Art
St. Peter’s Basilica Meets the Black Panthers in a Contemporary Altarpiece
Kevin Beasley's installation feels sublime and sacred in its grandiose silence.
Review
Film
New Jersey’s One Million Acres of Undeveloped, Otherworldly Land
David Kessler spent six years filming the Pine Barrens' landscape and its inhabitants, capturing the area in every imaginable state and season.
Books
A Compendium of Shakespeare’s Plants, from Juliet’s Rose to Ophelia’s Bouquet
The book Botanical Shakespeare, by historian Gerit Quealy with illustrations by Sumié Hasegawa-Collins, compiles the roughly 175 mentions of plants in Shakespeare's plays.
Art
Depicting Nature’s Rebellion Against Humanity
In Thiago Rocha Pitta’s The First Green at Marianne Boesky Gallery, nature is not victimized, but rebellious and intent on reclaiming land lost to humanity.
Art
Learning a Lesson from New York City Birds
A public artwork reminds us that what’s happening to the humans in a city is not necessarily the same as what’s happening to the animals.
Books
A Wordless Journey from Crappy Art to Actual Crap
Tara Booth's graphic memoir D.U.I.I is an exploration of shame and failed expectations
Art
Ai Weiwei Floats a New Project About the Refugee Crisis
Conceived in response to the current humanitarian disaster, Law of the Journey is rooted in the artist's research while on location at refugee camps in Greece
Art
Artists Explore Indigenity Through Printmaking
Map(ing) is part art show, part residency: indigenous North American artists collaborate with Arizona State University graduate students to make prints
Books
101 Unflinching Portraits of Survivors of US Gun Violence
Kathy Shorr's photography book helps to de-normalize what has become painfully normal
Art
A Botanical Garden Blooms with Chagall
It is no small feat that Marie Selby Botanical Gardens managed to provide a new perspective on an exhaustively studied painter and perennial favorite of the art world.
Books
Hirato Renkichi: The Black Shadow-Man Illuminated
Already in the three short volumes which Hirato had hoped to publish, but for which he was unable to raise money, we see a growing tendency to break up the language and images, abstracting them into a pulse of pure energy that conveys the meaning rather than simply expressing it.
Art
Steve Keister’s Cargo Cult of One
The first thing that makes Keister an outlier is that he made sculpture that you didn’t back into, but which you bumped your head against.