The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, is pleased to present a new series, In Conversation, that will showcase various artists, authors, thinkers, and creators in conversation with each other. These casual conversations will surprise and delight the community and offer an opportunity to delve into current issues, best-selling books, and other topics of interest. The first of these talks will feature Maira Kalman in Conversation with Bob Morris. This special event and book signing will be held on Thursday, February 9 at 6 pm. 

In these precarious times, it is often women who do the work of holding things together – home, family community, memories, love – while holding the hostile intrusions of the world at bay.  In the midst of the pandemic, internationally acclaimed artist, designer, and bestselling author Maira Kalman addressed what she was seeing and feeling with a series of intimate, heartfelt drawings.  

The result is her current book, Women Holding Things. In it, she employs humor and an eye for detail to show the countless things women hold, from the mundane – a cup, a whisk, a chicken, a hat—to the abstract—dreams and disappointments, regret and love. Virginia Woolf holds herself together. Louise Bourgeois holds the wolves at bay. Kalman’s grandmother holds the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Her books include The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, The Principles of Uncertainty, Beloved Dog, And The Pursuit of Happiness, My Favorite Things, and Max in Hollywood, which is one of her many treasured books for children. Her quirky Sara Berman’s Closet, about her mother and made in collaboration with her son, Alex, was installed in 2017 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In addition to her books, Kalman’s quirky and playful watches, clocks (one a rubber ball alarm clock you can throw across the room), accessories, and paperweights have been featured at the Museum of Modern Art store. She lives in New York City, where she recently designed the theater curtain for David Byrne’s American Utopia on Broadway and curated a 2014 show for the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum. In 2011 The Jewish Museum featured her in a career-long retrospective.

Kalman, who has illustrated over a dozen New Yorker covers, will discuss all this and more in her far-reaching informal conversation with Bob Morris, a frequent New York Times and Town and Country contributor and the author of several books, including Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating With My Dad and Bobby Wonderful. Bob will be in conversation with several authors at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, this season.

Free for MFA members; $20 for Not-yet members
Museum admission is included. Copies of Women Holding Things will be available for purchase and signing.

Registration for this event is required.