Diego Rivera’s Flowered Canoe

The wonderful exhibition Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945, curated by Barbara Haskell (with a book designed by Michelle Nix of McCall Associates!) is still up for another few weeks at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It’s a great chance to see Diego Rivera’s La canoa enflorada (The Flowered Canoe). The painting, currently on loan from the collection of the Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico, is on view. It is staggering to consider this masterpiece in the context of the Arensbergs’ stairwell, where it hung cheek by jowl with more than 30 other artworks until late 1948 or early 1949 when the couple traded it to their neighbor Earl Stendahl for pre-Columbian works. Check out the exhibition here: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/vida-americana

—Mark Nelson

Designer Elin Miller, ready to hop in the canoe.