Film
The Complicated Legacy of Gertrude Bell, the Englishwoman Who Helped Colonize the Middle East
A new film looks at the life of the female explorer, spy, translator, and archaeologist, who's been largely written out of history.
Review
Art
Drawing on Firsthand Experience to Depict the Horrors of Hurricane Katrina
Dapper Bruce Lafitte's work records a singular personal trajectory in a grander, historically significant moment.
Art
A Collaborative Reading of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” All Across Alabama
Whitman, Alabama presents a pointillistic portrait of the American identity through videos of Alabama residents reading the epic poem.
Art
How the 1960s and ’70s Counterculture Queered Fashion
Counter-Couture at the Museum of Arts and Design offers a new way to think about the legacy of the counterculture movement.
Books
Photographing Thoreau's Walden Pond in Its Altered 21st-Century Landscape
From 2010 to 2014, photographer S.B. Walker explored the shores of Walden Pond, where Thoreau's bucolic environment now bustles with recreation and development.
Art
Hints of Queer Desire in Erased Pornographic Images
In Stephen Irwin's altered images of pornography magazines, figures previously engaged in sex acts are now alone, or barely present at all.
Art
Self-Portraits of the Artist as Historical African Figures
In his debut US exhibition, Omar Victor Diop inserts conspicuously absent historical black male figures into Western art.
Art
Nina Katchadourian’s Playful, Persistent Questioning
A survey of the artist's work at the Blanton Museum of Art argues that there's a seriousness behind her irrepressible pluckiness.
Art
The Evolution of Diane Arbus in 35mm
The exhibition diane arbus: in the beginning gathers images the photographer shot between 1956 and 1962, when she started using the distinctive Rolleiflex camera with which she captured her most famous photos.
Art
Tapestries Depict the Anger and Intimacy of the Human Struggle
Christina Forrer's colorful and gripping tapestries, currently on view at the Swiss Institute, focus on the awkward physicality of aggression.
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.
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.