Heads of a Girl and a Turbaned Man; verso: Hand Studies and Man in Profile 1835

Curator: This sketch, "Heads of a Girl and a Turbaned Man," plus studies on the back, is by Washington Allston, born in 1779. It's currently residing at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: It’s got a haunting quality, doesn't it? Like a half-remembered dream, delicate and ephemeral. Curator: Allston was deeply influenced by European Romanticism, and this piece reflects the period's preoccupation with emotion, the exotic, and perhaps a nascent orientalism. Editor: The girl's gaze is captivating, but there's something…vulnerable about it. It's not just her youth. I see a longing for something more. Curator: And the turbaned man hints at colonial power dynamics—a European gaze upon an 'other,' often romanticized but always contextualized within imperial structures. Editor: It feels almost too simple to say, but this sketch encapsulates the push and pull between innocence and experience, between fantasy and reality. Curator: Precisely. It's a conversation starter about how we construct identities and narratives, both then and now. Editor: A little gem, isn't it? Makes you think about all the untold stories sketched out on the back of our own lives.