“I'd be reading an article about an exhibition of, let's say, paintings by Botticelli or something like that. And then there would be just like a mention in the review that said, and Botticelli went out of favor and was basically forgotten for 200 years. And then they'd go on and talk about paintings. I'd go, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's where the story is. You buried it right there.”
Food with Mark Bittman · Food & Beverage · October 2026
Byrne was explaining how he started collecting "sleeping beauties" for his new book: ideas, papers and artists that were forgotten and then rediscovered years or decades later. He got the term from a science paper and realized he knew the pattern from music and the arts.
Transcript
…goes, that is exactly what we've been looking for. Or it's the same thing we're doing now, but this person already did it. And then I realized, no, I know this from music. I know it from the arts and literature and all sorts of things. So I thought, oh, I'll start collecting examples of these.
That's fascinating. That's fascinating. And it
was. So it takes a while. I'd be reading an article about an exhibition of, let's say, paintings by Botticelli or something like that. And then there would be just like a mention in the review that said, and Botticelli went out of favor and was basically forgotten for 200 years. And then they'd go on and talk about paintings. I'd go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's where the story is. You buried it right there.
Well, the rediscovery is the story. The rediscovery
is the story. And they don't mention that. So I thought, okay, now I have to do some research and find out why did he go out of favor? And how did he get rediscovered? That kind of thing. Were there predecessors, is that the right word? Or foreshadowings of Impressionism 200
years before there was Impressionism or of rock and roll 200 years before there was rock and roll? And that's what you're talking about.
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