During the two-day protests, activists explained that they “won’t stand by and let the Science Museum green-wash Shell’s reputation.”
Naomi Polonsky
Naomi Polonsky is a London-based curator, art critic, and translator. She studied at the University of Oxford and the Courtauld Institute of Art and has experience working at the Hermitage Museum and Tate Modern. She has written for the Times Literary Supplement and The Calvert Journal. Follow her on Twitter @NaomiPolonsky
Posted inArt
Jennifer Packer’s Lucid Tributes to Black Life
In Packer’s canvases, swathes of abstraction express aspects of human experience that lie beyond representation.
Posted inArt
A Beguiling Look at the Biases of AI
With Bloom, Trevor Paglen collapses distinctions between the real and virtual, laying bare the prejudices embedded in supposedly objective artificial intelligence systems.
Posted inArt
Toyin Ojih Odutola’s Skillfully Flips the Script of Art History
In A Countervailing Theory, her current exhibition at the Barbican Centre, Ojih Odutola’s alternative histories take on a more epic, mythic scale.
Posted inBooks
28 Years of Miranda July, Master of Self-Fashioning
Titled simply Miranda July, Prestel’s excellent new “mid-career retrospective” of the artist highlights July’s enduring interest in the very darkest aspects of human existence.
Posted inFilm
The Life of Clyfford Still, the Most “Irascible” Abstract Expressionist
The documentary Lifeline recounts Still’s life, career, and legacy — and how they were shaped by his cantankerous temperament.
Posted inArt
The Untamed Jungles of Vivian Suter’s Abstract Paintings
While the ecological aspect of Suter’s work is particularly timely, her obvious enjoyment of pure color and form makes her artworks all the more enduring.
Posted inNews
Anti-Oil Activists Stage Largest Protest Yet at British Museum, With Trojan Horse in Tow
Hundreds of activists occupied the British Museum for a protest lasting over two days straight, coinciding with the BP-sponsored exhibition Troy: Myth and Reality.
Posted inNews
The K-Pop Boyband BTS Launched an International Art Project
BTS, described as the “biggest boy band in the world,” announced an international public art project with 22 contemporary artists across five cities. Its first exhibitions opened at London’s Serpentine Galleries and Berlin’s Gropius Bau.
Posted inArt
Visions of Home that Are Gut-Wrenching, Contemplative, and Funny
In Homelands, artists variously characterize home as “a transient dwelling,” “an ongoing process,” and “other people.”
Posted inNews
Activists Dressed as Trojan Figures Crash Opening of BP-Funded Exhibition
Activist group BP or not BP? interrupted the opening of Troy: Myth and Reality at the British Museum, dressed as “living statues,” including a character of their own invention, “Petroleus.”
Posted inNews
In Its First UK Action, PAIN Sackler Holds “Die-in” at the V&A
Warning of “toxic philanthropy,” activists gathered in the museum’s Sackler Courtyard, honoring the five people who die every day in the UK from opioid overdoses.
