Art & Exhibitions

Most people think of mobiles as simple children’s toys designed to distract babies and help them fall asleep. Yet the origin of this soothing gewgaw actually marked an important turning point in the history of sculpture.
Alexander Calder first began crafting mobiles in the early 1930s, not as a commercial product to fill the shelves of toy shops, but as a means of turning sculpture from a static medium into a kinetic one, capable of defying the forces of gravity and interacting with the physical space they inhabit. (The name “mobile” doesn’t come from Calder but rather from conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp, who identified movement as their primary characteristic.)
A visionary, Calder went on to inspire scores of rebellious young sculptors eager to blow new life into this millennia-old artform. Among these was Thaddeus Mosley. The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) is exploring the connection between these two artists and their approaches to playing with movement, weight, and time in an exhibition titled “Following Space: Thaddeus Mosley & Alexander Calder,” now on view.
Alexander Calder, Dispersed Objects with Brass Gong (1948). Photo courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York © 2024 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Calder and Mosley enjoyed radically different upbringings. Both were born in Pennsylvania, the former in 1898 and the latter a quarter century later, in 1926. Calder was the son of artists, a sculptor and a painter, while Mosley’s parents worked as a miner and a seamstress. Both artists traveled extensively in their youth, Calder with his parents and Mosley while serving in the U.S. Navy.
Struggling to be taken seriously as a sculptor, Calder was inspired by circus acrobats and how they contorted their bodies to maintain balance on trapezes and tightropes. “The idea of detached bodies floating in space seems to me the ideal source of form,” he later said of his mobiles, whose basic constructions resemble acrobatic performances.
Calder working on the pierced disc of Bougainvillier (1947) in his Roxbury studio, 1947. Photo: Herbert Matter. Photo courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York © 2024 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Mosley took a different path. Turning to sculpture in the 1950s after working as a freelance journalist and Postal Service Employee, he was inspired by Calder. His fascination began after seeing one of Calder’s large-scale outdoor mobiles, 6 Dots Over a Mountain (1956), on a collector’s lawn.
Yet while their interests overlapped, their execution took them down separate paths. “Both artists stress a heightened awareness of forms in space and instill an anticipation of change,” Catharina Manchanda, a curator of modern and contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum, told Artnet. “Calder does this with his gently moving mobiles, Mosley by balancing heavy volumes that seem to defy gravity.”
In comparing the work of these two artists, “Following Space” functions as a tour of 20th and 21st century art developments, taking visitors from the foundation of modern sculpture as shaped by Calder to more contemporary 3-D work as exemplified by Mosley, who fuses Calder’s influence with other sources of inspiration, including traditional African art.

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“My work, like Calder’s, has a sense of balance and imbalance,” Mosley explains in a video SAM put out along with the show. “People always say, ‘gee, it looks like they should fall over’… that’s my idea of ‘weight in space.’”
That particular concept is well-illustrated by the work that opens the show, Mosley’s Following Space (2016), one of 17 of his sculptures on display. Constructed over the course of two decades, its graceful form is reminiscent of a wave or a serpent, accentuated at SAM by the gallery’s curved wall
It finds its complement in Calder’s White Panel (1936). Considering that both these sculptures are meant to be seen from multiple vantage points, the museum has installed them in such a way that visitors will be able to view them from different floors.
Photo: Natali Wiseman.
“My hope,” Manchanda said, “is that visitors will see each of the artists in a fresh light, animated by the aesthetic contrasts: Calder’s works in this exhibition, selected in collaboration with Mosley, move delicately, whereas Mosley’s monumental sculptures rise from the ground and reach into space.”
Or, as Mosley himself says in SAM’s video, the exhibition promises to give its viewer “the idea of levitation, in two different ways.” More

 In 1919, while at school in the Spanish city of Figueres, a 15-year-old Salvador Dalí volunteered to write a series of articles for the school’s magazine, Studium. Titled “The Great Masters of Painting,” the assignment allowed Dalí to study and pay tribute to the artists he most admired, including the 17th-century Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez, whose “color distribution and placement” he saw as a precursor to Impressionism and, by extension, Surrealism.
Nowadays, most people view Dalí’s work as sui generis: a dazzling Surrealist concoction of dreamlike imagery that has little to do with the waking world, much less with the artists who came before him. But as the anecdote above indicates, Dalí was anything but disconnected from art historical tradition. Not only do his paintings draw on religious and historical imagery, but he also considered himself deeply indebted to scores of European artists, from Velázquez to Albrecht Dürer.
Salvador Dalí, Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages) (1940). Courtesy: The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
That indebtedness is on full display at “Dalí: Disruption and Devotion,” an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), which places Dalí’s work side by side with that of his favorite classical painters from Spain, Italy, and the Low Countries of Belgium and the Netherlands, all while highlighting how the ever-eccentric Surrealist had to learn the rules of traditional painting before he could effectively break them.
“Even as a teenager, Dalí looked to great artists of the past for guidance and inspiration,” Julia Welch, the MFA’s assistant curator of paintings, art of Europe, said in an interview. “He frequently referred to a series of art books that he had as a child, which introduced him to many great artists of the past, and for Studium [he] wrote about Velázquez, Dürer, Goya, Leonardo and Michelangelo.”
“Dalí: Disruption and Devotion” exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Although Dalí was drawn to art from many countries and cultures, he gravitated most towards painters from his native Spain. “Many major Spanish artists held particular significance to him,” notes Welch, “having spent many hours roaming the galleries at the Prado Museum while a young art student in Madrid. Velázquez, above all, would remain one of his greatest and lasting influences throughout his long career.”
According to Welch, Dalí was drawn to the “power and strength that Velázquez conveyed through his portraiture.” He attempted to channel Velázquez’s “vigor and energy” into Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory (1958), which shows the shadow of the Spanish master as he labors over a portrait of the future Holy Roman Empress.
Left, Salvador Dalí, Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory (1958), and, right, attributed to Juan Bautista del Mazo, Infanta Maria Theresa (previously attributed to Velázquez). Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerita is displayed next to this very portrait, produced in Velázquez’s workshop and currently attributed to one of his students, Juan Bautista del Mazo.
Leonardo da Vinci also made a strong impression on Dalí. Just look at his 1935 painting Paranonia, whose small figures and horses in the background were, Welch points out, “directly inspired by Da Vinci’s sketches. Meanwhile, “the double image of a woman’s face produced within those small figures”—a hallmark of Dalí’s oeuvre—“is pulled directly from Da Vinci’s The Woman with Disheveled Hair [1506–1508].”
All in all, “Dalí: Disruption and Devotion” juxtaposes close to 30 of Dalí’s paintings and prints (loaned from the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida) with European paintings from the MFA’s own collections, including portraits, religious and historical scenes, and still lifes by the likes of El Greco, Orazio Gentileschi, and, of course, Velázquez.
Salvador Dalí, The Ecumenical Council (1960). Photo: Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society/Doug Sperling and David Deranian, 2021/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Some of these juxtapositions are surprising, even to art historians. “One of the earliest works by Dalí in the show, Girl’s Back from 1926, is most often described in literature in connection with the Dutch predecessors, like Vermeer,” says Welch. “But we found a really interesting juxtaposition with an early portrait by Velázquez in the MFA’s collection of Luis do Góngora from 1622. In both works, there is a similar attention to the modeling of forms, the textures of hair and skin, and the dramatic use of lighting effects against dark backgrounds.”
Those visiting the exhibition may just walk away with a new conception of the artist’s work and Surrealism as a whole. Even though many of his works feature what Welch calls “bizarre, often fantastical or indecipherable imagery,” they will find, it is deeply rooted in traditions which the Spaniard held in the deepest esteem.
“Dalí: Disruption and Devotion” is on view at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, through December 1, 2024. More

A major retrospective of Art Deco darling Tamara de Lempicka has opened at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, ranging from some of her most celebrated paintings to lesser-known drawings that are only now getting their deserved attention.
Furio Rinaldi, who co-curated the show with Gioia Mori, said in an emailed interview that the exhibition has been “very popular,” even if many people from the audience “admittedly never heard Lempicka’s name before.”
“They respond passionately to her iconic Art Deco portraits and to the artist’s resilient life journey,” Rinaldi said. “Those from the audience who are more ‘in the know’ have expressed their particular appreciation in discovering the artist’s drawings—her draftsmanship is exquisite—and some lesser-known and rarely seen paintings, like her early Cubist still lifes.”
The show marks the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States, more than four decades after her death. It unites over 120 paintings as well as other Art Deco sculptures and objects from the museum’s collection that help put her practice into historical context.
Tamara de Lempicka. Kizette on the Balcony (1927). Photo courtesy of Jacqueline Hyde/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1898, Lempicka survived the Russian Revolution and relocated to Paris, where her bold, stylized portraits of society figures and her opulent lifestyle gained her fame and clientele amid the cultural elite of the 1920s and 1930s.
“In her time, Lempicka received critical praise at the Parisian salons and international exhibitions: as early as 1927 her works were acquired by museums, including the Musée d’art de Nantes and the future Pompidou,” Rinaldi said.
But the painter’s legacy was nearly lost to obscurity. Despite success in Paris, the Jewish artist was forced to flee at the outbreak of World War II and fell victim to changing art trends after the war. Her work was only rediscovered again in the 1970s, following a resurgence of interest in Art Deco. Even then, her legacy had to compete with those of famous male artists.
Tamara de Lempicka. The Communicant (1929). Photo courtesy Arnaud Loubry/Centre Pompidou/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
In recent years, the creative world has made efforts to give Lempicka the limelight and capitalize on the glamor of her character, including a short-lived Broadway show starring Eden Espinosa as Lempicka. Sotheby’s also presented a selling exhibition of her work earlier this year.
“This exhibition aims to reassess her defining role within the development of Art Deco and, more broadly, to present her as a highly original artist who contributed to the international modernist movement—specifically to its classical declination in the ‘rappel a’ l’ordre,’ or ‘return to order,’” Rinaldi said.
Which of the works in the De Young exhibition were particularly pivotal in the artist’s career? Rinaldi pointed to Kizette at the Balcony (1927), La belle Rafaëla (1927), and Young Woman in Green (1931).
Tamara de Lempicka, Young Woman in Green (1927–30). Centre Pompidou, Paris, purchase, 1932, inv. JP557P. © 2023 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, NY.
In Kizette, the artist painted her daughter Marie-Christine in what Rinaldi called a “symphony of metallic grays.” It was among the first of her works that received widespread critical praise when it was shown at the Salon d’Automne of 1927. “It can be seen as an allegory of pubescence, as the young Kizette occupies, quite physically, a liminal space between the world of childhood and the modern metropolitan world of adulthood, seen behind the rails,” Rinaldi said.
As for the painting of Rafaela, a model who served as a muse for the artist for several of her most famous paintings, Rinaldi called it “quite phenomenal” for how she depicted the female nude with a feminine perspective rather than with a heterosexual male gaze.
Tamara de Lempicka. Male Nude (ca. 1924). Photo courtesy of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
“What she brings to this historical cannon is an entirely modern feminine perspective that celebrates womanhood and women’s sexuality,” Rinaldi argued. “The model in the painting is completely self-absorbed in her own pleasure.”
But the key Lempicka painting in the show is likely her work Young Woman In Green, which Rinaldi called an “emblematic image” of Art Deco. That work, he said, “encapsulates the optimism” and the “feminine freedom” of the interwar period.
Installation view showing a sculpture and paintings by Tamara de Lempicka at the de Young Museum. Photo courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Within this show’s attempt to show the complexity of her practice, a fourth work stands out to Rinaldi for providing special insight: Woman with a Green Glove (1928). An unfinished work, it highlights her layered design process.
The painting depicts an androgynous and unidentified woman with a boyish haircut who is wearing a “hyperfeminine” white dress that emphasizes her “powerful sensuality,” in Rinaldi’s words.
A photograph of the artist Tamara de Lempicka at the entrance to an exhibit of her work at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Photo courtesy of Randy Dodson/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
It was painted with a polished finish on a large wood panel, perhaps inspired by the artist’s knowledge of religious icons. It also has elements that reprise the 16th-century Italian Mannerist portraiture by the likes of Bronzino and Pontormo.
“In the research leading to the exhibition, I was particularly impressed to learn how the knowledge and appreciation of the Old Masters informed Lempicka’s figural vocabulary and infused her pictorial language with great sophistication,” Rinaldi said. “Her use of visual sources from the past is quite clever and extremely creative, for example in her adoption of details from a 16th-century Madonna by Parmigianino for her Sapphic painting Printemps (Spring).”
“Tamara de Lempicka” is currently on view at the de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, through February 9, 2025.  More

Opened on November 16, “The Art of French Wallpaper Design” has filled the Rhode Island School of Design Museum with over 100 “exceptionally rare” samples of French wallpaper designs created in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The exhibition promises to explore the “intricacy and innovative quality of French wallpapers.”  A key theme in the show is the innovations that were possible in wallpaper design thanks to the development of woodblock printing techniques in France. The use of intricately carved blocks and hand-finished details gained French craftspeople an international reputation for the vibrancy and texture of their work, and these methods continued to be used by designers in Western Europe long after the dawn of mechanized printers.
The French decorative paper—or papier dominoté—industry produced book covers, decorative stationary, and furniture lining during the 1700s, growing into a bustling wallpaper industry that saw French designs coveted and exported around the world. The exhibition includes preliminary drawings and drafts, borders, and individual fragments in addition to larger samples. All manner of subject matter, too, is showcased in the exhibition, from abstract and floral patterns to classical imagery and extravagant narrative scenes.
Bon Wallpaper Design, 1799. Image courtesy of RISD Museum, Rhode Island.
The exhibition is made up of works from the 500-object collection of Charles and Frances Wilson Huard, which has been in the care of the RISD Museum since it was purchased by the institution in 1934. The Huards—Charles a respected French illustrator and Frances an American author and translator—who married in 1905, assembled their wallpaper collection in the 1920s and 30s. They built up their collection with purchases from antique dealers as well as rescuing wallpaper from abandoned homes and working directly with designers.
Given the ephemeral nature of wallpaper, and the likelihood of it being damaged, covered, or simply discarded, the Huard Collection is remarkable for its quality as well as its quantity of exceptional samples. The fragility of paper artifacts like those in the Huard Collection mean that “The Art of French Wallpaper Design” is a rare opportunity for the public to see so many high quality pieces.
French, Flocked Wallpaper Border, 1820 – 1830. Image courtesy of RISD Museum, Rhode Island.
Emily Banas, the Associate Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the museum and the curator of “The Art of French Wallpaper Design” has said she’s “thrilled to have the opportunity to re-introduce this extraordinary collection, which has not been presented in depth for many years, to a broad audience”.
RISD Museum have also partnered with Adelphi Paper Hangings, based in Sharon Springs, New York, on a special project for the exhibition. Adelphi, an artisanal wallpaper producer with a specialty in historic wallpaper designs founded in 1999, have been commissioned to recreate one of the wallpapers in the exhibition using the traditional woodblock printing method used by the wallpaper’s original manufacturer in the 18th century.
Wallpaper Border, The Adventures of Don Quixote; Panel from Don Quixote series; The Adventures of Don Quixote, ca. 1830. Image courtesy of RISD Museum, Rhode Island.
The exhibition is accompanied by a digital publication which includes essays exploring the history of the Huard Collection and wallpaper design in the context of printmaking, as well the preservation processes involved in working with objects of this nature. RISD Museum have also created two videos, one a walkthrough of samples in the Huard collection, and the other a look at Adelphi’s intricate production process to create their commissioned design.
Banas has said she is “certain the material will excite our visitors and challenge notions of what “historic” design looks like. From its foundations in drawing and printing, to its dynamic forms and creative uses that enlivened and personalized spaces, there is so much more to wallpaper than meets the eye. I look forward to sharing the many discoveries this exhibition holds.”
Wallpaper Border, ca. 1820. Image courtesy of RISD Museum, Rhode Island.
Banas told Artnet News exclusively: “Many people have preconceived ideas about wallpaper, from what it looks like to how it’s used. Colorful floral patterns are often the touchstone, but historical wallpapers offered so much more. The Art of French Wallpaper Design captures the diversity of inspirations and forms that emerged in wallpapers in France from the late 18th to mid 19th century. Produced using the technique of woodblock printing, these wallpapers are highly sophisticated in composition, scale, and color and reflect an often unacknowledged history of that discipline. I think visitors will be amazed by how fresh and contemporary these designs are, but also the unique ways in which people arranged them in their spaces. I’m excited to see the ways in which these wallpapers will surprise and inspire.”
“The Art of French Wallpaper Design” is on display at RISD Museum until May 11 2025. More

Maffeo Barberini lived up to the lofty expectations of his aristocratic parents by being elected pope in 1623. Aside from expanding the papal states, repelling a radical French theological movement, and navigating the Thirty Years’ War, Urban VIII found time to patronize the arts (Gian Lorenzo Bernini was his personal favorite).
Barberini had cultivated artistic tastes early on. In 1598, his friend and fellow clergyman Francesco Maria del Monte had taken a struggling artist under his wing (housing him at his family palazzo) and suggested Barberini commission a portrait. That artist was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and the work he painted, of a quietly vigorous 30-year-old, is now on display to the public for the first time.
Fittingly, the venue is Urban VIII’s old familial haunt, Palazzo Barberini in Rome, which now houses the National Gallery of Ancient Art. It was built during Urban VIII’s papacy by Bernini and architect Carlo Maderno and remained in the family into the 20th-century.
Caravaggio, Portrait of Maffeo Barberini (1598). Photo: Getty.
The painting was passed from one generation to the next for roughly 300 years and only left the Barberinis in the 1930s when the family sold off its estate. As such, it has no accompanying documentation and remained a work unknown until the 1960s, when Roberto Longhi, an Italian Caravaggio scholar, published an article on the Barberini portrait.
While only a handful of specialists have seen the painting in person, there is broad academic agreement that the work, which is held by an unnamed private collection in Florence, is a Caravaggio. The case may be proved one way or the other given a promise by the organizers “to study the work in greater scientific-critical depth.”
The Palazzo Barberini in Rome now houses the National Gallery of Ancient Art. Photo: Getty Images.
By the time of the painting in 1598, Barberini had obtained a law doctorate from the University of Pisa and with the help of his aristocratic connections had moved through a series of important church appointments. Within a couple of years he will be the papal legate in France. The painting shows a seated Barberini emerging from shadow, his face spotlit and glowing. He appears modestly dressed in simple a black cap and gown and steers his gaze off to the side. The portrait may not boast the bold flair of Caravaggio’s broader oeuvre — such as Judith Beheading Holofernes (1602) or Narcissus (1599) which stand nearby at the Palazzo Barberini —but the mastery of light is certainly evident.
“The heart of the painting lies in the hands, the left hand clutching a letter and the right hand emerging from the painting,” said co-curator Paola Nicita in a statement. “It is a painting that expresses itself through gestures.”
“Caravaggio – The Portrait Unveiled” is on view at the Barberini Palace, Rome from November 23 through February 23. More

In the foyer of the Met’s second-floor gallery, Cleopatra’s Chair sits empty, beckoning. This throne, constructed by legendary sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud, is a remnant of a sustained revelation. In 1957, at only 18 years old, the American artist visited Egypt and experienced an awakening, this first encounter with artworks beyond the European canon influencing her practice for decades. She recalled of the experience: “For someone exposed only to the Greco-Roman tradition, it was a revelation. I suddenly saw how insular the Western World was vis-a-vis the nonwhite, non-Christian world. The blast of Egyptian culture was irresistible. The sheer magnificence of it. The elegance and perfection, the timelessness, the depth. After that, Greek and Roman Art looked like pastry to me.” She completed Cleopatra’s Chair in 1994 (five years before her own groundbreaking solo exhibition at the Met).
“Flight Into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt 1876–Now” highlights almost 200 years of this return-to-self. It’s a meeting ground of Black cultural production, a decidedly pan-African sensibility that engages with ancient Egypt as a spiritual point of reference for fashioning a collective identity; a source for inspiration and a site of affinity against the erasure of a cultural lineage. The exhibition, on view through February 17, 25, offers more than mythos, grounding itself in the promise of great origins reclaimed from a discipline of Egyptology that had categorized the civilization as “proto-European,” separate from the rest of continental Africa. The show’s aims are clear, but our means of flight remain as unresolved as these histories. Egyptian sphinxes don’t have wings.
Installation view of “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now,” on view November 17, 2024–February 17, 2025 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: Eileen Travell, Courtesy of The Met
The Met’s warm walls bear the threads of this restorative practice with a nod of recognition. It’s a noteworthy celebration that feels uncharacteristic—if not unheard of—at this institutional scale. The museum’s commitment to the work feels singular in its candor, an endeavor that imbues the space with an authenticity that is above all else deeply comforting. It’s a feeling only dwarfed by the magnitude of its implications: the way a movement appears before our eyes with resonances that touch the soul. 
The survey’s pantheon of Black artists ranges from contemporary titans like David Hammons and Jean-Michel Basquiat to lesser known figures from the 19th century. Together they depict a well of spiritual data, the source material of self. Beyond the visual works, however, the abundance of music and literature underscores the museum’s role as a public resource. 
Installation view of “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now,” on view November 17, 2024–February 17, 2025 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: Eileen Travell, Courtesy of The Met
In the room titled “Awakening and Ascent,” covers of early issues of The Crisis, a magazine published by the NAACP since 1910, are just one element exploring Afrocentrism’s rise alongside the moods of the Harlem Renaissance. Copies of the publication, alongside other corollary publications, are available to peruse in a spacious reading room designed by Steffani Jemison and Jamal Cyrus. The exhibit’s final room “Space Is The Place” carries the name of the canonical film featuring Sun Ra. Alongside other images rife with pastiche, the videos are just one of many instances where the show complicates the work of dreaming up Black futures. The exhibition is an accessible anthology; the stories bound to each piece are at once preserved behind vitrines and within arm’s reach.  
In the “Kings and Queens” section, Fred Wilson’s Grey Area (Brown Version) greets the viewer: a series of five bust-replicas depicting Queen Nefertiti, their plaster pigmented in shades ranging from sandstone to deep umber. The series contends with the question of color, its lingering influences on our contemporary perceptions of these ancient histories. With enough time, the eye discerns that none of the busts’ shades resemble human skin. The busts only acknowledge the impossibility of their resemblance to any common reality. There remains an ever-expanding spectrum of colors between these figures, unsettled explorations of a contested history.
Still from Space is the Place (1974). Directed by John Coney. Courtesy North American Star System Production; John Coney
On the other side of the wall, a series of diptychs by conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady likens photographs of her sisters and daughters to the remnants of royal Egyptian stoneworks. Her late sister, Devonia Evangeline O’Grady, appears in a bridal portrait beside a photograph of the renowned Nefertiti bust referenced by Wilson (as well as a critical mass of other artists featured in the show). In the series, titled Miscegenated Family Album, O’Grady highlights the widely understood cultural and gendered associations around figures such as Nefertiti, echoing the ways in which a shared ancestry continues to both unify and trouble our own legacies. An image of the queen’s bust sits on my bedside table.
Installation view of “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now,” on view November 17, 2024–February 17, 2025 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: Eileen Travell, Courtesy of The Met
The collection of works in the show together highlight Egypt’s long-held sacred presence in our dreams: something to strive for and somewhere we’ve already been. The works stand in as tools against social death, a record of the imaginative thinking required to transcend what has marred Black identities across the globe for generations. 
Nearby, Simone Leigh’s contemplative bronze figure, Sharifa, leans against a wall. The figure towers in the room at a stature over nine feet tall, even in repose. One foot emerges from under her floor-length dress, implying something of the precarity of her posture, or perhaps footnoting the fine line between rest and labor under the contingencies of Black feminine embodiment. While there are pieces by Leigh more directly emblematic of Egypt’s influence on her practice—such as the glazed Sphinx she featured at the 2022 Venice Biennale—this monumental work shares the massive quality of an obelisk, a presence felt by way of its indifferent gaze. It’s an association further heightened by two adjacent gypsum totems by LA-based sculptor Lauren Halsey, constructed specifically for the show. The pair of untitled works are airbrushed with landmarks from the artist’s hometown, both those recognized by the city and those sanctified by its residents. These are monuments to the intimately local, shaded by the motifs of a history that edges on mythology.
Installation view of “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now,” on view November 17, 2024–February 17, 2025 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: Eileen Travell, Courtesy of The Met
The section of the show titled “Nu Nile Abstraction” presented some of the most formally risky works in the show, examples of how the glance-friendly symbologies that fill other rooms can be distilled to pure concept. Here, many artists take on the shifting image of the pyramid as a point of departure. Maren Hassinger’s Love (Pyramid) forms its triangle shape in the gallery’s corner. Pinned to the walls and floor, each pink plastic bag is filled with human breath, an accumulation of utterances – the word love. Rashid Johnson’s sculptural environment, titled Pyramid, offers objects rich with cultural memory atop its shelves: mounds of shea butter and black soap, a vinyl record from The Modern Jazz Quartet. The sentimental takes form through the readymade. At the center of the space, Sam Gilliam’s Pyramid refurbishes the sacred geometry in lacquered wood, providing a launchpad for the psychic leaps that make these worlds coterminous with the contemporary.
Clips of music videos and performances by Alice Coltrane, Michael Jackson, and Beyoncé ground the exhibition in cultural touchstones accessible for a wide audience. Played in sequence, they begin to map a cycle of reincarnation among these pop culture icons, though the pharaonic archetypes they reference remain timeless. The well-known video works are staged in a screening room outfitted with a disco ball in the shape of our dear Nefertiti. This multimedia approach doesn’t end with the objects on display. A robust performance program is set for the specially-built neon atrium dubbed “The Performance Pyramid.”  The space will host artists such as Karon Davis, Clifford Owens, and M. Lamar & The Living Earth Show, in collaboration with Met Live Arts. Tomassino hopes the exhibition can be a “welcoming cultural oasis for people of all walks of life.”
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Flight Into Egypt (1923). Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, image © Metropolitan Museum of Art
While there are many allusions to ancient architectures and traditions of object-making throughout “Flight,” the curatorial team resisted including any antiquities from the Met’s collection. McClain Groff, the Research Associate for the exhibition, tells me that this noted absence is intentional. “If you want to see those, you can go to the Egyptian wing.” 
“Flight into Egypt,” does, however,  include the works of living Egyptian artists such as Cairo-born sculptor Iman Issa and feminist polymath Ghada Amer. The “Heritage Studies” on display are more in conversation with each other than they are with any preoccupation with the “ancient.” Maha Maamoun’s Domestic Tourism II is a montage steeped in celluloid fantasy, a compilation of popular cinematic representations of Egypt from the New Hollywood era of the mid-20th century. Mahmoud Mokhtar’s Bride of the Nile rests in the center of a room, a subtle standout among more commanding figurative works. The bronze and silver bust peers over its scarab-encrusted clavicle, as if eavesdropping on the video collage installed behind it. She personifies the collective turning of a head to look back on a past that is never as distant as history may portray. Her earring dangles, frozen in an inertia that is almost audible.
Moving through the show there’s a sense of the perennial now-ness of Egypt’s influence. Everyone has their own relationship to the mythology; there was a feeling of nostalgic pride visible on the faces of many wanderers. For curator Akili Tommasino it’s especially personal: “I designed [the exhibition] for myself at 15.”  
Derek Fordjour, Board Meeting (Brotherhood Smoke) (2021). Collection of Robert F. Smith Photo: © Derek Fordjour, courtesy David Kordansky Gallery, Photo: Mark Blower, Daneil Greer
As a child of immigrants hailing from the island nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tommasino’s upbringing in Brooklyn influenced his own understanding of a larger, global African diaspora.  This experience is common, a way to reconcile, a rite of passage. The urban environment continues to inspire. Three longstanding public artworks located in Harlem are temporarily designated as part of the exhibition. The inclusion of these site-specific works, located in subway stations and along the Metro North railway, highlights the populist essence of this pan-African sensibility. It’s a coveted tradition, one that has been deployed thoroughly across disciplines for over a century, but has never been concisely articulated with such focus until now.
The tradition, however, appears to be so pervasive that it also at times veers into cliché. These gestures of self-appropriation are often derided when pushed up against newer schemas of Black liberation. A pride in Egyptian ancestry among Black Americans has often been relegated to an association with the “hotep,” a term referring to a derogatory archetype of Black pride that has come to resemble a parody of the aesthetics on display in the Met show. 
Installation view of “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now,” on view November 17, 2024–February 17, 2025 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: Eileen Travell, Courtesy of The Met
I asked Tommasino about potential associations with the label “hotep,” and he led me to the work of Kemetic practitioner and jeweler Baaba Heru. My eyes were drawn to The Ankh of Love, a hand-forged and -filed talisman composed of copper, silver, and brass in the shape of the symbol for eternal life. My mother’s only tattoo is an ankh. Her name is Love. “Heru said that when he got into Kemetic studies, saying ‘hotep’ was a way to greet each other with peace,” Tommasino explained, adding that he hopes this exhibition “helps resuscitate some of the original spirit of the greeting of peace.” 
What we’re left with is a tradition still in-progress. As a counter to the storied conditions of our social realities, such cooptation proves essential to our own perpetuity. In communicating the countless ways in which Black artists lay claim to these symbols as artifacts of ourselves, the exhibition offers a look at their nuanced circulation through a third eye. 

“Flight into Egypt” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until February 17, 2025. More

Essex-born artist and writer Stanley Donwood first met musician Thom Yorke when they were studying at the University of Exeter in the 1980s. Although they briefly lost touch after graduation, their paths crossed again in 1994, when Yorke asked Donwood to help him design a cover for The Bends, the second studio album of his up-and-coming rock band, Radiohead.
Their creative partnership was a tremendous success, with Donwood going on to design each and every one of Radiohead’s subsequent album covers. In 2025, his creative process will be laid bare in a new art exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford titled “This is What You Get: Stanley Donwood, Radiohead, Thom Yorke,” which will run from 8 August 2025 until 11 January 2026.
The first large-scale, public gallery exhibition of its kind, “This is What You Get” will not only showcase the finished album covers themselves, but also the work that went into designing them, including unused compositions, unpublished drawings, and never-before-seen song lyrics taken directly from Donwood’s own sketchbooks.
When Donwood first started working with Radiohead, he was working as an unpaid artist in an internet café out of the back of a bar. Although he didn’t have a computer, he volunteered to help Yorke put together a website for his band, something their record label—Parlophone—didn’t have much faith in at the time, considering the internet was still in its infancy.
Still, these kinds of initiatives paid off, as—according to music website Monster Children—Donwood’s role quickly evolved from “hired gun” into “an intrinsic part of the band” whose album covers are truly as “sweeping and complex as the records themselves.”
Anselm Kiefer is also getting a show at the Ashmolean next year. Installation view of “Anselm Kiefer: Fallen Angels.” Photo: Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio Ⓒ Anselm Kiefer.
Visitors of “This is What You Get” can expect to learn where Donwood gets his inspiration.
“The artwork for OK Computer was done in various places, but also at Thom’s house” the artist told Monster Children, taking its editors on a crash course through each Radiohead album he worked on. “He used to live in this little semi-detached suburban house with a view of some trees that was very nice. But I was in a bit of a dark place with making that artwork…” The final artwork’s mood is shaped by a surreal, almost apocalyptic vision of bare sticks and white ash.
Donwood’s album covers have since become as iconic and instantly recognizable as Yorke’s music, with framed reproductions adorning the dorm room walls of musically inclined college students across the world.
“This is What You Get” is one of several upcoming exhibitions at the Ashmolean dedicated to figures who the museum says have made “groundbreaking contributions to art, music and our contemporary cultural landscape.” Also planned for 2025 is “Anselm Kiefer: Early Works,” which—as the title suggest—will dive into the formative years of German artist Anselm Kiefer, a leading voice in the New Symbolism and Neo-Expressionist movements whose paintings recount significant events from German history. More

“Let them eat cake!” Whether or not Marie Antoinette truly uttered these infamous words, they have come to symbolize the extraordinary opulence of her life.
As Queen of France, her world was one of marbled palaces, lavish gowns, and glittering jewels, culminating in possessions so exquisite they continue to captivate centuries later.
Marie Antoinette’s possessions regularly smash records when they go up for auction, and not just because of their historical significance. As the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and wife of French King Louis XVI, Antoinette’s clothing and jewelry were designed by the finest craftsmen and made from the most expensive materials.
Her three-strand pearl necklace, made up of 119 saltwater and freshwater pearls, sold for $2.2 million, while one of her many collections of diamonds went under the hammer for $9.3 million. One of her most cherished possessions, a pendant, raised a mind-boggling $36 million when Sotheby’s put it up for sale.
However, these items pale in comparison to her long-lost watch. Soon on display at the Science Museum in London as part of their “Versailles: Science and Splendour” exhibition, which explores scientific innovations sponsored by the French royal court, the No. 160 Marie Antoinette—as this timepiece is now referred to—fits the late queen’s exuberant style, sporting decorations of sapphire, platinum, ruby, and gold, as well as a crystal dial.
The No. 160 Marie Antoinette in all its glory. Photo: David Silverman/Getty Images.
Designed without a budget and comprised of no less than 823 moving parts, its creator is none other than Prussian watch wizard Abraham-Louis Breguet, whose Breguet company—now part of the Swiss Swatch Group—has been popular with European nobility for centuries.
The No. 160 Marie Antoinette may well be Breguet’s best work. In addition to sounding the hours, minutes, and seconds, a commendable feat for the time in which it was created, the watch came with a thermometer, a second hand that could be used as a stopwatch, and a calendar that corrected for leap years—features that earned it the nickname “the grand contraption.”
Considered the most valuable watch on the face of the Earth, one need not imagine the shock  when—in April 1983—employees of the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art awoke to find its display case smashed, and it missing alongside 106 other rare and antique watches.
The No. 160 remained missing for nearly two decades until 2004, when the thief, overcome with remorse in his final days, revealed its location—returning the masterpiece to the world and restoring its place in horological history. Now the watch is heading to London—its first international trip after being returned to L.A. Mayer in 2008.
While the No. 160 watch eventually found its way back into the spotlight, Marie Antoinette’s own story ended long before its completion. Commissioned in 1783, the watch wasn’t finished until 1827, after both Breguet and the Queen had passed—leaving behind a legacy of elegance and extravagance that still dazzles today. More