Friendly creatures from Friends With You (image via friendswithyou.com)
This week’s Required Reading features mashed-up video games, a lost e.e. cummings poem, an indie arcade review and a museum just for you.
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links (10 or less) to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.
The Latest
Can Western Architecture Ever Be Truly Decolonial?
The Project of Independence at MoMA probes the limits of modernist construction in South Asia.
Cheech Marin’s Long-Awaited Museum for Chicano Art Opens in LA
The newly opened Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture — also known as “The Cheech” — celebrates, spotlights, and complicates representations of Chicano art.
Center for Art, Research and Alliances Opens Space for Future (Un)doings in Conjurings
Convened by Erika Sprey, Lamin Fofana, Sky Hopinka, Emmy Catedral, and Manuela Moscoso, the public program unfolds this summer at CARA in New York City.
Olivia Guterson Carries Ancestral Patterns Into Contemporary Art
The Detroit-based artist draws from her Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and African American roots to create a dazzling new ornamental language.
A Meta Remake-of-a-Remake Muses on the State of Cinema
Stuffed with references to historical and contemporary film, Olivier Assayas’s miniseries version of his own 1996 film Irma Vep is sometimes too clever for its own good.
San Francisco Art Book Fair Returns After a Two-Year Break
The Bay Area art book fair is back this July with free programming at three different on-site venues, new exhibitors, and fundraising editions from renowned artists.
FBI Raids Florida Museum and Seizes 25 Disputed Basquiats
The authenticity of the works, whose owners say Basquiat sold to Hollywood screenwriter Thaddeus Mumford in 1982, has been heavily scrutinized.
In Historic Agreement, Five Native Tribes Will Co-Manage Bears Ears National Monument
The Utah site has been subject to longstanding contention over federal lands management.
CCS Bard Summer Exhibitions Delve Into Video Art and Black Melancholia
Shows at the Hudson Valley’s Hessel Museum of Art feature artists Dara Birnbaum and Martine Syms, as well as new scholarship on Black melancholia as an artistic and critical practice.
Sam Gilliam, Groundbreaking Abstractionist, Dies at 88
At a time when many Black artists turned to figuration, Gilliam harnessed the power of abstraction, freeing the canvas from its support.
Cecilia Vicuña Sees Venice Through Her Mother’s Eyes
The artist’s portrait of her mother, painted in 1977 and reproduced on the vaporetti of Venice, may be one of the most evocative artworks in the Biennale.
The Cinematic Time Loops of Shahram Mokri
A new box set of four of the Iranian director’s features offers a great opportunity to get to know his singular style.