Art
Winds of Change at the São Paulo Biennial's Introductory Show
Emphasizing obscured histories, Vento inspires hope that the biennial programs to come will be potent enough to raise some dust in Niemeyer’s drafty halls.
Reviews
Film
The Spotless, Uncanny World of Cleaning YouTube
The "Clean with Me" video genre pits our deep need to connect against the pressures that come with sharing the intimacies of one’s life.
Film
At New Directors/New Films, Stories About People Struggling to Heal
This year's online edition of the venerable festival features movies about mourning rituals, reenactments of family history, cult survivors, and more.
Art
John Edmonds’s Intimate Gaze
In his meticulously posed photographs, Edmonds conjures new avenues for imaging relationships between Africa and its diasporas today.
Art
One London Art Center Has Ideas For Navigating the Digital Shift (Some More Useful Than Others)
Serpentine Galleries’ “Future Art Ecosystems” emerges as an odd but occasionally insightful case study of the impact of the broader institutional shift to the digital realm.
Film
A Streaming List for All the Ronald Reagan Haters Out There
Enjoy some dissenting views on the US president — the subject of a new series — from critical explanations of his image-making to a satirical show that makes him a supervillain.
Books
Poking Fun at Art History, Amy Sillman Makes a Case for Awkwardness
A collection of relatable but often erudite texts, Sillman’s Faux Pas: Selected Writings and Drawings muses on the unwieldy question of painting’s status in a world preoccupied with bigger problems.
Art
The Fallacies of Whiteness
Divya Mehra offers a complex view of race and identity that supplants the myth of a monolithic Other.
Art
Anne Truitt’s Spiritual Quest
As her death approached, was the artist starting fresh or beginning to let go?
Art
Clean Lines and Calm in a Time of Unrest
The exhibition "Shofuso and Modernism" presents a synthesis of International Style and Japanese craft traditions.
Books
Some of the Best Art Books of 2020
Abstractions, illusions, DIY concoctions, museums touting their collections, and other holiday confections.
Books
A Poet Who Wrote the Way Abstract Expressionists Painted
Barbara Guest stands apart as a radical traditionalist, committed to poetry’s clairvoyant, mythical potentials.