From the John Singer Sargent frontal nude painting of McKeller in Boston’s MFA, I’d imagined Thomas as tall and slender. Looking more closely, I can see that even 100 years ago a body like Thomas’s was not accidental.

Lorraine O'Grady
Lorraine O’Grady’s book of collected writings, Writing in Space: 1973–2019, will appear in October 2020 from Duke University Press. Her career retrospective, Both/And, will open at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on March 5, 2021, with a catalogue co-published by the BKM and Dancing Foxes Press.