I fear that the visual culture in which these works were admired is now one of those distant “you had to be there” moments, which are impossible to reconstruct.
Guggenheim Museum
Simone Leigh’s Debris of Silence
Simone Leigh’s work, on view at the Guggenheim Museum, is inhibiting in a particularly difficult way: it doesn’t seduce; it doesn’t explain, it doesn’t rely on interpretation; it doesn’t care what I think.
Guggenheim Workers Successfully Vote to Unionize
More than 90 workers will join Local 30, a union that includes installers and maintenance workers at New York’s MoMA PS1.
Reflections on Artistic License
Join the Guggenheim Museum for a series of conversations with the six artist-curators of Artistic License on select Tuesdays from June 18–December 17, 6:30 pm.
Hilma af Klint Breaks Records at the Guggenheim Museum
The survey of the late Swedish abstract painter has drawn 600,000 visitors, increased museum memberships, and broke another record in catalogue sales.
Pulled into Robert Mapplethorpe’s Vortex of Voyeurism
“What’s S&M?” I overhear a woman asking her husband in the exhibition. “The artist says here that it stands for sex and magic, but this set up doesn’t look very magical.”
Hilma af Klint, Outlier for the Ages
Hilma af Klint reminds us that institutionally approved narratives generally function as touchstones for conformists and the weak-kneed.
Hilma af Klint, the Spiritualist Painter Who Pioneered Abstract Art
Witchy and prescient, Hilma af Klint’s paintings from the early 1900s curiously combine spiritualism with an interest in evolutionary biology.
Major Art Institutions Navigate Ties to Saudi Arabia After Disappearance of Journalist [UPDATED]
The Smithsonian, Sotheby’s, and landmark institutions across NYC are under pressure to address their financial connections to the Saudi Arabian government in the wake of the suspected murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
A Playful and Prurient Performance About Pornography
In Prurience, Christopher Green asks his audience to “consider if society is in the grip of an actual addiction or a moral panic.”
Someone Yarn-Bombed a Guggenheim Museum Toilet with Gold Crochet
The guerrilla intervention was in place for two hours during the museum’s pay-what-you-wish period on Saturday.
Fox Business Anchor Outraged at Guggenheim in Wake of Golden Toilet Offer
From a slew of negative reviews on Yelp and Facebook to a Fox anchor calling on chief curator Nancy Spector to resign, the backlash to revelations that the Guggenheim offered the Trumps a gold toilet is many-pronged.