Allison C. Meier

@allisoncmeier.bsky.social

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Writer on art, culture, history & other wonders. Editor
at Fine Books & Collections. NYC-based, Oklahoma born. 'Grave' book is out now from Bloomsbury! (she/her)

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I've got a new essay up at the Public Domain Review on the danse macabre, printmaking, and the ways centuries of artists have visualized how the only true victor in times of violence is death publicdomainreview.org/essay/our-mo...

Our Mortal Waltz: The Dance of Death Across Centuriespublicdomainreview.org The sight of a skeletal corpse rarely inspires a rollicking jig. Yet for more than half a millennium, the dance of death in European visual art has imagined a tango between the quick and the dead. All...

On Sundays in August I'll be leading an online cemetery symbols deep dive! Sign up here and book time to stay inside, it's hot 🥀 www.morbidanatomy.org/classes/spea...

Speak with the Dead: Understanding Cemetery Symbolism with Cemetery Expert Allison C. Meier, Begins August 4 — Morbid Anatomywww.morbidanatomy.org Taught online via Zoom Sundays, August 4 - 25, 2024 5 - 7 pm ET (NYC time) $125 Paid Patreon Members / $145 General Admission Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that ...

This Friday, my NYC Microseasons collaborator Erin is presenting an evening of mid-summer seasonal discussion at Museum of the Moving Image! (I am sadly out of town for it.) Stop by, it's free! movingimage.org/event/more-t...

More than Meets the Eye – Museum of the Moving Imagemovingimage.org MoMI opens its doors for a series of free events that bring into conversation mycologists, biologists, and ecologists alongside artists and filmmakers, exploring how the tools of science and cinema ca...

The summer issue of Fine Books magazine that I edited is alive! Pick up a copy for stories on endangered languages, book curses, Indigenous cartography, the Mexico City book scene, the enigmatic Vivian Maier & much more!! www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/summer...

What have I been doing and what am I going to do? You can read all about it in the latest of my infrequent newsletters here: mailchi.mp/418cb5bc76b2...

The Cemetery Language of Flowers & More This Spring! 💀🌸mailchi.mp

It’s a good time to be in Tasmania

Wrote about the conservation of one of Keith Haring's lesser-known murals in an Iowa City school library, depicting a book opening up with a colorful array of characters www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/05/03/l...

Little-known mural Keith Haring made for an Iowa school goes on public view for first timewww.theartnewspaper.com Created less than a year before the artist’s death, ‘A Book Full of Fun’ was painstakingly moved to the Stanley Museum of Art while the school undergoes renovation

Shout out to local journalism as no one besides my hometown paper is reporting on the messy mismanagement situation at Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower involving sketchy crypto & the selling off of Bruce Goff artifacts www.examiner-enterprise.com/story/news/l...

www.examiner-enterprise.com

Reporting from yesterday’s tree tour at Green-Wood that we are very close to it all happening 🌸

Good news: If the apocalypse happens in Niagara Falls, the house the Prophet Isaiah built to welcome people for their final judgement will still be vibrantly standing

Salvation for artist’s apocalyptic prophecy housewww.theartnewspaper.com Isaiah Robertson's house covered in kaleidoscopic assemblages in Niagara Falls, New York, to open to the public as an art destination and community gathering space

I guess it's good social media exists still so I can confirm there was an earthquake and not just my building collapsing around on me.

Sometimes when I'm leading cemetery tours people are upset about lichen covered graves as signs of neglect, but when we see them in NYC it's a reminder that our choices about how we care for the environment matter

Lichens Share Our Urban Airwww.nycmicroseasons.com 50 years ago, there was hardly a lichen to be found in New York City. But now they have returned as the air has cleared.

In this new article, I reported on how Black cemeteries that were deliberately obliterated or overlooked are receiving community-based preservation attention

How the US’s Black cemeteries are being made visible once morewww.theartnewspaper.com A cemetery hidden under a Florida air base is the latest African American burial site rediscovered following decades of erasure

I have a Green-Wood Cemetery tree tour tomorrow and the sun is promised to shine upon us. Come walk with me and meet some trees www.green-wood.com/event/great-...

Great Trees of Green-Wood – Green-WoodEvent Serieswww.green-wood.com

Voting for "The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway should be allowed to fall down as a warning to the rest of America about decision fatigue" although adding as mine: the Birdie NYC mascot should be brought back & more city mascots added!! Let me see an anthropomorphic rat czar walking around

Presenting our annual MARCH MADNESS OF NYC HOT TAKES! Flaco ugly? Nets must move to LI? "Chopped cheese" a psy-op? NYC skyline ugly? Takes prized not for their correctness but for their sheer heat. But when you look within, aren't they kind of right? hellgatenyc.com/hell-gate-pr...

Hell Gate Presents: March Madness of NYC Hot Takes 2024 - Hell Gatehellgatenyc.com After much deliberation, we will defend these to the death (even if we don't 100 percent believe in them).

Hello the spring issue of the magazine I edit, @finebooks.bsky.social, is out in the world with stories on bird field guides, keeping letterpress alive, tiny dollhouse libraries & much more. It’s only $8, less than a drink at even a dive bar these days! www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/spring...

I joined an NYC Parks tour of Hart Island, the burial place for the unclaimed, unidentified & publicly interred. What a difference from visiting under DOC; you are now encouraged to spend time & take photos. I'm encouraged that this island of a million dead will have more visibility going forward.

As the spring equinox is upon us, it's time for a new NYC Microseason considering the great awakening taking place in our waters www.nycmicroseasons.com/our-waterway...

Our Waterways Witness an Underwater Processionwww.nycmicroseasons.com On this spring equinox, we celebrate the underwater life returning to our urban archipelago.

Did you know that over the last three years Green-Wood Cemetery has planted thousands of crocuses and they are blooming right now??

After selling out the initial printing, I've added my new collaborative manhole cover zine to the Etsy for the longterm! It includes covers I've seen around the world, from Amman to Austin, & encourages appreciation for utilitarian design www.etsy.com/listing/1681...

Manhole Covers: the World Underfoot Zine - Etsywww.etsy.com This Zines item is sold by readingreliquary. Ships from Brooklyn, NY. Listed on Mar 13, 2024

Soft launching a new zine on Instagram—Manhole Covers: The World Underfoot!—celebrating the joy of observing utilitarian design while traveling www.instagram.com/p/C37zzzqLf-3/

Honored to be the writer an editor thinks of when there's a medieval blood show

Getty Center explores the bloodlines between old and new artwww.theartnewspaper.com Show combines Medieval manuscripts with contemporary works that deploy blood as a symbol of the divine and the bodily

If you weren't able to make it to Lily Dale last summer & continue to enjoy staying home, this is your chance to experience all manner of esoteric conversations online! I'll be kicking off this Supernatural Mystery Symposium on March 3 with a talk about the grave

Shannon Taggart's Supernatural Mystery Symposiumwww.eventbrite.com Selections from the annual event on supernatural mystery and strange cultural history, curated by Shannon Taggart and hosted in Lily Dale, NY, USA—the town home to the world’s largest Spiritualist com...

The Met opens its Harlem Renaissance exhibit this week & I wrote about how it shines new light on the influence of this era, particularly through loans from HBCUs & other institutions that collected Black modern art when major museums did not

Harlem is now truly on the Met’s mindwww.theartnewspaper.com Decades after sparking protests, the museum takes another pass at presenting Manhattan’s historical centre of Black creativity

Will this finally be the year with enough snow to resurrect the Essex Street snowman from his long absence?

I’ve missed the days when Brooklyn becomes a Bruegel painting

Had to microseason my favorite season

Snow Mutes the City Clamorwww.nycmicroseasons.com The fleeting drifts of fresh snow offer a brief stillness from the daily urban noise.

I need the story on the people always ready to ski in Brooklyn

The modernist curvy Nivola horses are back on the Upper West Side and I love them

Taking N. Scott Momaday's class on the oral tradition in college was so impactful not just in thinking about storytelling but also in being in the presence weekly of such an incredible storyteller. RIP to Momaday and, as he put it, "his bear heart."