On occasion a fashion editorial speaks volumes to me. Model Franziska ‘Franzi’ Mueller’s trip to New York’s Metropolitan Museum, lensed by Gregor Hohenberg, is such a fashion statement. Franzi is styled by Kerstin Schneider in ladylike elegance for Elle Germany’s February issue. She’s probably playing the young ingenue preparing for a rise into the 1% with a job at Sotheby’s and a rich Wall Street husband — a true ‘Meisterwerk’ (note the masculine word) in today’s income-inequality America.

For me this referential moment unleashed a different experience at Irving Penn’s 2002 show at the Met called ‘Earthly Bodies’. The art was disruptive to me for many reasons that I will explain in a separate post. But after walking through Penn’s ‘Earthly Bodies’ show, I wandered through the museum —much as Franzi is here — looking at the historical intersections of nudity, religion, body size, nudity, and women’s history as told through the paintings.

Anne of Carversville wouldn’t be born for five years until 2007, but the seeds were sown at this moment of reckoning as an American woman wandering through New York’s Metropolitan Museum. ~ Anne