Art
A Worthwhile But Flawed Reconsideration of Orientalist Art
The British Museum's Inspired by the East asks its audience to rehabilitate Orientalist art without ever focusing on what made it problematic in the first place.
London
Art
The Raucous and Frenetic Energy of Nam June Paik
As a recent retrospective at Tate Modern demonstrates, even fitted with decades-old circuitry, Nam June Paik’s work still pulses with energy, breakneck and experimental.
Art
Technological Invention Is Not Necessarily the Answer to a Sustainable Future
An exhibition at the Royal Academy suggests that technology is our main hope for a better future, generally ignoring the current discourse around natural climate solutions.
Art
Kiefer Overbrims His World
Anselm Kiefer draws down the world upon his shoulders in a mood of what can only be described as apocalyptic excess.
Art
Seeing Ourselves in a Chimpanzee's Art
Seeing works by Congo the chimp takes us from wild aesthetic conjectures to sobering ethical dilemmas around animal agency, art ownership, and basic rights of living creatures.
Art
In 1977, an Artist Married Her Male Alter-Ego to Challenge Chauvinism
For almost 50 years, Tomaso Binga has been tackling the numerous manifestations of patriarchy in Italian culture. At 88, she is a living legend in Rome’s cultural scene.
Art
Painting Home, When It Won't Let You Stay
In her first major solo show in London, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s paintings recall the all too familiar diasporic experience of being foreign in both places you call home.
Art
When the West Dreamt of Odalisques
Inspired by the East: How the Islamic World Influenced Western Art is a giant teaching aid of a fairly solid and dependable kind, but one that does not quite push far enough.
News
Activists Dressed as Trojan Figures Crash Opening of BP-Funded Exhibition
Activist group BP or not BP? interrupted the opening of Troy: Myth and Reality at the British Museum, dressed as “living statues," including a character of their own invention, “Petroleus.”
News
In Its First UK Action, PAIN Sackler Holds "Die-in" at the V&A
Warning of "toxic philanthropy," activists gathered in the museum's Sackler Courtyard, honoring the five people who die every day in the UK from opioid overdoses.
Art
When Leonardo da Vinci Just Isn’t Enough
Leonardo’s “Virgin” meets virtual reality — simpleminded in the extreme.
In Brief
Extinction Rebellion Sends a Sinking Home Along the River Thames, Warning of Climate Disaster
The work was intended as a public appeal to politicians to make a more stringent and immediate response to regulate the effects of human industry and waste on the environment.