art

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• 10/25/2020
  

  Trump: Superhero or Superspreader?

  by Meredith Martin, Gillian Weiss and Bonnie Siegler

  Inspired by the Sun King’s detractors, the White House Gift Shop’s self-parodying statements, and Trump’s own Superman fantasies, we offer a medal honoring the Super Spreader.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/27/2020
  

  In His Own Words: Jacob Lawrence at the Met and MoMA

  The artist Jacob Lawrence died in 2000; he spent a day in New York museums with Times art critic Michael Kimmelman four years before, discussing art and his creative process. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/19/2020
  

  She Was More Than Just the ‘Most Beautiful Suffragist’

  A contemporary artist is recreating the final campaign of suffrage activist Inez Milholland through historical ephemera, primary documents, and photographic reenactments. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  8/11/2020
  

  African Americans Have Long Defied White Supremacy And Celebrated Black Culture In Public Spaces

  by Shannon M. Smith

  Long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history. But those African American memorial cultures have often been overshadowed by Confederate monuments that dominate public space and set in stone a white supremacist story of the past.

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• SOURCE: Hyperallergic
  8/5/2020
  

  Portraits that Honor the Men Who Participated in the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike

  Carl Juste’s double portrait of father and son presents an extraordinarily intimate experience on the usually busy public plaza surrounding the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in North Miami.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  5/31/2020
  

  Christo, Famous For His Monumental Works Of Art, Dies At 84

  Christo's works played off of their environment in cities around the world.

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• SOURCE: Architectural Digest
  5/5/2020
  

  A New Public Art Installation in Alexandria Confronts the City’s Ties to the Slave Trade

  Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous examines an oft-overlooked aspect of the Virginia port community’s history.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/30/2020
  

  This is how Bad Things are for Museums: They Now Have a Green Light to Sell Off Their Art

  The Association of Art Museum Directors has relaxed its guidelines against selling works of art for operating funds. Now, the notion of selling off a Claude Monet or two to plug a budgetary hole—or to fend off a total financial meltdown—is suddenly something to contemplate.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/17/2020
  

  She Tracked Nazi-Looted Art. She Quit When No One Returned It.

  A researcher stopped working for a German museum after she says she lost faith in its commitment to return works with tainted provenances.

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• 2/11/20
  

  How Somalis Use Theatre to Rebuild Culturally

  by Farah M. Omer

  Modern Somali theatre rose to prominence in the 1960s, the period following the independence and the subsequent unification of Somaliland and Somalia. By the 1970s, there were multiple shows a night in any given city and the average Somali adult was considered a regular theatre goer regardless of socioeconomic status.

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  1/6/20
  

  Nell Irvin Painter Featured in Boston Review

  After retiring from Princeton, celebrated historian Nell Irvin Painter decided to go to art school. In this interview with Walter Johnson, she discusses what it’s like to be an old student, and how art lets her tell truths about history that she couldn’t as an academic.

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• SOURCE: Hyperallergic
  8/28/19
  

  A History of Holocaust Denial Comes Under Scrutiny in The Evidence Room

  The Hirshhorn Museum exhibition, filled with reproductions and plaster casts of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, works through the wounds and scars of a gruesome history.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/25/19
  

  George Washington owned slaves and ordered Indians killed. Will a mural of that history be hidden?

  by Gillian Brockell

  This is the story of the layers of history that will continue to exist underneath, whether the murals are covered by curtains, panels or paint.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/5/2019
  

  The Exhibit Lauded Freedom of Expression. It Was Silenced.

  Statues of so-called comfort women have long been an irritant to Japanese nationalists who dispute that the women were forced into servitude.

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• SOURCE: Frieze
  June 24, 2019
  

  The Untold Queer History of California

  by Bryony White

  Vital indigenous perspectives are highlighted in an exhibition of art and activism at the Oakland Museum, which spans the state’s colonial past to the present.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  June 19, 2019
  

  The Photographer Who Captured 20th-Century Queer Life

  by Hannah Giorgis

  Joan E. Biren’s images from the ’70s and ’80s—which appear in the new exhibit “Art After Stonewall”—reflect an effort to document and encourage lesbian love.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  5/9/19
  

  Now for Sale on Facebook: Looted Middle Eastern Antiquities

  Artifacts said to have been taken from the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria have been offered for sale on Facebook.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  3/19/19
  

  A half-century before the hashtag, artists were on the front lines of #MeToo

  by Vivien G. Fryd

  The cultural prominence of rape and sexual assault might be new. Efforts to bring attention to the issue, however, are not.

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• 3/17/19
  

  Why is the Mona Lisa not the Mona Lisa?

  by Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher Brown

  New research suggests the famous painting in the Louvre does not depict Mona Lisa.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/6/19
  

  Are These Paintings Really by Hitler? German Authorities Are Investigating

  In the last 10 years, the niche market for art by Hitler has grown. But many, if not most, of these works are likely not by Hitler.