Art
A Painter Takes a Collaborative Approach to the Portrait
Gisela McDaniel captures the voices and memories of her sitters and offers them the opportunity to narrate their own histories.
Review
Film
The Worst Person in the World Is Among the Best Portraits of Modern Womanhood
Part of the glory of the film is that its heroine’s choices, however unexpected, are taken seriously.
New York
Jennifer Packer Shows Us the Responsibility of Seeing
Most everything in this show, is unsure, a maybe, might be there, might not be, could fulfill your hopes, might leave them by the side of the road.
Art
Transcendental Painting Lives on in New Mexico and Beyond
The group of self-identified idealists, active until 1942, created nonrepresentational paintings of and from the creative imagination.
Film
Three Minutes of Film Are All That Remain of a Polish Jewish Town Before the Holocaust
What can be learned from just a short clip from a 1938 vacation film? The documentary Three Minutes — A Lengthening shows that it can be quite a bit.
Books
Edith Schloss and Her Feminine Take on New York’s Macho Art Scene
Schloss challenged the concept of the lone genius toiling in his studio, instead framing this cohort of artists as neighbors and friends.
Art
Two Artists Record the Voices of the Silk Road
The Silk Road Songbook’s polyvocal strategies to share diasporic experiences are a radical reversal of what expressions of resistance and persistence are expected to look like.
Art
Contemporary Iranian Art That Doesn’t Shy Away from Politics
Fighting the Western perception of Iran as a hostile war zone, Mohammed Afkhami began collecting artworks by Iranian artists to highlight the country’s rich cultural production.
Art
An Artist Goes Home to Her Appalachia
The paintings that form the heart of Ceirra Evans: It’s Okay to Go Home offer a more complex and generous response to the stale and sneering stereotypes of Appalachia.
Books
Philosophy of Aesthetics That’s Actually Fun to Read
Lydia Goehr's Red Sea–Red Square–Red Thread is so ambitious, so original, so detailed, and so poetic that it transcends mere commentary and becomes itself a distinguished contribution to philosophy.
Art
Walking for Art
The visual stutter of Mary Lum's artwork invites us to enunciate the staccato repetitions of sounds we hear and see when we walk through the city.
Books
Artist Sophie Calle Took a Job as a Maid to Spy on the Guests
Calle’s methodical analysis makes the reader more curious about the artist herself than the guests she spies on.