Allan Sekula seeks to put a human face on modern globalization, exposing the harsh realities of working-class life on the “forgotten landscape” of the high seas — “one of the most precarious and exploitative systems of neoliberalism.” Bruno Serralongue is drawn to a different element — fire — in his quest to document the birth pangs of countries like Kosovo and South Sudan and capture the tenor of strikes, rebellions and social tension internationally.

Over the phone, Sekula and Serralongue — along with curator Hou Hanru — discussed their work and the artistic convictions it represents. See the accompanying slide show for a quick exhibition preview.

What’s the philosophy behind this exhibition? It seems very timely, in light of recent events at home (the Occupy movement) and abroad (the Arab Spring revolutions) — but it must have been planned relatively far in advance.

Hou Hanru: It’s an interesting coincidence — but not really a coincidence. I’ve been quite interested in exploring the role of artists in the changing world today. For the last few years, we’ve had this program called the New Models of Culture and Art Production, which explores alternative initiatives in terms of negotiating different models of production in the context of globalization.

I was very impressed by Allan’s recent work, and also I saw a wonderful show by Bruno in Paris last year. I decided to propose this project to both artists — for them to come together, with their individual works, and create this interesting momentum. (Allan and Bruno have known each other for the past few years, but this is the first time that they are exhibiting together.)

The artworks cannot be innocent or insensible to what’s happening around us. And people like Allan and Bruno — they’re not simply reacting to this moment; it’s really been a long-term engagement on their part to explore the historical reasons why we are here, at this [point of] crisis.

When it comes to documenting these sorts of stories and events, how is an artist’s work different from that of a photojournalist or paparazzo?

HH: My personal interest is in the very subtle distinction between journalism — the media — and the artistic approach, [which] I would say is more like that of a researcher trying to show the complex historical background and conditions that make up a particular event. I think that’s where the artist actually has a role to play. [The distinction between an artist and a journalist] is really important, even though sometimes it’s not easily perceived at first glance by the public. But making an exhibition showing the whole system of image research and production can actually show this invisible aspect that makes up the substance of our work — the position of an artist’s engagement.

Bruno Serralongue: I think Allan and I are experimenting with another way of making photos — even if the subjects cross the interests of the paparazzi. We are not only interested in the photo, but also the process [of getting it].

Allan Sekula: I think one difference is that artists — if we use the term “artist” in a way that isn’t an honorific (we’re not saying that we’re more creative than journalists) — more readily call the formulas of representation into question. That’s more at the forefront of what we’re interested in. When Bruno uses a 4×5 camera to photograph political events, he’s using a technique more traditionally associated with landscape photography or architectural photography to show these fleeting political moments which have pretty much conventionally been shown by means of small-camera images (because those cameras are quick and portable). He’s also not doing it electronically; the whole point of his photos is not that they can be uploaded immediately to a home newspaper or a website — but that they give a slower, more deliberate take on things.

The one thing I would say to slightly amend what Bruno and Hanru have said is that journalism is also in flux — and it’s important to understand that journalists have their own struggles [to survive] in a media environment that’s changing and brutal but also has certain openings and promises. I always think of the journalists I admire, because — whether it’s George Orwell or Ryszard Kapuściński — these are all people who didn’t fit the norm of their professions, [but] were able to work in it. We’re all working with nonfiction, and we’re all working with contemporary events, and we’re trying to figure out nonformulaic ways of looking at these events. For me, part of that is reorienting the point of view: Changing the point of view from the land to the sea is a crucial thing for me.

Why did you decide to focus on sea-related stories? And Bruno, how did you settle on the idea of campfires (and fire more generally)?

AS: If we think of our economic problems, not so much in a terrestrial way, but in terms of this watery planet we live on … What happens when we treat the ocean as if it were a giant interstate highway system, without rest stops? (Why doesn’t it have rest stops? Because the whole sea is a toilet — right?) There are a whole bunch of consequences that follow from instrumentalizing the environment in this way, and obviously it’s not sustainable. Also, there are consequences from treating it as a place where you can just exploit the hell out of people because there are no sovereign, national laws that apply, in terms of working conditions and the like. So it’s a kind of hidden space of exploitation.

The prevailing fantasy [right now], of course, is that everything’s moving at this electronic pace, and that’s what sets the standard for the world. But the fact is that there’s all this heavy stuff moving around slowly that provides both the material energy and the physical objects that are produced by the use of that material energy. So those are some of the concerns.

What interested me is that, historically speaking, the sea was a place where — in the 16th through the 18th centuries — there was this enormous exploitation; these were the most modern machines in the world, and they were like factories. The sailing ship was a kind of engine of colonial conquest, and it also ground down the people who worked on it. But out of that came certain dreams of freedom. Going back to the mutinies in the British fleet at the end of the 18th century — roughly, say, at the time of the French Revolution — [we see that the] idea of mutiny and of maritime revolt is a really strong one in the formation of democracy. And … abolitionist ideas were also circulated among seafaring workers. There are historians who have worked on this: Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh are two who’ve really done the yeoman’s work of exploring this history. What happens in the 20th century, of course, is that seafarers for a brief period of time are recognized as human beings, and accorded labor rights because of their struggles. These are not granted to them from above; they win it by shedding blood, as happened here in San Francisco with the general strike in 1934. But global capital is not content with that solution, especially as it enters into yet a new stage of crisis, and so it wants to return to [its past] exploitation. And it has done so. Seafarers now come from the Philippines, or from China, or from the former Soviet Union, or socialist-bloc countries like Romania, Bulgaria and so on … That’s kind of the framework, for me: What is the cargo container? What does it mean that this box was invented in the ’50s that came to be the dominant way of [transporting] dry, semi-manufactured or manufactured goods? It allowed this massive re-localization of production, away from the developed world, to developing countries like China. And shifted, essentially, the global economy in a very profound way. And I think that, in turn, liberated finance capital in the West to just spin in increasingly complex circles of derivative trading and the like — to lose any sense of connection to the real economy.

BS: For me, just a few words! I’m really interested in conflict; that’s what fire means. It’s more of a metaphor of the conflict between two sides.

“Oceans and Campfires: Allan Sekula and Bruno Serralongue” is on view at the San Francisco Art Institute through Feb. 18, 2012.

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2011 marks the second year that caretaker Lindsay Mican Morgan has decorated a handful of the rooms for the holidays. The process takes an immense amount of research, time and effort — involving everything from scholarly inquiries to the fashioning and commissioning of tiny toys and props.

Over the phone, Morgan explained the Thorne Rooms’ background and discussed the laborious process of setting them up for the season; the slide show that follows takes you behind the scenes of the rooms’ festive reinvention.

Can you give a short history of the Thorne Rooms? When and why were they created?

They were created by a woman named Narcissa Ward Thorne (Mrs. James Ward Thorne). She was born in Indiana, but moved at a young age to Chicago and eventually married into the Montgomery Ward business. She always collected miniatures. Miniatures have gone through quite a few phases of popularity, basically since the beginning of time; during Mrs. Thorne’s time period, in the 1920s, Queen Mary was making dollhouses and collecting fine miniatures — so when Mrs. Thorne was collecting and putting together the rooms, it was already a little bit popular. But the idea of doing miniature period rooms specifically — full scenes — was not a common one. Not the way she was doing them. The dollhouse-type scene, or the scene within a cabinet, had been done — but she kind of came up with these herself.

For society ladies at that time, education was more about how to properly put on your hat than about history and whatnot. But Mrs. Thorne was very interested in decorative arts on her own, and taught herself. She collected very fine books — all the right materials to be educated in what was considered the height of fashion in the ’30s. She made her first set of rooms just after World War I. You have to understand: This is when people were suddenly able to buy whole rooms of furniture [from abroad], and put them together again for museums. Because of the war, all these very elite households were suddenly having to basically put their whole houses up for sale — so museums were buying whole rooms, and so were individuals. (Hearst, for instance, was putting together whole rooms of medieval furniture.)

Of course, museums only have so much real estate. So Mrs. Thorne developed this idea of showing fine miniatures instead of doing full-scale period rooms. Actually, her first set of rooms was largely made from antique miniatures. These rooms were shown at the 1933 World’s Fair, as well as what now is the Chicago History Museum. At this point, when she showed the rooms, there’d be some minimal fee for spectators, and the proceeds would always go to benefit certain groups of people — sort of like a charity fundraiser. Some of the money went toward [funding] out-of-work architects; another cause she supported was the children’s hospital. One of her pet causes was the Women’s Exchange, which helped generate income for women who had either lost a husband or were somehow disabled.

Obviously, these rooms would be a lot harder to accomplish nowadays. During the Depression, Mrs. Thorne was basically able to hire people for a higher wage than they’d be making elsewhere — but it was still next to nothing. She was sort of notorious over at Marshall Fields, because she’d go to see the window displays, and then she’d go and see the window display workshop, and ask, “Who did that?” Someone would raise their hand; she’d say “I’ll pay you seven cents more,” and then off they went. She was friends with the Fields, but she was also notorious for stealing employees.

So there wasn’t actually a huge expense involved in making them?

Oh, there was. It’s just that it was more affordable to do these back then. But she definitely spent a significant amount of money putting them together. Otherwise, she would have been lounging about doing society lady things. Of course, she did do that a bit, but this project is what kept her going — it was her passion in life. She really took to it full-tilt. She would put in full work days — beyond full, even. Eight in the morning until 8 at night, in her little studio, working on these miniature rooms for years and years. So she was pretty passionate about it!

How much upkeep do they take now?

There’s a fair amount, but less and less over the years. Originally, whoever was the caretaker would basically have to straighten and tidy them up almost every morning, because they were not as well sealed as they are now. I’ve been told kids would come and pound on the windows or walls, and everything would kind of shake a little bit — but that was back in the ’40s or ’50s. Now, everything is very secure, and there are rubber gaskets to keep most of the dust out and whatnot.

[Keeping the Thorne Rooms in good condition] basically involves upkeep of everything imaginable, though, because these run the whole gamut of everything else in the museum. You have everything from real paintings — in the 1930s San Francisco room, there are quite a few original art pieces commissioned from contemporary artists — to furniture pieces, fabric, needlepoint, rugs … It’s kind of fun because I get to kind of talk with the various departments of the museum; if there’s a concern for a certain object in one of the rooms, we have a whole department for that kind of object.

This is the second year that you’ve decorated some of the rooms for the holidays. How long does the decoration process take?

Research is the major time-consuming element, for me. I start in late spring or early summer. We’re dealing with time periods from late Tudor England up through the 1940s in America, so it’s a pretty huge range of time to be dealing with. And the holidays have gone through some pretty major changes within that time period; we go from scenes slightly reminiscent of pagan-era England straight through to the years after the First World War.

Sadly, not all of the rooms work well for holiday scenes. A lot of the early American rooms are really beautiful — but then you think: “Wait, they really didn’t do much of anything at that point.” For a time, Christmas was outlawed [in parts of the northeast]; you couldn’t do anything (well, some people would still try, and then they’d get in big trouble).

We really try to get it as historically correct as we can. Even the Williamsburg room was difficult — because, of course, if you go to colonial Williamsburg, they really do it up decoration-wise. When I talked to them about the rules they use when setting up decorations, they said they’ll [use any material] they know to have been available in the period. My only problem — and they’re the first to admit it — is that it’s more of an idea of what would be done; it’s not really what would be done. Sometimes, for example, you’ll see people using oranges or pineapple. The richest person in town maybe could afford a pineapple. And that would be the most exotic treat on Earth. You’re not going to be stapling that to the outside of your building!

For the wreaths, I just did straight-up greenery that would have been available really readily — and then there’s a garland going up the bannister. Garland going up the bannister — it was maybe pushing it a little bit. But there was a bannister there; we really had to do it!

The Holiday Thorne Rooms are on view at the Art Institute of Chicago now through January 7, 2012.

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Over the phone, curator and American decorative arts specialist Charles Robertson described the collection and its history; an edited transcript of our conversation is below. Click through the accompanying slide show for a peek at the patents of the past.

Can you give a brief history of these objects? I believe they were made starting in the 1790s — right? And it was a practice exclusive to America?

Yes. The first patent law was passed by Congress in 1790; it required the submission of a drawing, a description (which was called a specification) and a model. The United States was the only country that required the model. England and France and Germany didn’t; they had the technical engineering and scientific expertise to evaluate models on the basis of the drawing and description alone. But, hey, in 1790, the United States was pretty lacking in that area of expertise, so the model was necessary in order to give some idea of how the invention would work.

The model was not only required to be submitted, but also to be put on public display — so eventually, these grand galleries were designed on the top floor of the patent office building, specifically for the display of the patent models. By 1880, when the requirement for submitting a model was discontinued, there were some 200,000 patent models in the building, on public display. They are unique American historical artifacts of technology, invention and craftsmanship.

Who made the actual models? Would an inventor have to pay an artisan to make one of these?

In the early days, the inventor himself probably made them because the procedure was cumbersome; it was revised in 1836. Before then, there was really not even a patent clerk; the application for patent was submitted to the secretary of state — who was Thomas Jefferson at the time, of course, and he knew something about inventions — and reviewed by him and the attorney general. The president actually personally had to sign the letters patent, as they were called.

And he stopped signing those in 1836?

Yes. That’s when the law was radically revised. At that time, professional patent examiners, who eventually did have the scientific training and the specialization to review the patents and grant them, were established.

When these were put on public display, were they viewed as curiosities? Or art? Were they a tourist attraction?

They were a tourist attraction. [There was a] huge fire in 1836, actually, when the patent office was in what’s called Blodgett’s Hotel, which is at the corner of E and Seventh streets — and that destroyed literally all the patent models, paperwork and everything. Completely destroyed. Officials actually wrote to the inventors asking them to remake and resubmit their models and the descriptions and everything. They got about 2,800 back, but many, many thousands were lost.

There were many [other] curiosities in the building, like the original of the Declaration of Independence, all kinds of treaties, Benjamin Franklin’s printing press, etc. About 100,000 people [a year] came to the patent office in the mid-1850s to view the patent models and these other curiosities. There was kind of a fervor of invention; everybody wanted to patent something and make a fortune. But most of the inventions were never commercially produced — and many were improvements on earlier inventions — like the sewing machine model we have in the exhibition.

Did they charge an admission fee?

No, no. It was absolutely free; anybody could come in and see them. And there was a finder’s guide for finding them by subject matter in these vast cases (they were nine feet high on two levels — actually, three levels, in one gallery — so it was really, really awesome).

Lastly, what happened to these items in the course of the 20th century? How did they eventually make it into the hands of Alan Rothschild, who owns them today?

Well, the Patent Office wasn’t the only [agency] in the Patent Office Building; the space was shared with the Interior Department, created by act of Congress in 1849. After 1849, the Patent Office was put under the Interior Department.

The first two floors of the Patent Office Building were largely offices occupied by the Interior Department. The Interior Department grew and grew, and when the models were finally discontinued, these huge spaces were converted into offices; by the end of the century, all the patent models were put in storage. Then, in 1924, there was a congressional investigation — Why are we paying so much money to store all these patent models? — and they were sold at auction. Some were returned to the families of the inventors; any museum that wanted them could take them; and the rest were sold at auction. One man bought a lot of them and was going to establish a patent model museum in New York City — but that never happened. Gradually, they were dispersed, by auction, by sale, various things. [Eventually,] Alan Rothschild bought 4,000 patent models [and brought them back to] Cazenovia, N.Y. Thirty-two models from his collection are in this exhibition.

“Inventing a Better Mousetrap: Patent Models from the Rothschild Collection” will be on display through Nov. 3, 2013, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

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Shortly after Pyle’s death in 1911, a group of his friends came together to form the society that would eventually become the Delaware Art Museum. One hundred years later, that museum has launched a retrospective, seeking to put Pyle’s work in context and delineate the artist’s influences. (Among Pyle’s sources, the exhibition explains, are pre-Raphaelite tableaux and Japanese woodblock prints.)

Over the phone, curator Margaretta Frederick answered some of my questions about Pyle’s work; an edited transcript of our conversation is below. Check out the following slide show for a selection of Pyle’s own sublime images.

The title of this exhibition is “Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered.” Why “rediscovered”? Do you think there’s a sense in which his work has been lost?

Sometime around the turn of the century, illustration got written out of the history of art. For lots of reasons: its commercial associations, the advent of photography. Illustration got sidelined as kind of a poor, younger sister to the fine arts. So the premise of the exhibition is to suggest that despite the fact that Howard Pyle is normally only looked at as an illustrator, he was as aware of — and as much a participant in — the art of his time as any of the fine artists. That’s why in the exhibition we’ll be using comparisons of works by other artists to show that Pyle was engaged with the art of his time.

Is there an artist working today who spans the genres of fine art and illustration in the way that Pyle did?

You know, before, illustration was it. It was your TV, your movie; it was the visual entertainment. I’m not sure we think about illustration that way anymore. At least at the time that Pyle was beginning, there were artists working in both fields, and that was OK. But as I said, somewhere around the turn of the century, it started to get more segregated — and there wasn’t much of a crossover. I think there are contemporary fine artists now who do do illustration in addition to their other work — but they are fine artists first.

It seems like Pyle had an active role in shaping our understanding of classic Western tales — his illustrations of romantic, fantastical characters, like pirates, have had impressive cultural staying power. How has Pyle shaped the stories that we know — or shaped the way we envision certain sorts of things? Have people who may not have actually heard of Pyle still been influenced by his work?

Well, certainly in terms of what the average person on the street today thinks of as a pirate, that image was something that Pyle conceived. Because there wasn’t that much documentation of what pirates wore, much of it was Pyle’s creation. Early moviemakers looked to Pyle’s illustrations when they were creating, for instance, the Errol Flynn movies; modern-day filmmakers do the same — [as in the case of] the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. I mean, it’s documented fact: The creators of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” for instance, talk about looking at Pyle’s work — because that’s what we all think pirates look like. That’s definitely from Pyle.

What Pyle did with things like the Arthurian tales was to retell them for an American audience (in this case, of course Arthur was a British figure). That’s something slightly different. But yes, I would think most Americans, when they think about Arthur, are thinking about Pyle’s illustrations — not an English version.

Were these normal late-19th-century preoccupations? These historical, romantic themes?

With pirates, I think Pyle’s pretty much got a clamp on the market for originality. But in terms of looking at the past, and romanticizing it, that’s something that was going on [more widely] — for instance, with ancient scenes: That subject was very big in the academies in Europe, and Pyle was certainly looking at the works of the artists like Jean-Leon Gerome in France, or Lawrence Alma-Tadema in England, both of whom were doing scenes from the classical world.

Of course, Pyle’s an illustrator, so there’s a demand for these. There’s some text that requires these illustrations. This is more of a Western-world cultural happening, this romanticizing of the past in the late 19th century.

Some of Pyle’s illustrations also deal with American history [slides nine and 10]. Where did the inspiration for these come from?

The Thomas Jefferson picture [slide nine] was an illustration for the history of the American revolution written by Henry Cabot Lodge. There is this moment — and it’s actually around the time of the colonial revival in the United States — when America as a country is starting to look at its early history. Pyle’s illustrations, Henry Cabot Lodge’s books — this is all part of a new-found, nationwide interest in the early history of the country.

My final question is about the Delaware Art Museum itself. It’s directly linked to Howard Pyle and his career, right? Can you give a little bit of the background?

Towards the end of his life, Pyle got very interested in mural painting. And there was a big movement in American art for public mural painting. Pyle decided he needed to go to Europe to learn more about mural painting (he had actually completed a couple of commissions before he went). It’s interesting because he was largely self-taught or [U.S.-trained] up until this point; he hadn’t gone abroad [for instruction] like many of his contemporaries. But then at the very end of his life, he decided to do that.

So he went to Italy, and he was there for a very short time, and he died of some sort of a liver complication — it’s not really clear at this point. At any rate, he dies — it’s 1911 — and he’s left a studio full of work here in Wilmington. A group of his friends and citizens in Wilmington got together and made sure many of those works were kept for the Wilmington public. They called themselves the Wilmington Society of Fine Arts; there was no building — they exhibited first, I think, in the Hotel DuPont in downtown Wilmington. They also exhibited in the top of the Wilmington Library, and then eventually, in 1935, when a gift of land and an additional collection of pre-Raphaelite art were given, they built a building. Then the Pyle paintings came to where they are today on Kentmere Parkway. But the museum begins with Pyle’s death, really.

“Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered” will be on view from Nov. 12 through March 4 at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Del.

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“There are two difficulties about the miniatures,” Met director Luigi Palma di Cesnola bluntly opined. “In the first place, some of them are not art, and in the second place, they are not, considered as a whole, of the historical value that was claimed for them.” (“It was said that the collection was of the most beautiful women in the United States,” he added. “That is not true, for beautiful women are not confined to the ‘four hundred,’ and I could go out on Broadway and find women as beautiful as any in the collection.”)

If the images were at all lacking in historical import at the turn of the century, they no longer suffer from any such deficiency. Now, more than a hundred years later — at a time when the Gilded Age gap between privileged and poor seems especially relevant (Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Martin [Slide 6] would have been prime candidates for Salon’s Out of Touch feature) — these paintings, artistically accomplished or not, are fascinating relics from a former, but not unfamiliar, world.

The New York Historical Society, which has owned the watercolor-and-ivory miniatures since 1905, will put many of them on display in three installments starting Nov. 11. Over the phone this week, curator Margi Hofer told me a little about the collection’s history. An edited transcript of our conversation is below; a selection of the miniatures, with explanatory captions, can be found in the following slide show.

First, I have some basic questions. Who was Peter Marié? What were the criteria he used to decide which women were worthy of inclusion in this set of images?

Peter Marié was a member of New York’s aristocratic society. He was of French descent, and played that up; he was a very cultured gentleman, and was known for the parties he gave at his home and his art collection. He was also a bachelor.

He never articulated very clearly what the criteria were for his “beauties” collection — but it’s clear that physical looks alone were just part of it. You definitely had to be a respected member of society [to be included]. He wasn’t looking at just anyone on the street. Most of the women who make up the collection were from his social circle.

So he had met most or all of them in person?

The implication is that he knew all of them — although one of the portraits that we have in this first round is of the actress Maude Adams, who was notoriously reclusive; it makes me wonder whether he actually met her or just saw her on the stage and had the portrait done from a publicity photograph.

I suspect most of these women he knew and specifically asked for a photograph — or asked them to sit for the portrait.

So they were all aware that they would be depicted as part of the series.

Oh, yeah. I think it was a real badge of honor for these women to be approached by Marié and to be added to the collection; it wasn’t like they would just find out after the fact. It all seems a little sleazy today, from our perspective — but there’s a wonderful quote in Eleanor Roosevelt’s autobiography, where she talks about her mother [Slide 5] being selected as one of Marié’s “beauties.” She says that to her mother, this was really important.

When someone recently created a blog called Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street — publishing images and videos of attractive women from the New York Occupy movement online — many female readers and viewers took umbrage. Was there any kind of public backlash to Marié’s project?

No, on the contrary. I think people found it fascinating, and because of all the individuals involved — both Marié and the sitters — I think no one dared criticize.

The only real scandal, if you could call it that, was after Marié’s death, when he bequeathed the whole collection to the Metropolitan Museum. At that time, they had a very outspoken director — Luigi Cesnola — who refused the gift on two grounds. One was that the miniatures weren’t truly artistic because many of them were based on photographs; the other was that they didn’t really represent the beauties of New York. He’s quoted as saying, “I could go out on Broadway and find women as beautiful as any in the collection.” I think what he’s really saying is, these are just your society, your friends — this isn’t a true cross-representation of New York society.

So do you disagree with the Met’s take? Are the miniatures art? And has their historical significance appreciated over the past century?

Yes. I think, given the passage of time, these have stood the test — and I think our understanding of art is a little more forgiving these days. At the turn of the century, even American artists were having trouble getting recognition, just because they weren’t trained in Paris or Rome. There was a lot of snobbery. But these portraits are incredibly well-executed, and it’s a fact that many accomplished painters relied on photographs for assistance. So while they can’t be praised for the genius of the pose or the original conception, they’re still very skillfully executed. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of reaction we get.

They do vary in quality — some of them, you look at the miniature itself and it’s an exquisite work of art; some to our eye today look a little garish. Many of these sitters are in costume-ball attire. So when you look at the miniature and see someone who’s dressed like Marie Antoinette … [it] can come across as kind of strange. But once you put them in context, you realize that they’re really pretty rich and wonderful.

They have been shown in a museum context many times in between 1905 and today; a dozen or so were in an exhibition in Germany about three years ago on society portraits of the Gilded Age, which also included works of John Singer Sargent and many recognized painters.

Finally, a number of these images were created by female artists. Is it at all unusual, given the time period, that women were commissioned to paint these miniatures?

There were many women artists during this period, as it was considered a respectable career for young women, and there were numerous schools, like the Art Students League, where women could learn to paint. Miniature painting required an unusually high degree of dexterity, and women were believed (right or wrong) to have more nimble fingers than men. Women seem to have been drawn to miniature painting as a more feminine art, in the same way that they often specialized in portraits of children. The American Society of Miniature Painters, organized in New York in 1899, had more or less equal membership among men and women.

“Beauties of the Gilded Age: Peter Marié’s Miniatures of Society” will be on display at the New-York Historical Society from Nov. 11, 2011 through Nov. 11, 2012, in three four-month installments.

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