Maira Kalman and Alex Kalman, “Sara Berman’s Closet”

In Conversation with Virginia Shearer, Eleanor McDonald Storza, Director of Education, High Museum

SHORT FILM SCREENING: Sara Berman’s Closet by The New Yorker

Irreverent artist Maira Kalman, illustrator of the bestsellers, The Principles of Uncertainty, The Elements of Style, and too many New YorkerMagazine covers to count, and her son, Alex Kalman, the designer, curator, and founder of New York Mmuseumm, combine their talents in this captivating memoir of Maira’s mother, Jewish émigré Sara Berman. At age 60, she left her husband after 38 years of marriage, packed a single suitcase, and moved into a studio apartment in Greenwich Village. According to the Kalmans: “in a burst of personal expression, she decided to wear only white.” Sara kept her belongings in an extraordinarily clean and organized closet, filled with elegant, minimalist, heavily starched, all-white clothing. Upon her death in 2004, her family decided to preserve its pristine contents, eventually recreating the closet in Alex’s Mmuseumm, and last year, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inspired by the exhibit, this spectacular illustrated memoir, packed with family photographs, exclusive images, and Maira Kalman’s distinctive paintings, is an ode to Sara’s life, freedom, and re-invention.