The Most Important Art Essays of the Year
This time last year, my editor asked me to put together a list of the most important essays of 2014, and I drew a blank….
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The Inequality of Contemporary Art
In an 1854 painting called The Meeting, a young Gustave Courbet depicted himself encountering a rich art patron and his servant. Such was the…
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Beware the “Creative Economy”
One-thousand six-hundred fifty-four. I’m not teaching this semester, but if I were, that is the one number that I would want everyone to remember….
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Successfully Mining Politics for Feeling: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s Istanbul Biennial
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s Istanbul biennial SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms opened with speeches and song as the artworld gathered to see her first major exhibition…
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The Meaning Behind the Merger of ARTnews and Art in America
It’s a media cliché that more has changed in the last ten years in journalism than in the century before that. Yesterday’s big news…
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Can Art Museums Afford to Be Free?
Are art museums better off offering free admission? As the art market surges, and museum attendance rises, the question of what kind of ticket…
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After Bjork Fiasco, MoMA’s Yoko Ono Show Makes a Case for Art and Celebrity
Yoko Ono: One-Woman Show, 1960-1971 arrives at the Museum of Modern Art pre-freighted with issues of art and celebrity that have dogged the institution of…
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The Whitney’s Triumphant New Museum is Worrying For Art
Today, the new Whitney Museum of American Art opens its broad gates to the masses. If New York’s museum competition were a horserace, Renzo Piano’s appealing and thoughtful…
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In “Martin Wong: Painting is Forbidden,” the Wattis Institute Largely Sidesteps Painting
“Basically everything I paint is in my immediate neighborhood, where I ended up,” Martin Wong said in a lecture in 1991. “So, people assume…
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Hito Steyerl’s Nexus of Money, Violence, and Art
Enter the Greene Street location of Artists Space and the voice of martial artist Bruce Lee will greet you. “Empty your mind,” Lee instructs,…
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