Despite Stein’s Baltimore connections, the city has never claimed her as one of its heroes in the way that it has claimed Edgar Allan Poe, Billie Holiday and Fitzgerald—or the many other artists who spent portions of their lives here. Maybe it’s because her time in the city raises uncomfortable memories of a no-longer-acceptable institutional sexism and anti-Semitism. Maybe it’s because her years here were tainted by failure. Or maybe it’s because, even today, Gertrude Stein remains, as she was in her lifetime, a bit too queer— in all senses of the word— to be adopted as a native daughter. In any case, Stein’s Baltimore history has been, if not erased, at least discreetly veiled.
The Cone Sisters of Baltimore
The women were the Cone Sisters, Claribel and Etta, daughters of a prosperous Jewish merchant who made a fortune selling denim to Levi Strauss.
A Tale Of Two Sisters And Their Serious Eye For Art
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