Writing About Indigenous Art with Critical Care
With arms crossed, a Métis curator contemplates Kent Monkman’s The Scream (2017) at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The history painting dramatizes Canada’s seizure of First Nations,…
The Spaces Where We Live: Gentrification, Insecurity, and Experimental Living in LA
Four men came to our house because they were interested in architecture. They knew someone who knew our landlord, which is how they got…
With Sharper Tools: Defending the National Endowment for the Arts
The Heritage Foundation and conservative groups like it have been trying to kill the National Endowment for the Arts for decades. Last month, the Trump…
The Lake and The Lake: Against Crisis as Narrative
A small white pile of foam glistens in the sun. Moments later it evaporates, its wetness seeped into the earth. By small I mean…
Anna Oppermann Looks Down
In 1979 at a University of Kansas conference, a remarkably contemporary thesis about the Venus of Willendorf and other similar Upper Paleolithic “goddess” figurines…
Living Fragments: On Berlin’s Winter of Broken Pieces
I, for one, want to be broken into pieces. The way sappy music breaks its lovers. We bright-lit gallery people are more reserved. But…
Episode 16: “What Makes Great Art?” with Margaux Williamson
As we continue to circle the question “what makes great art?”, Sky Goodden spoke with Margaux Williamson, a slow painter who gives the greatest primacy…
Lives of the Artists: Remembering Vilmos
I first met Vilmos in January of 1970, in the depths of an Ontario winter, at the London Psychiatric Hospital. I was twenty-two and…
To Better Days: Optimistic Design for an Uncertain Future
If it’s common knowledge among architects, engineers, and urban planners that design determines quality of life, the Designs for Different Futures exhibition, currently on…
The Weight of Enduring: Miles Greenberg’s Sanguine Devotion
Weeks before the new year, the artist Miles Greenberg staged a seven-hour performance that saw him standing semi-nude, wearing what looked to be a…
The Apocalypse is Selective, Not Total: Geoffrey Pugen’s Disanthropic Moment
I clung to my ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my war against civilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to…
Detective Stories about Feelings: The Driving Force of Peter Schjeldahl
Most of us have never known an art world without Peter Schjeldahl in it. We count on him being part of New York like…
An Arch and a Gulf: When Public Art Falls Short of Social Reality
Today, iconic public artworks, both permanent and temporary, are defining visual elements of many urban landscapes – from the LOVE sculpture (1976) in Philadelphia…
“There is a Tongue for This”: Aurora as Art Writing
The sky is called the firmament because it supposedly stays still. Abruptly, we saw this etymology break down: a thin vaporous green trail, like…
Open Secrets: Gossip and the Reframing of a Canadian Painting Dynasty
The October 12, 2019, edition of CBC Radio’s “Weekend AM Newfoundland with Heather Barrett” begins with a Thanksgiving-themed story about Newfoundland’s love of the…
After the Afterparty: Alan Belcher and Friends, in Retrospect
Alan Belcher’s Friends at Downs & Ross is an afterparty. The works in the exhibition are a series of mascot-like plush sculptures sitting in…