The Lonely Palette

04/07/2026

“The deeper you go, the less indulgent it will be.”
— Helena De Groot’s stickie note

is an audio maker, but, really, she’s an audio artist. Her series, Creation Myth, just dropped in full as part of the ’ show, Personally. Personally is about the most personal experiences that audio makers that probe within themselves, laying themselves bare, for our benefit, as the best memoirs do.

Creation Myth is, ostensibly, about the question whether or not to have kids. But as you’ll hear, both in listening to the series, and to my conversation with Helena today, it’s about craft and memoir, parenting yourself and parenting others, care and compassion. It’s a masterclass in the creative process itself - that is, creating. Creating life, both your own and another person’s. Creating stories. And creating art that reaches people, sometimes in surprising places. ✨

Episode link in bio.

10/28/2025

"I know a person as deeply devoted to the preservation of objects as I should be more horrified by the Louvre heist, and on a certain level I am, but let's be honest, the rest of me is here for the memes."

Read more art world round-up tiddles in our latest newsletter:
https://mailchi.mp/thelonelypalette/botticelli-louvre-memes-nyt-spain

09/04/2025

Now that the winners have been announced, I'm thrilled to report that I was a finalist for this incredible prize.

It's a joy to know that there are foundations out there who see what we do as necessary, and remind us - in the midst of hustling, budgeting, fretting, and every other odd and end that goes with freelancing - that it is.

The Rabkin Prize celebrates the creative and intellectual contributions of today’s visual arts writers and comes with an unrestricted award of $50,000. We believe today’s arts writers are at the heart of our most essential conversations, help us think together in public, create the original fiel...

07/31/2025

Curators share the works that sparked their lifelong passion for art. What can we learn from their journeys?

07/31/2025

“Questions and the search for answers, and the appreciation of beauty, and then wanting to share it with other people, to go look at it closely together.” - Emily Pegues, curator, National Gallery of Art

Museum curators are an intimidating species. Those experts with their degrees. How could they possibly remember what it was like to walk into a museum for the first time and feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of history on display? How could they imagine what it’s like to be a visitor who doesn’t care about a landscape with cows? After all, we’re not born knowing the stories these paintings tell, or how to seek them out.

👂In the second episode in our series, we’re going to explore how a long look into an artwork can inadvertently engage another sense: hearing. Hearing the stories that a painting can tell.

👂And the curators at the National Gallery are here to help. Help put us in the best possible position to receive these stories; help us listen to what these paintings are saying to us. And how to imagine these stories moving through the centuries, embracing us the way they once embraced them for the first time, and making them want to do what they do.

Podcast Episode · The Lonely Palette · 07/31/2025 · 25m

07/31/2025

👀 “There are different levels of looking. And it’s exciting to bring people to the different levels.” - Estelle Quain, docent, National Gallery of Art

👀 How do YOU feel when you walk into an art museum? Is it familiar? Intimidating? Do you have a guard trying to shush you, or an overly-enthusiastic friend trying to tell you what to like? Are you joyful? Are you sad? Are you… bored?

You’re not alone. Whether it’s your first time in an art museum or your 10,000, everyone’s going to respond differently. That’s why we made this podcast.

👀 In June of 2024, I was honored to be the Storyteller-in-Residence at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I spent a week in the museum talking to and recording as many people as I could: curators, museum staff, visitors. We talked about what brought them to the museum, and what keeps them there. We talked about what makes the museum experience transcendent, and, bluntly, what can get in the way of that - what stands in the way of connecting with an artwork, what makes them feel like they never learned the secret knock to access this world. After all, in order to make a space inviting, you have to understand why some people can feel left out.

In this three-part series, a collaboration between the National Gallery of Art and The Lonely Palette, we’re going to explore the idea of what it means to open yourself up to an art museum, one artwork, or conversation, at a time. And how the tools to do this have been here for you all along, literally in plain sight, just waiting for you.

👀 Today, in the first episode of our series, I talked to various museum staff about preconceived notions of art that visitors bring with them to the museum. We discussed how their jobs are to meet visitors where they’re at, and to encourage them to go further. To look longer.

Podcast Episode · The Lonely Palette · 07/24/2025 · 26m

07/04/2025

Whether arguing for soft versus hard taco shells or the Neo-N**i right to march in Skokie, freedom of speech is a fundamental right we all enjoy as Americans. But it turns out that telling people that is pretty complicated, actually. Thank goodness we have Norman Rockwell, virtuosic photorealistic painter and America's crown prince of nostalgia, to help us understand our fundamental freedoms from the intimacy of the magazines fanned across the coffee tables inside our homes.

Happy 4th of July. 🇺🇸

Whether arguing for soft versus hard taco shells or the Neo-N**i right to march in Skokie, freedom of speech is a fundamental right we all enjoy as Americans. But it turns out that telling people that is pretty complicated, actually. Thank goodness we have Norman Rockwell, virtuosic photorealistic p

06/17/2025

This was a truly great conversation: censorship, Dr. Seuss, Anselm Kiefer, Louise Bourgeois, the Muppet Show, Philip Guston, N**i imagery, Peter Pan, all together at last. Take a listen!

Podcast Episode · The Cheeky Scholar · 06/14/2025 · 1h 19m

05/13/2025

This episode is particularly meaningful to me. It's a conversation with Judith Wechsler: a professor, art historian, filmmaker, writer, researcher, Francophile, and leading expert on Paul Cezanne and Honoré Daumier. She’s the daughter of a major religious philosopher. Her resume reads like a who’s who of 20th century art historians – Meyer Shapiro, Linda Nochlin, Leo Steinberg, Gershom Sholem. Her films tell the story of 20th century Europe, image by image.

She was also my grad school advisor. And she’s now a dear friend.

We all have a mentor. Someone who once extended a hand and took you through a door that suddenly materialized, suddenly unlocked. Mine was Judith Wechsler. At the time, I was a twenty-two-year-old graduate student, whatever shade comes before green, in the art history department at Tufts University.

04/04/2025

NEW EPISODE: Shattered porcelain is impossible to repair. As impossible as fully, and accurately, reconstructing the past. But who needs that pressure? What if, instead of tossing those shards in the dustbin of history, we acknowledged that the thing will never be what it once was? Maybe then we appreciate the beauty, and the human resilience, of what new things it could be, in the now.

Art history with a side of Billy Joel and Leonard Cohen, what could be better?

Podcast Episode · The Lonely Palette · 04/04/2025 · 24m

03/14/2025

Start ‘em young.