NEW YORK, NY.- Deep in the archives of The Metropolitan Museum of Art are two strange old scrapbooks packed with newspaper obituaries of painters, illustrators, sculptors, and photographers, famous and forgotten alike. Somber death notices of luminaries like Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin are preserved on their crumbling pages, side by side with tragic, often grisly stories of obscure artists. Compiled from 1906 to 1929, the scrapbooks not only memorialize the subjects of the obits; they also exhibit the sensationalized reporting typical of the heyday of yellow journalism.
Who collected these nearly three thousand obituaries of artists? Some had celebrated careers, some became celebrated only posthumously, and some met their demise poverty-stricken, victims of accident, murder, or disease. In Deaths of Artists Moske unravels the improbable story of how an ex-convict and aspiring artist hired in 1884 as a Met Museum guard—Arthur D’Hervilly—came to assemble this massive chronicle. Moske’s engaging narrative is illustrated with full-page images of scrapbook pages, headlines, and paintings and sculptures by the artist-subjects. The deaths of artists, seen in the light of their uncommon lives, add up to much more than a litany of sad ends. In this eerie glimpse into a dark side of art history and creative practice, Moske illuminates the unique challenges artists face, exceptional risks they take, and the cruel turns of fate that often thwart their efforts.
“Fascinating, poignant, and just the right amount of macabre . . .” —Patrick Bringley, author, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me
“Jim Moske struck gold when he discovered this trove of artist obituaries.” —Christine Coulson, author, One Woman Show and Metropolitan Stories JIM MOSKE is an archivist and writer based in New York City. He was Managing Archivist of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2008–23, and in earlier years was Archivist of the New York Public Library. Jim has published on topics including artwork provenance and transformational moments in the Met’s past. Deaths of Artists is his first book.
DEATHS OF ARTISTS by Jim Moske
Foreword by Robert Storr
Hardcover · 7 .5" × 10.5" · 128 pages
Art/Art History · 144 four-color illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-922233-53-3
Publication date: April 7, 2024
