Connections/Motherhood

I'm Jean Sorabella, and I'm a lecturer here at the Museum. I'm going to talk about motherhood

a subject very dear to my heart. It's a definition of a major part of my time right now.

As I have returned to some of the objects that I liked best as a child, like the Degas dancers, I see that in addition to all of the dancers there are, concealed in the back, these

mothers. So the mothers were sitting there almost like anticipations of the future that I've only really come to discover now.

In art, when you depict a mother, it seems she'd better be doing her job well, and she's almost an ideal for mothers.

She makes it look so easy, and she's never, you know, punishing the Christ child, or giving him a time-out, or you know, off exasperated in the corner. And in a way it's really nice to see

those images, because they give me, anyway, this chance to be still with the things that are the most peculiar to motherhood. And then

when I had my little son, in particular, I thought about these pictures all the time as though I were, in a way, living them in a way I had never imagined that I might.

Only from time to time do I see an image where it really seems to suggest that a mother has any work to do. And I think when I come to the museum

it's lovely to see all of these children that are in a way cared for by themselves. You know, little, little children who are without

runny noses, without whining, without trying to keep their bedtimes far away, where you have

two siblings relating to one another so harmoniously. I have, at the moment, two children. If I could see them together like that every day I would feel so happy, and the times when I actually do see them looking like that are sadly few at the moment.

One image I remember looking at a lot before I had any children is the Sleeping Eros. And something I loved about it was how lifelike a portrayal of a sleeping child it is. I'm sorry to report that my daughter would never go to sleep on a rock

and my son would never sleep on a rock. They need their blankey, they need their crib. So, in a way, I feel like this statue is a weird kind of wish fulfillment. On the other side, though

it's Eros. It's not just a baby. And the genius of the Greeks in imagining desire as a baby shows very clearly where desire leads.

One of my favorite mothers is the wonderful Venus. And I think that there are lots of Venuses that don't show any trace of that physical aspect of motherhood, but this Venus does and I love that about her.

In all of her voluptuous perfection, she is in no way a maidenly figure, and she's here nude. And Rubens is so good at making the mother look desirable.

I just reread the biblical story of Ishmael, and it is so incredibly moving. I guess Hagar, the mother, and her only, and it seems very beloved son, Ishmael, have been chased out into the wilderness.

And in the biblical story, Hagar places him under a bush, she goes a long way away, she's run out of water and thinks he's going to die and says, "I don't want to see this child die." And that's every mother's worst nightmare, really

that your child won't survive you, or that your child will suffer. And when I put myself into these scenarios and try to imagine

what these mothers must be suffering, then all the little concerns of everyday motherhood really pale.

To me, motherhood is a tremendous chance to have a wonderful relationship with one's child

actually to produce children, to shape children for the future. That's a huge responsibility and a great pleasure

on the other hand, terribly scary.