Eliana Willis

What is scripted or planned versus improvised isn’t discernible in Jacklean (in rehearsal)—the latest performance project by Mariana Valencia—and that is exactly why it is as captivating as it is.
Presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio, Jacklean (in rehearsal) was produced in collaboration with sound artist and musician Jazmin “Jazzy” Romero, who shares the stage with Valencia for the course of the 60-minute performance. Featuring music, song, dialogue, and choreography, the show uses a fictional character by the name of Jacklean as a starting point.
Mariana Valencia, Jacklean (in rehearsal) (2025), with music by Jazzy Romero. Photo: Maria Baranova. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Valencia and Lydia Okrent, a fellow performance artist and long-time collaborator, first conceived of Jacklean in 2014. In Valencia’s words, “Jacklean is a being who will arrive to us in the future, and it will be a future without identity binary, and Jacklean will prefer the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us,’ and Jacklean is the perfect example of improvisation at its best. A kind of vision for hope and potential that came to Lydia and I.”
While Jacklean’s conceptual origins date back to 2014, the present project was largely born out of the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, when seemingly everything was brought into question: institutions, communities, life and death, and artmaking itself. From this perspective, Valencia developed a performance that focused on crafting a solid, creatively rigorous framework on which experimental and ever-evolving presentations could be hung.
“It’s not about proposing a final project but proposing a structure for work to be made again and again, an improvisatory structure, a structure of rehearsal, a structure of practice, and a structure where I’m not focused on product,” said Valencia.
Mariana Valencia, Jacklean (in rehearsal) (2025), with music by Jazzy Romero. Photo: Maria Baranova. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In its present iteration, the fluidity of exchange between Romero and Valencia speaks not only to the efficacy of their collaboration but also to their respective creative fortes. Valencia, who was awarded the Outstanding Breakout Choreographer at the 2018 Bessie Awards and participated in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, has been an important figure in the New York performance art scene for more than a decade. Weaving together elements of her personal life, relationships, anxieties, and more, a vibrant and dynamic world is brought to life in the performance, highlighting her individual experience while simultaneously casting a light on the greater context these thoughts and encounters occur.
Within the performance’s structure, space is carved out for Romero to in turn bring her own creative vision. “Jazzy is working through tools and modalities of electronic music or acoustic or vocal, or her histories in punk music and Spanish speaking music and traditional music from Mexico,” Valencia said.
Mariana Valencia, Jacklean (in rehearsal) (2025), with music by Jazzy Romero. Photo: Maria Baranova. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
While the performance could not necessarily be described as participatory, at various moments in the piece the audience participates, answering questions collectively or, in several of the more humorous moments (skillfully inserted as a counterweight to the weighty, vulnerable tenor of the piece overall), laughter feeds into the reciprocal nature built between viewer and performer.
“It’s a process of the audience watching Jazzy and I communicate, but also us communicating to them in a way that isn’t ‘we broke the fourth wall,’ but as people to people.”
With eight performances in the series total, and knowing the pivotal role improvisation plays in the work, it’s difficult at first (even if subconsciously) not to seek out the boundary between the planned and unplanned, attempting to suss out what might be the variable between iterations. Valencia’s personable and accessible execution of Jacklean (in rehearsal), however, quickly makes the delineation feel moot. Instead, viewers come away with a feeling analogous to having spent time with a close friend you haven’t seen in a long time, the type where you pick up right where you left off. And perhaps this is at the crux of what or who Jacklean is—a cogent reminder of just how small the chasm really is between you and I and we and us. More

Unfortunately, almost everyone has resonated at some time or other with Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893). So much so, it seems, that a recent investigation found that the legendary masterpiece had been damaged by eager visitors breathing too heavily in front of the work. The iconic painting wasn’t the only time that the leading Norwegian modernist sought to personify some form of existential angst, with other examples being Despair (1894) and Melancholy (1891). Yet, it was in the many portraits also produced by Munch that he was able to attempt a slightly more subtle probing of the human condition.
A group of more than 40 of these character studies have just gone on display as part of “Edvard Munch Portraits” at the National Portrait Gallery in London, through June 15. The exhibition reveals new dimensions to Munch, using his art to build up a vivid sense of his biography, his wider cultural milieu, and his developing style before, during, and after several influential years spent in Paris and Berlin.
Though many of the paintings on display, especially those of family or close friends, contain the moments of brilliance we would expect from such an internationally beloved artist, some of his society portraits are surprisingly slapdash and inept. It may be that some level of intimacy was required for Munch to do what he does best: employ gestural brushwork to make paint quite magically metamorphose into a bewitching psychological presence.
“Throughout his life, Munch sought to delve behind the masks of those he portrayed, using expressive paintwork to reveal inner feelings and motivations,” explained the show’s curator Alison Smith.
Here is our pick of five must-see masterpieces from the show.

Tête-à-tête (1885)
Edvard Munch, Tête-à-tête (1885). Photo: Halvor Bjørngård, © Munchmuseet.
Painted when Munch, who was born in late 1863, was just 21, Tête-à-tête is a scene in which the artist’s friend, fellow artist Karl Jensen-Hjell, can be seen from behind appearing to chat up a mysterious woman at a bar. It has been suggested that the woman in the picture is Munch’s sister Inger, which, though he was immersed in bohemian circles, may have risked her reputation in the late 19th century. This may be why neither sitter was ever formally identified, but double portraits, building narrative around subjects, and integrating them into a seemingly natural, candid scene, would all be recurring features of Munch’s later work.

Evening (1888)
Edvard Munch, Evening (1888). Photo: © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
A few years later, Munch painted his other sister Laura in Evening, a painting that might on the surface appear to be a pleasant scene of a woman in a straw sunhat enjoying a sunny vista. That is, until the viewer squares in on the subject’s face, with her intense stare betraying an inner turmoil that would align with the mental health condition that Laura struggled with. The sense of alienation is heightened by a ghostly white presence faintly perceivable at the center of the canvas, the remnants of an original composition that included a standing woman, most likely Munch’s other sister Inger. With her absence, the composition becomes an obvious precursor to Melancholy, which contains a similarly posed figure modeled on Munch’s friend Jappe Nilssen.

Thor Lütken (1892)
Edvard Munch, Thor Lütken (1892). Photo: Sidsel de Jong.
In one apparently ordinary portrait of Munch’s friend, the lawyer Thor Lütken, eagle-eyed observers will spot an intriguing painting within a painting. What could, at a glance, be the white cuff poking out from a black jacket sleeve, appears, in fact, to be one of two figures—one dressed in white, the other in black—making their way through a mysterious, moonlit landscape. This highly unusual vignette is left ambiguous, and it is up to the viewer to decide whether it might be an allusion to romance or death, two themes that recurred frequently in Munch’s work.

The Brooch. Eva Mudocci (1902)
Edvard Munch, The Brooch. Eva Mudocci (1902). Photo: courtesy Peder Lund, © Private collection.
Munch’s prints are among the most affecting works on view at the National Portrait Gallery, including the lithograph The Brooch. Eva Mudocci, of the English violinist who was a friend and potentially lover of the artist. According to the exhibition catalogue, during Munch’s Symbolist phase, he tended to portray women as either positive or negative archetypes. If he admired the woman, as was the case with Mudocci, they might be idolized, but other women with whom he had more painful relationships were imagined as malevolent femme fatales.

Model with a Green Scarf (Sultan Abdul Karim) (1916)
Edvard Munch, Model with a Green Scarf (Sultan Abdul Karim) (1916). Photo: © Munchmuseet.
Munch made portraits of many of the men who worked for him, and one of these was his chauffeur Sultan Abdul Karem, who had arrived to Norway as a traveling member of the German Hagenbeck Circus. He and Munch met during a stop in Oslo. Eventually, the artist made seven paintings and one lithography of Karem, and the nature of these works differs greatly. In Cleopatra and the Slave, he is represented as an enslaved person, reinforcing racist stereotypes of Black people at that time. However, in Model with a Green Scarf, Karem is not exoticized or othered but shown simply as he was, wearing casual winter clothes.
“Edvard Munch Portraits” is on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through June 15. More

Satellite Ranch opened last weekend across a 10-acre sprawl in Austin, Texas, transformed into a playground for artists, craftspeople, and performers. The Texas event is an outpost of Satellite Art Fair, founded in 2015 by New York artist Brian Andrew Whiteley (he of the Trump tombstone). When I visited the art show on Sunday, the scene was bucolic—the ranch’s buildings housing myriad exhibitions and projects, the sun beaming on a host of outdoor sculptures. Not so, however, in photographer Phil Buehler’s cyclorama.
The indoor installation is a cylindrical plywood structure featuring a panoramic image on its inside. Visitors stepping into the curved space find themselves immersed in a 360-degree view of the remains of an apartment complex in Ukraine after it had been targeted by Russian bombs, courtesy of a high-definition photograph by Buehler. Over the entire scene, an air raid siren plays on loop. It’s a powerful experience, however lo-fi.
Installation view of Phil Buehler, The Perils of Indifference at Satellite Ranch in Austin, Texas, 2025. Photo courtesy of Phil Buehler.
“I always feel like these cycloramas are like a transporter,” he told me. “I try to bring things in from someplace else in a different way than other people would. It’s getting a message across in a different way than a writer or a filmmaker or the news would, because art goes into your head a different way.”
Buehler has had a long history of photographing sites equally haunting and haunted. Since 1973, he’s visited the remains of Ellis Island, the Greystone Park psychiatric facility, and New York’s 1964 World’s Fair—documenting what he terms “endangered history.”
His work has also intersected with his activism: he’s photographed the site in Ferguson where Michael Brown was killed, installed a massive mural chronicling U.S. president Donald Trump’s lies, and created a memorial on the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. His cycloramas have captured events from the 2017 Women’s March to a Trump rally. More recently, his mural projects, Empty Beds and Irpin Ukraine: Please Don’t Forget Us, have unpacked the devastation wrought on Ukraine by Russian forces.
Installation view of Phil Buehler, The Perils of Indifference at Satellite Ranch in Austin, Texas, 2025. Photo courtesy of Phil Buehler.
His new installation features an image Buehler created in Borodyanka during his first trip to Ukraine, which he took with his wife, the artist Lisa Levy. In the background are variously charred and ruined buildings—some apartments appear abandoned; some have their windows boarded up with wood, signaling that their occupants had returned after the bombing; and others destroyed, their insides exposed to the elements. A children’s toy store is visible in the distance. In the foreground is a field of yellowed grass, amid which a swing set stands askew.
Buehler’s decision to center the panoramic view in the complex’s playground was a conscious one. “I wanted to have some humanity,” he said. “It’s hard to get humanity when there’s nothing inside.”
(Not in frame but close by, Buehler told me, is a wall with a Banksy on it. “It was coming apart. When I was there, there were some Italians who were squirting glue behind the plaster with syringes, so the plaster wouldn’t come off the brick.”)
Installation view of Phil Buehler, The Perils of Indifference at Satellite Ranch in Austin, Texas, 2025. Photo courtesy of Phil Buehler.
The artist has titled the cyclorama The Perils of Indifference, a nod to Elie Wiesel’s 1999 speech at the White House. It’s also even more resonant at this moment, as Russia’s war on Ukraine enters its third year, and as Trump, following a disastrous meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, waffles on sending further aid to the embattled nation. “We’re going backwards,” Buehler noted.
It’s why the photographer has opted to work with nonprofits such as Liberty Ukraine, which has backed The Perils of Indifference, in his continued bid to ensure exposure for the ongoing conflict.
“I almost use art as a media provocation,” he explained, telling me about the curiosity that greeted his Ferguson cyclorama when it was installed in Brooklyn. “Art seduces you in a different way. The nature of the cyclorama is that there’s no perspective. You stand in the middle and there’s no framing. You get to choose what you look at.”
Installation view of Phil Buehler, The Perils of Indifference at Satellite Ranch in Austin, Texas, 2025. Photo: Min Chen.
After Satellite, Buehler’s plywood cyclorama (the first one he’s hand-built; his other structures were aluminum constructions) will make its way to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, he will install it with an entirely different image: that of the ward in Greystone Park where the folk legend spent his final years. The picture is plucked from Buehler’s 2013 book Wardy Forty, compiled in partnership with the Woody Guthrie Archives.
That showcase is worlds removed from his Ukraine project, just as his war images are somewhat distinct from his pictures of abandoned sites. But seen together, they’re testament to Buehler’s roving eye and curiosity. Visitors to his cycloramas aren’t the only ones getting immersed.
“These art projects allow me to join groups that otherwise might not necessarily be a natural fit,” he said. “These different worlds are interesting to me. What are they feeling? What are they sharing? There are commonalities: they love their kids and their family, they want their freedom, and they don’t want to be told what to do. The stuff that’s good about America? They want the good stuff.”
Satellite Ranch is on view at 719 Shady Lane, Austin, Texas, through March 15. More

So often, a work of art is meant to reflect beauty, the artist dexterously rendering something that is pleasing to the eye, recording it for posterity. But in “Uncanny” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, there’s something downright anxiety-provoking about the work on view, all of which is slightly strange and unsettling, mixing the familiar and the unknown to an uncomfortable effect.
“This is a show about how women artists express their discomfort and unease about the world around them, reflecting on their lived experiences,” NMWA associate curator Orin Zahra said at the exhibition press preview.
“The exhibition name comes from Sigmund Freud,” she added. “He described the term ‘uncanny’ as a psychological experience of seeing something that was both familiar and foreign at the same time, something that we recognized was also something mysterious and alien. The two-sided nature of that is what provokes these feelings of discomfort and unease in us.”
In organizing the show, Zahra wanted to see how women artists had explored the concept—something she realized had not really been done in other exhibitions.
“There has been a lot of historical stereotypes about what women’s art looks like: pretty, ornate, or small,” she said. “It’s not necessarily weird, or cerebral, or irrational. This is a show that turns that on its head because you’re looking at those exact ideas through the women’s lens.”
That includes works that explores the ways in which the world can be an unsafe space for women—something that seems especially timely in Washington D.C. given the current political climate.
The exhibition features examples of 20th-century Surrealism by the likes of Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) and Meret Oppenheim (1913–1985), as well more contemporary works by established names including Laurie Simmons (1949–) and Gillian Wearing (b. 1963), and less well-known figures such as Fabiola Jean-Louis (b. 1978) and Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990).
We asked Zahra to tell us about five of the most uncanny works in “Uncanny.”

Julie Roberts (b. 1963), Sigmund Freud Study (1998)
Julie Roberts, Sigmund Freud Study (1998). Collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., gift of the Heather and Tony Podesta Collection. Photo by Lee Stalsworth, ©Julie Roberts/DACS, London.
The show’s Freud connection is most prominent in the work of Julie Roberts, who paints interior scenes on colorful, monochromatic backgrounds. Each work looks unassuming at first glance, but these are places where women have been harmed, be it physically, mentally, or emotionally.
That includes Roberts’s painting of Freud’s famous study, with the psychoanalyst’s chair and the couch for the patient, rendered in neat, precise detail against a field of mustard yellow.
“Julie is quite critical of those institutions that exercise control over women. And it was Freud who theorized about hysteria, and that it was a disorder that was found predominantly in women,” Zahra said. “As a result of his writings, a lot of women are put in mental asylums. Because he wrote that they were directly related to their reproductive organs, a lot of women were forced to have hysterectomies.”

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), Untitled (with Foot), 1989
Louise Bourgeois, Untitled (with Foot), 1989. Collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., gift from the trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Museum purchase with funds provided by the Roger S. Firestone Foundation Fund, the Friends of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, William A. Clark Fund, the gift of William E. Share [by exchange], the Women’s Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Carolyn Alper). Photo ©the Easton Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.You’d be forgiven for mistaking this pink marble sculpture by Louise Bourgeois for an abstract work, depending on the angle from which you approach the piece.
“I do recommend that you walk around. You have this really smooth, perfectly formed orb, this globe—this is not easy [to carve] by the way,” Zahra said. “And then you see this chubby baby leg sticking out from underneath that ball. On one hand, you have this tender flesh, something that feels cute and pudgy, and you have these feelings of tenderness towards it. And you’re suddenly shocked with that association that the baby may have gotten trampled under that heavy object.”
The somewhat disturbing work is likely inspired by Bourgeois’s own experiences with childbirth—which is often traumatic both physically and emotionally—and the challenges of motherhood.
“She felt quite ambivalent about the idea of childbirth. That in itself is, I think, was due to the defined expectations of women’s roles at that time,” Zahra added. “Bourgeois thought that she could never have children, and when she did, she suffered postpartum depression. She’s giving voice to these experiences that certainly her male counterparts were not exploring in their art.”

Stephanie Dinkins (b. 1964), Conversations With Bina48 (2014–)
Stephanie Dinkins, Conversations with Bina48 (2014–). Photo courtesy of the artist, ©Stephanie Dinkins.
A trio of short videos in the exhibition capture the artist Stephanie Dinkins’s conversations with Bina48, a chatbot with a human face based on a Black woman named Bina Aspen, the wife of the robot’s creator, Martine Rothblatt.
But Bina48’s conversations suggest that the chatbot likely has very little in common with the face she embodies—something the artist believes reflects the biases of the white men who programmed the robot.
“What Stephanie is pointing out is the kind of lack of diversity in the tech world, both gender and racial,” Zahra said. “Because when she’s asked questions like ‘who are your people’ or ‘what emotions do you feel,’ Bina48 is not able to talk about the Black experience or the experience of Black women in America, even though she’s modeled after a Black woman. When you have a homogeneous population in charge of developing technology that will be deployed everywhere all over the world, that becomes very problematic.”

Frida Orupabo (b. 1986), Labour II (2022)
Frida Orupabo, Labour II (2022). On loan from Darryl Atwell. Photo by Nina Lieska, ©Frida Orupabo, courtesy of the artist and Stevenson Cape Town/Johannesburg/Amsterdram.
The exhibition showcases a pair of work by Frida Orupabo, a Nigerian Norwegian artist who is gaining attention for her collages based on historical imagery.
“Frida mines colonial archives for imagery. She also looks at Renaissance paintings, at films. She goes through pornography to get different body parts,” Zahra said. “She might get an arm from one source, a leg from another, and then she pins them together and essentially Frankensteins a new being.”
It’s this use of familiar images in strange combinations that give Orupabo’s work its uncanny sense, her hybrid creatures literally held together by pins.
Her piece Labour II is a dark one on multiple levels, referring both to the historical experiences of enslaved women who would have their children stolen from them, having to care instead for white children, and to maternal mortality in the present day, which is statistically far more likely to impact Black mothers.
The work shows a naked Black woman lying down, as if just having given birth. Her baby, which has no arms or legs below the knees is perched on her stomach, and both turn their heads to meet the viewer’s gaze.
“Frida herself went through some difficulties and challenges postpartum and through the labor process in the modern medical system,” Zahra said. “She says that by staring back at the viewer, it is her way of refusing to be made into an object.”

Remedios Varo (1908–1963), Tejido espacio-tiempo (Weaving of Space and Time), 1954
Remedios Varo, Tejido espacio-tiempo (Weaving of Space and Time), 1954. Collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., gift from a private collection. Photo by Lee Stalsworth, ©2023 Remedios Varo/Artists Rights Society, New York/VEGAP, Madrid.
Spanish Mexican painter Remedios Varo had her own unique take on the Surrealist trope of the woman as an inanimate object—rather than dehumanizing the female form, Varo was thinking more broadly about humankind, and how we can all be cogs in the machine.
Both the man and woman in Tejido espacio-tiempo (Weaving of Space and Time) have wheels and gears where their bodies should be, and are encircled in a kind of woven basket themselves.
“Varo was part of this generation that escaping the fascism and totalitarianism in Europe,” Zahra said. “They were really leaning into the irrational as a way to offset what they thought was responsible for all the war and violence that they were seeing.”
“Uncanny” is on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C., February 28–August 10, 2025. More

There is no museum that could contain art made on a truly monumental scale. It needs space to breathe. In turn, man-made architectural and artistic interventions have an almost paradoxical ability to articulate a landscape of already stunning natural beauty. It is these elements that make Desert X a much-anticipated staple of the art world calendar that always promises panoramas verging on the sublime. The 2025 edition is no different.
Once again, a crop of 11 artists from across the globe have had their site-specific ideas installed amid the sprawling, breathtaking landscapes of California’s Coachella Valley, which range from dusty, arid deserts to regions of luscious, green oasis.
Artistic director Neville Wakefield is back for the fifth edition, this time partnering with co-curator Kaitlin Garcia Maestas, and both hope that the exhibition will prompt some pause for reflection on the myth of “unadulterated nature” and the future of our relationship with the environment. “The realities of the world we live in now are both more complex and contested,” said Wakefield. “Time, light, and space permeate every aspect of this work but so too does an urgency to find new sustainable approaches to living in an increasingly imperiled world.”
Here is our pick of five top works to check out.
1. Agnes Denes, The Living Pyramid
Installation view of Agnes Denes, The Living Pyramid at Desert X 2025. Photo: Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X.
The Budapest-born, American conceptual artist Agnes Denes‘s The Living Pyramid overturns our assumptions about the desert topography by drawing on the abundant flora and fauna of Sunnylands Center & Gardens. The work was installed in November, and has already changed in form thanks to the constant growth of the its native vegetation. Indeed, the plants’ eventual death will also be part a natural part of the works evolution.
“My pyramids are an ointment to ease the wound,” explained Denes. “An optimistic edifice in a place of turmoil. It conveys the cycles of life as it renews itself from soil to seed to plant to blossom. It speaks many languages to all of humanity.”
2. Sanford Biggers, Unsui (Mirror)
Installation view of Sandford Biggers, Unsui (Mirror) at Desert X 2025. Photo: Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X.
California-native Sanford Biggers is best known for incorporating antique quilts into paintings and sculptural installations, which often deal with very painful histories. For Desert X, however, he has chosen to provide some light-hearted humor and the sky is, quite literally, the limit. The artist’s pair of glittering gray, cartoon clouds atop tall poles are a whimsically garish addition to the infinite blue. The name Unsui (Mirror) means “cloud and water” in Japanese, and refers to Biggers own personal relationship with Buddhism.
“I wanted to make something to remind viewers of the limitless possibilities of freedom, of being a cloud,” he said. “To be liberated and free from definition, limitations, and form. It is also an opportunity to meditate and be dreaming.”
3. Alison Saar, Soul Service Station
Installation view of Alison Saar, Soul Service Station at Desert X 2025. Photo: Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X.
Though all the works at Desert X are best explored, rather than viewed, in person, it is Californian sculptor Alison Saar’s Soul Service Station that could never be summed up in just one photo, or even two. This fun twist on a classic Western gas station considers more than simply the most practical necessities. What if it is ourselves, not our machines, that are running on empty and need a top up before hitting the wide open road? Then we’d be relieved to chance upon Saar’s spiritual oasis, handcrafted by a community of artisans out of salvaged materials.
Installation view of Alison Saar, Soul Service Station at Desert X 2025. Photo: Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X.
The gas station is manned by a larger-than-life statue of a woman who Saar has named Ruby. “When you think about the desert as being this landscape for opening your mind and letting go of all of those pressures,” the artist mused, “it just feels like a collaboration with the landscape itself.”
4. Cannupa Hanska Luger, G.H.O.S.T. Ride (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology)
Installation view of Cannupa Hanska Luger, G.H.O.S.T. Ride (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology) at Desert X 2025. Photo: Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X.
The seemingly endless stretch of desert in Coachella Valley is usually admired while on the move, and Cannupa Hanska Luger’s unusual vehicle for G.H.O.S.T Ride (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology) will be making some pitstops over the course of Desert X’s run. The artist lives in New Mexico but was born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. His shiny caravan’s wacky collection of accoutrements may even be capable of time travel, as it channels imagined, speculative futures that center the region’s Indigenous communities.
Luger explained that the van’s inhabitants are the “ancestors of these folks who developed and sustained a relationship with the land that was generative and passive and still didn’t lose style.” He said, “I pulled some of the technological forms of my people and reinvented them onto this vehicle, looking at Indigenous technology as a 20,000 year proof of concept. Once we recognize that we can look at the land with reverence rather than resource, we begin to understand not the value of being here, but the cost.”
5. Muhannad Shono
Installation view of Muhannad Shono, What Remains at Desert X 2025. Photo: Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X.
Saudi artist Muhannad Shono presented The Lost Path at Desert X AlUla 2020. Now, he infiltrating another renowned desert with What Remains, a work that fully embraces the destructive potential of the elements. You might even say these loose structures of fabric collaborate with the wind, becoming freely tangled or bundled over the course of Desert X’s run. After all, if we exit the heavily regulated atmosphere of the white cube gallery, we surely invite such unexpected elements of chaos.
“It started with this idea of, what is home, and how do you carry that with you?,” said Shono. “I grew up struggling with notions of home, trying to trace this line of earth back to what is home and realizing that there is no such place. When there is no place left that you call home that you can return to, what is left?”
Desert X 2025 runs through May 11. More

In 1894, the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923) tapped the Parisian studio Lemercier to create a last-minute poster for her production of Gismonda. The assignment fell to Czech artist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939), and it not only jump-started his career and a six-year partnership between the two—it helped establish him as one of the leading lights of the Art Nouveau style movement, creating a signature style that continues to inspire artists, illustrators, and designers to the present day.
That lasting influence is the jumping off point for “Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line,” which opened last month at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.
Organized by the Mucha Foundation, which is run by the artist’s descendants, the show features not only their extensive holdings of the artist’s posters, drawings, paintings, and other works, but also a wide selection of album covers, manga illustrations, comic book covers, and other 20th- and 21st-century artworks inspired by Mucha.
So a classic 1896 Mucha poster for Job cigarettes—one of his first and best-known advertisements—featuring a woman with long hair that curls into exaggeratedly stylized decorative swirls, is shown alongside a Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley poster for a 1966 concert featuring Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band and Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Alphonse Mucha, JOB (1896). Collection of the Mucha Trust, ©Mucha Trust 2025.
The duo repurposed Mucha’s female figure, but transformed her with electric green hair set against bold shades of red and magenta and their own curving lettering.
“They are really identifying with this work’s graphic potency,” Phillips associate curator Renée Maurer told me. “They are relocating it to another time period by using a psychedelic color palette to promote the event.”

Mucha was undeniably revered in his day, when his posters and advertisements were widely disseminated. His posters lined the streets, and his illustrations graced the covers of major magazines.
And to feed the public demand for his work, Mucha even produced smaller posters printed in publications, allowing people to bring his ornately detailed lithographs home without having to rely the luck of finding one in the wild.
Alphonse Mucha, Monaco Monte-Carlo (1897). Collection of the Mucha Trust, ©Mucha Trust 2025.
“This moment in history is really a wonderful time because there are less restrictions on printed materials, so more and more artists are creating posters and prints,” Maurer said. “Posters are everywhere, creating that open air exhibition space for everyone.”
“Everyone wanted to live with it,” Maurer added, citing the artist’s “sinuous line and curving form.”
Alphonse Mucha, Lily, “The Flowers” (1898). Dean Torrence (Kittyhawk Graphics), Diana Ross and the Supremes, Let the Sunshine In (1969). Collection of the Mucha Trust.
His flowing compositions with their intricate line work are a timeless celebration of female beauty, as evidenced by the comparison between Mucha’s Lily from his 1898 series “The Flowers,” and the cover for the 1969 Diana Ross and the Supremes album Let the Sunshine In designed by Dean Torrence (of the band Jan and Dean) for his company Kittyhawk Graphics. In both, the woman’s face is framed by a profusion of white flowers growing all around her.
In addition to some framed versions of mid-20th-century album art on display, the museum also has a retro-looking listening station featuring these records. Just put on the supplied headphones and place the album sleeve down next to the record player to listen to the music from Mucha-inspired artists including the Grateful Dead, Thin Lizzy, and King Crimson.
A visitor to “Timeless Mucha” listens to a record with cover art inspired by the Art Nouveau style of Alphonse Mucha. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
“Seeing these connections, having lived with or grown up with these posters, to see what inspired them is really fascinating,” Maurer said.
The Phillips is the first stop of the exhibition’s five-city North American tour, although the foundation has staged versions of the show in Japan and China. Mucha Foundation shows at U.S. museums are relatively rare; a 2021–23 show that only  traveled to the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky and the North Carolina Museum of Art, was the country’s first in 20 years. (In Prague, the foundation opened the first official Mucha Museum at the Savarin Palace just last week.)

The current retrospective, curated by Tomoko Sato, also includes some of Mucha’s childhood drawings, as well as items from his home and personal collection, such as Japanese prints that influenced his compositions.
It’s only fitting, therefore, that such cross-cultural exchange goes both ways—the show includes a number of contemporary manga illustrations from artists such as Hideko Mizuno, Ryoko Yamagishi, and Yoshitaka Amano that undeniably bear Mucha’s influence. That includes works mimicking Mucha’s signature “Q-formula,” in which a woman is seated within a circular halo shape, with drapery trailing off below her to form the tail of a capital “Q.”
Alphonse Mucha, The Arts Dance (1898). Collection of the Mucha Trust, ©Mucha Trust 2025.
Mucha’s style has become so famous and influential the world over that some of these artists weren’t even aware of who they had to thank for the elegant line, ornate framing devices, and gentle, organic beauty of the flowers and drapery that they were incorporating into their own work.
This embrace of the Mucha style—even unknowingly—speaks to an artistic connection across countries, from generation to generation, underscoring the lasting power of his art.
Yoshitako Amano, Final Fantasy XIV: Adventurer and God of Storms (2010). ©Yoshitako Amano, Final Fantasy XIV, SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.
“Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line” is on view at the Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street, NW, Washington, D.C., February 22–May 18, 2025. It will travel to the New Mexico Museum of Art, Plaza Building, 107 West Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 20–September 21, 2025; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, Florida, November 19, 2025–March 11, 2026; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak Street, Kansas City, Missouri, April 11–August 30, 2026; and the Museo Kaluz, Avenue Hidalgo 85, Historic Center, Mexico City, Mexico, October 8, 2026–February 8, 2027. More

At long last, Meow Wolf is bringing its otherworldly enchantment to New York City, with plans to open its seventh permanent exhibition at Pier 17 in South Street Seaport. The immersive experience company, which launched as an art collective in Santa Fe in 2008, announced the project at the SXSW festival in Austin today.
For years, Meow Wolf fans have been waiting for the company to come to the East Coast. The success of the original Santa Fe exhibition, which opened in 2016, inspired ambitious expansion plans announced in 2019 to open 15 locations in the next five years.
The pandemic slowed things down, and scuttled plans for an interactive hotel in Phoenix and exhibition in Washington, D.C. But Meow Wolf debuted permanent exhibitions in Las Vegas and Denver in 2021, Dallas Grapevine in 2023, and Houston in 2024, with Los Angeles on track to open in late 2026. Now, with New York officially in the works, the East Coast expansion is finally back on.
“It’s a dream come true for us,” Vince Kadlubek, Meow Wolf’s cofounder and chief vision officer, told me. “Some of the greatest art institutions on this planet are in New York, and amazing DIY performance spaces and live venues. There’s just so many reference points in New York that we’ve been inspired by our entire lives. We’ve always known that we wanted to do a project in New York, but we needed to grow and evolve as a creative company to reach the standards of a New York project.”
The castle on the ice planet Eemia at Meow Wolf Denver. Photo courtesy of Atlas Media.
If you’ve never been to a Meow Wolf, the exhibitions exist at the intersection of an art museum, an interactive theater production, and a theme park, with high-tech light, sound, and video melding with painting and sculpture for an immersive storytelling experience. And the company is hoping to take that to the next level in New York.
“This is a a new tier of exhibition. We’re gonna bring detailed physical environments and remarkable digital environments together in a mixed reality ecosystem,” Kadlubek said. “We are striving to create alternate worlds that are alive—an immersive, animated world that is responding to your actions.
It’s gonna be something that nobody in the world has seen before.”
Finding space in Manhattan big enough for one of Meow Wolf’s maximalist exhibitions was no easy task. At Pier 17, Meow Wolf is partnering with the Seaport Entertainment Group, which operates a series of Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurants at the site, as well as open-air concert venue called the Rooftop, under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“The Seaport has close to 400 years of history. It used to be a Dutch fur trading port. Up until 20 years ago, it was a very famous fish market. Today it’s an amazing cultural center,” Meow Wolf CEO Jose Tolosa—a 10-year resident of the city—told me. “It has reinvented itself through the years, in the same way that the city reinvents itself consistently. It pays homage to to our immigrant past, present, and future in many ways.”
Meow Wolf Gas Station in the in Projected Desert in Meow Wolf Las Vegas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
Wherever it goes, Meow Wolf always looks to tap into the local community and its history, with installations designed by local artists complementing the work of the in-house team. New York, of course, will offer no shortage of talent to add to the mix.
“They will become part of our family, just like every group of local artists that work in in every single Meow Wolf exhibition,” Tolosa said. “Meow Wolf artists always impress me with their own unique way of looking at the world, and I can’t wait for the New York filter on that view.”
And for all that Meow Wolf explores portals to alternate dimensions, its storylines are also rooted a sense of place, inspired by history. For New York, Kadlubek expects to highlight the role the city played in American independence, and the meaning of freedom, as well as how it has become a melting pot for cultures from across the globe.
“As we get to know local artists and curators, I’m sure a lot of the story of New York will start to come through authentically,” he said.
The exhibition is still in the early concept stages, even after a year of talks with the Seaport to secure the location. Kadlubek estimated a late 2027 or early 2028 opening, adding that it was “probably safely say that this is going to be our most expensive project project yet.”
Neon Kingdom in Meow Wolf the Real Unreal in Grapevine, Texas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
Despite its impressive growth over the years, the company has hit speed bumps along the way, including three rounds of layoffs—one in 2020 and two last year. The first of those was primarily a reduction in staff at the exhibitions, and in-character actors were on hand to interact with visitors. The second, Tolosa told me, was a means of adjusting staffing needs from the lead up to opening two locations in back-to-back years, compared to the two-year gap before Los Angeles will debut.
The Meow Wolf Workers Collective has been outspoken in its criticism of the layoffs. Company employees first unionized in 2020 and have secured contracts in Santa Fe, Denver, and Las Vegas, with negotiations ongoing at Dallas. (There are currently 962 staff members.)
Meow Wolf has also faced criticism for setting up shop in Texas, given the state’s restrictive reproductive health care laws and outlawing of gender-affirming care for minors, among other anti-LGTBQ legislation. I asked Kadlubek if the company felt an added pressure to continue to tell diverse stories given the current political climate.
“We need courageous champions who are willing to stand up for human rights and what’s made this country great, and that includes the incredible weave of cultures that America has always welcomed,” he said. “And honestly, New York represents that more than any other city.” More