Dec 01
In this day of broad familiarity with Philip Guston’s figurative paintings, it’s hard to comprehend the shock of his 1970 show at Marlborough. Remember, though, that by then Guston, first a muralist and then a part of the New York School, had been painting his gestural liquid masses to much acclaim for over twenty years.
Oct 01
Gina Adams considers herself an Indigenous-hybrid artist involved in a variety of craft-based work rooted in her heritage. Yet her commitment to art-making is equally matched by the extensive research she conducts in libraries, museums, and databases. Its Honor Is Hereby Pledged: Gina Adams is the product of Adams’s deep-dive into American history. It is a stunning collection of works intent on truth-telling, making it all the more relevant and poignant.
Jul 29
With Still Life No. 3, sound artist Raven Chacon (Diné) subverts the notion of the still life, immersing visitors in a layered, multimedia experience of the story of the Navajo people's emergence into this world at the surface of the earth.
May 24
Two years ago, I sat transfixed beside a memorial garden assembled within a gallery at the Frye Art Museum on Seattle’s First Hill. That installation, a feat in and of itself, might have scored my memory even were it not for what preceded it...
Apr 26
Walking around Santiago for a week, I saw it as a magical city. In many neighborhoods, almost every house front is covered with original murals in a dazzling array of styles. Chile is saturated by the long trail of migrations...
Mar 27
It’s late June 1969, and the young people clustered on Christopher Street look giddy, some performing, others a bit shy before the camera. Neither they nor Fred McDarrah, the Village Voice photographer who shot Celebration After Riots Outside Stonewall Inn (1969)...
Jan 30
Photos of Mexico from the 1970s to 2005 by Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide bring a documentary impulse in touch with a poetic eye. Her photos are personal, yet immersive in cultures not her own; unafraid of the humorous, the strange, and the symbolic.
Nov 28
My third-grade field trip to a State Capitol was a muggy school-bus ride to Montgomery, Alabama. We visited the requisite sites, including the state senate chambers and a life-size statue of Jefferson Davis. We were taught that the Capitol building was the first headquarters for the Confederacy during the Civil War, which was fought to preserve “states’ rights.” Rights to do what? is a question nobody asked...
Oct 01
The upcoming exhibition, Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices 1950s to Now, at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, highlights the work of modern Indigenous artists from the U.S. and Canada...
Aug 28
Cheryl Donegan’s GRLZ + VEILS, curated by Heidi Zuckerman and Bill Arning...
Jul 30
For the past several years, the Birmingham Museum of Art has been quietly amassing a powerhouse collection of some of the most significant politically inflected art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Jun 29
Words, whether in the form of slogans, mantras, or hip-hop lyrics, matter, and they are treated reverentially and humorously by multimedia artist Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band Choctaw, Cherokee), whose work is the subject of Like a Hammer, a show on view at the Denver...
Jun 01
Soon after moving to northern New Mexico, almost seven years ago, and after doing a welter of studio visits, I noted the number of exceptional draftspersons in the area and pulled together a proposal for a show of drawings by artists who live in the general area of Taos...
May 01
In a recent interview in Artforum, the artist Howardena Pindell recalls her first efforts toward protesting the oppressive and exclusionary practices of art institutions in the 1970s: “Because I was a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I needed to remain anonymous, so...
Apr 01
Fishing nets once connected the communities along Colombia’s Magdalena (Yuma) river with the water and its populations, but now the waters are so polluted the nets cannot be used for fishing. Carolina Caycedo, whose parents are Colombian, repurposes the nets as hand-dyed sculptures...
Feb 01
Canal Convergence: A tranquil canal that slices through a chic section of downtown Scottsdale, Arizona, is the attractive setting for an annual exhibition of large-scale, temporary, and site-specific art installations. Called Canal Convergence: Water + Art + Light, the...
Dec 01
If you’re Denver-bound this ski season, the MCA Denver has a trifecta of concurrent exhibitions on view through January 29. Kim Dickey: Words Are Leaves is a major survey of work by the Boulder, CO–based artist. Primarily working in ceramics, but also other media including textile and photography...
Nov 01
Throughout the sprawling, cavernous gallery spaces of downtown LA’s Geffen MOCA, the haunting doo-wop coos of “I Only Have Eyes for You” follow viewers everywhere...
Dec 01
Some advice before visiting the Hammer Museum to view Radical Women: make sure you have a few hours, and bring a notebook and pen. The exhibition, a dense and sprawling display of hundreds of works, deserves focused attention, and there will be many artists that most viewers...
Nov 01
The Palm Springs Art Museum, as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, is exhibiting two major installations. Kinesthesia: Latin American Art, 1954-1969 features...
Aug 01
Artist Jimmie Durham is not Cherokee, and that’s a fact. Indigenous tribes in the United States act as sovereign nations that determine their own citizenship, and Durham’s [...]
Jul 01
Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Kerry James Marshall has said of his childhood, “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility. [...]
Apr 01
Denver Art Museum: Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Place is an exhibition of site-specific installations by emerging and mid-career Latino artists that express experiences of contemporary life in the American West [...]
