Morbid Anatomy Book Launch: Deaths of Artists by Jim Moske

Starving Artist Knifed to Death in Village Room…
Famous Artist Dies Penniless and All Alone…

Deep in the Archives of The Metropolitan Museum of Art are two strange scrapbooks packed with century-old 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 and often grisly stories of obscure artists who met their demise as victims of accident, murder, poverty, and disease. Compiled from 1906 to 1929, the scrapbooks not only memorialize the subjects of these obituaries: they also record graphic and sensationalized news reporting from the heyday of yellow journalism. When archivist Jim Moske chanced upon these fascinating relics forgotten in museum storage, he set out to unravel the mystery of their creation. This eerie glimpse into a dark side of art history and creative practice illuminates the unique challenges artists face, exceptional risks they take, and the cruel turns of fate that often thwart their efforts.

Jim Moske is an archivist and author based in New York City. He was Managing Archivist of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2008-2023 and previously was Archivist of the New York Public Library. In his creative practice, Jim explores the visual qualities and unintended meanings of historical documents through research, writing, and picture-making.