Somewhere on a mesa in New Mexico on land belonging to the Zuni resides a powerful war god that once stood—more an exile than a piece of art—in the New York apartment of Emily Hall Tremaine. In solitude, visited by the wind, it looks out at the vastness of the land known as the Middle… Read more »
A simple Dan spoon is anything but simple. To see it solely as a work of art is analogous to seeing a monarch’s crown as merely a fancy hat. Anyone who is not informed about the cultures from which the spoon and the crown arise will misinterpret their significance. In the Dan culture, the spoon… Read more »
This episode was originally posted on the Fresh Art International podcast. What does it mean to be Black in 21st century America? The expression of Blackness in art has a history of intricate connections to civil rights and social movements. In the United States and abroad, painting and drawing, filmmaking and photography, performance and protest have long represented diverse… Read more »
A museum carves and sculpts a cultural space for itself and its collection. Within its halls, a museum tells a story of the art pieces it displays, the artifacts it collects, the curatorial process it embodies. Such a mission can be as broad or as specific as befits the museum’s own calling. For many of… Read more »
Three distinct exhibitions, Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia, Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany, and Black Is, Black Ain’t, took place in three different locations in the US, respectively in 2004, 2007 and 2008. While at first glance, all three exhibitions seem to contend with issues of what might be… Read more »