Robber Barons, Marcel Duchamp, and Big Museums’ Dirty Little Secrets
In 1915, Marcel Duchamp bought a snow shovel at a hardware store in New York City. He inscribed his signature and the date on its wooden handle. On the evening…
Abstract Trailblazer Frank Stella Dies at 87
The painter and sculptor reoriented the North American arts landscape, defying any strict characterizations of his work as it evolved across concepts and media.
Stunning Codex Documenting Aztec Culture Now Fully Digitized
The 16th-century “Florentine Codex” offers a Mexican Indigenous perspective that is often missing from historical accounts of the period.
A Trite Dramatization of the Oslo Peace Accords
An adaptation of the Tony-winning play, Oslo‘s apolitical take on the Israel-Palestine conflict is of little use to anyone.
Hillbilly Elegy Tries, and Fails, to Understand the Working Class
In 2016 Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance’s memoir of growing up in rural Ohio, became a bestseller in no small part due to the idea that it could “explain” the average…
How the Louvre Codified Essentialism in Art History
The art historical meta-narrative canonized by the Louvre Museum converts all artworks into specimens of their cultural moment. No wall tag can fix this.
The South African Art Collective That Imagined the End of Apartheid
In 1978, Serote and Thamsanqa (Thami) Mnyele founded the Medu Art Ensemble, an art collective that advocated for an end to the South African apartheid government through creative expression —…
Artists Demand Removal of Their Works From Aichi Trienniale in Open Letter
The exhibition After ‘Freedom of Expression?’ was meant to probe Japan’s history of art censoring and celebrate artworks that had been previously excluded from museums in Japan. It was shuttered…
How Abandoned and Eroding Victorian Mansions of the Gilded Age Came to Symbolize Impending Doom
In a portentous video essay for Vox, producer Coleman Lowndes explains why the highly decorated, overly trimmed Victorian mansions (McMansions of their time) of the Gilded Age went from being…