The Women Artists Who Found Freedom in Old Age

Oct 9, 2025

In 1982, the Museum of Modern Art staged the first-ever major retrospective dedicated to the work of Louise Bourgeois. She was 70 years old. The overdue exhibition was intended to solidify Bourgeois’s legacy, to recognize more than half a century of creative output....

A Warts-and-All Biography of the Man Behind the Barnes Collection

Sep 26, 2025

Albert C. Barnes, c. 1920–25 (image via the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication) The quality and quantity of art at Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation dazzle. West African masks, Diné jewelry, and decorative...

How the Wound Man Healed Medieval Europe 

Sep 24, 2025

Sebastian Jäger, “Wound Man” (c. 1580), ink and paint on parchment, painted in Vienna, Austria, held in UCLA’s Louise M. Darling Medical Library, MS Benjamin 8, fol. IVv (photo by Jack Hartnell) Even safely contained on the page, the Wound Man is...

Unpacking the Ageist Myths of Western Art 

Sep 22, 2025

The years before Michelangelo’s death were some of his most productive and most celebrated — including his work as the lead architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and his murals at the Pauline Chapel in Rome. He passed at age 88 in 1564, a long life even by today’s...

France Flips the History of Photography Upside Down 

Sep 16, 2025

ARLES, France — The investigation of the archive, in all its malleable reinvention and disruption of canonical narratives, is at the core of this year’s Rencontres d’Arles photography festival and its theme: “Disobedient Images.” The more than 40 exhibitions included...

The Poetry of van Gogh’s Montmartre Years

Sep 16, 2025

Christianity had failed him. What next then? Art?  Vincent van Gogh’s life as an artist had the most faltering and rudimentary of beginnings in 1880. By 1890 he was dead, by suicide, at the age of 37. A tempestuous life snuffed out. A Fire in His Soul: Van Gogh,...

Giuseppe Penone Captures the Breath of the World 

Aug 21, 2025

LONDON — In this era of climate crisis, during which it has become evident that we urgently need to reassess our relationships with the environment and other species, the art world is increasingly commissioning exhibitions themed on ecology and the more-than-human...

Leigh Bowery Was His Own Artwork 

Aug 21, 2025

LONDON — The very idea of encapsulating the concept of Leigh Bowery within a gallery space should not work. He was not someone who brought art objects into the world, but was instead an embodiment of ideas and acts that can no more easily be categorized as singularly...

Dana Awartani’s Gentle Reparation of Gaza

Aug 14, 2025

BRISTOL, England — Last year, Bristol’s Arnolfini cancelled two Bristol Palestine Film Festival events, leading to controversy and a boycott. After mediation with local groups such as Bristol Artists for Palestine, Arnolfini issued a statement apologizing for the...

Sonya Clark’s Communal Tapestry

Aug 14, 2025

Detail of Sonya Clark, “The Hair Craft Project: Hairstylists with Sonya, Sonya Clark with Chaundra King” (2014), pigment print on archival paper (all photos Liz Kim/Hyperallergic) HOUSTON — Sonya Clark might be best known for her use of human hair as medium and...

Caribbean Artists Take on the Myth of Tropical Escapism

Aug 14, 2025

SASKATOON, Canada — Contemporary Caribbean art exhibitions at an institutional level are all too rare. Those that reflect an understanding of the region’s intertwined histories are particularly uncommon. So I can say, as a Trini-Canadian writer and curator, that my...

At 82, Meredith Monk May Finally Get Her Due 

Aug 14, 2025

“She, among all of us, was the uniquely gifted one — is the uniquely gifted one.” So avers none other than Philip Glass, minimalist composer extraordinaire. The “she” in question is Meredith Monk, whose unconventional genius epitomized the creative avant-garde during...