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40 Artists and Writers Respond to 40 Objects “Mistaken” for Guns by the Police
The book This Is Not a Gun collects personal responses to these objects, which include a cell phone, hairbrush, Wii remote, and underwear.
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Step Into a Mysterious Photography Studio From the 1850s
Predicting the Past—Zohar Studios: The Lost Years presents the mythical world of a Lower East Side photography studio, founded by an Eastern European Jewish immigrant in the 1850s.
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A Poet Defends the Earth
Susan Barba's poems are both environmental plea and protest, at once personal and broad.
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Enter the Humorously Awkward World of a “Long-Distance Cartoonist”
Brilliantly paced, Adrian Tomine’s latest graphic novel takes readers from discomfort to laughter in just a few panels.
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Shaking Up the Ethnographic Museum
In a new book, the curator and art historian Clémentine Deliss proposes that “ethnographic” artifacts be reconsidered, remediated — and maybe even returned to their original owners.
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Poetry With a Painterly Eye
The latest poetry collections by Lawrence Giffin and Lesle Lewis use the vocabulary of visual arts to extend poetry's reach.
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Félix Fénéon: Critic, Collector, Anarchist
What is the relationship between Félix Fénéon’s politics and the art he admired?
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Abstract Poetry and the Language of Life
What’s most remarkable about Carlos Lara’s Like Bismuth When I Enter is the palpable sense that the author is translating life into language.
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The Ethics of Examining the Swastika, the Energizer Bunny of Hate Symbols
Steven Heller’s latest edition of The Swastika and Symbols of Hate begs the question: if one were truly interested in divesting the symbol of its power, would it not be better to let it fall into the dustbin of history?
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What Constitutes an “Appropriate Monument”? Philadelphians Have a Few Ideas
In 2020, Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia is not merely a living handbook, but an uncanny prophecy.
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John Cage, Forager of Music and Mushrooms
No matter how much one knows about the artist or mycology, John Cage: A Mycological Foray surprises with its ode to continuous wonder.
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Memoir as the Fragments of Memory
When Michel Leiris died in 1990 at age 89 he was a canonical figure in France, mainly for having remade the genre of memoir in his own image.