How Tarot Survived for 500 Years
Plus: Protesters call on MoMA to ditch Leon Black, and our exhibition fall guide for the Bay Area.
It’s the second day of fall here in the northern hemisphere, and magic is already in the air. Critic AX Mina paid a visit to one of the most fitting places for this season of spells and introspection: a glimmering exhibition on tarot through the ages at the Morgan Library and Museum. A tarot reader themself, Mina considers how deck designers have responded to shifting systems of power over the centuries in the hopes of granting us the tools to overcome them.
Also today, Paddy Johnson’s new edition of Art Problems tackles the shame faced by so many artists who work day jobs to pay the bills. The underlying issue, of course, is the classism that suffuses the commercial art world. Johnson offers some words of wisdom and solidarity for artists workin’ nine to five below.
More in this edition, including an activist duo’s protest against billionaire Leon Black outside the Museum of Modern Art, Sarah Michelson’s 25-day dance at the same museum, and your handy guide to Bay Area art shows this fall.
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor
Art Problems: If I Have a Day Job, Am I a Real Artist?
Imagine you’re a plumber who works a nine-to-five job during the week and fixes pipes on the evenings and weekends. Do you lie awake wondering whether you’re a real plumber? Of course not. Plumbing pays reliably. It also comes with an apprenticeship and a license. Art has no equivalent. The pay’s shit, when it happens at all, and nothing “certifies” you to make it.
So we invent tests that help us evaluate value, most of them arbitrary and inane. Studio outside the home? Serious. Ivy League degree? Serious. Teach at one? Very serious. No job at all? If your answer is “no,” congratulations! You’re the most serious artist of all! | Paddy Johnson
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Lead, Create, & Innovate: University of Michigan’s Master of Design Program
The Stamps MDes program builds curious designers interested in interdisciplinary problem-solving, community engagement, and critical making.
News
- Protesters in front of the Museum of Modern Art call for the removal of billionaire Leon Black from the museum board.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art brokers the return of three sculptures to Nigeria through a long-term loan agreement for their display in New York.
- The Art Institute of Chicago will return a Cubist painting by artist Jean Metzinger that was looted by the Nazis to the family of the late art collector Emanuel Lewenstein. [Chicago Sun-Times]
From Our Critics
Tarot for a Broken World
With some of the oldest surviving tarot decks on view, the Morgan’s exhibition traces how a Renaissance card game became something far more powerful. | AX Mina
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“Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte” at the Jewish Museum
The exhibition illuminates the role that women played as artists, designers, and tastemakers shaping modernist aesthetics in early 20th-century Vienna.
Feature
Sarah Michelson’s Delicate Fetish Play
Her 25-day dance at MoMA is meta, but it’s not about dance itself so much as a lifetime of collaborating with dancers. | Amit Noy
Read MoreGuides
10 Public Artworks to See Across the US This Fall
Camille Henrot’s pack of dogs take Central Park, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz leads a procession through Philadelphia, and Sara Genn paints the sky in Santa Fe. | Anna Lee and Rhea Nayyar
Read More10 Art Shows to See in the Bay Area This Fall
Dread Scott’s body politic, Azzedine Alaïa’s sculptural garments, Dewey Crumpler and Irving Norman surveys, and much more. | Max Blue
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This October, Experience Refract: The Seattle Glass Experience
Seattle’s glass festival returns with milestone anniversaries, fresh art, parties, demos, exhibits, and open studios with the vibrant theme Year of Celebration.
Hyper Links
- As AI-induced extinction scenarios flood the internet, will doomsday fear-mongering end up hurting efforts to regulate the technology? Nitasha Tiku has thoughts.
- For Foyer, Matthew Rolfe traces the journey of 19th-century Black life model Pierre Louis Alexandre from his birthplace in French Guiana to the classrooms of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.
From the Archive
The Marvelous and Monstrous Reality of Being a New York Artist
Defying scholarly conventions, Marin Kosut’s latest book takes a searingly honest look at the “impossibility of New York” and the barriers artists face. | Mary Karmelek
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