The Throckmorton Fine Art gallery in New York has extended its current exhibition of photographs of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (Mirror Mirror... Portrait of Frida Kahlo, until 19 September) and has thrown in an odd surprise: a plaster cast corset on which Kahlo painted an unborn baby and a hammer and sickle. Kahlo actually wore the piece during a hospital stay in the 1950s following a surgery. (She was famous, in part, for her chronic illnesses, and told her doctors that the corset eased her pain.) The plaster cast was painted with the aid of a mirror and reflects Kahlo’s dedication, at the time, to the USSR and Joseph Stalin. The Throckmorton show coincides with an exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden (Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life, until 1 November), in which curators have recreated Kahlo’s garden from her Mexico City home.
