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A few weeks back, Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller participated in a panel discussion at the Winter Show alongside collector Jeremy Simien (former guest of the podcast) and Morgan Library and Museum curator Jesse Erickson. The ostensible subject was the challenges and opportunities for collectors taking an interest in previously overlooked or under-recognized object categories, but the discussion ranged far afield.
(Left to Right) Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller, Jeremy K. Simien, Jesse Erickson
Jeremy K. Simien is a historian, art collector, and consultant who specializes in the art and history of the American South. His sleuthing was instrumental in the recovery and restoration of the painting Bélizaire and the Frey Children, a seventeenth-century group portrait containing the obscured visage of a Black youth, and he chronicles other discoveries on his Instagram account, @jeremyksimien.
Jesse Erickson is the Astor Curator and Department Head, Printed Books and Bindings, at the Morgan Library and Museum. Erickson’s research specializations include ethnobibliography, African American print culture, and the transnational publishing history of the Victorian-period author Ouida (the pseudonym of English novelist Maria Louise Ramé). He received his master’s in Library and Information Science and a doctorate in Information Studies from the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, formerly held positions at the University of Delaware, and in 2021 Dr. Erickson was named co-editor of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.
