Weems’s essay is excerpted from Ways of Hearing: Reflections on Music in 26 Pieces.
Excerpts
How Black Artists Are Shaping a Distinctly Black Gaze
Cultural and artistic icons are reshaping the circulation of Blackness on a global scale.
The Strange Tradition of “Practice Babies” at 20th-century Women’s Colleges
An excerpt from Megan Culhane Galbraith’s “The Guild of the Infant Survivor,” a memoir of an adoptee’s quest for her past.
New Hokusai Graphic Biography Shares Stories from His Extraordinary Life
At the age of 44, Hokusai took on an amazing challenge: a giant portrait of the founder of Zen Buddhism.
M. Sharkey’s Luminous Photos of Queer Kids in the US
The light in Sharkey’s images doesn’t so much cover his subjects but illuminates them from within.
Andy Warhol’s Defiant Hopes for Queer Art
In an essay in “Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Desire,” out from TASCHEN, Gopnik argues that Warhol had good reason to believe that daring gay imagery was where art ought to have been heading.
Why a Disabled Artist Collective Was What I Needed All Along
I hadn’t just needed Disabled friends. I’d needed friends who could give my experiences context and analysis.
Reynaldo Rivera’s Photographs of a Los Angeles That No Longer Exists
In the 1980s and ’90s, Rivera photographed drag performers in Latinx gay bars, house parties in pre-gentrified Echo Park, and performers like Sade, Vaginal Davis, and Chaka Khan.