Art
The South African Art Collective That Imagined the End of Apartheid
The history of the Medu Art Ensemble reminds us of the role artists play in making the aims of revolutionary thinking tangible.
Review
Books
An Art Forgery Thriller With Many Narrators but Not Enough Answers
Author Clare Clark's In the Full Light of the Sun raises important questions about the lengths we go to distract ourselves from governmental horrors, and how art can’t save us, but it doesn't manage to find easy answers.
Film
In 1970, the Original Cast of Company Went Through Hell to Record Their Album
Despite being out of circulation, the 1970 behind-the-scenes Broadway documentary Original Cast Album: Company remains revered by both film and theater fans.
Art
Artworks About Place Struggle Within the Confines of a Museum
Landlord Colors at Cranbrook Art Museum tries to “elevate” art borne of economic hardship and upheavals, but such art needs no elevation; the viewer must seek and find its level.
Art
The Spurious Progressivism of Spanish Colonial Art
Art and Empire attempts to retell the story of Spain’s golden age by highlighting the global exchange of cultures as seen in the empire’s art and its hugely diverse body of subjects.
Art
A Poetic Feast Conjures Familial Immigrant Histories
Rather than being haunted by the past, Jane Wong views “going toward the ghost” as a method of reclaiming her family’s silenced histories.
Art
N. C. Wyeth's Artistic Aspirations
Illustration provided Wyeth a very comfortable living, but did not satisfy his deep ambition to be taken seriously in the art world.
Music
Chance the Rapper Ties the Knot, and You’re Invited
Chance the Rapper’s new release, The Big Day, is celebratory and playful, but also wheedling — he wants to convince you that marriage is a good decision.
Art
The Rarities and Oddities of a Vanished World
It’s fair to say that images of sporting have a relatively marginal place in our art world.
Art
Berenice Abbott's Optimistic Modernity
Abbott aimed her lens at so many 20th-century subjects that her photographs challenge us to rethink modernity itself.
Art
Jess, a West Coast Visionary
It is clear to me now that seeing Jess's art was the beginning of my awareness that there was a multitude of what John Ashbery called “other traditions.”
Art
Seeing American History Through the Art of a Black WWI Soldier
Horace Pippin was a self-taught artist out of necessity, as the society in which he lived had shut most of its doors on him.