Do You Have to Be Rich to Make It as an Artist?
On my end-of-the-year “Best Shows” list, I nominated Rachel Rose’s hypnotic Everything and More video at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In response,…
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From Exile to Acclaim, the Unlikely Story of Mu Xin, and China’s Reformation
Landscaping along the 87-mile stretch of highway from Shanghai to the ancient village of Wuzhen in southern China is a work in progress. On…
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No Land in Sight: A Timely Response to the Migrant Crisis from Denmark’s SUPERFLEX
A small white boat navigates forceful swells and choppy waves. No land in sight, this lone vessel presses forth. Fortunately, the lightly clouded sky…
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Abstraction Made Political: Helena Almeida Rewrites Her Own History in Portugal
In 1968 political turmoil and tumult reverberated throughout America, Europe, and beyond. Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm described this year as a signpost; almost every…
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Any Plans After the Exhibition?
The image above is an installation shot from When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013. It was a recreation of Harald Szeeman’s famous exhibition…
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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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Why Can’t We Talk About Class and Art in Canada?
A couple of weeks ago, an old friend posted a j’accuse on social media. It was brief and blunt and perhaps even rude. They…
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The Problem of Access: An Interview with Emerging First Nations Artist Joseph Tisiga
Joseph Tisiga is an emerging artist of a particular stripe. He is young (born in 1984), and very successful: he was nominated as a…
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Friends Among Us: Reflections on the Value and Risk of Nepotism in Art
Corazon del Sol had just arrived in Lisbon, to an apartment she left in the early 2010s, not long after losing someone close. She…
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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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