Art History Gets Cute: Leslie Holt and Hello Kitty

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HELLO KITTY is a most unlikely art history professor. She's cute, cuddly and anything but serious. But there she is, putting forth a tutorial of Western masterpieces, at Curator's Office.

The lesson is part of an exhibition by Bethesda native Leslie Holt, who has found a place in history for Hello Kitty. Holt has copied some of the most famous paintings ever made — most of which are instantly recognizable to any student of art — with the Japanese icon in tow. She's seated Hello Kitty among the oranges in a Paul Cézanne still life and in the far corner of Vincent van Gogh's "Café Terrace at Night," clutching a saxophone, and even in Artemisia Gentileschi's gruesome "Judith Slaying Holofernes," in which the little mascot wields a baseball bat.

Holt is reminding us that even masterpieces are pop culture icons. But, even so, Hello Kitty doesn't quite belong in art history. She is still able to make her audience smile as she dances through Toulouse-Lautrecs, Matisses and Warhols, raising the question of what the masters themselves would have thought of this little stowaway.

» Curator's Office, 1515 14th St. NW; through Aug. 1; 202-387-1008.

Written by Express contributor Danielle O'Steen
Photo courtesy Leslie Holt/Curators Office