On May 6, two feminist activists entered Centre Pompidou-Metz in France and spray-painted Gustave Coubert’s 1866 work “The Origin of the World” with the “Me Too” slogan. Artist Deborah De Robertis claimed responsibility for the action, saying her intention was to “call on all women, with or without vulvas, all intersex, trans and non-binary people,…
In the months preceding its release, Legacy Russell’s Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us (2024) generated a considerable amount of literary notoriety. The curator and writer’s second publication details the story of memetic Blackness — the migration and circulation of Blackness as material — deftly stitching together analyses of accounts from…
Forge Project 2024 fellowship winners (clockwise from top left): Delbert Anderson (Navajo/Diné), Schon Matthew Duncan (United Keetoowah Band of the Cherokee Indians), Donna Hogerhuis (Stockbridge-Munsee), Lindsay McIntyre (Inuit), Mikayla Patton (Oglala Sioux Lakota), and Sterling Anthony Schreiber II (Stockbridge-Munsee) (images courtesy Forge Project) The Native-led arts and culture advocacy organization Forge Project announced its 2024…
On the night of May 6, between dress adjustments, pearl placements, and camera flashes at the controversial Met Gala, 27 protesters were arrested on the Upper East Side during a pro-Palestine demonstration while Israeli forces seized the Rafah crossing that displaced Palestinians relied on for their evacuation to Egypt. In response to the celebrity silence…
Every May 15 for the last 76 years, Palestinians around the world commemorate the Nakba (Arabic for “the catastrophe”), during which 750,000 Palestinians were permanently displaced from their homelands as a result of the establishment of the State of Israel. During this mass exodus, the ancient embroidery practice known as taṭrīz or tatreez became an…
DETROIT — Above a little snarl where Detroit’s major freeways meet in the middle of the city, a towering mural rises into view. Painted by Smug, the artwork depicts city native painter and muralist Bakpak Durden in a larger-than-life calling card that suits its unexpectedly approachable subject perfectly. “Smug was one of the artists that…
Burning Man has removed a pro-Palestine artwork from its website days after a Change.org petition called to take it down. The petition’s authors said the work’s title, “From the River to the Sea,” constituted “language that advocates for the annihilation of Israel.” The sculpture was conceived as an 8-by-14-foot fiberglass installation in the shape of…
George Frederic Watts’s 1868 portrait of Thomas Carlyle at London’s National Portrait Gallery (all photos Michael Glover/Hyperallergic) LONDON — “It’s too long by far!” I’m telling my barber. It’s a chilly late Monday morning, and I’m down at Q for Hair at Clapham North for the weekly beard trim. I’m pulling at it as I…
Louise Nevelson on the cover of the May 1979 issue of ArtNews with an annotated note to her granddaughter (image courtesy the Louise Nevelson Foundation) There are more artists whose legacies are worth preserving than bandwidth for art professionals to undertake that preservation. Consequently, it often falls to the artist’s family to take up this…
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, “Replenishing” (2001), composition of seven Polaroid Polacolor Pro photographs, 88 1/2 x 66 inches (image courtesy the artist) Mother’s Day, traditionally celebrated on the second Sunday in May in the United States, can evoke a vast range of feelings, from pride to comfort to grief to apathy. On this day, some of us will celebrate,…