In the quite literally mind-bending Devorah Sperber exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, in front of “After Picasso (Gertrude Stein).” Dramatis personæ: two older women, part of the First Saturday crowd.

Woman #1: Do you think she made that herself?
Woman #2: The artist?
Woman #1: Gertrude Stein.
Woman #2: (a bit nonplussed) No, that’s not… Anyway, isn’t she dead?
Woman #1: That doesn’t mean she couldn’t have made this.

At this point, I had to walk away.

In my almost-nonexistent standing as a Stein Expert, or at least a person who has read more Gertrude Stein than most, I think she would like the piece, as long as she saw it as a celebration of Picasso rather than a critique of him. I don’t think the work necessarily takes a stand on Picasso either way. But I do that that Sperber’s use of spools of sewing thread, the tools of a feminized craft, to revisit masterworks of the western art canon is a form of feminist critique about a billion times subtler and more interesting than most of what I saw in the Global Feminisms exhibit, which felt almost unbearably obvious and dated. (The Kara Walker wall being a notable exception - I always forget how tremendous her work is in person. Remind me next time, will you?)