Please join me and my Hollywood Arensberg co-authors—William H. Sherman and Ellen Hoobler—for a discussion moderated by Getty Research Institute Director Mary Miller on 9 March 2021.

I have often wondered why Louise and Walter Arensberg never purchased the work of the ingenious artist Arthur Dove.

We learned recently that Spazio, a Milan-based organization whose self-described mission is to be “an independent platform for critical reflection, speculation and discussion” has promoted Hollywood Arensberg on YouTube via Facebook with a reading of some of our text by Mariana Siracusa.

The other day I was perusing (for the umpteenth time) Man Ray Portraits: Paris—Hollywood—Paris, featuring photographs from the archives of the Centre Pompidou, when suddenly this picture on page 284 jumped out at me in a new way. The subject of the photograph is the ballerina Tamara Toumanova, but behind her is the Arensbergs’ Aztec Corn Goddess!

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).