Ydessa Hendeles: Of Ourselves and of Our Subjects
There is a fine line between being an object and a person. And it’s hard to know when it’s been traversed. The difficulty lies…
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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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A Future Never Sought: Okwui Enwezor’s 56th Venice Biennale
Swimming for his life, a man does not see much of the country through which the river winds. – W. E. Gladstone’s diary, 1868…
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A Pixelating Voice: Reading Sophia Al-Maria’s “Sisters” at the New Museum Triennial
Any visitor to the New Museum Triennial is subject to the burden of information. There’s no ignoring the walls when the walls sprout obstacles…
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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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To Cut and To Swipe: Understanding Hito Steyerl Through “HOW NOT TO BE SEEN”
The complex work of contemporary artist, media theorist, and filmmaker Hito Steyerl often pivots on a surprisingly simple tactic – wordplay. Consistently, across both…
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Taking On “The Gaze,” and Doing Away With it, Too: Warsaw’s Elsner and Rogalski
Whenever I am asked to fill out a form that requires a description of my eye color, I have to get up, find a…
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“Feast”: Xiao Guo Hui’s Divine Tragedy
There are few films that could be said to have led to their director’s deaths; Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or The 120 Days 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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The Troubling Thrill of Invernomuto’s Counter-Ritual
Invernomuto is an Italian duo who bring an uneasy postcolonial funk to contemporary art, somehow managing to capture the over-the-top brio of, say, dub…
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