Books
Shopping for the Afterlife in China
Chanel shoes, McDonald's french fries, iPhones, cognac, lacy lingerie, and machine guns are just a few of the consumer goods you can purchase for the dead in China.
Latest
Art
An Exhibition Recaps 50 Years of James Bond, the Spy Who Loved Himself
PARIS — James Bond, 007 the Exhibition provides just enough ludicrous, louche swagger to fill hard-living, hard-killing art stars with envy.
Art
The Hidden History of Recycling in Medieval Art
It's easy to forget that a historic artifact preserved in a museum is not a static object.
Art
Considering What Art Can (and Can’t) Do in a Survey of Northwest Artists
TACOMA, Wash. — Your eye is desperate for a focal point when you look at Rodrigo Valenzuela’s “Goal Keeper #1” (2014).
Comics
The Mind Games We Play
I spend a lot of energy trying to outsmart my brain.
Opinion
Required Reading
This week, the new African American museum, the troubles of nonprofit workers, Norton Museum's Cranach diptych, the Qatari art scene, colonial nostalgia, and more.
Opinion
Weekend Words: Soft
"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music."
Books
Reader’s Diary: Frank Lima's ‘Incidents of Travel in Poetry’
“There are several Puerto / Ricans on the avenue today, which / makes it beautiful and warm,” wrote Frank O’Hara in “A Step Away from Them.” It was 1956, the day after Jackson Pollock’s funeral.
Books
Foreign Sounds or Sounds Foreign
Brandon Som’s first book of poems, The Tribute Horse, won the 2012 Nightboat Poetry Prize.
Art
Is It a Trojan Horse?
In 1989, after a protracted litigation, a jury of five voted four to one in favor of removing Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” (1981) from Federal Plaza in Manhattan, where it had stood for nearly a decade.
Art
Seymour Krim to William Saroyan: A Letter
You're surrounded by jerks, ass-kissers, sycophants.
Books
The Poetics of Embodiment: Elaine Kahn's 'Women in Public'
The poems in Elaine Kahn’s Women in Public are highly self-aware. They’re porous, riven with gaps and fragmentation; at the same time, they’re unquestionably "lyrical" in their concision and fluidity