Film
What New Yorkers Are Too Afraid to Say About the Future and Climate Change
In the documentary The Hottest August, director Brett Story interviews sweaty bystanders about how the world is changing.
Review
Art
Two Women in a Man’s Art World
You are not likely to find the work of Mimi Gross and Marcia Marcus in the permanent collections of any major New York City museum. I find that both predictable and troubling.
Books
Why Matisse Thought “A Picture Should Always Be Decorative”
For Matisse, decoration was never a secondary matter.
Art
How Do Artists Get Into the Whitney Biennial?
I made a spreadsheet to find out what the participants in the Whitney Biennial have in common.
Art
Paradise Lost: Paul Davies's Fictive California
The painter's depiction of breezy palm trees and picturesque mountain ranges contain eccentric, discordant details.
Art
The Ideas Hidden in One Artist's Embroidery
Elaine Reichek uses hand-embroidery to emulate the handwriting of authors whose ideas she makes her own.
Art
A Silver Exhibition's Classist Undertones
Despite the artistry on display in this Gorham Silver exhibition, I found it difficult to suppress a kernel of class hatred in looking at it.
Art
The Bold, Blessed Paintings of a Sharecropper’s Daughter
An exhibition showcases the graphically powerful work of Mary T. Smith — a self-taught artist from Mississippi — in a rare, in-depth survey.
Art
A History of Writing, from Hieroglyphs to Squiggles
An exhibition at the British Library powerfully delves into the personal and political complexities of writing, driving home that it's not only one of humanity’s greatest inventions, but born out of the strongest human motivations.
Film
How a '70s Anthropological Experiment Turned into the "Sex Raft"
In Marcus Lindeen's documentary The Raft, the subjects of the disastrous study reenact its strange events.
Art
A Show About Stonewall's Legacy Falters on Inclusion
While impressive in its scope and engagement with the era’s tensions, Art After Stonewall fails to adequately represent the roles of people of color, trans folks, and folks with disabilities.
Film
The Woman Who Recorded Decades of TV News on 70,000 VHS Tapes
The documentary Recorder explores the life and work of Marion Stokes, who amassed the world's largest independent TV archive without anyone noticing.