you, it's yours, keep it." During December 2017, a public petition was circulated requesting that Balthus's painting Thérèse Dreaming be removed from display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York due to its alleged explicit content and suggestive portrayal. Philip Kennicott, writing for The Washington Post on 5 December 2017, in an article titled "This painting might be sexually disturbing. But that's no reason to take it out of a museum", summarized the museum's long-standing position against censorship. The painting had previously been on display at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany in 2007 without incident. In popular culture South African novelist Christopher Hope wrote My Chocolate Redeemer around a painting by Balthus, The Golden Days (1944), which appears on the book jacket. Stephen Dobyns's book The Balthus Poems (Atheneum, 1982) describes individual paintings by Balthus in 32 narrative poems. Harold Budd's 1988 album The White Arcades includes a track titled "Balthus Bemused by Color". Robert Dassanowsky's book Telegrams from the Metropole: Selected Poems 1980–1998 includes "The Balthus Poem". Thomas Harris's book Hannibal (1999, Delacorte Press) says that the character Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist, cannibal, and genius, is Balthus's cousin. William Minor's book The Balthus Poems (Coracle, 2018) is a minimalist, absurdist approach to his life and work. Joyce Carol Oates's 2018 book Beautiful Days: Stories contains the story "Les beaux jours," which contains lyrical descriptions of Balthus's paintings and imagines the life of an eleven-year-old model of Balthus. Maya Hawke's 2022 single "Thérèse" from her second studio album Moss is inspired by Balthus's painting entitled "Thérèse Dreaming". The UK print edition of Philip Pullman's short work The Collectors features Portrait de la jeune fille en costume d'amazone (1932) by Balthus as a cover image and inside print. The UK adult cover of Northern Lights (Pullman novel) also features another work by Balthus, Girl in Green and Red (1944). Exhibitions Balthus held his first exhibition at Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1934. Following the ensuing scandal, he exhibited at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, from 1938 to 1977, although he never visited the United States. Balthus's first major museum exhibition was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1956. Other museum exhibitions of note include Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris (1966); Tate Gallery, London (1968); La Biennale di Venezia (1980); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1980); Musée cantonal des beaux-arts de Lausanne (1993); Musée d'Art Moderne de la