When is an apple not an apple? February 09, 2024 When it comes time to use images to support a written report, a presentation, or a publication, oftentimes people find themselves stumped. The early years of education introduce students to the building blocks of verbal literacy, but very few of us are taught the ways in which images communicate their magic. Read More
Robin Schuldenfrei on Objects in Exile January 30, 2024 Robin Schuldenfrei reveals how the process of migration was crucial to the development of modernism. Read More
The artist Mina Loy: Modernist constellation June 26, 2023 Not since Marcel Duchamp curated Mina Loy’s last one-person exhibition in New York at the Bodley Gallery in 1959 has the latter artist risen above the obscuring cloud of mystery and notoriety that set to her heels in 1914. Read More
Roni Horn’s reflections on Iceland June 07, 2023 I returned to Iceland with migratory insistence and regularity. The necessity of it was part of me. Iceland was the only place I went without cause, just to be there. Read More
When Eero Met His Match May 04, 2023 Aline B. Louchheim (1914–1972) was an art critic on assignment for the New York Times in 1953 when she first met the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. She would become his wife and the driving force behind his rise to critical prominence. Read More
Tracing the global travels of Isabella Stewart Gardner April 12, 2023 To describe the fairy-tale effect of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s spellbinding interior is to verge upon the cliché—and yet, the historical bridge between its enchanting atmosphere and the global travels of the museum’s founder and namesake is a complicated one that needs restoration. Read More
In Dialogue: What is misunderstood about Blackness? February 27, 2023 For decades, ‘Blackness’ has been a crucial political and cultural category that grounds a public discourse on cherishing a robust historical tradition and systemically uprooting white supremacy. Read More
Ukraine’s memorials February 20, 2023 One of the curiosities of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is how, even amid the deprivations of a savage war, Ukrainians have turned their attention to destroying or de-Russifying Soviet monuments and protecting their own. Read More
Roland Betancourt on White: The History of a Color February 02, 2023 Moving away from those who might wish to find a universal symbolism or archetypal truth in a color, Michel Pastoureau’s The History of a Color series has sought to understand color as first and foremost a social phenomenon, one with historically grounded realities and effects. Read More
Batman’s holy grotto: The psychic resurrection of Bruce Conner February 02, 2023 Bohemian San Francisco gained a new gathering place in 1960 when the deep-pocketed aspiring painter Billie Jahrmarkt and his wife Joan decided to found a gallery for the benefit of their artistic and literary friends. Two such, artist Bruce Conner and poet/playwright Michael McClure, took the project in hand. Read More
The need for material literacy October 03, 2022 In a time of screen saturation, digitized images of objects and manuscripts, and an emphasis on “knowledge workers” rather than craftspeople, we run the risk of becoming materially illiterate. Read More
Aline, Eero, my boyfriend, and me September 20, 2022 A few years ago, after I had just met my boyfriend, we found ourselves driving in circles around a Colorado carpark. He claims the carpark was confusingly oriented, that its architecture seemed to indicate that we would go either up or down if we kept going. Read More
Bénédicte Savoy on Africa’s Struggle for its Art May 09, 2022 For decades, African nations have fought for the return of countless works of art stolen during the colonial era and placed in Western museums. In Africa’s Struggle for Its Art, Bénédicte Savoy brings to light this largely unknown but deeply important history. Read More
In Dialogue with Lucas Bessire and Emmet Gowin April 29, 2022 In The One Hundred Circle Farm, renowned photographer Emmet Gowin (b. 1941) presents stunning aerial images of center-pivot irrigation systems in the western and midwestern United States. In this short discussion with anthropologist and National Book Award finalist Lucas Bessire, author of Running Out, Gowin offers insight into his powerful photographic survey of the impact of irrigation systems on landscape. Read More
Listen in: Africa’s Struggle for Its Art April 14, 2022 For decades, African nations have fought for the return of countless works of art stolen during the colonial era and placed in Western museums. In Africa’s Struggle for Its Art, Bénédicte Savoy brings to light this largely unknown but deeply important history. Read More