Art
A Powerful Debut
As a young Asian American painter, Susan Chen knows what she is up against and is consciously pushing back.
Review
Art
An Artist’s Vision Centers Indigenous Narratives and Spaces
In Red Exit, Andrea Carlson’s motifs celebrate the spaces Native people create for themselves.
Film
Inventor Nikola Tesla Gets a Suitably Unusual Biopic
Tesla is less “the story of Tesla” and more a dialogue with the audience about the infamously eccentric figure.
Film
A Celebration of Black, Brown, and Indigenous Stories
The BlackStar Film Festival consistently resists forces that try to define culture in majoritarian terms.
Books
The Evolving Designs of US Voting Ballots
This Is What Democracy Looked Like by Alicia Yin Cheng is the first book of its kind to look at the history of ballot design.
Film
Nudity in the US Film Industry, and How it Has (and Hasn’t) Evolved
The documentary Skin spurs the viewer to think about what kind of bodies are usually naked in movies.
Books
How Latinx Artists Were Shut Out Of Art History
Arlene Dávila’s Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, Politics considers the plights of Latinx artists through the lens of race and class disparities in both North and South America.
Film
What Happens When a Thousand Teenage Boys Form Their Own Government
For the new documentary Boys State, directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine use a long-running youth program to examine US democracy. The result is is both comedy and horror.
Film
Relic Joins the New Era of “Mommy Horror”
Relic delves into a darkness beyond filial caregiving, approaching the mother figure as the first, and last, monster, her house a veritable womb for distinctly female trauma.
Books
How Words Cast Their Spell on a Poet
Geoffrey O'Brien explores language's magic — part sound, part sense, part bodily sensation.
Art
Rediscovering Leslie Kerr's Pop Abstraction
Kerr was an abstract artist with a vulgar sense of humor.
Art
Warren Isensee’s Breakthrough
Isensee has gone from being a dutiful geometric abstractionist to defining his own trajectory, and gaining a verifiable freedom for himself.