Left: Frida Kahlo. Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (Autorretrato con pelo cortado), 1940. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., 3.1943. © 2025 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital Image © 2025 MoMA, N.Y; Right: Mary Reynolds, written by Alfred Jarry. Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien (Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician), published 1923, bound 1930–42 or 1945–50. The Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Mary Reynolds Collection.
Join Alivé Piliado Santana, curatorial associate at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, and Tamar Kharatishvili, Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Research Fellow in Modern Art, for an exclusive look into Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds.
This exhibition—the Art Institute’s first presentation of Kahlo’s work—focuses on her month-long stay at the home of Mary Reynolds, an avant-garde bookbinder best known today as Marcel Duchamp’s partner. Drawing upon the extensive Mary Reynolds Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and extraordinary Kahlo loans from public and private collections in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe, we tell this story with unrivaled accuracy, presenting Kahlo among a cast of characters that included not only Reynolds and Duchamp, but also Man Ray, Constantin Brancusi, and others. Shedding light on a little-known chapter of 20th-century art history, the exhibition recounts the legacy of two women navigating identity, partnership, and cross-cultural exchange on the eve of World War II.
Programming for Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds is made possible by the Frank J. Mooney Memorial Fund.
Frida Kahlo, 1938
Nickolas Muray. Courtesy of the Nickolas Muray Estate. Photo by Jamie Stukenberg.
Mary Reynolds, 1930
Man Ray. Archivo Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Museo Frida Kahlo. © 2025 Man Ray Trust / Artist Rights Society (ARS) New York / ADAGP Paris.
About the Speakers
Tamar Kharatishvili is the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Research Fellow in Modern Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, serving the departments of Modern and Contemporary Art and Provenance Research. With Caitlin Haskell and Alivé Piliado Santana, she is co-curator of Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds. Her publications include an essay in Sonia Delaunay: Living Art (Bard Graduate Center, 2024), and a forthcoming essay in Arshile Gorky: New York City (Hauser & Wirth, 2025).
Alivé Piliado Santana is the curatorial associate at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, where she is a part of the Advancing Latinx Art in Museums initiative. In collaboration with Caitlin Haskell and Tamar Kharatishvili, she co-curated Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds. Previously, she was a research associate in Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Piliado has also worked as a curator at national art museums in Mexico City and has contributed to numerous international exhibitions on modern and contemporary Mexican art.
If you have any questions about programming, please reach out to museum-programs@artic.edu.
Closed captioning will be available for this program. For questions related to accessibility accommodations, please email access@artic.edu.
