Blog Posts

  • Death’s Bouquet at Morbid Anatomy

    On Sunday, October 18, I’m joining Morbid Anatomy for an in-person talk at their Industry City space about “Death’s Bouquet: The Language of Flowers in Cemeteries and Mourning.” It will be complemented by the memorial hairwork now installed in the Morbid Anatomy space from Leila’s Hair Museum and delve into how floriography rose in popularity alongside Victorian cemeteries and mourning art, where pansies for thoughts and snapped roses for a life cut short emphasized the fragility of life. Carpe diem, register here!

  • Union Hall Day of the Dead Event

    This Day of the Dead, November 1, I’m going to lead a class on Cemetery Symbols & Secrets from New York’s City of the Dead at the wonderful Union Hall in Brooklyn. Focusing on funerary art found in cemeteries across the five boroughs, we will discover some of the most common cemetery symbols and their meanings. Register here!

  • Houdini Panel Discussion

    On October 28 at 6pm, I’m joining the “Houdini Among the Villagers: The Magician’s Life and Afterlife in Greenwich Village” panel discussion hosted by Village Preservation and Boroughs of the Dead. It should be a lively evening on Houdini’s life in magic and the debunking of Spiritualism in NYC. Free to attend, even more magical.

  • Art on American Memory

    For the Art Newspaper, I wrote a preview of an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston on the work of Beverly Buchanan and Dionne Lee and how they have explored art as a form of divination and of uncovering American history. Read it online and in print!

  • Pete’s Mini Zine Fest 2026

    On Saturday, September 19, I’ll be joining the Pete’s Mini Zine Fest! It’s presented by Quimby’s NYC at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg and is free to stop by and browse zines great and small from a variety of local makers.

  • Saving a Civil Rights Landmark

    For the Art Newspaper, I covered the preservation efforts for the Edistone Hotel, which has stood in downtown Selma, Alabama, since 1855 through the history of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement. After years of neglect, it’s being reimagined as a community hub. Read the full story here.

  • Mortal Matters at Green-Wood

    On Sunday, September 20, I’m joining the Mortal Matters happening at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn to lead a walk on the past, present, and future of the grave. The schedule of the full weekend of (free!) events offering “a rare chance to engage mortality on Earth and beyond it” is online.

  • A Poem to the Prairie

    For the Art Newspaper, I wrote about the preservation of the Prairie House in Norman, Oklahoma, designed by modernist Herb Greene in an organic shape made from cedar planks:

    “While cities across the United States were being transformed by sleek glass towers in the mid-20th century, on the Great Plains a more fantastic vision of Modern architecture was being built. Now known as the American School, this rebellious strain of design had no boundaries in style, form or materials.” Read the full story here.

  • Apollo Cover Story

    I wrote the cover story for the July/August 2026 issue of Apollo magazine. It explores the expansion of the New York Historical museum in the context of America’s 250th. Find it in print and online!

  • A Refresh for NYC’s Oldest Library

    For the Art Newspaper, I reported on the recent refresh of the New York Society Library. Established in 1754, it’s considered the oldest library in New York City. You can read about how they are reimagining their historic space on the Upper East Side.

  • An Opinionated Guide to New York Architecture

    New book alert celebrating my home and the great city of New York! I authored An Opinionated Guide to New York Architecture for the UK-based Hoxton Mini Press. It’s a compact, photo-illustrated book featuring over 70 sites I think represent the diverse history of local design: “From Brooklyn brownstones to swaggering skyscrapers, Art Deco icons to Brutalist behemoths—New York’s ever-evolving skyline traces its astonishing history.” Available now in the UK and in the US.) Take yourself on some summer exploring!

  • Online Cemetery Symbolism Class

    On Sundays in August, I’ll be teaching the online class Speak with the Dead: Understanding Cemetery Symbolism for Morbid Anatomy. The four virtual sessions will each cover a different era of cemetery symbolism and how it evolved from the visual expression that came before. Each will include recommended readings and a prompt for exploring symbolism on your own, perhaps to consider what message you might like to leave behind as a final statement. Register here!

  • Hidden Muses of NYC Walk

    To coincide with the release of the Women’s History New York Map I authored for Blue Crow Media, I’m leading a Hidden Muses of New York Sculpture Walk on June 13. We’ll recover the overlooked stories behind some of the city’s most iconic public art, where behind the faces of angels, goddesses, and allegorical figures, there are unheralded women’s stories. I’ll have maps on hand for sale, too! Register here.

  • America’s Most Endangered Places

    Sites threatened by federal erasure and rollbacks to public land conservation are spotlighted on this year’s list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. I reported on it for the Art Newspaper:

    As celebrations of the US’s semiquincentennial kick into gear, many of the historical sites that recognise the country’s diverse, complex history are in peril. … This year, the list concentrates on sites that reflect the assertion in the country’s founding document that all people are “created equal”. The sites range from gathering spaces used for organising for equal rights to places of worship that once served as refuge for their communities. Yet federal censorship, development, neglect and shortfalls of funding have put them all under threat.

    Read more here.

  • The Great American Trees

    For the latest issue of ArtDesk, I rounded up some of the greatest trees in the United States, from those that traveled to the moon to those that have endured centuries of change. You can find it in print! If you’re in the Oklahoma City area, free copies are at Oklahoma Contemporary.

  • Cemetery Greenhouse Restoration

    For the Art Newspaper, I reported on Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery opening its new welcome center in a restored Victorian greenhouse:

    Green-Wood acquired the landmarked greenhouse from McGovern Florists in 2012 for $1.6m. At the time, it was in a deteriorated condition, with damage to the glass and its wooden frames rotting. While restoration progressed over the years, breaking ground for the new centre that wraps around it in an L shape did not take place until 2023. Where once mourners stopped in to buy flowers on their way to visit graves, visitors can now orient themselves with the new tile map of the cemetery covering the greenhouse’s floor.

    Read more here.

  • Zine Guide to Artist Studios

    The hints of spring we’ve been having inspired me to make a scrappy mini zine to encourage some local exploring, with its pages highlighting some of NYC’s historic artist studios that are available for you to visit! (Or to keep an eye on for their rare openings.) I gathered 13, from Robert Rauschenberg’s converted chapel and Louise Bourgeois’s lovingly cluttered townhouse to Walter De Maria’s cloistered former transformer station and John A. Noble’s leaky houseboat. You can pick up a copy on my Etsy.

  • NYC Women’s History Map

    Just in time for spring walks and wanders, it’s a brand new Women’s History of NYC Map! It was an honor to author this for Blue Crow Media (my fifth for them) and chart 50 of the famed and little known markers, landmarks, monuments, and other places where you can remember the women who built the city we know today. It features beautiful photography by Anna Morgowicz of sites across the five boroughs, from artistic wonders like the only surviving sculptural environment by Louise Nevelson to the recently unveiled state park dedicated to trans activist Marsha P. Johnson. Pick up a copy here!

  • Raw Vision Feature

    The spring 2026 issue of Raw Vision magazine includes my feature on artist Margaret Mousseau, a self-taught artist who uses intricate colored pencil drawings to reflect on her life. You can find the full piece in the print issue and read an excerpt online:

    Each work is layered with pattern and detail that draw a viewer in to notice things entwined in the scene, like the tendril of some otherworldly flora or the multicoloured body of a bird. Her spontaneous style gives the feeling that these drawings are still transforming as she responds to both joyful and haunting experiences of the past and present. “My way to deal is to try and draw a feeling,” explains Mousseau.

  • Dance of Death Talk

    On Monday, April 20, I’ll be giving an online talk for Morbid Anatomy on the art of the dance of death. Learn about how in times of uncertainty and calamity, the danse macabre has resurrected again and again. From Hans Holbein’s playful mocking of the elite to Alfred Rethel’s 19th-century meditations on cholera, to haunting etchings of World War II by Percy Smith, this mortal dance has persisted in our visual culture. And still now, its bony hand beckons us to join in its endless waltz as artists find new ways to interpret it in the 21st century. Register here!

  • Asia Society at 70

    In my first feature for Apollo magazine, I reported on how the Asia Society is marking its 70th year. You can read the story online and in print:

    When John D. Rockefeller III founded the Asia Society in New York in 1956, many Americans associated Asian countries with war and political upheaval. … He felt that art and culture were powerful conduits for developing what he called “person-to-person” experiences. “Good relations on this level are necessary if we are to strengthen friendship bonds with that region of the world,” he said in an interview with the International News Service in 1957.

  • Leroy Johnson Feature

    For the winter 2025/26 issue of Raw Vision magazine, I wrote a feature on artist Leroy Johnson. The full story is in print with an excerpt shared online. The late Johnson transformed discarded materials he found on the streets of Philadelphia into complex sculptural works that tell the stories of Black life.

  • AI & Architecture

    For Prattfolio, the magazine of Pratt Institute, I talked with people from across the field of architecture about the opportunities and challenges of AI in their work. The story is out now online and in print.

  • Protecting Cave Art

    Did you know there is publicly viewable 800-year-old cave art in Tennessee? I wrote about Dunbar Cave for the Art Newspaper and how it’s being conserved after historic flooding, while also preparing it for more extreme storms in the future. Read all about it here.

  • Monumental Sculpture Story

    There’s now a colossal head in Miami Beach commemorating the overlooked history of women’s service in the Coast Guard during WWII. It was sculpted by artist Prune Nourry. I spoke to Nourry about the project for the Art Newspaper, read all about it here.

  • New Mini Zines

    I wanted to make some smaller zines for fun timed with the Halloween season. These try out something I haven’t before which is folding one page into a 14-page little booklet. The selected spooky topics are L’Inconnue, the drowned muse of Paris; the protective lore of witch bottles; and mortsafes, made to safeguard against graverobbing. You can find them all on my Etsy!

  • Spooky Trees Podcast

    I contributed to Tree Speech’s podcast “The Trees Remember: Tales from the Haunted Grove” with a haunting tale of why mulberries are red. Listen to the episode here!

  • Cypriot Art

    For the Art Newspaper, I reported on a new gallery of ancient art 100 years in the making at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. It was collected by John Ringling of the Ringling Bros circus. Read the story here.

  • US Modernist Radio Interview

    I joined US Modernist Radio for an interview on the Modernist New York Map I worked on with Blue Crow Media. Listen to the discussion on all things modernism in the city and why maps are great!

  • Self-Taught Artist Biography Project

    I spent much of this year on a project for the American Folk Art Museum rethinking biographies for “outsider” artists and I’m proud these are now coming online! It was inspiring in this time of undervaluing human creativity to commune with those who made their own paths. You can explore them here.