"Millet and Modern Art," Robin Mitchell

Episode No. 433 features curator Simon Kelly and author/historian Robin Mitchell.

Along with Maite van Dijk of Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, Kelly is the curator of "Millet and Modern Art: From Van Gogh to Dali." It's at the Saint Louis Art Museum through May 17. The exhibition examines, for the first time, Jean-François Millet's influence on succeeding generations of painters, from Cezanne and Pissarro to Monet, Gauguin and even Homer, Modersohn-Becker, Munch and Picasso. The smart, richly illustrated exhibition catalogue was published by the museums in association with Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $27.

On the second segment, Robin Mitchell discusses her new book "Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France."  The book examines how images of Black women helped shape France's post-revolutionary identity, particularly in response to the French defeat in the Haitian Revolution. Mitchell particularly focuses on Sarah Baartmann, Ourika, a West African girl effectively kept as a house pet by a French noblewoman, and Jeanne Duval, the partner of Charles Baudelaire who was painted (and un-painted) by Courbet and Manet. Mitchell is an assistant professor at California State University, Channel Islands. "Venus Noire" was published by University of Georgia Press. Amazon offers it for $35.