My childhood was divided between my parents: the painters Lennart Anderson and Mimi Weisbord. They married in 1958 and split apart during the women’s movement in 1972.
Until 1978, they lived two blocks from each other in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Then Mimi bought a loft in Soho and my brother and I rode the subway between the burroughs. I wrote in college: “I go between my parents as I would two worlds. I have two identities. They do not talk to each other; they do not know who I am with the other.”
Lennart died in 2015. Mimi died in 2020. Her loft was left packed with artwork, letters, manuscripts, photos, and journals. These included materials she’d saved over decades, from my parents’ life together, from when our family was still intact. Writing is how I survived the task of digging out her studio and living spaces (along with enormous support from my spouse Kim). During that year-and-a-half-long excavation, I began a memoir. But there is too much for one book.
I go between my parents as I would two worlds. I have two identities. They do not talk to each other; they do not know who I am with the other.
– Eliza Anderson, Two Houses, A Memoir of Art and Divorce
Two Houses 