, “The stench of a dead enemy is wonderful. The stench of a dead fellow citizen is even better.” 

Mary Beard, a famous classicist, and author of the new book Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World

And “in his spare time, he was a sexual pervert,” quipped Mary Beard, one of the most renowned classics scholars and author of the book SPQR, during a lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Beard didn’t get into it, but let’s just say Tiberius gave Vitellius the nickname Tight Ass — and it had nothing to do with being stingy. 

The Feast in the House of Levi by Paul Veronese, 1573

The painting has not one but two figures modeled after Emperor Vitellius!

Vitellius: The Where’s Waldo of the Ancient World

Despite his lackluster reputation, Vitellius’ image has been copied, reinvented and reincorporated into Western art for centuries. Beard explored the significance of this often-overlooked figure and why he continues to pop up in art even today.

Take, for example, Paul Veronese’s painting The Feast in the House of Levi from 1573. Painted in Venice for a religious order, it was originally intended to depict the Last Supper. But when the Inquisition objected to this representation because it included animals, a jester, Germans and a server with a bloody face, Veronese changed its name to another feast from the Bible.

Beard pointed out a figure in the painting who’s gazing across at Jesus, utterly transfixed. It’s none other than Vitellius. So what’s he doing in there? 

It’s revealing a major coup for Christ. “Here, Jesus is converting one of the most despicable, immoral Roman emperors ever,” she explained. 

But, strangely enough, that’s not the only Vitellius in the artwork. His face also shows up as a server. “This is a clever spin on Vitellius’ gluttony because here we see one of Rome’s biggest overconsumers being turned into a server himself,” Beard said. 

If you want to show depravity, as Thomas Couture did in his 1847 work The Romans in Their Decadence, you need look no further than Emperor Vitellius, whose face can be found below the topless woman on the left.

In Thomas Couture’s painting The Romans in Their Decadence (nicknamed The Orgy) from 1847, Vitellius creeps up again. He’s shown in the midst of a pile of drunken revelers, so comatose he doesn’t even notice the naked woman near him.

An American magazine declared this work “the greatest sermon in paint ever rendered,” Beard told us. It was even suggested that a reproduction of it should be displayed prominently in every school in the United States — naked woman and all.

The canvas is filled with sprawling, drunken revelers in various states of undress. While it’s showing a graphic depiction of Ancient Rome’s moral decline, there was also a contemporary message to it: People viewed it as an attack on the disparities of wealth in France at the time and the blatant immorality of the bourgeoisie.

Vitellius Dragged Through the Streets of Rome by Georges Rochegrosse, 1883

The emperor ruled only briefly, and met a gruesome end — beaten, impaled on a hook and thrown into the Tiber River.

“If you knew what happened to Vitellius at the very end, when he’d lost power — dragged through the streets, tortured, beaten to death, impaled on a hook and thrown into the Tiber — if you knew that, I think you’d see in this figure a strong hint that this scene of debauchery and the modern lifestyle it evoked was doomed,” Beard said. “A very nasty punishment was around the corner.”

This painting, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, was once known as Hail, Caesar! We Who Are About to Die Salute You — until it was spotted that the emperor was actually Vitellius.

And there’s Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 19th century painting of the gladiatorial games — a representation that’s said to have inspired director Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. It’s a painting known as Hail, Caesar! We Who Are About to Die Salute You. But if you zoom in on the emperor, it’s — sure enough — none other than Vitellius. There’s no doubt; it’s even got his name painted below him. 

The title changed to Gladiators Before Vitellius. “Now, learned pedants, of which I know there are some in the audience, may have spotted a historical problem here,” Beard said, “which is this is clearly in the Coliseum, but the Coliseum wasn’t yet built by the reign of Vitellius.”

The legendary Grimani Vitellius, which pops up in numerous paintings, has a shocking secret.

Busted! The Grimani Vitellius

So why does Vitellius keep showing up in artworks? 

For the most part, we can thank a bust that’s become known as the Grimani Vitellius.  

This famous ancient image of Vitellius was excavated in Rome in the early 16th century under the direction of Cardinal Domenico Grimani and was bequeathed by him to the city of Venice upon his death in 1523.

“Now, I am by no means the first to spot how ubiquitous the Grimani Vitellius is,” Beard continued. But what was the significance? “Why copy this image of Vitellius? What extra does it bring to your painting if you include him? What ideological or moral register is at work?”

The Grimani Vitellius bust became the perfect symbol of an amoral glutton — which is why it has been copied hundreds of times from the 15th century on.

Boy Drawing Before the Bust of a Roman Emperor by Michael Sweerts, circa 1660

The bust itself even appears in paintings, such as Boy Drawing Before the Bust of a Roman Emperor by Michael Sweerts, from the mid-1600s.

“You can say this is just a convenient visual source to copy,” Beard said. “But I think you miss a lot if you don’t also think `Vitellius.’ When people use recognizable faces in paintings, they usually do it for a reason. And they expect you to recognize it.”

There could be a darker intent in this work, Beard suggested. “Anyone who knew anything would surely have said, Why on Earth did they put this little innocent lad to draw that sexually perverted monster — even if he is the acme of the craft of sculpture. And I can’t help thinking … there are bigger questions about the potentially corrupting force of art.”

But that fat fuck is having the last laugh. The Grimani Vitellius isn’t even a portrait of Vitellius! Technical details, such as the way the eyes have been drilled, make it clear that it dates from the 2nd century and cannot possibly be Vitellius. 

The bust, also known as the Pseudo-Vitellius, actually depicts an unknown Roman probably from the 120s or 130s CE who, by coincidence, was unfortunate enough to look very much like the coin portrait of the emperor. 

A gold coin depicting Vitellius. The emperor’s depiction is what led to the mislabeling of the Pseudo-Vitellius bust.

Emperor Vitellius: The Art World’s Fascination With an Infamous Ruler

It’s fascinating to think that this bust, which was not even of Vitellius, spread like wildfire and has had such a lasting impact in art. 

So the next time you’re wandering through an art gallery or museum, keep an eye out for Vitellius. Thanks to Beard, I predict he’ll have a comeback. –Wally

Fashion in Full Bloom at Billy Porter’s Extravaganza at the Phipps Conservatory

A journey through the impressive Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, where the latest exhibit, Flowers Meet Fashion: Inspired by Billy Porter is a fusion of flora and fabulousness. Strike a pose!

Duke, Mima and Papa were so inspired by the Japanese Garden at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, they decided to only speak in haiku.

I’ll say it: The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens puts Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory to shame. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where we spent a delightful long weekend with my parents. This stunning gem of Victorian-era architecture, adjacent to Panther Hollow in Schenley Park, has captivated guests for more than a century — and is sure to do so for years to come.

Visitors to the Phipps are greeted by a towering figure standing in front of a pink neon sign that reads, "You are an Icon." The skirt is made of petal-like layers. If you look closely, you can see hidden details, such as a map of Pittsburgh and song lyrics from the musical Kinky Boots.

From Roots to the Runway

Throughout the year, the conservatory changes themes seasonally, and our visit serendipitously coincided with the opening day of their summer show, Flowers Meet Fashion, a celebration of native son Billy Porter's local roots, his sartorial style and his love of flowers. 

For those of you who don’t know, Porter is an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony award winning performer and fashion icon. Billy is well known for his bold, creative and androgynous style, and is a tireless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the seeds for the show were sown in the summer of 2021, when Porter returned to the City of Champions to direct the movie Anything's Possible, a coming of age romantic comedy about a trans girl in her senior year of high school. While shooting scenes at the conservatory, Billy found common ground with the personnel and decided to become a board member.

As Billy wrote in his memoir, Unprotected:

I didn’t have the words for any of this at the time, just a child's awareness that people carried themselves differently in different clothing, that fashion could affect a profound transformation, on the outside and inside both.

The Phipps purchased a few favorites from past exhibitions to add to their permanent collection, including American glass sculptor Dale Chihuly’s Goldenrod, Teal and Citron chandelier. The stunning sculpture hangs in the atrium, where it can be enjoyed by all visitors.

A Welcoming Homage to Porter’s Pittsburgh Roots

Our experience began on the ground floor of the airy glass-domed Welcome Center, where a 7.5-foot-tall silver mannequin positioned near the entrance stood wearing a voluminous black gown. Entitled “Home Grown: Planted Roots,” the garment was designed by Madison Michalko, one of six professional costume designers tapped to create pieces for the show.

Michalko found her muse in Billy’s gender-fluid style and in the state of Pennsylvania. The bodice of the dress is shaped like a keystone, the state’s official symbol, accented with gold buttons and white mountain laurel blossoms, the state flower. The wide-brimmed hat is a nod to the crystal-fringed one Porter wore at the 2019 Grammys and features strands of LED lights that flicker like lightning bugs, the state insect.

This tuxedo dress by Damian Dominguez is a powerful statement about the importance of self-expression and the freedom to be who you are. The top is an homage to Mister Rogers, while the skirt is a nod to Dominguez’s Mexican heritage.

Palm Court: The Dress That Defied Convention

The four of us took an elevator up to the first of 14 interconnected conservatory pavilions and entered the spectacular Palm Court. The palms grow in the central and largest room of the conservatory, which reaches 65 feet in height, is 60 feet wide and 450 feet long. 

Holding court before us on a raised platform was a stunning dress by Mexican-American costume designer and Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Damian E. Dominguez. The look was inspired by the now-iconic black velvet tuxedo gown and matching bolero jacket designed by Christian Siriano for Porter to wear at the 2019 Academy Awards. Porter’s ensemble pushed boundaries and raised a few eyebrows at the somewhat restrained awards show. 

Like Siriano’s dress, Dominguez’s gown is also made from velvet but features a red tuxedo jacket in a nod to another Pittsburgh native, Fred Rogers. The hand-embroidered skirt includes a yellow bridge, as well as marigolds and dahlias, a nod to the designer’s heritage and the traditional full skirts of Mexico, where Dominguez’s parents were born.

Carnegie Mellon students Chloe Brown, Huixin Kang, and Jen Tepe reimagined a 1960s pantsuit that takes inspiration from the late British fashion designer Alexander McQueen's iconic Sarabande dress.

Sunken Garden: A Beacon of Hope

Our next stop was the Sunken Garden, which was filled with the colorful and creative designs by students from the Fundamentals of Costume Design class taught by Susan Tsu, professor of design at Carnegie Mellon, Porter’s alma mater. The students had been asked to read his memoir and then work in teams to create designs that reflected different aspects of Porter’s life and career. 

We paused to admire the sheer white pantsuit with crocheted fungi created by Chloe Brown, Huixin Kang and Jem Tepe. The designers explained that the fungi are a botanical metaphor for Porter’s exploration of his identity and his journey to self-reliance.

Could there be a pea in this pod? Caifeng Hong and Katherine Chung’s design was out of this world. 

Caifeng Hong and Katherine Chung’s look was inspired by the theme of contrast and rebirth. The dress is made of olive green netting layered over a green silk organza gown and collar that conceals the face of the mannequin. The contrast between the light and airy netting and the heavy and luxurious organza creates a sense of movement and energy. The collar, meanwhile, adds a touch of mystery and intrigue. The overall effect is a dress that is both ethereal and otherworldly, evoking something extraterrestrial.

Carrie Anne Huneycutt and Evan Riley’s collaboration was Somewhere Over the Rainbow, celebrating Porter's legacy as a trailblazing figure in the LGBTQ+ community. 

Carrie Anne Huneycutt and Evan Riley collaborated on the third look, entitled “Statue of Liberation.” The corseted dress is enveloped by a shimmering rainbow that soars above the mannequin’s head and is held aloft by a torch made of colorful fabric strips. The “flames” emanating from the torch represent Porter’s passion, determination and generosity of spirit.

Cathy Trostle-Olivar's dazzling Egyptianate look floats above the water of the Victoria Room. 

Fit for a Queen: From Camp to High Art 

In the Victoria Room, a luminous costume rose from the waters. The look was designed by Cathy Trostle-Olivar and was inspired by Porter’s glittering gold Egyptian sun god Ra costume at the 2019 Met Gala. The theme that year was camp, which Porter said can sometimes be seen as “cheesy.” However, when executed properly, it can ascend to “the highest forms of fashion and art.” The pavilion uses blue Egyptian lotus aka waterlily and tall stately papyrus to great effect. 

Three bronze maiden statues by Edmond Amateis, which originally stood within niches in the walled garden of the local Mellon estate, hold court among the formal French garden at the back of the Broderie Room.

The Broderie Room: The XIV Factor

Modeled after the formal period gardens of French chateaux during the reign of Louis XIV, the Broderie Room takes its name from the French “parterre de broderie,” a type of garden arrangement translated as “embroidery of earth.” This style of garden design came from a time when nature was considered a force to be tamed. 

I don’t speak French, but I think that this photo of Wally and Mima is très mignon. 

This fabulous footwear is a wink to the 2013 musical Kinky Boots, which Porter starred in, and a reminder that sometimes the most unexpected things can save the day. 

While visitors are discouraged from throwing coins into the many ponds and water features throughout the conservatory to protect the flora and fauna, a wishing well can be found here. 

Chihuly’s celestial Desert Gold Star sculpture provides a brilliant blast of color amid the green hues of desert flora.

These flowers are so whimsical, they could have been plucked straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.

Gallery Room: Blooming With Creativity 

Visual arts students from CAPA 6-12, a local creative and performing arts school, have transformed the Gallery Room at Phipps Conservatory into a whimsical wonderland. Using papier-mâché, the students have created larger-than-life flowers and animals that are sure to delight visitors of all ages.

The Gallery Room showcases a collection of critters created by local students.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is a towering salvia spike that nearly reaches the ceiling. The spike is made up of hundreds of individual flowers, all of which have been carefully hand-crafted by the students. And in the center of the room, a menagerie of amphibians and animals frolic in a whimsical forest.

These looks made from plant material by Phipps master gardeners were so avant-garde, they could be on the red carpet at the Oscars.

South Conservatory: “Hort” couture

The sound of camera shutters and the strobe of flashbulbs add a fun theatrical element to the red carpet vibe of the South Conservatory room. Wally spoke with one of the friendly conservatory staffers, who informed him that the topiary models were created by the master gardeners at the Phipps. The nature-inspired garments were fashioned from plant material sourced and crafted onsite at the conservatory and are so stunning, they would impress the judges on Project Runway.

The first mannequin featured a dried leaf hat in the shape of a lady slipper orchid, and a full skirt fabricated from clusters of blue hydrangea flowers contrasted by a form-fitting acid green palm frond bodice.

This look, inspired by a tetra fish, is sure to turn heads — even underwater!

The second look reimagines the scales of a neon tetra fish. Blue-painted magnolia leaves create a fish scale pattern on the jacket and hood, while salal leaves were used for the pants. Marigold-colored staghorn ferns are transformed into the cuffs and lapels, and painted monstera leaves create the “tail fin.” The deep-sea diver-like boots are made of upcycled accession tags, the metal labels that are issued to plants when they become part of the Phipps collection.

Well, this look is one fashion-forward way to channel your inner bird (note the nest atop its head and the dress details made of pheasant feathers).

The third look uses salal leaves trimmed with pampas grass and a dried grapevine garland to create drama and height, encircling the mannequin's waist and head like a bird’s nest. Completing the look are upcycled accession tag bracelets and white pheasant tail feathers.

The woman Wally had spoken with about the topiary models also told him about the Tropical Forest Conservatory, a 12,000-square-foot, 60-foot-high space located behind the South Conservatory. If she hadn't, I think we might have walked right by it, which would have been a shame. The incredible space is home to the immersive Tropical Forest Hawai'i, showcasing a variety of endemic and native species from the state. 

As soon as we stepped inside, we were transported to another world. The air was humid and warm, and we were surrounded by lush vegetation, with towering native trees and cascading waterfalls. 

This lettuce-covered look was a showstopper. I sure hope there’s an opening under the hat so the fish can eat!

The Serpentine Room: Salad Days and a Surprise 

As we made our way past the final five costumes, found in the Serpentine Room, I was unsure which look I liked best. But once I saw the aquaponics dress, I knew without a doubt that it was my favorite. The ingenious installation was a truly innovative and sustainable design. The clear acrylic body contained live goldfish, and the hoop skirt was made of living lettuce. A placard explained that the lettuce cleans the water and maintains a healthy ecosystem for the fish, whose waste, in turn, fertilize the plants. It was a truly beautiful — and functional —  piece of art.

Drag queen Thee Suburbia’s ruby red dress is a tribute to Porter’s uplifting message and blooms with the power of positivity.

Brooklyn-based drag performer Thee Suburbia designed the ruby red dress. She was inspired by a personal encounter with Porter, who spoke to the entire crew about the importance of lifting one’s surroundings, while working on a music video shoot for his song “Children.” Thee Suburbia’s gown pays homage to Porter’s attire that day as well as his words. The bursting blooms are a metaphor for the power needed to be an uplifting and inspiring force. It’s a friendly reminder to Phipps visitors that we can make the world a better place by lifting each other up.

Mindy Eshelman’s sustainable suit and cape is a sartorial love letter to Pittsburgh and our planet.

Next up was a white mandarin collar suit and oxblood-lined cape designed by Mindy Eshelman, associate professor of costume design at Carnegie Mellon. The sustainable, locally sourced and upcycled vintage piece was a perfect reflection of Porter’s deep connection to Pittsburgh, as well as the possibilities for our collective future — one in which caring for the planet is imperative. The look has been paired with vintage brooches, including flowers for Phipps, bees recalling our interconnectedness with the natural world, and butterflies symbolizing personal transformation. 

NYC performer Gloria Swansong’s designs evolved from the long-established pageantry of drag queen balls, a parade of gender expression and aesthetics.

To close out the show, New York City drag performer Gloria Swansong served up two stunning looks inspired by the underground 1980s ballroom scene. Category is: Botanicals Eleganza.

The first was an Old Hollywood-style gown made of shimmering blush pink silk organza. The sleek form-fitting dress was adorned with silk roses handmade in NYC by M&S Schmalberg.

The second look was an iridescent bouquet sleeve dress, a beautiful and meaningful tribute inscribed with the names of ballroom legends to honor their contributions to the community.

Don't forget to stop and “Strike a Pose” in front of the Instagram-friendly pink and green vertical wall before you leave the Serpentine Room.

Café Phipps: Lunch Break  

We arrived at the conservatory at 10:30 a.m. and were starving by noon. My dad and I are both notorious for getting hangry, so the four of us headed over to Café Phipps, which is located in the Welcome Center, across from the gift shop.

After taking a look at the elevated and healthy menu options, we agreed to have lunch there. The menu featured a variety of dishes made with fresh, seasonal ingredients. Wally and I shared a spinach and kiwi salad and a Hawaiian pulled pork sandwich. Both were delicious and satisfying.

Another Chihuly work, Celadon and Royal Purple Gilded Fiori, captures attention at the center of the Tropical Fruit and Spice Room.

Chihuly’s vibrant glass installation, Cattails, can be found nestled amongst the lush greenery of the Palm Court. 

The Porter-inspired show is a delightful experience, where talent and collaboration flourish. Whether or not you make this summer’s show, though, the Phipps is a feast for the senses. 

Be sure to find the Longfellows by Hans Godo Fräbel in the Orchid Room.

The Lowdown

Flowers Meet Fashion: Inspired by Billy Porter is on display at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens until June 25. 

Admission is $21.95 for adults; $19.95 for students over 18 and seniors 62 and older; $13.95 for children ages 2-18; and free for Phipps members and children under 2. 

A bronze sculpture of Scottish poet Robert Burns, holding a plow and contemplating a mountain daisy, stands outside one of the Victorian glasshouses at the Phipps Conservatory.

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens 

1 Schenley Park Drive 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
USA

 

Fábrica la Aurora: Textile Factory Turned Art and Design Center

A popular stop in San Miguel de Allende, the Fábrica la Aurora spins a new yarn as a complex filled with antique shops, galleries, artist studios and restaurants. 

La Fábrica la Aurora, an old textile factory, is a winding complex filled with art of all sorts.

San Miguel de Allende is a town with art in its DNA. There are galleries galore and shops full of colorful folk art. But we knew that one of the places we had to add to our itinerary was the Fábrica la Aurora. It just sounded so interesting: It’s a former textile mill that has been converted into a vibrant arts center. A remnant of Mexico’s industrial era, the factory was built at the turn of the 20th century and featured the best technology of the time. The complex operated for nearly 90 years producing percale (a fabric often used for bedsheets), muslin and flannel, before closing for good in 1991 — that is, until it was reimagined as an arts center in 2004.

We took one look at the mask wall at the front of Casa Michoacana and knew we had to go in.

Walk This Way: Shopping Stops on the Way to Fábrica la Aurora 

Whenever we can, we walk on foot in the cities we stay, and I’m especially glad we did so in SMA — otherwise we might have missed Casa Michoacana, an incredible shop filled with folk art that we passed on the way to the Fábrica. Many of the items here are made by artists from the state of Michoacán but also include a few from other regions of the country, too. You will find a collection of ceramic piñas of all sizes, multi-tiered candelabras, innumerable masks, wood carvings and more. The staff was patient and informative, and it was here that we found a variety of changos, black clay vessels used for storing mezcal in the shape of a monkey, and purchased one.

The owners also run the sister shop with the same name, a bit farther down, on the opposite side of the street. Look for the sign with two hands and an archway decorated with handpainted flowers.

“The renovation retains the building’s industrial character, with open spaces, concrete floors, high ceilings, steel casement windows, exposed pipes and more than a few industrial artifacts, including massive mechanical looms.”

We wanted to get this alebrije — but there’s only so much space in our home.

We did, though, find room to bring back a chango mezcalero!

As we walked along Calzada de la Aurora and crossed a puente (bridge), we paused to admire a carved Colonial-era Cantera stone cross. The crucifix features an INRI plaque at the top and so-called Arma Christi (Weapons of Christ), including glyphs of Christ’s face, a nail and a ladder — items linked with Christ’s crucifixion. 

If you walk to La Aurora, you’ll cross a bridge with this cross. It depicts the Arma Christi, the collection of artifacts related to the Passion of Christ.

Here’s your sign (literally) that you’ve arrived at La Fábrica la Aurora.

Art Park in front of La Fábrica la Aurora

Just a few minutes later, we passed an oxidized Cubist sculpture of four converging figures and a sign marking the entrance to Fábrica la Aurora. The park-like grounds contain additional sculptures, including Oso Grizzly by Francisco Esnayra, a striking work of art composed of a series of metal bands in the shape of a bear. It majestically stands in place on a patch of mulch amongst the trees, while the sculpture Looking for Balance by Rodrigo de la Sierra features a trio of his childlike Timoteo characters precariously balancing on an unsupported ladder. 

Oso Grizzly by Francisco Esnayra

Looking for Balance by Rodrigo de la Sierra

La Aurora’s historic façade includes its central archway with metal lettering and wrought iron gate.

The Dawn of a New Fold as an Art Makers Outpost

Most of the original structure of La Fábrica remains intact. Its brick façade is punctuated by Cantera stone arches, made from quarried volcanic rock. Its central entrance has a wrought iron gate and metal lettering spelling out “La Aurora” above. The arts and design center was founded by a quintet of creative forces: Francisco Garay, Christopher Fallon, Mary Rapp, Merry Calderoni and DeWayne Youts. In addition to showcasing local and expat artists’ works, there are also places to eat. A burger joint named El Grandpa & Son occupies one side of the front and can be seen through the aforementioned arches. There’s also a café called Geek & Coffee tucked away somewhere. We didn’t happen to stumble upon it during our visit — the complex is quite large and meandering. 

The front courtyard before you enter the sizable complex filled with galleries and studios.

The renovation retains the building’s industrial character, with open spaces, concrete floors, high ceilings, steel casement windows, exposed pipes and more than a few industrial artifacts, including massive mechanical looms that were used for the production of cloth from cotton. 

An industrial Zinser loom tucked among one of the galleries at La Fábrica la Aurora

Wandering the Maze of Fábrica la Aurora

The first shop we stopped into was Cantadora Antigüedades, which specializes in arte popular and ephemera from the 16th to 19th centuries. A figure depicting Jesus riding a donkey, possibly used during Easter week processions, stands outside the store entrance. 

By this time, Wally and I were both craving a snack, and the relaxed and casual open-air Café de la Aurora was the perfect spot. I tried a mango smoothie that incorporated a large dose of ruby red chamoy sauce, which was refreshing. If I had to describe the flavor, I would say that it was simultaneously sweet, spicy and tangy — the chile on the glass rim was a nice touch. What’s chamoy, you ask? The popular condiment is a combination of dried chiles, mangoes, apricots or plums and lime juice that’s added to flavor hard candy as well as drizzled on fruit. 

Just beyond the café, were the cutest vistas of potted plants arranged along the old factory wall.

Lotería imagery decorates this wall at La Fábrica la Aurora.

Can you see why Wally was obsessed with these vignettes?

One shop in the Fábrica, La Buhardilla, purchased a trove of items in 2004, including letters, sketches, paintings and clothing from an eccentric lawyer in Mexico City that were alleged to have once belonged to the surrealist Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. 

These artifacts are well-documented in the fascinating book Finding Frida Kahlo. The personal effects were said to have been originally acquired from Abraham Jiménez Lopez, a woodcarver who received them in lieu of payment for frames he had made for Kahlo. While many experts question their authenticity and say that the objects are fake, I’d like to believe that at least some of them are real. 

This kitty seemed to share our taste in art.

A modern-feeling wing of art galleries toward the back of La Fábrica

After resting and refueling, we ventured into another annex, where we saw a small black and white cat slinking through one of the galleries. We wandered into Manuk Galeria, which was founded by Mexican artist Lourdes Rivera. I suspect we were drawn to this gallery in particular because of its well-curated assortment of contemporary and folk art-inspired pieces.

Artwork on display at Manuk Galeria at the back portion of La Fábrica

While there, the compelling work titled Neblina (Fog), by self-taught artist Erik García Gómez, caught my eye. The painting features a stylized animal (pig? dog?) and spotted albino snakes. According to the artist’s bio, his main source of inspiration comes from the town he grew up in, San Cristóbal de las Casas, and memories of his grandmother, who was a village healer. 

Neblina by Erik García Gómez

A menagerie of heads from a sculpture workshop led by Juan Luis Potosí

The whimsical Travesías sin Rumba by Ernesto de la Peña Folch sits atop a pedestal outside CSEIS gallery. 

Italian for “the Spice,” Le Spezie lives up to its name — the spice of life, that is. This design shop features a mix of handicrafts from Mexico and other regions of the world. Colorful metal roosters, distressed painted furniture, sofas and accent cushions upholstered in colorful fabrics are all for sale here. Also of note is a range of industrial and hammered copper lighting fixtures. I especially liked the painted wood Kamadhenu, the wish-fulfilling Hindu cow goddess, sitting atop one of the cabinets. 

What’s not to love? The Kamadhenu is part woman, part cow, with the wings of an eagle and the tail of a peacock.

The last space Wally and I walked through was Rise, a store featuring the works of Argentine graphic designer Lucas Rise and a clothing line created by his wife and business partner, Giuliana Vastarella. Rendered in jewel-tone hues, his works have been digitally printed onto textiles, with a few resembling kaleidoscopic Rorschach tests. Rise works in a nontraditional manner by using cabinets as his canvas, combining geometric forms, each meticulously painted by hand. 

A steampunk-looking apparatus with oversized gears, a remnant of the textile factory, shares a space with Rise. 

Over the years, La Fábrica has expanded its galleries and studios as places where both national and international artists can create and sell their work. It’s a short distance from the historic center of San Miguel de Allende, and if you’re like the two of us, you can easily spend a fun afternoon going from one gallery to the next. –Duke

A statue of a rearing horse stands in the parking lot of the arts center.

Fábrica la Aurora

Calzada de la Aurora s/n
San Miguel de Allende
Guanajuato
Mexico