Eliana Willis

Dozens of drawings Michelangelo made while planning the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel will go on view at the Muscarelle Museum of Art after a monumental feat in networking and logistics by the Williamsburg, Virginia museum ahead of the Renaissance master’s 550th anniversary.
Curator Adriano Marinazzo, an architect and Michelangelo expert, has organized a show that offers an extremely rare chance to see 25 drawings that were used to plan for the celebrated ceiling and another fresco in the Sistine Chapel known as The Last Judgment.
Of those drawings, seven have never traveled to the United States. Most have never been shown together. In total, some 38 objects are going on view, including a famous portrait of Michelangelo in the time between his work painting the ceiling and The Last Judgment by his contemporary Giuliano Bugiardini.
“What he likely did, and this is a typical fresco sort of process, is make large drawings, putting them up on the ceiling and likely poking holes at various inflection points in the drawing,” museum director David Brashear said in a video call.
Adriano Marinazzo is pictured in 2012 at Casa Buonarroti studying Michelangelo’s original drawings. Courtesy of the Muscarelle Museum of Art.
All of those “cartoons” were probably destroyed at the time they were used. In advance of those cartoons, he likely did hundreds, maybe thousands, of miniature drawing studies to work out compositional elements.
“He destroyed almost all of them before dying because he was feeling sick. He knew he was dying. He never created them for public display,” Marinazzo said. “Now less than 50 survive and we have almost half of those, and four in preparation for The Last Judgment.”
Brashear said the survivors, mostly preserved by Michelangelo’s nephew, are locked in dark boxes and only sanctioned by Italian authorities to leave for 12 weeks every few years. So Marinazzo painstakingly coordinated with Italian institutions and authorities to ensure the drawings would be available and not promised to another museum.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Study for the Prophet Zechariah (1508). Courtesy of Gallerie degli Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, via the Muscarelle Museum of Art.
One drawing Marinazzo sought could not be loaned for this show, Brashear noted, because it had already been promised to the British Museum. Nevertheless, he commended Marinazzo’s effective coordination in securing notable examples for the College of William & Mary museum.
Earlier in his career, the Italian curator worked with the Casa Buonarroti, a museum dedicated to Michelangelo in the home he bought for his family when he found success. Marinazzo became close friends with Casa Buonarroti’s late director, Pina Ragionieri.
“You have to make sure that you can reassure the lenders that all of the best museum practices will be in place as you have them in your custody,” Brashear said. “Then, of course, they travel with couriers and are guarded all the way. It’s a complicated process. It’s very different from collecting and hosting an exhibition on, say, Cézanne paintings.”
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Study for the Cumaean Sibyl (1510). Courtesy of Biblioteca Reale via the Muscarelle Museum of Art.
Brashear added that the exhibition will include massive recreations of scenes from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a showcase that came about because of the Muscarelle’s partnership with the Vatican Museums. “We’re not getting any drawings from them,” he said, “but we are getting their highest level of detail image files that we’re allowed to use in the exhibition.”
“That’s where it’s really going to become powerful for viewers,” Brashear added. “Like, ‘this is the head of one of the figures in the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes’ and ‘this is what it looks like in the final form, as Michelangelo put it up on the ceiling.’”
The idea for this exhibition was born in 2012, while he worked in Casa Buonarotti’s dusty archives, Marinazzo said. As he read Michelangelo’s letters, he spotted a sonnet with a sketch underneath that the artist likely sent to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Self-portrait in the act of painting the Sistine ceiling with autograph sonnet (c. 1509–10). Courtesy of Casa Buonarroti via the Muscarelle Museum of Art.
“Nobody knew what it was. After a while, I understood, since I’m an architect, that this little sketch was the representation of a ceiling,” he said. “Eventually, I thought to put together ‘Michelangelo’ and a ‘ceiling’ and realized it might be a sketch for the Sistine Chapel.”
Experts consider it to be perhaps the first drawing Michelangelo made for the project. Another very famous sonnet in the exhibition, also likely sent to Giovanni da Pistoia, contains a self-portrait of Michelangelo painting the ceiling. The show marks the first time these two sonnets with sketches about the Sistine ceiling are together.
The exhibition features two drawings of apostles that “were almost forgotten by scholars” but are significant because they were ultimately not used in the ceiling. When Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to design the ceiling, he asked him to paint the 12 apostles over the ceiling’s pendentives. Michelangelo started the sketches but ultimately told the pope he didn’t just want to paint the apostles, and they were scrapped.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Study for a male face for the Flood (c. 1508–1509). Courtesy of Casa Buonarroti via the Muscarelle Museum of Art.
Marinazzo also described how the show’s organization directly led to a new discovery about the drawings. Scholars had previously thought that two little sketches on two different pieces of paper were probably part of the same sheet of paper.
“But we didn’t have any proof,” he said. Before such valuable drawings are shipped, their condition is checked by restorers. Restorers put them together and found the line where they were connected. “So, we are publishing this, too. The drawings will be framed together and presented for the first time in the exhibition together.”
The show is laid out through several galleries, Marinazzo said. The first three are dedicated to the ceiling, with the fourth dedicated to The Last Judgment, and the exhibition is capped with works by Marinazzo that contextualize Michelangelo’s work for the public.
Michelangelo Buonarroti. Study for the Prophet Jonah (1512). Photo courtesy of Casa Buonarroti via the Muscarelle Museum of Art
One of the topics is the relationship between the artist’s sculptural work on the tomb of Julius II and the painting of the Sistine ceiling. For this exhibition, Marinazzo prepared 3D renderings of what he believes the tomb would have looked like if completed.
He argued that the Sistine Chapel ceiling is inherently tied to the commission of the tomb, including its artistic design. In 1505, Michelangelo traveled to Rome. Pope Julius II requested that Michelangelo build a large tomb that would feature 40 statues. Although the original drawings are lost, the initial design is described.
Michelangelo went to Carrara to collect marble for the project and returned to Rome to request additional funds. However, Pope Julius II shifted his focus to constructing the new Saint Peter’s Church and was no longer interested in completing the tomb.
A comparison between Michelangelo’s sketch of the architectural outline of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the actual ceiling view, digitally elaborated by Adriano Marinazzo. Courtesy of the Muscarelle Museum of Art.
Michelangelo felt slighted and returned to Florence. The pope sent emissaries to persuade him to return to Rome, emphasizing that his skills were needed. Initially, Michelangelo refused but eventually complied after further pressure from Florence’s ruler, who did not want conflict with Rome.
Ultimately, Michelangelo met Julius in Bologna, where they agreed he would resume work on the tomb and take on a new commission for the Sistine ceiling. The tomb as it was initially designed was not completed, but this established a connection between them.
“If you read the description of the tomb by Vasari, a biographer and contemporary of Michelangelo, it recalls the painted architecture in the ceiling,” he said. “So, I recreated the 3D structure over the architecture, and I use these architectural elements, combined with the description by Vasari, to make a reconstruction of the tomb that was never built.”
The show also includes an installation titled This Is Not My Art, made by the curator, that contextualizes the show.
Adriano Marinazzo, This is Not My Art. Courtesy of Muscarelle Museum of Art.
A memo Michelangelo wrote in 1508, when he moved from Florence to Rome to start to work on the ceiling, also appears. And the museum got ahold of a famous letter from Michelangelo’s friend, Francesco Granacci, that has never been on view. In the letter, Granacci whines about complications in recruiting assistants to paint the ceiling.
Brashear noted that, because of the significance of the exhibition, the museum coordinated with local authorities to plan for a major influx of visitors. Luckily, the city is already prepared for tourists because of the Colonial Williamsburg historical complex.
“When we previously did Italian master exhibitions, we shared them with MFA Boston, a museum much larger than us. We put the shows together and then they bought in and invested and took it for half of those 12 weeks,” Brashear said. “With the reopening of our museum, we wanted to be the sole venue and have it for the full 12 weeks.”
“Michelangelo: The Genesis of the Sistine” will be on view at the Muscarelle Museum of Art, 603 Jamestown Road, Williamsburg, Virginia, March 6–May 28. More

There are nearly 50 paintings in Amy Sherald’s biggest museum show to date, currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and set to touch down at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in April. Each and every one of them—most famously, of course, her portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama—features African American subjects in colorful, fashionable outfits, their skin carefully rendered in shades of gray.
“Grisaille is originally a Renaissance technique, but Sherald uses it in effect to minimize the associations with race,” SFMOMA associate curator Auriel Garza told me during a walk-through of the show. “It also creates a nice connection with black and white photography.”
But Sherald’s reliance on grayscale does not mean the 51-year-old artist’s work has not evolved since she first hit upon this signature style in 2008. The exhibition includes her largest and most ambitious paintings to date, including a monumental new triptych—her first—titled Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons), that greets visitors at the show’s entrance.
All three canvases depict a solitary figure looking out from a white watchtower, set against a bright blue sky. Their clothing is coded with references to the weather—one top features an orange-hued sunrise, the second is patterned with rain clouds, and the last is rainbow striped.
Amy Sherald, Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons), 2024. Photo by Kelvin Bulluck, ©Amy Sherald, courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.
“The figures in the painting are kind of looking out into the horizon, perhaps manifesting that brighter future,” Garza said, noting that the title comes from the Ancient Greek word for the assembly of citizens.
And Sherald’s work hasn’t just grown in scale. Her compositions, all based on photographs she takes in the studio, have become more complex.
She now carefully outfits her sitters from her fully stocked wardrobe, rather than painting them in their own clothes—one room displays a painting alongside the original clothes worn by the sitter, as well as a photo of Sherald at work in her studio—and even builds sets for her backdrops.  For the 2019 painting Precious Jewels by the Sea, she rented a larger studio and filled it with hundreds of gallons of sand to bring the beach scene to life.
Amy Sherald, Precious Jewels by the Sea (2019). Collection of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, ©Amy Sherald.
Sherald designed the watch tower in Ecclesia, which is topped with different antique weather vanes in the three panels, based on the phone booth in a scene from Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. (She’s also spoken before about her love of the lighthouse tower scene in his Moonrise Kingdom.)
“It’s nice to see a painter in a mid career moment who is getting more and more dexterous,” SFMOMA director Christopher Bedford told me. “She is actually getting better.”
Installation view of “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo by Matthew Millman Photography, courtesy of SFMOMA.
Bedford has known Sherald and her work for years—he came to San Francisco in 2022 after six years leading the Baltimore Museum of Art. The artist, who now lives in Jersey City, moved to Baltimore in her twenties to get her MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Even after graduating in 2004, Sherald called the city home for many years.
“She was one of the last artists to study with abstract expressionist Grace Hartigan,” Garza said.
Many of Sherald’s early works feature an element she developed under Hartigan’s tutelage, with unusual bubble-like splatters spreading across her bright, jewel-toned backgrounds.
Amy Sherald, Saint Woman (2015). Private collection, courtesy of Monique Meloche Gallery and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, ©Amy Sherald.
“Grace was really giving her a hard time in the studio, trying to get her work to push the boundaries of her practice,” Garza said. “In a moment of frustration, Sherald splattered turpentine on a canvas with the intention of starting over. When she came back to the studio the next day, she discovered there was this beautiful texture, and she realized she could harness that to great effect.”
That surface is characteristic of Sherald’s earlier paintings. Later, she began favoring a more flat colored ground, and in more recent works the figures—now there is often more than one—have begun to live in a less abstract world, like the golden field in Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between (2018).
Amy Sherald, Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between (2018). Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, ©Amy Sherald.
But from the beginning, Sherald’s work resonated with viewers, her deft use of grayscale adding a reverence and gravitas to her loving depictions of African Americans. Her work highlights the importance of representation, of Black people controlling their own images, and of those images becoming part of the American art canon.
When the artist was commissioned to create Michelle Obama’s official portrait for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., it seemed like the kind of star-marking turn more common in the movie industry than the art world.
The painting was a sensation, inspiring a childrens’ book and drawing such huge crowds that it needed to be moved to a bigger room, and Sherald signed with mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth. (The painting’s forthcoming homecoming as part of the exhibition’s tour will be the NPG’s first-ever solo show of a Black woman artist.)
Amy Sherald, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (2018). Collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. The National Portrait Gallery is grateful to the following lead donors for their support of the Obama portraits: Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg; Judith Kern and Kent Whealy; Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
But if it seemed like Sherald had arrived overnight, her sudden rise to prominence upon the portrait’s unveiling in 2018 was actually the culmination of years of carefully honing her practice. She had won the NPG’s $25,000 portrait competition in 2016, and by that point there were 50 to 60 people and institutions on the waitlist to buy one of her paintings.
The lenders for the SFMOMA show, therefore, are some of the country’s most seasoned collectors. (There are loans from the likes of CNN’s Anderson Cooper; sportscaster Bryant Gumbel, artist couple Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian; investment billionaire Robert F. Smith; and collectors Anita Blanchard and Martin Nesbitt; and Bill and Christy Gautreaux.)
“There were only two or three cases where multiple works came from a single collection. Each loan has its own series of negotiations, and the collectors are really advanced collectors,” Garza said. “Our standard loan agreement didn’t work for a lot of them!”
Amy Sherald, They Call Me Redbone, But I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake (2009). Collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of the artist and the 25th anniversary of National Museum of Women in the Arts. Photo by Lee Stalsworth, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, ©Amy Sherald.
All but two of the works are hung at eye level to meet the viewers’ gaze, and, as per the artist’s preference, without frames. The two exceptions are Sherald’s only commissioned paintings—the Obama portrait, and one of Breonna Taylor, created for the September 2020 cover of Vanity Fair at the behest of guest editor Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Sherald wanted the museum to show the painting of Taylor, who was killed in her own home in 2020, alongside other depictions of young women, in a gallery that’s been titled “The Girl Next Door.” (The work is jointly owned by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, and the Speed Art Museum in Taylor’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.)
For Sherald, but also for Taylor’s family, who were closely involved in the work’s creation and its display here, it was important to show the portrait alongside other depictions of young women. Each of the figures in the gallery is someone you or I could know—a sister, a friend, a neighbor—a reminder for viewers that Taylor was more than the tragic headlines that surrounded her death.
Amy Sherald, Breonna Taylor 2020). Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, purchase made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C., purchase made possible by a gift from Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg/the Hearthland Foundation. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, ©Amy Sherald.
Seeing the painting in person for the first time, I got full body chills, overwhelmed by the senseless loss that it represented. The work’s power is undeniable, Taylor seemingly frozen in time against a sea of aqua, the background inspired by her birthstone, alexandrite.
“Sherald wanted to create a sense of radiance around the figure, a color that would energize her, to try to capture her very warm, vital presence, hoping to create an image that would live on and outlive the narrative of violence around her,” Garza said.
Amy Sherald, For Love, and for Country (2022). Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Helen and Charles Schwab. Photo by Don Ross, ©Amy Sherald.
The exhibition also marks the first time SFMOMA has been able to display its own Sherald, the 10-foot-tall painting For Love, and for Country (2022) acquired in 2024. It is the artist’s version of the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898–1995) photograph V-J Day in Times Square (1945), of a soldier kissing a nurse in jubilation upon learning that World War II was over. In her work, Sherald reimagines the figures as two queer Black men—a fitting work for the museum given San Francisco’s historic embrace of the LGTBQ community.
“Sherald is really trying to bring stories into the museum that haven’t been told before—and they are Black American stories,” Garza said.
That impulse was also part of the inspiration for the title of the exhibition, “American Sublime,” which Sherald had kept in her back pocket for years waiting for her first major retrospective. (It is from a poem by Elizabeth Alexander, an African American writer who is president of the Andrew Mellon Foundation.)
Amy Sherald. Photo by Olivia Lifungula, courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.
“The sublime relates back to an 18th century concept of experiences of great emotional magnitude, to experience great beauty or awe,” Garza explained. “And it’s Sherald’s hope that this exhibition will help people celebrate the beauty and the persistence and pride of Black people, and the flourishing of Black culture, despite centuries of racism and oppression. These images hopefully run counter to the narratives of violence or poverty that have characterized fictions of Black life in U.S. media and culture.”
“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, California, November 16, 2024–March 9, 2025; the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, New York, April 9–August, 2025; and the National Portrait Gallery, 8th Street NW and G Street NW,  Washington, D.C., September 19, 2025–February 22, 2026. More

Isabelle Brourman was a little-known fine artist until she sketched her way into stardom at the Depp-Heard trial. Now, her vivid depictions of Donald Trump are redefining the art of legal drama and have earned her a solo show at New York’s Will Shott Gallery.
“I’m on so much adrenaline,” Brourman said, describing to me how she instinctively chose to use a piece of red paper she had with her to sketch the face of the returning president amid closing arguments in his criminal “hush money” trial for payments he made to Stormy Daniels. “A lot of [the work was made] in the middle of an adrenaline moment so it was sort of just my intuition, my faith that things were going to work out.”
Brourman’s solo show at Will Shott features her courtroom sketches of the Trump trial during his New York court battles last year. The exhibition opened with bipartisan political fanfare the night before he was to be sentenced in his criminal trial and marks the artist’s second outing after she debuted her Depp-Heard work at Murmurs Gallery in Los Angeles in 2023.
Isabelle Brourman, Grossed Up, Hush Money Trial (2024). Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
While political stars packed Shott’s Chinatown gallery, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the sentencing from occurring. Ultimately, Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge. “It’s been like that, so I haven’t really come down from the adrenaline,” Brourman said.
“There’s a lot of genius in the work,” Trump has said of Brourman’s art. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has separately taken legal actions against Trump’s family business, called Brourman an “incredible artist” whose work captures “subtle emotions to major revelations.”
Isabelle Brourman, Red, Hu$h Money Trial (2024). Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
Brourman, 31, sat down for an interview fresh off a trip to Washington, D.C., to sketch the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth — Trump’s pick to serve as the Secretary of Defense in his second cabinet.
“It was like my first day at school because I utilized my congressional pass for the first time for Rolling Stone on this political project and there’s not really a space for me,” she said of her time at Hegseth’s hearing. “I was being told 1,000 different things and shuttling back-and-forth trying to figure out what I could do. Eventually, I just settled for sitting with the public.”
Her rise in the art world has earned her glowing features in Rolling Stone and the New York Times, which documented her high-octane lifestyle since deciding nearly three years ago to drive down to Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia to see the former married couple Johnny Depp and Amber Heard taking each other on in court over mutual allegations of domestic violence.
“I read an article that said, ‘Meet the people waiting in line to enter the trial’ which I forgot that that was an aspect of the justice system,” she said. “So, I drove down there, and it was just so fucking interesting.”
A group of students listen as artist Isabelle Brourman discusses her court sketches of Donald Trump. Photo by Adam Schrader
Brourman, who received her master’s degree in fine art drawing and painting from the Pratt Institute, felt her career solidify during the Depp-Heard trial in Virginia, driven by adrenaline and positive feedback. Inspired by Bill Hennessy, who covered significant events like President Clinton’s impeachment and the Guantanamo Bay trials, she embraced the life of a court sketch artist.
As she stepped further from her comfort zone to document the trial, she received more recognition from the public, reinforcing her nerves amid the high-stress environment.
“There’s always going to be the nerves of drawing strangers, who are being watched and who might be intimidating, and people who you might possibly in the past have looked up to and having them literally look over your shoulder at your work,” she said. “That feeling is different than confidence. I am still humble, and I still get nervous. I just know the lemonade of all that is that I can filter it through the artwork and create something honest.”
Isabelle Brourman, I Want to See It, The People of New York v. Donald Trump, Civil Fraud Trial (2023). Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
For certain witnesses, Brourman has admitted to a little preparation—such as using a certain paper she bought from a handmade paper mill in Williamsburg for Ivanka Trump. The paper has pearl dust crush adding pearl and violet tones. Such preparation, including Brourman’s organizational skills in planning the logistics of her courtroom visits, underscores her meticulous approach, blending artistry with strategy to document history.
“It takes more organization skills than I would like. I’m becoming a different person. Maybe now I am just a logistics person,” Brourman said. “It’s tough. Every like legal space I go into, the traditions are really in place. It’s hard for me to get my seat.”
Addressing her feelings amid her proximity to power, Brourman said there are some instances that feel “exciting” while other times leave her telling herself “that was too much” as she drives away from the courthouse.
Installation view of Isabelle Brourman’s works at Will Shott Gallery in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
“This is Stormy on the cross exam when they asked her if she hated the president,” Brourman beamed at one of her drawings. “You want to talk about confidence, she was ready to talk, and she dished everything until somebody stopped her.”
When I interviewed Brourman at the gallery, a classroom of students appeared to witness the historic show and peppered the artist with questions about her practice. Brourman took to it like an expert witness on the stand. Shott whispered that his phone has been ringing with New York area teachers seeking to visit his gallery to see the work.
Now, Brourman is preparing to cover Luigi Mangione’s trial, following his arrest after a multi-state manhunt for allegedly killing a health insurance executive in broad daylight on a New York street. Public support frames his actions as vigilantism amid widespread anger at the U.S. healthcare system.
She called her work “a collaboration with the world” and said there isn’t too much she can prepare besides arranging access to courtrooms she visits and other political theaters. As the new Trump presidency enters into play, Brourman hit at the unpredictability of it all.
Isabelle Brourman, Portrait of New York Attorney General Letitia James on Day 1, The People of New York v. Donald Trump, Civil Fraud Trial (2023). Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
“We are in the ‘concepts of a plan’ era, and I have concepts of a plan,” she said. “I have Mangione lined up to do and I’m painting the inauguration so I’m going to follow this thing through.”
Brourman unwinds by taking long walks on weekends and avoiding her phone, which her friends and family understand. “I just wanted to relax and be alone,” she said. After Trump’s civil trial, she took a trip to Mexico and spent two weeks on a boat with her family.
Among the important details in Brourman’s works that show the urgency under which they are made are quotes and names from the trials scrawled on the pages and sometimes misspelled. But not all courtroom moments are thrilling.
Brourman took time to admire fashionably dressed court stenographers in at least one of her works, and she mentioned that a witness during Trump’s civil trial was so dull discussing financial matters that she began depicting him in a cubist style.
“I was so bored I had to abstract myself,” she said. “I had to abstract him.”
“Exhibit 1: Paper Trail” is on view at Will Shott Gallery, 17 Pike Street, New York, through February 23. More

In 1942, a 13-year-old Anne Frank and her family entered a cramped space in the rear of an office building in Amsterdam. It was to be their home for the next few years as they hid from Nazi persecution. While there, Frank began a diary in which she avidly documented life in the Achterhuis, or Secret Annex—its rhythms and tensions, but also her dreams and passions that reached far beyond her confined circumstances. “I see the eight of us in the Annex,” she reflected, “as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds.”
Today, the Annex that harbored the Frank clan and four other Jews, including the Van Pels family, during World War II is preserved by the Anne Frank House. But for the first time, the nonprofit organization is bringing a full-scale replica of the hidden space outside of the Netherlands, as part of its remit to foster global understanding of the Holocaust.
The bookcase that hid the entrance of the Secret Annex, in the Anne Frank House. Photo: Cris Toala Olivares / © Anne Frank House.
The installation anchors “Anne Frank The Exhibition,” which opens today at the Center for Jewish History in New York. In it, visitors will be immersed in a faithful reproduction of the cloistered room, complete with artifacts and faded furnishings—from the movie star clippings Anne tacked to her wall to the pet carrier that housed the Van Pels’s cat.
2020 reconstruction of the Anne Frank room in the Secret Annex. Photo courtesy of the Anne Frank House.
“Through this exhibition, the Anne Frank House offers insights into how this could have happened and what it means for us today,” said Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, in a statement. “The exhibition provides perspectives, geared toward younger generations, that are certain to deepen our collective understanding of Anne Frank and hopefully provide a better understanding of ourselves.”
Accompanying the recreated Annex are galleries that unfold the story of the Frank family through animation, photographs, videos, and more than 100 artifacts from the Anne Frank House’s collection, some traveling to the U.S. for the first time. Included here are Frank’s first photo album and handwritten verses, the family’s Torah, furniture, and surviving letters. Coloring in the political climate are images and films that detail the Nazi occupation.
Anne Frank’s poetry album. Photo: Ray van der Bas. © Anne Frank House.
The show doesn’t flinch in recounting Anne Frank’s fate. The Annex occupants were arrested in August 1944 and forcibly deported to concentration camps. Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her father, Otto, was the only family member to survive the Holocaust and worked to publish his daughter’s diary—a journey chronicled in the exhibition.
Today, The Diary of a Young Girl (also known as The Diary of Anne Frank), first published in 1947, is available in more than 75 languages and remains a searing document of the horrors of the Holocaust, as experienced by a teenager with an unflagging spirit. A replica of the original journal is featured in the Annex installation.
Installation view of “Anne Frank The Exhibition” at the Center for Jewish History in New York. Photo: Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images.
The exhibition arrives at a time when Holocaust misrepresentation and distortion—and outright denial—remains shockingly widespread.
In a first-of-its-kind survey, the Claims Conference, a nonprofit that supports Holocaust survivors, laid bare startling gaps in knowledge about the Nazi genocide across eight countries. While most respondents reflected a concern that the Holocaust could happen again, the Eight-Country Index of Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness found that some were unaware of basic facts about the atrocities.
One in five French adults had not heard or weren’t sure that they had heard about the Holocaust prior to the survey, while 48 percent of American respondents could not name a single concentration camp. In Romania, 53 percent of participants believe that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust—6 million, including 1.5 million children—is “greatly exaggerated.” American and Hungarian respondents were also more likely to report that Holocaust denial is common in their countries.
Photos of Anne Frank’s kindergarten class (in the bottom image, she is pictured in the back row center in a white dress). Photo: Ray van der Bas / © Anne Frank House
“The alarming gaps in knowledge, particularly among younger generations, highlight an urgent need for more effective Holocaust education,” said Gideon Taylor, Claims Conference president, in a statement. The majority of the survey’s participants are on his side: 93 percent of them stress the continued importance of teaching the Holocaust.
Such is the goal of “Anne Frank The Exhibition,” as Leopold, in his statement, noted “an obligation to help world audiences understand the historical roots and evolution of antisemitism, including how it fueled Nazi ideology that led to the Holocaust.” According to press materials, the show has already sold tens of thousands of tickets ahead of its limited run and aims to reach 250,000 students through its partnerships with hundreds of school districts.
2020 reconstruction of the Van Pels room in the Secret Annex. Photo courtesy of the Anne Frank House.
On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, said Gavriel Rosenfeld, president of the Center for Jewish History, “Anne Frank’s story becomes more urgent than ever. In a time of rising antisemitism, her diary serves as both a warning and a call to action, reminding us of the devastating impact of hatred. This exhibition challenges us to confront these dangers head-on and honor the memory of those lost in the Holocaust.”
“Anne Frank The Exhibition” is on view at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, through April 30. More

One of Japan’s—and the world’s—most beloved art forms is getting a rightful tribute at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
Opening in September, “Art of Manga” will array more than 700 drawings by Japan’s most influential manga artists, in a showcase of the artistry and impact of the country’s leading comic books and graphic novels. Manga, after all, hasn’t just gripped readers for decades with its deft storytelling, but has radically shaped Japan’s pop culture and publishing industry.
“Captivating millions around the world with dynamic graphic narratives,” said Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, in a statement, “manga is one of the most significant visual mediums of our time.”
Taniguchi Jiro, Qusumi Masayuki (Author), FUSOSHA Publishing Inc. (Publisher), Solitary Gourmet (1994–96, 2008–15). © PAPIER/ Jiro Taniguchi/ Masayuki Qusumi, FUSOSHA.
The show is in good hands. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, research director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in the U.K., is curating the exhibition, following her work on “The Citi Exhibition: Manga,” the British Museum’s blockbuster manga outing in 2019. She’s passionate about her subject.
“Manga,” she told me over a video call, “is an innate language that you understand. You immediately pick it up because it’s a visual language that has a grammar. It’s not just pictures—it’s pictures that are in a narrative.”
Yoshinaga Fumi, Hakusensha (publisher), Ōoku, The Inner Chambers (2004–21). © Fumi Yoshinaga / Hakusensha, Inc.
The form is rooted a long legacy of Japanese artistry: its predecessors include 12th-century emakimono, horizontal scrolls that offered viewers an unfolding narrative; the woodblocks of ukiyo-e artists such as Hokusai; and kibyōshi, 18th-century picture books, among others.
Manga flourished in Japan’s postwar period, with the emergence of popular titles (and their subsequent on-screen adaptations) such as Astro Boy, Dragon Ball, The Rose of Versailles, and Slam Dunk. Besides venturing stylistic innovations and techniques, these series would come to dominate Japan’s publishing landscape.
Oda Eiichiro, Shueisha Inc. (Publisher), ONE PIECE (1997–). © Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha.
Today, Japan’s manga market rakes in billions, not counting its footprint in other territories from France to the U.S. Manga artists, too, are gaining the recognition that has long eluded them, Rousmaniere said, as the form is increasingly being embraced in its home country.
“Manga artists are now going to art school,” she said, noting the marked difference from the previous generations’ practice of apprenticeship. “They’re learning techniques and that’s shifting the industry. The rapidity and the drawing are just breathtaking to look at. When you look at their originals, you see this amazing line quality. It changes the way you look at the printed example.”
Chiba Tetsuya, Takamori Asao (author), Kodansha Ltd, Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow (1967–73). © Asao Takamori, Tetsuya Chiba / Kodansha Ltd.
“Art of Manga” delves into the medium’s past and present through the work of 10 artists. Drawings by early-generation masters Chiba Tetsuya, of Ashita no Joe fame, and Akatsuka Fujio, who created Tensai Bakabon, will provide historical grounding and insights into how manga is created and consumed.
Yamazaki Mari, Tori Miki, Shinchosha Co., Ltd. (publisher), Plinivs (2013–23). ©︎ Mari Yamazaki, Tori Miki /Shinchosha.
The following sections survey the craft of eight leading manga artists.
Among them are Oda Eiichiro, creator of the world-dominating One Piece; Yoshinaga Fumi, known for her sprawling epic Ōoku: The Inner Chambers; Tagame Gengoroh, whose My Brother’s Husband helped define gay manga; Araki Hirohiko, maker of the supernatural hit series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure; Yamashita Kazumi, whose otherworldly Land earned her a Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2021; and Yamazaki Mari, who created the award-winning Thermae Romae.
Araki Hirohiko, Shueisha Inc. (publisher), JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 6 Stone Ocean (2003). © Hirohiko Araki & Lucky Land Communications / Shueisha.
Also featured are manga giants, namely the late Taniguchi Jiro, best known for The Summit of the Gods and Kodoku no Gourmet; and Takahashi Rumiko, the widely celebrated author of Urusei Yatsura, Ranma ½, and the ongoing series Mao.
Takahashi Rumiko, SHOGAKUKAN Inc. (Publisher), MAO (2019–). © RUMIKO TAKAHASHI／SHOGAKUKAN INC.
These works, sourced directly from publishers and artists’ foundations, boast a sweep of styles that surface “the skill and art of creating manga” as well as each artist’s “range, breadth, and thought processes,” Rousmaniere noted. The medium’s ongoing appeal is further demonstrated in a new collaboration between Akatsuka Fujio and Pop artist Tanaami Keiichi, which will show up at the exhibition.
Tanaami Keiichi, TANAAMI!! AKATSUKA!! / Revolver 2 (Looking in the Mirror). ©Keiichi Tanaami Courtesy of NANZUKA © Fujio Productions Ltd. / Shueisha Inc.
As well, the exhibition will delve into how manga has entered the digital age by exploring publishing company Kodansha’s digital platform K MANGA and Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage, an initiative that explores new approaches to collecting manga via limited-run prints and NFTs. These new efforts, however, open up challenges for contemporary manga in terms of rights and piracy. The show will confront both these issues—the former impacting artists’ estates and the latter a billion-dollar concern.
“The numbers of people reading or purchasing a manga have a direct effect on not just the artist’s income, but on the artist’s viability,” Rousmaniere explained. “If they were being pirated, that has a direct effect. First of all, the publishers won’t do an English version [if legitimate sale numbers are not high enough]. Will they [continue] their series? Fans need to understand that when they’re reading the pirated version, they are hurting the artists.”
Yamashita Kazum, Kodansha Ltd. (Publisher), LAND (ランド) (2014–20). © Kazumi Yamashita / Kodansha Ltd.
While manga, a global phenomenon, needs little introduction, Rousmaniere hopes the show might shed new light on its creators and visual vocabulary—both keys to manga’s ongoing appeal. She aims to have viewers fluent in manga by the end of their visit.
“I’m trying to have every artist displayed in a slightly different way, so that you would have different insights. By the end of the exhibition, you would have an understanding of this incredible range and the skill of learning manga through looking at sequential images,” she said. “This grammar is intuitively understood if you allow it. What we’re going to do in the exhibition is show you how to allow it in.”
“Art of Manga” is on view at the de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, California, September 27, 2025–January 25, 2026. More

The Leroy Johnson exhibition at Margot Samel—the artist’s first solo in New York City—looks like a curious little neighborhood or city street. Little “houses” lined up, each wholly unique, with recognizable hallmarks that could be found in any number of communities: signs for restaurants, images of storefronts, stoops, people, and patchwork architecture.
Installation view of “Leroy Johnson” (2025). Photo: Matthew Sherman. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
These modestly sized sculptures up close, however, don’t offer any viable, inhabitable space for the mind’s eye to occupy as a dollhouse or diorama might. Each work instead appears more as composites of artifacts: photos and clippings; scraps of wood, cardboard, and fabric; pieces of pottery; even gum wrappers. And, upon up-close inspection, the heart of Johnson’s practice can be found, revealed through symbolic and material clues that are both explicit and oblique.
Johnson was born in 1937 in the Eastwick neighborhood of Philadelphia, the city where he ultimately lived his entire life until his death in 2022. Eschewing art school and traditional arts training (beyond attending some classes at Fleisher Art Memorial), Johnson’s position as an outsider artist was a conscious decision. Fueled by what he saw as art world hegemony, he chose instead to forge his own path.
Leroy Johnson. Photo: Matthew Bender. Courtesy of the Estate of Leroy Johnson, Margot Samel, New York and The Center for Emerging Visual Artists.
Though Johnson first began making art while still in high school, over the course of his adult life he simultaneously held a wide range of jobs, including as a social worker, rehab counselor, and teacher to disabled youth, to name a few. He completed his M.A. in human services in 1988, and was deeply committed to the city and communities of Philadelphia—which can be traced throughout his artistic practice.
Johnson’s houses are largely comprised of found materials sourced from across Philadelphia, complemented by photos taken and printed by the artist as well as the addition of “graffiti” and painted surfaces. Some of these houses feature portions of fired ceramic, made from clay that the artist excavated from the ground in the city.
Leroy Johnson, Crosswalk (ca. 2000–2005). Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Adding to the complexity of Johnson’s work are references to Black life and history, urban lived realities, art, and the effects of poverty, racism, and gentrification, with each work holding space for multiple truths and interpretations.
On Crosswalk (ca. 2000–2005), the white outline of a crown adorns the front side of a gable, alluding to the iconic signature of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Below, a series of shadowy silhouettes feature on the corner and within an inset porch; along the roof, a row of tiny, modeled pigeons quietly looks on. The details are simultaneously specific and common. Rather than lean into the exact representation of a singular building or site, it is a visceral portrait of a collection of places, pieced together through a psychological lens.
Leroy Johnson, recto: Who Is Eligible (ca. 2010–2015). Photo: Claire Iltis. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Elsewhere, images of corner stores, references to the civil rights movement—whether an image of Malcolm X or Cecil B. Moore’s name scribbled on a wall—and idiosyncratically reproduced figuration reflect the cultural and physical fabric of the city, acting as both a tender homage and unyielding record of the place Johnson lived for 85 years.
Notably, each of the houses is fully circumventable, with the details and compositions wrapping the entirety of the work, adding depth to this parallel world. In Who is Eligible (ca. 2010), the proverbial exterior resembles any number of row houses or apartments, but on the reverse side is a wide open blue sky above a collage of more building facades.
Leroy Johnson, Who Is Eligible (ca. 2010–2015. Photo: Claire Iltis. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Through his distinctive approach to construction and medium, Johnson situates himself as an architect of memory and archivist of materials; where the city of Philly ends and his work begins is undefinable, a testament to the artist’s commitment to depicting through poetic means the true scope of life in the City of Brotherly Love. More

“It all kind of started with this idea about edibles,” said Stacy Lynn Waddell via video call from her North Carolina base, describing her newest body of work set to go on view with Rebecca Camacho Presents at FOG Design+Art 2025. “The first time I went out West, I went to San Francisco and of course, when one goes out West and you go to San Francisco, you go to a weed shop or whatever they call them.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell. © Marco Giugliarelli for Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2022).
Cannabis-infused foods and candies have become an increasingly popular and widespread commodity, but, for Waddell, these products presented a potent starting point for a new line of artistic inquiry. “Edibles,” as the presentation within FOG Focus is aptly titled, features 10 works on paper, each featuring a plant specimen rendered in pastiglia, or paste work, and covered in 22-karat gold leaf, and marks Waddell’s first solo presentation with Camacho.
“I’ve been interested in Stacy’s unique and thoughtful practice for years, admiring her commitment to historical techniques and how her luminous, elegant surfaces belie her use of challenging, frequently unforgiving materials,” Camacho said. “After participating in a group exhibition at the gallery last summer, this solo FOG booth is a great opportunity to share Stacy’s work with a much larger audience within the Bay Area as well as national and international audiences. I am excited and proud to debut Stacy’s newest works at the fair.”
Installation view of “Stacy Lynn Waddell: Edibles” at FOG Design+Art 2025. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents.
Gilding with precious metals is an essential technique within Waddell’s practice, which was on full display in her last solo show, “light takes time to reach us,” at Candice Madey, New York, in 2023 (her third solo with Candice Madey is planned for this September). Here, works included compositions crafted with gold leaf but also variegated metal leaf, silver leaf, and Japanese-colored silver leaf.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Lemon Daylily) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
In “Edibles,” however, all 10 pieces are overlain exclusively with gold, making their low-relief images difficult to discern from a single vantage point, prompting the viewer to move around the piece to see all the different details depending on the light.
“My work tends to be a quieter read, I am asking you [the viewer] to look at something that is a monochrome, also a metallic monochrome, and engage with something that isn’t necessarily easy to engage with. The graphic capability of the work itself is a slow read, and it’s layered between other stuff. You’re negotiating light and shadow, depending on the space the work is shown in.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Wild Strawberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
Complementing this visual experience is the specificity of the work’s support, a “leathery” type of paper handmade in India with a distinctive, textural surface and irregular edges, which lends it a sense of objecthood in and of itself. Working in pastiglia, using paste or other mediums to build up the surface, certainly imbues Waddell’s work with a sculptural quality but simultaneously allows her to engage with a type of drawing.
“There’s something about being able to use words related to construction and building when thinking about drawing… it’s the way I think about making a drawing,” Waddell explained. “I couldn’t make paintings like wet media onto paper or canvas. It has to be mediated with drawing. Everything I do has to be a drawn painting, not a painted painting.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
Across the series of golden pastiglia drawings, both everyday and rare plants make appearances, and their edibility ranges from delicious to medicinal to toxic, with the inspirations behind each varying broadly. “Some have very particular personal stories behind them, like the blackberry bush that I grew up with at my grandparent’s property that became this giant, almost mythological being in and of itself,” said Waddell. “It was huge and unruly, and every year I would wait for those first ripe berries.” Others capture the artist’s interest through their associated lore. Pokeweed, for instance, is incredibly toxic but has historically been used as a dye—one known, however, to fade quickly—and in traditional herbalism.
Other works feature wild strawberries, opium poppy, bunch flowered narcissus, lemon daylily, cherry tree, sweet violet, tulip, and orchid (these last two species appear together in one work, in a variation on the theme). The way they are arranged in their respective compositions echoes the tradition of botanical drawings, which Waddell cites as a reference point.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Pokeweed) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
The history of botanical drawings stretches back several thousand years, with the intrinsic purpose of documenting the details of various plants but also identifying their uses and classifying them as medicinal, edible, or poisonous. In more recent history, specifically in American history, it was a tool of exploration and colonization. Today, in light of climate change, environmental disasters, and habitat loss, the botanical drawing may very well be the only extant record of any number of plant species.
Connecting back to Waddell’s initial inspiration of edibles in California, the works also tap into the history and heritage of agriculture in the state, and how the Central Valley operates as a source of sustenance due to its extremely long growing season.
The gold leaf placed over the top of these drawings adds yet another layer of complexity to these works, evoking icon painting, religious images that were popular in the 6th as well as 13th through 17th centuries, which frequently depict portraits of figures and scenes from holy texts against a ground of gold leaf. These paneled works operated as a focus point for parishioners, and, similarly, Waddell’s works invite focused attention from viewers—both in how the compositions are optically perceived as well as reflection on and contemplation of what they depict.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
The intended viewing experience of Waddell’s work in many ways parallels her working practice, which, Waddell admits, is rather gradual and time-consuming. “I work really slowly, and I have things I want to really experiment and play with.” Part of this prolonged approach is in no small part due to an interest in things that have had some time to settle, and tracing reference points between things that might otherwise be incongruous.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, detail of Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
“I need things that have a bit of a patina, to have a bit of age on it,” Waddell said. “It’s about connecting myself to history or rerouting what I want to make through the historical lens. It gives the work weight, but it also gives people a whole lot to bring with them too. You’re standing in 2025, looking at a work that was made at the end of 2024 with a process from the Renaissance, and then you’re bringing all of your experiences as a human being, your preferences art as a collector, your interests as a curator or gallerist. That’s super interesting to me.”
The angles, both physically and intellectually, at which Waddell’s new work can be approached are numerous yet subtle. Despite their glittering opulence, their presence is decidedly quiet, and contemplative. Against the backdrop of the fair’s (and life’s) clamor and commotion, they invite viewers to take pause, offering a moment of respite and reflection. More