Edmonia Lewis in her lifetime was an enigmatic, singular figure, a maker of art in pristine marble. Though highly educated, she allowed the contemporary press to portray her as a naïf savant; though black and female, she succeeded in exhibiting her sculpture alongside the upper crust on both sides of the Atlantic.

Though I vaguely recall scribbling in the lines of Lion King and A Bug’s Life illustrations in elementary school, it was not until high school that I returned to coloring. I took a class on neuroscience for which one of the required texts was a book called The Human Brain Coloring Book. It’s a massive tome, and I still have it — I’ll probably never get through its hundreds of pages. It would…

“Beatle John Lennon married his Japanese mistress, Yoko Ono, in a civil ceremony today in Gibraltar, the Beatles’ office announced.”

That was how the Associated Press began its article on the wedding between avant-garde artist Yoko Ono and the singer-songwriter John Lennon on this day 45 years ago: March 20, 1969.

The fact that the phrase “Japanese mistress” was used in a newspaper article is startling, especially considering that in 1969,

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Never look uneducated at a Renaissance gathering again:

"If everything is highly-contrasted and sharp, sort of bluish, and everyone has gaunt bearded faces, it's El Greco."