‘The Ugly History of Beautiful Things’: Reading + Talk with Katy Kelleher
May 23 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm PDT
Free
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Join Katy Kelleher and the Institute for Art and Olfaction’s Minetta Rogers for author readings from ‘The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption,’ followed by a discussion and Q&A.
This is an online event that will take place on Zoom. If you are unable to attend live, the event will be recorded and shared with all registrants.
Paris Review contributor Katy Kelleher explores our obsession with gorgeous things, unveiling the fraught histories of makeup, flowers, perfume, silk, and other beautiful objects.
In these dazzling and deeply researched essays, Katy Kelleher blends science, history, and memoir to uncover the dark underbellies of our favorite goods. She reveals the crushed beetle shells in our lipstick, the musk of rodents in our perfume, and the burnt cow bones baked into our dishware. She untangles the secret history of silk and muses on her problematic prom dress. She tells the story of countless workers dying in their efforts to bring us shiny rocks from unsafe mines that shatter and wound the earth, all because a diamond company created a compelling ad. She examines the enduring appeal of the beautiful dead girl and the sad fate of the ugly mollusk. With prose as stunning as the objects she describes, Kelleher invites readers to examine their own relationships with the beautiful objects that adorn their body and grace their homes.
And yet, Kelleher argues that while we have a moral imperative to understand our relationship to desire, we are not evil or weak for desiring beauty. The Ugly History of Beautiful Things opens our eyes to beauty that surrounds us, helps us understand how that beauty came to be, what price was paid and by whom, and how we can most ethically partake in the beauty of the world.
This book was published by Simon & Schuster in April 2024. Learn more about ‘The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption.’
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