The year our daughters went to college and we moved back to California I was hired to teach a course about museums. It was for Stanford's...

Vanves, Paris, Flea Market, 2022 Almost a decade ago someone in Minnetonka, MN, bought a painting at a garage sale.  I’ve never been to...

When our daughters were small one of our weekly routines was picking up the Palo Alto Weekly every Wednesday afternoon. With twin...

We live in Northern California, where irises are blooming around the corner on this mild January day. I just had a conversation with our...

"Unlocking the Secrets of Art that Gives You Chills" "The Art World’s Favorite Dermatologist Opens in Tribeca" "How Two Artists Built a...

The journalist Michelle Young has written a gorgeous, thoughtful review of The Case of the Disappearing Gauguin . You can find it in...

Updated : Watch my conversation with Victoria Reed, moderated by the marvelous Sarah Chicone, here: https://youtu.be/Eb8oWlJpnPk?si=HOr8...

Last week was our 32nd wedding anniversary, and my husband surprised me with an inscribed first edition of Richard Wilbur's New and...

I know I am. Last week I spoke with Dr. Gary Girod, who hosts The French History Podcast. Take a break and listen--all the questions and...

Contemplating a copy of Flowers and Fruit My daughters had a brief career as Girl Scouts. The annual cookie sale was a contributing...

Amazon tells me that my book will be available for purchase on July 15. You can click that link and pre-order it. How about that? True...

I use a stack of books as a laptop stand: the oldest is a book by Thomas C. Hubka called Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn,...

My editor tells me that the book will come out in July. The cover will look like this: I sent it off on December 15, or possibly on...

This weekend 11 Johns Hopkins Museum Studies MA students from across the country are making their way to San Francisco, where they will...

This week I have been deep in the digitized issues of the Gazette de l'Hôtel Drouot. The Gazette Drouot still exists: it's the weekly...

It's been, as Sam Sanders used to say, a minute. So much to catch up on, more than I can go into today. I have drafted five of what I...

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Maternité II, 1899. Oil on burlap. 37¼ x 24 in (94.7 x 61 cm). A decade after Meier de Haan painted Marie Henry...

The Beach at Kerfany. Postcard, about 1900. We are taking the Marie Henry tour of Finistère; it’s challenging because we have to devise...

One of the books near my desk here in verdant North Carolina--where I come from, and where we have been these last few weeks--is a family...

Paul Gauguin, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? detail, 1897-98, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. On a December...