Books
Why Is It So Easy to Buy a Human Skull Online?
Damien Huffer and Shawn Graham’s These Were People Once mines the illicit online sale of human remains and the social media algorithms that enable it.
Reviews
Art
How Commercial Photography Sold Modernism
The Real Thing at the Met Museum shows that the advertising tactics of commercial studios were in dialogue with avant-garde art in the 1920 and ’30s.
Art
Fritz Scholder’s Art of Non-Belonging
Scholder, who called himself a "non-Indian Indian," refused to conform to expectations and rejected limiting definitions of his identity as Native American.
Art
The Art of Touch
An exhibition explores touch, from the possessive love of a mother holding her child to the violent and coercive contact that sometimes takes place between strangers.
Art
Is Toronto’s Art Triennial Just for Those “In the Know”?
The triennial maps what it means to be an artist from here, from somewhere else but now living here, or from here but living somewhere else.
Art
You Can’t Finish This Brian Eno Doc in a Single Lifetime
An algorithm organizes a unique ordering of scenes for each screening, meaning there are millions of versions of the film.
Art
A Fiber-Forward Vision of Modern Art
An exhibition at the National Gallery of Art makes the case that textiles are an integral part of modernist art history.
Art
There’s Something Toxic About Megan Bickel’s Landscapes
Knowledge, visual perception, and the disruption of both by new technologies are at the heart of artist’s multimedia paintings.
Art
The Chicanx and Latinx Artists Who Made the Border a Connection Point
Suturing the Border shows how an international group of artists built relationships along this nebulous zone dividing Mexico and the United States.
Art
Seeing Is Creating in Mark Milroy’s Art
Milroy begins his paintings with direct observation but ends up someplace that I cannot name.
Art
The Geometry in Motion of Nancy Holt
A survey at Gropius Bau frames Holt as an artist committed to the human body’s actions and dimensions, and its perceptual and cognitive boundaries.
Film
Shunga Might Just Convince You That Pornography Is Art
Director Junko Hirata delves deep into the history and influence of the pornographic art form without cheap tittering at its illicit imagery.