happy new year!

found on pinterest, believed PD

(Obligatory don't-feed-your-pets-champagne statement here.)
Happy New Year, Museum readers!  It's been a year of change and fortune here, with more to come in 2019, and I look forward to it all.  I hope you too are looking forward to your 2019.
With love to all creatures in your house,
Your friendly curator

christmas looked like this (wordless wednesday)

happy thanksgiving to you and yours

John Charles Dollman [Public domain] -Table d'Hote at a Dogs' Home, 1879, detail

May each and every one of you find joy and tasty treats wherever you may be today!  

Here's my favorite bit of the painting above:

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers! 

I'm grateful for you.

the muse tests a frame

image copyright and by kindest permission of the curatorial spouse

What better way for an artist to test the fancy frame he's making than. . .  by featuring the Kat Von D?  Right?  I'm right.

cool old cat illustration

from british library flickr (PD)

This cat is serious.  He may be only a piece of decorative embellishment in a 19th century novel* but he is going to do his damned best at it, sir. 

*From p. 115 of "Jardyne's Wife. A Novel, etc." (Etc.? - curator) (London: Trischler and Co., 1891).

something different for a happy easter

www.metmuseum.org  Rogers Fund, 1907

To Western eyes it may be a surprise to see a helmet fashioned to look like a rabbit.  To a Japanese samurai, it made perfect sense:  every child knew of the Rabbit in the Moon, who offered to give up his very life to feed a hungry stranger.  That discipline and sacrifice was a huge part of a samurai's belief.  At this helmet's page at the Metropolitan Museum you can hear a very short podcast about the Moon Rabbit's origin story (click "Audio"), and at this page you can read the different forms the story takes in various traditions.

May this Easter see you in the bravest spirits for a fiercely beautiful spring (or autumn, if you are one of my friends from down under)!

happy new year of the dog!

Gift of Estate of Samuel Isham, 1914 www.metmuseum.org

2018 is the year of the Earth Dog.  Here's a dog year surimono calendar created in Japan in 1814, with a jolly furball wishing you the best (and also wishing you would play ball, by the look of it).  Were you born in a dog year?  You can check what element type your dog year is here. 

wordless vintage wednesday redux (with love from curator)

from the museum collection
smooch!

happy 2018!

found on pinterest, assumed PD, let me know if not

Celebrate safely!

Celebrate heartily!

Looking forward to a wonderful 2018 for us all, furred feathered and finned included!

wishing you all

Leonard A. Lauder Collection of American Posters, Gift of Leonard A. Lauder, 1984 https://www.metmuseum.org

I borrowed from the great American illustrator Edward Penfield to help me say:

Merry Christmas!

I am grateful for every one of you

and wish you warmth and joy today and always.

wordless vintage wednesday christmas repeat!

from the museum collection

vintage wordless wednesday redux

from the Museum collection
on back:
"Thanksgiving 1985"

vintage wordless wednesday redux

from the museum's collection, and a personal favorite!

happy halloween, happy harvest

By Grigoriev (http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Page-207.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The harvest is in, the spirits are out.  In Boris Grigoriev's "Still Life with Cat and Onions" (Russian; circa 1928), this fine black kitty seems to take her duties overseeing this world and the next very seriously.

From our haunt to yours, dear Museum friends,

Happy Halloween!!

this pug personifies monday

www.metmuseum.org (PD)
Lesley and Emma Sheafer , New York (until 1974; bequeathed to MMA)

This weekend I had a lovely overnight at Thornewood Castle.  Now it is Monday, and I think this Staffordshire ware pug from around 1720-40 encapsulates my feelings better than I can myself. 

member of the wedding

Your friendly Curator was off on a weekend full of art openings (one) and lovely wedding celebrations (two).  At the first wedding, there were groomsmen, bridesmaids...and a groomsdog and bridesdog.  Up above, a reflective snap taken after the ceremony, as the bridesdog reflects upon Life and Happily Ever After, or perhaps simply didn't feel like getting up.
(Brides)doghance...

a friend met traveling

photos mine

We visited Friday Harbor this past weekend (and can't wait to go back).  One of our great pleasures was meeting the Port of Friday Harbor's official seal:  Popeye, a girl with all beholders under her flipper.  She loves attention and fish, and gets plenty of both.  I took a lovely short video of us feeding her, but it won't load, alas.  Luckily many others have done the same.

enjoy easter fiercely!

thanks internet archive (PD)

"This is a fierce bad Rabbit; look at his savage whiskers, and his claws and his turned-up tail."

I always had a soft spot for Beatrix Potter's thug bunny.  If you recall that you did too, you may refresh your friendship with him here at Internet Archive.  I think that Beatrix Potter knew she had a streak of Fierce Bad Rabbit herself, thinly veneered.  It's right there in her style - creatures recorded down to the last realistic hair, dressed up for civilized life but ready to shuck it all off at any moment.

Happy Easter to you all, dear Museum friends.  

Remember to share your carrots!

And be careful where you shuck off your veneer.

candid caturday

That's right, your friendly curator is mailing it in this morning.  

But to be fair, so are most of the staff...as the photographic evidence proves.

happy 2017!

Woop woop!  It's a new year!

Here at the Museum, that means party....which if you're the lovely Eliz, above, means string.

Whatever makes you happy.

We're happy for your readership this past year!

Celebrate well, Museum friends!