Subterms
Clad in a turtleneck and chic blazer, architect Rand Elliott—a dead ringer for the magician Penn Jillette, at least from certain angles—leaned back onto a couple of the 16,800 aluminum “fins” that comprise Oklahoma Contemporary’s facade. It was a gloomy day, but he explained that his design of the new museum reflects the city’s rapidly […] More
“Madame d’Ora“Neue Galerie, New York What the museum says: “Dora Kallmus (1881–1963), better known as Madame d’Ora, was an unusual woman for her time with a spectacular career as one of the leading photographic portraitists of the early 20th century. This exhibition, the largest museum retrospective on the Austrian photographer to date in the United States, […] More
The Guggenheim’s current exhibition, “Countryside, The Future,” is based on a fundamentally silly premise: that after 40-plus years of primarily building in, and theorizing on, cities, which account for roughly 2 percent of the earth’s surface, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is a reliable authority on the other 98 percent of the globe. In his assertion […] More
In Kara Walker’s new show at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., there’s a drawing of former President Barack Obama as Othello, the titular Moorish general of Shakespeare’s 16th-century tragedy, holding the head of his enemy, Iago—who looks a lot like Donald Trump. It’s one of several recent drawings by the artist depicting Obama in allegorical scenes […] More
Anicka Yi has created giant kelp pods filled with animatronic insects, injected live snails with oxytocin, and developed soil whose environment is governed by A.I. Later this year, her unique brand of oddball technology-infused art will receive its largest stage yet. The Korean-American artist has been chosen to create the next Turbine Hall commission at […] More
Consider two paintings. One is (1933), by the early 20th century spiritual-abstractionist painter Agnes Pelton. She is the star of a show that has just arrived at the Whitney Museum, part of a wave of recent interest in experimental art by previously unsung or undersung female artists working in esoteric or occult traditions, a vogue that is […] More
In the winter of 2017, an exhibition of contemporary Iranian art opened at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, drawing special attention because it coincided with President Trump’s then-recent travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries. The show would travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston that same year, playing an important role as cultural ambassador during a […] More
The photographer An-My Lê was born in 1960 in Saigon during the height of the Vietnam War. She knew nothing else growing up. “War was a part of life for us…it’s something we take in stride,” she told Art21 in an exclusive interview back in 2007. She and her parents fled Vietnam, eventually landing in the […] More
