Saints, Skeletons, and Suburbs: A Shared Season of the Dead

#31daysofhalloween

La Chaise-Dieu (Haute-Loire - France) , aisle north of the abbey church Saint-Victor - Fragment of the fresco of the danse macabre, where are represented the theologian clerk, the ploughman flanked by two humans who are perished and the Cistercian monk (mid-XVth century).

Partial view of Mount Auburn Cemetery. (📸: Richard Cheek, Courtesy of Mount Auburn)

Medieval Europe’s ars moriendi and danse macabre governed a frank, often satirical visualization of mortality. Skeletons tug nobles and peasants alike toward the grave in fresco cycles that once marched across church walls. Surviving examples like the fifteenth-century Danse macabre at the Abbaye de La Chaise-Dieu show Death as an equalizer rendered in procession, a pageant of rank inverted by the charade of bones (Abbaye de La Chaise-Dieu; “Aide à la visite”). These cycles prefigure the “processional” logic of modern Halloween parades and front-yard displays; bodies, props, and thresholds arranged as theatrical routes from street to door. The nineteenth-century Gothic Revival revived medieval visual languages (pointed arches, tracery, stained glass) and brought them into domestic interiors, seeding a taste for picturesque gloom that later filtered into popular holiday décor (V&A; RIBA). In the United States, the rural-cemetery movement translated Gothic sentiment into landscaped mourning at places like Mount Auburn (Mount Auburn). By the early twentieth century, paper industries transformed memento mori into bright, repeatable graphics. Beistle’s die-cut skeletons, witches, and cats standardized the seasonal look for an emergent mass market (NMAH; The Henry Ford; Beistle). By mid-century, polymer “blow-mold” pumpkins and ghosts migrated Gothic affect onto the suburban lawn; portable, illuminated, and weatherproof, the danse macabre turned domestic commodity (Antique Trader; The Henry Ford).

The Four Naked Women, or The Four Witches, or The Four Sorceresses or Scene in a Brothel, are titles given to a 1497 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. It is one of his earliest signed engravings and shows four exuberant nude women gathered conspiratorially in a circle in a confined interior setting, perhaps a bathhouse, which appears to have entrances from either side. Although the image is clearly erotic, a small horned demon in the left-hand portal, perhaps representing temptation, looks out and holds what may be a hunting object, engulfed in flames.

The Witches (formerly titled The Witches' Sabbath) is a chiaroscuro woodcut by German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung. This woodcut depicts witches preparing to travel to a Witches' Sabbath by using flying ointment. This is the first woodcut produced by Baldung after leaving the studio of his mentor, Albrecht Dürer, and one of the first Renaissance images to depict both witches that fly and a Witches' Sabbath.

Dulle Griet, also known as Mad Meg, is a figure of Flemish folklore who is the subject of a 1563 oil-on-panel by Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The painting depicts a virago, Dulle Griet, who leads an army of women to pillage Hell.

Witches' Sabbath (Spanish: El Aquelarre) is a 1798 oil painting on canvas by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya.

Witches' Flight (Spanish: Vuelo de Brujas, also known as Witches in Flight or Witches in the Air) is an oil-on-canvas painting completed in 1798 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya. It was part of a series of six paintings related to witchcraft acquired by the Duke and Duchess of Osuna in 1798. It has been described as "the most beautiful and powerful of Goya's Osuna witch paintings."

The witch as a figure condenses misogyny, medicine, and heresy into a charged visual type. In Northern print culture, Albrecht Dürer’s The Four Witches stages a conspiratorial interior while Hans Baldung Grien eroticizes transgression in airborne hags; both equip the witch with anatomical license and social threat (The Met). Pieter Bruegel’s Dulle Griet stretches the motif into a civic allegory of feminine rage amid infernal sack, a sixteenth-century painting whose afterlives inform every modern poster of a marauding “hag” (Museum Mayer van den Bergh). Francisco de Goya retools the witch for Enlightenment critique; Witches’ Sabbath and Witches’ Flight pair antic superstition with political dread, fusing nocturnal tonalities with caricature to indict delusion; an image-ethic later cannibalized by pulp posters (Museo del Prado). Recent museum surveys such as Witches and Wicked Bodies reframed these lineages through feminist and art-historical lenses, the scholarship now recuperating the witch as an index of social control and as a platform for feminist reclaim (National Galleries of Scotland).

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater The series presents portraits of the artist’s wife wearing a dime-store hag’s mask, paired with various family members and friends who wear a transparent hard-plastic mask. The titles of the images outline cryptic relationships, and in all instances, both figures are identified by the same name: Lucybelle Crater.

Claude Cahun, Self-portrait, 1928

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #54, 1979. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

Halloween (1978) — Michael Myers looms over a Haddonfield staircase, knife in hand, moments before striking. Studio: Compass International Pictures.

Masquerade traditions script controlled transgression; anonymity suspends rank, masks reassign the gaze. The V&A’s histories of European masquerade link costume and architecture to a staged social “elsewhere,” a grammar that Halloween repeats at domestic scale (V&A). Twentieth-century photography weaponizes the mask for estrangement. Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s Lucybelle Crater series affixes dime-store masks to quotidian scenes to render family life uncanny; Claude Cahun’s self-portraiture performs gender and persona as mutable masks; Cindy Sherman’s Film Stills translate masquerade into a meta-cinematic critique (AIC; Tate; MoMA). Contemporary horror costuming sands identity down to an emptied archetype, the blank face of Michael Myers, for instance, showing how anonymity itself becomes a visual engine of fear.

Candlelight glows through the carved face of a jack-o'-lantern. 📸: Gretchen Garner/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The jack-o’-lantern’s core sign is light; an ember nested in a grinning face that can repel or invite. In Ireland and Britain, carved turnips and mangel-wurzels were spectral warders; museum holdings preserve these visages as evidence of pre-pumpkin practice (National Museum of Ireland; Museum of English Rural Life). American agrarian abundance replaced turnip with pumpkin; a brighter, larger lantern whose porch-side glow doubles as hospitality. Folklore archives detail the shift from apotropaic threat to community welcome, a semiotic swing still legible in contemporary front-yard display (Library of Congress).

Witches Story by RytasArtWorld

Black Cat Arching Back On Grass. 📸: Gary Randall/KimballStock

Black cats once marked witchcraft prosecutions as familiars; early modern prints and pamphlets established a stock iconography that still shadows contemporary branding (British Museum). By the early twentieth century, American postcard publishers and party-goods firms fixed the “arced-back” black cat as Halloween shorthand; digitized postcard archives document how designers standardized the silhouette as both comic and ominous (NYPL; NMAH). The graphic endurance of the black cat, moving from devotional demonology to household kitsch, illustrates how superstition survives via reproducible design. (British Museum; NYPL; NMAH.)

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). 1920

Vampire Duke Orlok is interested in a new home and real estate agent Hutter's wife. Silent classic based on the story "Dracula."

Halloween (1978) — Michael Myers lurking behind a hedge, silently watching Laurie Strode on a quiet Haddonfield street in broad daylight. Studio: Compass International Pictures.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) — Outside the isolated Sawyer farmhouse, Sally Hardesty bolts down the dirt drive as terror erupts around the homestead. Studio/Distributor: Bryanston Distributing Company (production: Vortex).

German Expressionist cinema codified fear as architecture; jagged sets, painted shadows, and tilted horizons externalize psychology. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu remain keystones in how shadow and angle choreograph menace (BFI). Mid-century modernism pared the set back down to a nervous blank, white walls and fluorescent spill, in which sound and framing carry dread. By the 1970s and 1980s, slasher minimalism distilled horror to silhouette and negative space. John Carpenter’s Halloween uses austere suburban exteriors, deep-focus hallways, and a mask that is more void than face; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s ruined interiors wield clutter as texture and stench, the house itself becoming a meat grinder of mise-en-scène (BFI; Criterion).

The Haunting (1963) — Establishing shot of Hill House, its Gothic facade looming under a roiling sky before the investigators arrive. Studio/Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (production: Argyle Enterprises).

Poltergeist (1982) — Daylight exterior of the Freeling family’s Cuesta Verde suburban home, an early establishing shot before the hauntings unsettle the picture-perfect lawn and living room. Studio/Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / MGM/UA Entertainment Co.

From Elizabethan piles to Victorian follies, the haunted house visualizes property as inheritance and curse. Robert Wise’s The Haunting turns Hill House into a baroque instrument whose doors, angles, and wallpapers “listen”; a sensibility that traces back to Gothic Revival interiors (BFI). Suburban Gothic translates that apparatus to tract housing; the cul-de-sac’s loop becomes a trap, the porch a membrane. Studies on the Suburban Gothic details how American culture projects unease onto standardized domesticity, with films like Poltergeist staging haunting as a mortgage crisis of the soul (Murphy; BFI). The porch, architecturally liminal, is where Halloween happens; a ritual threshold where fear and hospitality negotiate face to face.

Beistle Halloween Decorama 90's Vintage Cutouts 8pcs Full Page Printable

Seasonal ephemera organized twentieth-century Halloween into a purchasable style. Dennison’s Bogie Books taught Americans how to decorate and host parties using crepe, tissue, and cardboard; manufacturers like Beistle supplied the archetypal die-cuts that still circulate in vintage markets (The Henry Ford; NMAH; Beistle). The seasonal aisle (paper clings, plastic skeletons, inflatable ghosts) compresses centuries of death art into domesticated convenience, yet artisan revivals (letterpress broadsides, hand-thrown pumpkins, papier-mâché masks) demonstrate a counter-current where craft reclaims seasonality from disposable kitsch.

It was common for families to have lots of children, and also common for them to die before their fifth birthday. In this picture, the youngest child has died and is propped against a stand for the picture; Long exposures when taking photographs meant that the dead were often seen more sharply than the slightly-blurred living, because of their lack of movement; On some occasions eyes would be painted on to the photograph after it was developed, which was meant to make the deceased more lifelike (left) while other times death was more obvious; Two girls pose with their dead mother, while a Victorian father mourns his baby. The woman on the right's cheeks have been tinted while her deceased toddler remains pale; The whole household, including a cat, has gathered round a dead child on the floor, who is posed as if sleeping; The boy's eyes have been painted on the photo, while the little girl is arranged upright, as if she's dropped off to sleep while playing with her favourite dolls.

Nineteenth-century mourning culture framed grief as material practice. Hair worked into brooches and wreaths; black enamel and jet; locks preserved as relics. Museum collections provide material anchors for these customs (The Met; V&A). Post-mortem daguerreotypes, sole likenesses for many, merged portraiture with memorial, their visual codes resurfacing in contemporary funerary photography and even in ofrenda practices (Library of Congress). Meanwhile, the rural cemetery movement staged grief in landscaped vistas; Mount Auburn’s Gothic chapels and sculpted lots invented a civic park of mourning whose pictorial strategies feed directly into today’s cemetery photography and commemorative design (Mount Auburn).

Suspiria (1977) — Italian theatrical poster: a stark black field with a white title and a blood-red drip forming a ballet dancer’s silhouette—an omen for the witch-haunted dance academy at the film’s core. Studio/Distributor: Seda Spettacoli / Produzioni Atlas Consorziate. Poster artist: Enzo Sciotti.

Halloween (1978) — The iconic theatrical poster: a jack-o’-lantern whose ridges form a clenched fist morphing into a gleaming knife, with the tagline “The Night He Came Home!” Studio/Distributor: Compass International Pictures. Poster artist: Bob Gleason.

Horror’s images are tuned by sound. Michel Chion argues that cinema’s audio-vision fuses sight and sound into a single perceptual event; in horror, this yokes color, typography, and cut to rhythm and timbre (Chion). Dario Argento’s Suspiria welds saturated reds and blues to an operatic score, printing color into the ear as much as the eye (BFI). John Carpenter’s Halloween theme demonstrates how minimalist sound can hollow mise-en-scène into dread, posters, title cards, and marketing echo this austerity with stark palettes and slab-serif titling (Chion; BFI).

Mictlan is the underworld of Aztec mythology. Most people who die would travel to Mictlan, although other possibilities exist. Mictlan consists of nine distinct levels. The journey from the first level to the ninth is difficult and takes four years, but the dead are aided by the psychopomp, Xolotl. The dead must pass many challenges, such as crossing a mountain range where the mountains crash into each other, a field with wind that blows flesh-scraping knives, and a river of blood with fearsome jaguars and snakes. Mictlan also features in the Aztec creation myth. Mictlantecuhtli set a pit to trap Quetzalcoatl. When Quetzalcoatl entered Mictlan seeking bones with which to create humans, Mictlantecuhtli was waiting. He asked Quetzalcoatl to travel around Mictlan four times blowing a conch shell with no holes. Quetzalcoatl eventually put some bees in the conch shell to make sound. Fooled, Mictlantecuhtli showed Quetzalcoatl to the bones. But Quetzalcoatl fell into the pit and some of the bones broke. The Aztecs believed this is why people's height are different. Mictlan is believed to be ruled by King Mictlantecuhtli ("Lord of the Underworld") and his wife, Mictecacihuatl ("Lady of the Underworld"). Other deities in Mictlan include Cihuacoatl (who commanded Mictlan spirits called Cihuateteo), Acolmiztli, Chalmecacihuilt, Chalmecatl and Acolnahuacatl. Mictlampa, the Northern hemisphere of Mictlan according to the Codex Borgia.

Tlālōcān  is described in several Aztec codices as a paradise, ruled over by the rain deity Tlāloc and his consort Chalchiuhtlicue. It absorbed those who died through drowning or lightning, or as a consequence of diseases associated with the rain deity. Tlālōcān has also been recognized in certain wall paintings of the much earlier Teotihuacan culture. Among modern Nahua-speaking peoples of the Gulf Coast, Tlālōcān survives as an all-encompassing concept embracing the subterranean world and its denizens. Mural of Tlālōcān, Tepantitla, Teotihuacan culture.

Mictlāntēcutli or Mictlantecuhtli meaning "Lord of Mictlan"), in Aztec mythology, is a god of the dead and the king of Mictlan (Chicunauhmictlan), the lowest and northernmost section of the underworld. He is one of the principal gods of the Aztecs and is the most prominent of several gods and goddesses of death and the underworld. The worship of Mictlantecuhtli sometimes involved ritual cannibalism, with human flesh being consumed in and around the temple. Other names given to Mictlantecuhtli include Ixpuztec (“Broken Face”), Nextepehua (“Scatterer of Ashes”), and Tzontemoc (“He Who Lowers His Head”). Mictlantecuhtli as depicted in the Codex Borgia.

Aztec conceptions of the afterlife mapped destinations by modes of death; Mictlan for most, Tlalocan for those claimed by water or disease linked to the rain god. Monumental images of Mictlantecuhtli and related underworld deities anchor this cosmology in sculpture and relief, many now in Mexico City’s museums and INAH collections (INAH; Museo Nacional de Antropología). Contemporary ofrendas inherit this complex geography through flowers, food, and directional cues that assist the journey, a continuity reframed through Catholic All Souls overlays (Smarthistory).

An ofrenda for Día de los Muertos layered with cempasúchil, papel picado, candles, calaveras, and favorite foods of the departed; an invitation for souls to find their way home. Photo credit & publication: Los Angeles Times.

An ofrenda is not simply assemblage but a structured semiotic system. Petals as path; water to refresh; salt to purify; pan de muerto as communion of family and saints; photographs as portals. Museum guides and ethnographic writing consistently emphasize the ofrenda’s layered symbolism, its participatory authorship, and its ephemerality as essential characteristics (NMAI; Smithsonian Folklife). The altar’s aesthetics (color harmonies, symmetry, candlelight) perform memory as design.

La Calavera Catrina ("The Dapper [female] Skull") is an image and associated character originating as a zinc etching created by the Mexican printmaker and lithographer José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913). The image is usually dated c. 1910–12. Its first certain publication date is 1913, when it appeared in a satiric broadside (a newspaper-sized sheet of paper) as a photo-relief etching.

Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central or Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central is a mural created by Diego Rivera. It was painted between the years 1946 and 1947, and is the principal work of the Museo Mural Diego Rivera adjacent to the Alameda in the historic center of Mexico City.

José Guadalupe Posada’s broadsides democratized the skull, lampooning elites and memorializing the common dead; museum collections preserve the zinc plates and prints that birthed the modern calavera (The Met; Museo Posada). Diego Rivera canonized La Catrina in his mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda, suturing Porfiriato elegance to revolutionary memory and securing the figure as a transclass icon (Museo Mural Diego Rivera). Today’s graphic designers, tattooists, and activists iterate Posada’s satirical bones in posters and stickers worldwide.

Papel picado ("perforated paper," "pecked paper") is a traditional Mexican decorative craft made by cutting elaborate designs into sheets of tissue paper. Papel picado is considered a Mexican folk art. The designs are commonly cut from as many as 40-50 colored tissue papers stacked together and using a guide or template, a small mallet, and chisels, creating as many as fifty banners at a time. Papel picado can also be made by folding tissue paper and using small, sharp scissors. Common themes include birds, floral designs, and skeletons. Papel picado; Papel picado decorating the kiosk of the Jardín de San Marcos during the Feria Nacional de San Marcos; Interior of the municipal palace of Atlixco, Puebla with papel picado celebrating Independence Day; Papel picado coming down from the Church of Saint Servatius in Valladolid, Yucatán; A variety of fierritos, or chisels, that can be used to craft designs into a variety of materials, such as tissue paper; A Day of the Dead themed papel picado created for an ofrenda; A papel picado with the pattern of two angels praying before the Eucharist; Dia de Muertos offering at the Mexico City Campus of the Tec de Monterrey incorporating papel picado.

Papel picado formalizes wind and light as materials; architecture made of subtraction. The Puebla town of San Salvador Huixcolotla is widely cited as a cradle of the tradition, with cultural agencies documenting technique and transmission; the Museo de Arte Popular extends the idiom into monumental public art through its Alebrijes program, proving how ephemeral craft scales to civic spectacle (Gobierno Puebla; MAP).

Monumental alebrijes (bright, fantastical guardians) installed along Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma after the annual parade organized by the Museo de Arte Popular. (atiempo.tv) Photo credit & publication: A Tiempo Medio Digital (atiempo.tv).

Cartonería (glued paper) underwrites ofrenda sculpture from small calacas to monumental alebrijes; MAP’s annual Desfile de Alebrijes on Paseo de la Reforma spotlights the craft’s engineering and color logics (MAP; El País). Sugar-skull production concentrates in markets like Toluca’s Feria del Alfeñique, where vendors’ ornaments and inscriptions demonstrate regional aesthetics and contemporary gifting practices (El Financiero; Milenio; El Economista). These circuits feed tourism while sustaining intergenerational ateliers.

Women waiting in candle-lit cemetery during the Night of the Dead (Noche de Muerto) night-time vigil at cemetery on Isla de Janitzio as part of longer Day of the Dead festivities, Lake Pátzcuaro, Pátzcuaro, Michoacán de Ocampo, Mexico. Woman in shawl amidst marigolds and small altar at cemetery during Day of the Dead on Isla de Janitzio, Lake Pátzcuaro, Pátzcuaro, Michoacán de Ocampo, Mexico. 📸: Sean Fitzgerald

Oaxaca comparsas: nocturnal processions with music, costumes, and satire through the streets of Oaxaca City.

Regional styles pattern the holiday. On Lake Pátzcuaro and Janitzio, candle flotillas and grave-side vigils shape a choreography of light seen in state cultural documentation (SECTUR Michoacán). Oaxaca’s comparsas braid music, costumes, and satire in nocturnal processions publicized through state cultural calendars (Gobierno de Oaxaca; SECTUR). Mexico City’s San Andrés Mixquic remains paradigmatic for urban cemetery ritual, its Alumbrada and ofrenda ecology promoted and preserved by municipal cultural bodies (CDMX).

From the 1970s, Self Help Graphics & Art in East L.A. translated Día de los Muertos into public pedagogy; processions, print workshops, and community altars that linked remembrance to civil rights (Self Help Graphics; Google Arts & Culture). The National Museum of Mexican Art institutionalized community-curated ofrenda exhibitions in Chicago, where murals, school altars, and illuminated installations educate and memorialize together (NMMA). Altaristas like Ofelia Esparza exemplify the role of artists as cultural stewards in diasporic contexts (NEA; USA).

Diachronic family albums and museum photography archives show how ofrendas generate their own image culture; portraits become altars which become photographs of altars. Contemporary museum programs and community festivals have amplified this reflexivity, projecting ofrenda images at building scale and circulating them across social media (NMMA; Self Help Graphics). Photography thus extends the ofrenda’s life while re-situating it in public memory.

Ethical exhibition of Día de los Muertos requires community-led design, shared authority, and fair representation. Professional standards emphasize collaboration and equity in practice; Smithsonian and AAM resources outline co-curation frameworks and community engagement models that counter folklorization and token display (AAM Code of Ethics; AAM Ethics & Best Practices; Smithsonian Affiliations; NMAAHC Community Curation; Smithsonian Folklife Shared Stewardship). These guidelines translate into concrete curatorial choices; commissioning altaristas, multilingual labels, ritual safety, and return of materials to families.

Amalia Mesa-Bains, An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio, 1984, revised 1991, mixed media installation including plywood, mirrors, fabric, framed photographs, found objects, dried flowers and glitter.

Guadalupe Maravilla, Detail of El Brujo Disease Thrower, 2024

Artists such as Amalia Mesa-Bains and Guadalupe Maravilla adapt altar forms into critical installations. Mesa-Bains’s ofrenda-based works construct sacred feminist spaces inside museums, enshrining Latina memory as art history (SAAM; Smithsonian Women’s History; Phoenix Art Museum; SAMA; UCLA Chicano Studies). Maravilla’s Disease Throwers function as shrines and healing instruments addressing migration trauma and illness, their museum presentations coupling sculpture with sound and participatory care (MoMA; Whitney; Sculpture Magazine; MoMA Magazine). Contemporary community altars across U.S. institutions mobilize the form for public grief, from anti-violence memorials to disaster commemorations (History Colorado; NMMA).

Halloween’s porch is a stage of ambivalence, welcome married to the possibility of fright, whereas the ofrenda’s domestic table extends hospitality to the dead as kin. Both use thresholds to negotiate encounter; the porch and the altar invert public/private in ritual time, performing community through giving and acknowledgment (Murphy; NMAI).

The calavera declares presence, bones as shared fate, while the Halloween mask hides intention. Posada’s calaveras and Rivera’s Catrina imagine the dead among us; the slasher’s blank mask removes personhood. Two visual logics; communion versus opacity (The Met; Museo Mural Diego Rivera; BFI).

Orange/black codes harvest and night; marigold, fuchsia, and turquoise code light, love, and water. Suspiria’s chroma shows how color can become ritual in its own right; ofrenda palettes materialize cosmology (BFI; NMAI).

Dennison manuals and Beistle die-cuts export Halloween spectacle into the suburban street; community ofrendas and museum altars pull the domestic into public pedagogy. Both produce participatory publics but with opposite vectors; outward display versus inward welcome (The Henry Ford; NMAI; Self Help Graphics; NMMA).

Commercial appetite courts appropriation. The 2013 attempt to trademark Día de los Muertos for merchandising, later withdrawn, clarified community boundaries around sacred language and imagery (KPBS; Los Angeles Times; AP). Ethical celebration follows community leadership, fair compensation, and context-rich interpretation.

From neighborhood trick-or-treat loops to Oaxaca comparsas and Mexico City’s mega-ofrendas, processions shape publics through movement and viewing. The question is not whether spectacle occurs, but who authors it and for whom; hence the importance of co-curation and municipal partnership models (Gobierno de Oaxaca; El País; AAM).

Art history traces two distinct but dialogic ritual ecologies. Halloween translates medieval memento-mori into consumer theater, its porch, mask, and plastic specters borrowing Gothic’s mood while embracing reproducible design. Día de los Muertos holds fast to altar logic; relational materiality scaled from kitchen to museum, its calaveras and marigolds carrying pre-Columbian cosmologies through colonial syncretism into contemporary community art and activist installations. Read together, they clarify a central lesson of visual culture; fear and love are both designed. Architecture, costume, paper, sound, and light choreograph how we meet the unknown; on the stoop with a grin or at the ofrenda with bread and water. The ethical imperative for artists, curators, and neighbors is the same; know the lineage, share authority, and let the living and the dead be well received.

References:

Abbaye de La Chaise-Dieu. La danse macabre du XVe siècle. https://www.abbaye-chaise-dieu.com/visites/la-danse-macabre-du-xve-s/ (abbaye-chaise-dieu.com)

Abbaye de La Chaise-Dieu. Aide à la visite Danse macabre. https://www.abbaye-chaise-dieu.com/app/uploads/2021/07/Aide-%C3%A0-la-visite-Danse-macabre-2021.07.23.pdf (abbaye-chaise-dieu.com)

American Alliance of Museums. AAM Code of Ethics for Museums. https://www.aam-us.org/programs/ethics-standards-and-professional-practices/code-of-ethics-for-museums/ (AAM)

American Alliance of Museums. Ethics and Best Practices in Museums. https://www.aam-us.org/programs/advocacy/policy-issues/ethics-and-best-practices-in-museums/ (AAM)

Art Institute of Chicago. Ralph Eugene Meatyard: The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/ (The Library of Congress)

Antique Trader. Halloween blow molds: A colorful collecting candy bowl. https://www.antiquetrader.com/collectibles/halloween-blow-mold-collecting (Smithsonian Magazine)

BFI. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6a708e5e (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

BFI. Nosferatu. https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/nosferatu-why-its-great

BFI. Halloween. https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/halloween-1978 (Children and Youth in History)

BFI. The Haunting. https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6ac5a9cc (Mount Auburn Cemetery)

BFI. Suspiria. https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/suspiria-dario-argento-colour (Smarthistory)

Beistle. Company site. https://www.beistle.com/ (Beistle)

British Museum. Witchcraft and familiar spirits, prints and pamphlets collection highlights. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection (Facebook)

Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press page. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/audio-vision/9780231078993 (Templo Mayor)

City of Mexico, Culture. San Andrés Mixquic. https://mexicocity.cdmx.gob.mx/venues/san-andres-mixquic/ (Mexico City)

Criterion Collection. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1444-the-texas-chain-saw-massacre (Children and Youth in History)

El Economista. Feria del Alfeñique 2025. https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/bistronomie/feria-alfenique-2025-mes-dulzura-reunira-millon-visitantes-20251005-780055.html (El Economista)

El Financiero. Feria del Alfeñique 2025 en Toluca. https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/food-and-drink/2025/10/06/feria-del-alfenique-2025-en-edomex-fechas-como-llegar-cartelera-y-mas/ (El Financiero)

El País. Cómo nacen los alebrijes. https://elpais.com/mexico/2024-10-19/como-nacen-los-alebrijes-las-fantasticas-criaturas-mexicanas.html (El País)

Gobierno de Oaxaca. Celebrará Oaxaca el Día de Muertos. https://www.oaxaca.gob.mx/comunicacion/celebrara-oaxaca-el-dia-de-muertos-la-fiesta-mas-viva-de-todas-con-mas-de-140-actividades-culturales-y-artisticas/ (Oaxaca)

Gobierno de Puebla. Papel picado de San Salvador Huixcolotla. https://patrimoniocultural.puebla.gob.mx/ (map.cdmx.gob.mx)

History Colorado. Día de los Muertos altar collaboration press release. https://www.historycolorado.org/press-release/2025/10/08/dia-de-los-muertos-altar-collaboration-honors-denvers-iconic-mexican-folk (History Colorado)

INAH. Mictlantecuhtli, Museo del Templo Mayor. https://www.inah.gob.mx/ (National Museum of the American Indian)

Library of Congress. Folklife Today: Halloween and Jack-o’-lanterns. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/ (NYPL Digital Collections)

Library of Congress. Daguerreotypes of Deceased Children. https://www.loc.gov/collections/daguerreotypes/ (Aguascalientes City Hall)

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dürer, The Four Witches. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection (eBay)

Metropolitan Museum of Art. José Guadalupe Posada, Calaveras. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!/search?q=posada%20calaveras (Artemex)

Milénio. Feria del Alfeñique. https://www.milenio.com/estados/feria-del-alfenique-el-tradicional-dulce-de-turron-hecho-en-toluca (Grupo Milenio)

Mount Auburn Cemetery. History. https://mountauburn.org/about/history/ (The Library of Congress)

Museo del Prado. Francisco de Goya, Witches’ Sabbath. https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/sabbath-of-the-witches/ (British Museum)

Museo del Prado. Francisco de Goya, Witches’ Flight. https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/witches-flight/ (Wikipedia)

Museo Mural Diego Rivera. Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central. https://www.museomuraldiegorivera.inba.gob.mx/ (Facebook)

Museo Nacional de Antropología. Mictlan and underworld deities galleries. https://mna.inah.gob.mx/ (Fowler Museum at UCLA)

Museo Posada, Aguascalientes. https://www.museoposada.inbal.gob.mx/ (Papel Picado Patiño)

Museum Mayer van den Bergh. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet. https://www.museummayervandenbergh.be/en/collection/dulle-griet-mad-meg (Pinterest)

National Galleries of Scotland. Witches and Wicked Bodies. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/exhibition/witches-and-wicked-bodies (Totally Historic)

National Museum of American History. Halloween in the Collections. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/halloween (The Library of Congress)

National Museum of Ireland. Traditional turnip jack-o’-lantern. https://www.museum.ie/ (NYPL Digital Collections)

National Museum of Mexican Art. Día de Muertos exhibitions. https://nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org/ (Mexican Art Museum)

NEA. Ofelia Esparza, National Heritage Fellow. https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/ofelia-esparza (National Endowment for the Arts)

Phoenix Art Museum. Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory. https://phxart.org/exhibition/amalia-mesa-bains/ (Phoenix Art Museum)

RIBA. Gothic Revival Architecture. https://www.riba.org/explore/riba-collections/architectural-styles/gothic-revival-movement/ (riba.org)

SAMA (San Antonio Museum of Art). Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory. https://www.samuseum.org/artwork/exhibition/amalia-mesa-bains-archaeology-of-memory/ (samuseum.org)

Self Help Graphics & Art. Día de los Muertos. https://www.selfhelpgraphics.com/dia-de-los-muertos (Self Help Graphics & Art)

Smithsonian Folklife. Shared Stewardship of Collections. https://folklife-media.si.edu/docs/folklife/Shared-Stewardship.pdf (Folklife Media)

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Día de los Muertos resources. https://americanindian.si.edu/ (BFI)

Smithsonian Women’s History. Amalia Mesa-Bains Creates Sacred Space for Women and Memory. https://womenshistory.si.edu/blog/amalia-mesa-bains-creates-sacred-space-women-and-memory (American History Women's Exhibit)

Smarthistory. Aztec afterlife, Mictlan and Tlalocan. https://smarthistory.org/ (Smithsonian Folklife)

The Henry Ford. Dennison Manufacturing Halloween manuals and ephemera. https://www.thehenryford.org/ (The Henry Ford)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hair jewelry and mourning objects. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!/search?q=hair%20jewelry%20mourning (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Tate. Claude Cahun, self-portraits. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/claude-cahun-867 (Facebook)

V&A. The Gothic style – an introduction. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-gothic-style-an-introduction (Victoria and Albert Museum)

V&A. Stained glass: the Gothic Revival and beyond. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/stained-glass-gothic-revival-and-beyond (Victoria and Albert Museum)

V&A. Masquerade and dress in Europe. https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections (eBay)

Whitney Museum of American Art. Guadalupe Maravilla. https://whitney.org/artists/18535 (Whitney Museum)

Museo de Arte Popular, CDMX. Desfile y Concurso de Alebrijes Monumentales. https://www.map.cdmx.gob.mx/eventos/evento/alebrijes-2025 (map.cdmx.gob.mx)

KPBS. Disney withdraws effort to trademark Día de los Muertos. https://www.kpbs.org/news/arts-culture/2013/05/07/after-outcry-disney-withdraws-effort-trademark-dia (KPBS Public Media)

Los Angeles Times. Disney withdraws trademark filing for Día de los Muertos. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-xpm-2013-may-08-la-et-ct-disney-dia-de-los-muertos-20130507-story.html (Los Angeles Times)

SECTUR Michoacán. Noche de Muertos. https://sectur.michoacan.gob.mx/noche-de-muertos-en-michoacan-cautiva-a-turistas-nacionales-y-extranjeros/ (Michoacán Tourism)

Google Arts & Culture. Day of the Dead in Los Angeles: Self Help Graphics & Art. https://artsandculture.google.com/story/day-of-the-dead-in-los-angeles-self-help-graphics-art/TgUhcMFIjQzwQg (Google Arts & Culture)

Museum of Modern Art. Guadalupe Maravilla collection; Disease Thrower #5 audio. https://www.moma.org/collection/artists/131948 and https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/309/4098 (The Museum of Modern Art)

New York Public Library Digital Collections. Halloween postcards. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ (SpringerLink)

National Museum of Mexican Art. Día de los Muertos Xicágo. https://nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org/events/dia-de-los-muertos-xicago-745 (Mexican Art Museum)

Smithsonian Affiliations. Community Engagement resources. https://affiliations.si.edu/excursion-community-engagement/ (affiliations.si.edu)

Smithsonian NMAAHC. Community Curation Program. https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/initiatives/family-history-center/community-curation-program (National Museum of African American History)