Finding Frida Kahlo reviewed in Library Journal

Wednesday, 19 August, 2009

Library Journal
As a collector and archivist, Levine (former director of exhibitions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) is particularly sensitive to the fragments of life one accumulates and how they can be interpreted by others. While sorting out her own life, she happened upon Frida Kahlo's personal archive, a treasure trove that had been lost for decades. This bilingual (English/Spanish) book is a record of her discovery, detailing both the objects themselves and the intimate relationships they evoked in viewers. Each object was photographed as it was unpacked and then returned to its original housing. In a very personal essay, the author charts revelations about this enigmatic artist yielded by the diary entries, recipes, sketches, and letters and a starkly annotated series of images of the techniques used for the amputation of her leg. VERDICT An illuminating find or an odd bit of miscellanea, depending upon the reader's interest in this artist's life, this book unravels for both author and reader the unique experience of a very human activity: storing away the little things by which we identify ourselves.—Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York