Books
A Former Museum of Modern Art Director's Meticulous Eye for Detail
As a non-specialist Rene d’Harnoncourt had a rare ability to engage deeply with objects across time, cultural specificity, and form.
Review
Books
Italian Poet Amelia Rosselli's Diary Examines and Reexamines the Self
In her diary, Rosselli experimented with what she described as “wild” writing to explore trauma and loss.
Art
When the Arts Resist Imperialism
The exhibition Clapping with Stones is a chilling reminder that the history of art is also the history of power.
Art
Extraordinary Paintings of Ordinary Birds
Ann Craven's painted birds, set against a soft-focus background, have a kitsch quality, but with a provocative edge.
Art
A Sanitation Worker's Collection of Salvaged Objects
Whether objects are considered trash or treasure depends on how we care for and arrange them.
Art
Finding Rapture Where You Don’t Expect It
An unattributed work can catch you off guard, forcing you to drop your defenses and simply look.
Art
Rescuing Art Sites on the Endangered List
The American researcher Jo Farb Hernández has led the charge to preserve fast-deteriorating, self-taught artists’ environments — before they’re gone.
Books
When a Poet Becomes Invisible
Facing her mortality, Mary Ruefle does not ask for pity or sympathy, because death is democratic.
Film
Linda Ronstadt's Passionate Life of Song
Like its subject, the documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice builds on familiar elements to make something new and beautiful.
Film
The Best Experimental Shorts at the Toronto International Film Festival
The festival's vaunted Wavelengths section features films about different concepts of performance.
Art
The Vernacular of Space Through Images of the Moon
The Met's exhibition shows us that our cosmos is divided between the pictured and the real, and that the character of the pictorial asserts a powerful influence over our conception of the actual.
Art
The International Spy Museum Seen Through the Eyes of a Human Rights Expert
"This feels like a loss," said Andrea Prasow of Human Rights Watch while touring the museum, flagging several errors in how curators have presented the history of torture and interrogation.