Behind the Scenes Minis: Morisot and Rosenwald

Tracy shares a story of hunting for a Berthe Morisot exhibit and her favorite painting by the artist. She and Holly also talk about scheduling guests and the legendary John Lewis.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy
Vee Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. This week on the show,
we talked about Barrett Morrisso, whose work I really fell
in love with in France, and here is a little

(00:23):
story about that that we didn't get into it all.
Uh So, when we took that trip to France, we
had a lot of time that was scheduled with like
group outings and walking tours and things like that, and
then we also had free time, uh that was up
to us um and so early in the trip was
when we went to the muse Marmattan Money and I

(00:45):
saw the paintings that they had on display by Barrett
morris which there were multiple of, but by far not
the entire collection that they have there in their own collection.
Later on in a trip, we went to the Music
do or Say and as I was walking around the
music door Say, there was a big sign on the

(01:07):
wall that said Bert morris So. And I was so excited.
I was like, I just saw I just really fell
in love with Bert morris So is art. I'm so excited.
I'm gonna go see this, and I kept just having
this you can't get there from here situation. I was
stymied every time I tried, and then I learned it
was a temporary exhibition that was literally opening something like

(01:27):
six days after we left Paris, and I was so
sad about it. Um One of the sources for this podcast, though,
was the exhibition catalog from that exhibition, which traveled I
think to three cities. One of them was Dallas. It
was at the Dallas Museum of Art. We did not

(01:49):
narrowly miss it the time that we went to Dallas,
it was like three years afterwards. That would have been
super frustrating had that been the case. I just love
looking at her work. A lot of it I just
find to be like really comforting and peaceful, which is
interesting because as a person, most of the accounts I

(02:11):
found of her were that she was like very reserved
and very precise about how she wanted to do things,
but also discreet about it. And this may have been
one of the things that caused her to butt heads
with Mary Sat a bit, because Mary Sat also had
very strong ideas, but she would be very very blunt
about it. And Barrett Morissa was more like having very

(02:32):
strong ideas but also being kind of discreet and delicate,
and how she talked about it. So I think that
may have been what seems to have led to them
maybe having some kind of a falling out that I
wish I had more to tail about because I'm nosy.
Do you have a favorite piece of hers? Um, So
there's one that is of her sister watering plants out

(02:56):
on a terrace that's really lovely. One of the ones
that I saw at the museum Marmatan Monet that I
really liked is of Julie and another child and they're
playing in a large bowl that I think has a
fish in it. There's like a little splotch of color
that suggests to me a fish that's swimming around in

(03:17):
the bowl. Um, And it just it sort of captures
the two of them in this moment of just being
entranced by what's happening in the in the bowl, and
also maybe they're about to knock it over. Are you
you're generally a fan of the Impressionist correct, Yes, very much, thanks,

(03:38):
I really um. I like a lot of Many's portraits
of her. Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't mention most of
those really at all, is aside from saying that he
painted her like fourteen times. Yeah, within the Impressionist movement,
those tend to be a little darker than a lot
of the others, which is probably why I'm like, I
love that, UM. Many of them are just very very

(03:59):
pretty though. Yeah. The painting that we that I have
chosen for our social media promotion of the episode is
her self portrait UM, which is very brown in its
color palette, whereas a lot of her other painting is
a lot more on the like blue and white and
green end of the spectrum. UM, but it has that

(04:20):
very unfinished quality to it where you look at it
and you're like, did you paint the edges at the
campus right? Which apparently was something that Edward Money felt
the need to correct. Correct It was not. It was
not incorrect in the first place, just his aesthetic a
little different, same grouping I um. I recently was very entranced,

(04:43):
and I even mentioned it on on Twitter. I think
that I just happened to stumble across a painting I
love of his, which is a bar at the fully Berger,
and it's one of those things where if you just
look at that painting in terms of portraiture and then hers.
You can see where he would have been like no, no, no,
no no, yeah, more like this show more detail, um,

(05:07):
and she would have been more defined like there's you know. Yeah,
she's felt absolutely sick about him quote retouching her painting
that she was submitting to the seen all. She did
not like that at all. I would not like that either.
It's a pretty conceited move to be like, oh, I'll
fix this before we turn it in. Yeah. Apparently her

(05:30):
mom found the whole situation hilarious and she did not
find it funny at all. One of the cool things
about there being more interest and more more exhibitions of
her work UM in the more more recent years is
that actually I was able to find two different catalogs

(05:52):
from two different exhibitions two go through as part of
the research for this episode, which was pleasantly surprising to
me because there, I mean, there are plenty of artists
who can find tons and tons and tons of exhibition
catalogs from, but not not as much with Bert MORRISO.

(06:15):
So getting to flip through two books of art really lovely.
Not a bad way to spend some time mm hmm.
Super delicious We got to have Andrew Feiler on the

(06:37):
show this week, which took a while to arrange, um,
but I'm thankful we did. Between his schedule and mine,
it got a little dicey, and I ended up booking
him on a day that I was out of town
because I'm a ding dong, But we got it all
worked out, uh, and he was just marvelous. And now
he's off running around because as a consequence of this work,
he has booked everywhere to give talks and and talk

(06:59):
about his his road trip around America, but documenting these schools.
It's funny, you know when he talks about particularly the
I mean I mentioned at the end of the episode
that when we talked about John Lewis, I mean I
got completely choked up because how could you not and
and his story I think is quite moving in having

(07:22):
that discussion with John Lewis and taking his picture, um,
but even him just talking about how important it became
to include portraits in this book as well as just
images of the schools and the states. They are now,
some of them, as we said, still living, working, breathing spaces,
some of them literally piles of rubble. But I I

(07:43):
love that you know, he ran into so many people
that had connections to them and wanted to share their
stories and wanted to be part of this project, and
I'm so grateful that he incorporated their portraits into it. Yeah,
it is a good reminder that history. We are all
writing history all the time, no matter whether you are
a child sitting in a classroom or the philanthropist that

(08:04):
funds that school, like, you're all part of that story. Um.
And so it's it's to me very cool. And I
love some of those pictures that are portraits because you
just get a different flavor and an insight into some
of these people that is so beautiful and fun. Um,
I love it. I love it. Okay, I tell you
a John Lewis story. It's not about this episode, what

(08:25):
it is about the show. When the third volume of
John Lewis's graphic novel March came out, I tried to
get him onto the show to talk about it. Uh.
As In I started trying to contact people to basically
be like, is John Lewis doing publicity for this book?

(08:46):
We'd love to have him on the show. And uh,
basically having not tried harder is one of my biggest regrets.
About my whatever eight years, but I've been on this podcast. Yeah,
because it wasn't like I just asked somebody and gave
up that. I think had I known some of the

(09:09):
things I know now about trying to get guests onto
the show, I might have made different decisions. And uh,
I don't know. It's one of my true regrets that
that did not end up working. Yeah, that's understandable. Um.
I always tell people I'm I don't get starstruck, and

(09:29):
the times I have, there have been very few. And
I can name two off the top of my head.
And one was meeting Charlie Bolden when he was the
administrator of NASA. Totally cried. And two was like literally
I met John Lewis at the airport during a protest
and he reached out and shook my hand and I
just burst into tears, like a complete mess, and I

(09:50):
was just like cant he was. So we didn't we
spent seconds together total, like he was. There were a
lot of people that wanted to talk with him, but
it was U You just realize you're holding the hand
of history and it's a little bit much. That was
a lot to take in, uh um, and was just
as lovely as one would ever hope in that situation,
and to his extraordinary credit and skill, and it's not surprising,

(10:17):
but it still took me by surprise. In a situation
like that where they were just throngs of people and
everyone wants to talk to him. I think he made
everyone feel like they had a connection with him for
at least a second or two, which is difficult to
do in crowd situations, and shows extraordinary grace. I've heard
similar descriptions from other people who had similar experiences. Just

(10:39):
a lovely human and we are poorer for not having
him with us anymore. But boy his I feel like
his legacy continues, and it is part of this legacy
that that Andrew wanted to document, you know. He he
mentions in that interview that you know, he had all
the history parts covered, but he didn't have really inexperiential

(11:01):
writing about what it was like to go to these
schools and just you know, sit in the schoolhouse, many
of them so tiny, and just you know that be
your um, you know, your primary education, and and how
that shapes a person um And it was just lovely.
I was so glad I got to talk to Andrew
and I was glad that he kind of continued that

(11:23):
discussion that we had a little bit of with Jeremy
Katz from the Breman Center about how in many ways
Atlanta's Black community and Jewish community have always been so
closely linked, um and really kind of dependent on each
other in a lot of ways. UM, and really you know,
had a um a sort of kinship born out of

(11:44):
their positions on the social ladder at that point. So
I was glad that that he got to kind of
book in that, uh in this interview as well. So again,
boy do I love that book. Um. His use of
light is just really extraordinary. It's the same kind of
thing that I respond to you in paintings, UM, in
the way that he uses light to frame and alter

(12:05):
a scene. And so of course I'm like, yeah, I
page through this all day long. I'll be great. I
also love that he accidentally found himself writing about history,
because he didn't know he was going to want to
write a story for every picture until he was actually
in it and then was like, oh, I guess I

(12:26):
am researching and writing. Now that's a whole different uh.
And also I just wanted to have him on because,
as I always try to do UM and you know
you do as well. We try to have people on
that have history careers that maybe aren't history careers. People
always think about UM and that it is not always
about teaching, but sometimes about discovering and and sharing art

(12:49):
and showing things in new ways. So super duper lucky.
I am hoping to get down to the exhibit before
it goes to its next position on tour, because it's
I I suspect it is rather mind blowing to see
those photographs at huge scale in a beautiful setting like that.
So if you're in Atlanta, maybe I'll run into you.

(13:12):
I'll be the one in the corner crying. It'll be great.
I hope your weekend the head is delightful. If you
are not having time off, I hope it is still
as delightful as can be, and that you managed to
find some some moments of peace and perhaps even happiness
in there. Uh. And we will be right back here
tomorrow with a classic and then we'll see you again
on Monday when new content. Stuff you missed in History

(13:40):
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