Art & Exhibitions

Suddenly, museums are in a rush to canonize the beginnings of digital art.
This has resulted in a welcome fleet of survey shows and hefty catalogs; each expounds on aspects of highly experimental practices that took place at the very margins of an art world that was, at that time, much more interested in abstraction or conceptualism. Among these is “Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet” at Tate Modern in London, currently on view through June 1, 2025. It focuses on the decades between the 1950s and the dawn of the internet in the 1990s.
Plenty of the earliest pioneers of this then-unfashionable new media have recalled how their efforts were once met with ridicule or hostility. Hungarian-French artist Vera Molnár became one of the inventors of generative art in the late 1960s when she began making algorithmic, geometric compositions using a mainframe computer and mechanical plotter held at the Sorbonne. In 2022, when she was 98, the now-late artist spoke of how these works left her peers “scandalized” and that she “had dehumanized art.”
Two decades later, Palestinian-American painter Samia Halaby also struggled to find much of a willing audience for her first forays into computer-generated, animated compositions, this time made on an Amiga, one of the earliest personal computers. The pieces were considered to be something of a fun novelty.
“I showed them to a friend and we both giggled at them,” she said earlier this year. “I still giggle sometimes. It was so surprising then to see this computer suddenly show us a whole world of color and shapes that were dinging and zinging about and then close [the window] and [it] go back to its dull existence.”
“Electric Dreams” is one of the most important shows to re-evaluate the significance of works like Molnar’s and Halaby’s. While much mainstream art during this period remained inward-looking and self-referential, early digital artists realized instead that the fast-paced electronic and digital advancements being embraced by wider society were, far from being irrelevant, a highly fertile ground for artistic innovation.
Differing considerably from the organic world, these new systems had innate characteristics that provided previously unexplored avenues for creativity. As “Electric Dreams” shows, this led to very wide-ranging discoveries.
Here are our picks for the five most important breakthroughs, organized according to the technology that enabled them.
Lighting
Photograph by Kiyoji Otsuji of artist Atsuko Tanaka wearing her Electric Dress at the 2nd Gutai Exhibition in 1956. Photo: © Tetsuo Otsuji, Musashino Art University Museum & Library, courtesy of YOK.
One of the most basic technological advancements to be adopted by artists is that of artificial lighting, and “Electric Dreams” both begins and ends by focusing on seminal light pieces by Japanese artist Atsuko Tanaka and American artist Liliane Lijn, respectively. At the entrance, visitors are shown archival photographs that document Tanaka’s Electric Dress (1956), a wearable costume made of colorfully painted Edison and tubular incandescent bulbs that could flash on cue thanks to a switching device invented by the artist. She had been inspired by the captivating dazzle of city lights in Osaka, Japan, and, being an amateur electrician, willingly took on considerable risks to recreate these effects on her own body. That the dress is both menacing and mesmerizing seems to reflect an uneasy relationship with the rapidly modernizing effects of postwar globalization.
Kineticism
David Medalla, Sand Machine Bahag-Hari Trance 1 (1963-2015). Photo: © David Medalla, © Tate.
Though Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely is rightly the name that springs to mind when thinking of kinetic art, a charming piece by Filipino, London-based artist David Medalla steals the show at “Electric Dreams.” The rather janky-looking contraption from 1964 uses a central rotating post to drag a beaded wire around the sandpit at its base, creating endless circular patterns. Its makeshift quality means the dangling beads create imperfect and unpredictable rings each time, inviting an element of randomness that allows the work to take on a life of its own, separate from the predetermined wishes of its creator.
Randomness
Hiroshi Kawano, KD 29 – Artificial Mondrian (1969). Photo: ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, © Hiroshi Kawano.
The use of randomness became a staple element of creative programming, allowing artists to create systems from a mix of rules and planned randomness that would generate endless variations on their chosen composition. Some of the best-known practitioners are Molnar, A. Michael Noll, Frieder Nake, and Georg Nees, but “Electric Dreams” also spotlights contributions to the field of computer art made by Japanese philosopher Hiroshi Kawano. Like many of his peers, he worked with “pseudo-random” number generators to create abstract designs from geometric shapes. Their characteristics and arrangement were decided according to parameters specifying a range of possible numbers, dimensions, or orientations, but the rest was left to chance. In 1964, some of these works were published in the Japanese IBM Review.
Telecommunication
Eduardo Kac, Horny (1985). Photo: © Eduardo Kac, lent by the Tate Americas Foundation.
The Brazilian-American artist Eduardo Kac is best known for his work with biotechnology, but in the 1980s he experimented with interactive holography, robotics, and telecommunications. Three works from this latter category are included in “Electric Dreams.” They make use of the Minitel system, a precursor to the internet, that allowed users to communicate and share information via phone lines that could be accessed by remote terminals. Kac used them to create animated poems and these works play with moving compositions and shifting typographies to reveal new meaning in the words. They are displayed at Tate Modern on restored vintage hardware and software.
“This network existed before the web and does not exist any longer,” Kac said in 2022. “And that idea alone is interesting: the idea of the birth and death of networks. And what it means to artworks that are made in and for these networks that no longer exist.”
Interactivity
Installation view of Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss, Liquid Views (1992) in “Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet” at Tate Modern. Photo: Lucy Green, © Tate, © Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss.
Though V.R. headsets are not a surprising sight in galleries these days, that was certainly not the case in the early 1990s when German artist Monika Fleischmann began working with architect Wolfgang Strauss and computer scientist Christian-A. Bohn to produce some impressively advanced works using nascent technologies. These include the virtual reality installation Home of the Brain (1989-90), which was staggeringly ahead of its time, and Liquid Views – Narcissus’ Digital Reflections (1992), a touch screen interactive game included in “Electric Dreams.” Visitors hovering over the screen can see their reflection distorted by a digital pool of water that responds to their touch by rippling.
“It depicts the encounter of the self with a shadowy virtual doppelganger as a metaphor for the internet and predicts the emergence of the second self as a selfie data body,” the artists explained in the exhibition catalog.
“Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet” is at Tate Modern in London until June 1, 2025. More

Any way you slice it, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) was exceptional. She forged a career as a librarian in the early 20th century, putting together a world-class collection of books, manuscripts, and art for millionaire banker J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) and his son Jack that became New York’s Morgan Library and Museum. But her achievements are even more remarkable given that Greene was actually a Black woman, passing for white in a segregated society.
Now, the Morgan is telling her incredible story in “Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy,” part of the 100th anniversary celebrations marking the institution’s opening to the public in 1924. Greene is an integral part of the museum’s history, serving as its first director until 1948, and bringing to life the vision of its founders.
“It was incredible what she accomplished,” Erica Ciallela, who curated the exhibition with Philip Palmer, the Morgan’s curator of literary and historical manuscripts, told me. “It’s not just that she passed [as white]. She was also a woman at the turn of the century. When she started here, she signed her own paycheck before women had the right to vote.”
That paycheck, it’s worth noting, was nothing short of impressive, making headlines in its own right. A 1921 news item in the Asbury Park Evening Press listed Greene as number eight in a list of “Women Who Earn Big Wages,” with a $25,000 annual salary.
Ernest Walter Histed, Belle da Costa Greene (1910). Collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.
She had gotten a job with Morgan in 1905, after three years working at the Princeton University Library in New Jersey, where she met his nephew Junius Spencer Morgan II. That meaningful connection set her on a path to acquiring some of the world’s rarest and most important documents for the museum library, including a 1485 printing of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.
“Belle Greene really pioneered the idea of a blockbuster manuscripts exhibition, not just artwork,” Palmer said. “That’s something I think the Morgan is known for.”
Born in Washington, D.C., to a prominent free Black family, Greene was the daughter of Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener (1849–1941) and Richard T. Greener (1844–1922). Her birth name was Belle Marion Greener, and her father was the first Black graduate of Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur, Westminster: William Caxton, (1485). Collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1911. Photo by Graham S. Haber.
The show delves into this early history, including the story of the 2013 rediscovery of Richard Greener’s lost Harvard diploma in an abandoned Chicago home, and the only surviving photograph of Genevieve Greener, who began passing as white, along with her children, after separating from her husband in the 1890s.
In adulthood, Greene obscured these origins, claiming that her complexion was due to Portuguese ancestry. She did her best to take the secret of her race to her grave, even going as far as destroying her personal papers. The truth remained a secret until 1999, when Jean Strouse published the biography Morgan: American Financier.
Mrs. Greene, Belle da Costa Green’s mother, on an outing in the Hudson River Valley near Bear Mountain State Park, New York (ca. 1930s). Collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.
More recently, Greene’s life was the subject of a 2021 novel, The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Unlike that fictional story, the exhibition doesn’t try to imagine her inner thoughts and feelings (and no, there’s no reason to believe there was any romantic encounter between Morgan and his librarian—although she did have a long-term romance with famed art historian Bernard Berenson).
“I would say the voice presented in that book is not quite Belle Greene’s voice,” Palmer said. “You really see in her letters how much her personality comes through in her writing.”
Gospels of Judith of Flanders (1051–64). Collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, purchased by J. P. Morgan Jr., 1926.
The curators are hopeful not only that the show captures that personality, but that it is also a celebration of Greene’s profession.
“Librarians are under attack in our country right now, and we really wanted to honor that work,” Palmer said.
“Maybe we can start getting librarians to become celebrities again,” Ciallela added.
A 1911 article in the World Magazine about Belle da Costa Greene bidding $50,000 to win a 1485 printing of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur at the Robert Hoe collection auction.
A fabulous news clipping from the World Magazine on display in the exhibition recaps a 1911 auction in which the librarian fearlessly bid $50,000 for the Mallory manuscript on behalf of Morgan. It identifies Greene as “the bachelor girl, still in her twenties, who as J. Pierpont Morgan’s librarian has charge of the finest private collection of costly volumes in the world.”
But Greene wasn’t just buying for Morgan. A section of the exhibition is dedicated to her sumptuous apartment, home to her own collection, including a stunning Lavinia Fontana painting, Marriage Portrait of a Bolognese Noblewoman, dating to about 1580.
Lavinia Fontana, Marriage Portrait of a Bolognese Noblewoman (ca. 1580). Collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. The painting was once owned by Belle da Costa Greene, J. Pierpont Morgan’s personal librarian and the first director of the Morgan Museum and Library in New York.
The work is now owned by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., which has an incredible collection of work by women artists—but didn’t realize the painting’s ties to Greene.
“The Morgan had acquired it after Belle Greene’s death, so it wasn’t well-known and -documented that it was actually from her estate,” Ciallela said. “And I knew that she had this status and wealth and this amazing apartment, but unboxing that piece, seeing it in person, I was just like, ‘OK, I want that in my apartment.’ It’s just incredible and beautiful.”
Clarence H. White, Belle da Costa Greene (1911). Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
The Morgan had always been proud of Greene’s foundational role at the institution, but has been working in recent years to better honor her legacy as a Black woman. In addition to the exhibition, the museum has awarded the two-year Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellowships to two “promising scholars from communities historically underrepresented in the curatorial and special collections fields” since 2019.
“So many young people starting out in medieval studies, or librarianship or museum studies, they see Belle Greene really working against all odds to rise to the top of her field. And to do it at a time when that was extremely difficult for a woman, let alone a Black woman?” Palmer said. “She is so inspiring to so many people.”
“Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy” is on view at the Morgan Library and Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, October 25, 2024–May 4, 2025. More

Larry Fink, the late photojournalist and art photographer whose work often depicted the glamour of the rich and famous, will have his photographs shown alongside the sculptures and paintings of his wife, Martha Posner, for the first time.
Fink, who died in November 2023 at the age of 82, had been in talks to have a solo show of his work at the Sarasota Art Museum. As his health continued to deteriorate, the exhibition evolved into one, guest-curated by Peter Barberie, that would put Fink’s and Posner’s work in conversation with each other.
“Larry was really hoping to be able to participate in the event itself,” Posner said in an interview. “But clearly that wasn’t going to happen. I don’t know how Peter Barberie did this. He made my work have this wonderful communication and interaction with Larry’s work that made perfect sense.”
Barberie, a Philadelphia Museum of Art curator, admitted in an essay that their art “seems utterly different,” contrasting Fink’s glossy photos of human behavior and desires to Posner’s waxy, rough and hairy sculptures.
Larry Fink, Lilith, Sculpture by Martha Posner (1993). Courtesy Larry Fink/MUUS Collection.
But Barberie wrote that Posner and Fink share “core artistic themes” including desire, vulnerability, and brutality, which were often shaped by life on their Pennsylvania farm.
Virginia Shearer, the director of the museum, said in an interview that the couple “really admired each other,” with their mutual influence highlighted by Barberie’s curation.
“Larry could get into a pond and really embed himself with a group of frogs,” Shearer said. “The beginning of the exhibition pairs those photographs with Martha’s beautiful watercolor drawings of animals and insects.”
Posner is best known for large sculptural works using raw materials, like figures made from honeysuckle retrieved from the woods around their farm in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania, on walks with her dog, Grizzly, who would carry back vines to use. She’s also used fleece from the sheep and llamas they raised, and feathers clipped from the wings of dead peacocks.
Larry Fink. A Sabatine Christmas, Martins Creek, Pennsylvania (1983). Photo courtesy of Larry Fink/MUUS Collection.
Posner said that even the way she and Fink thought about their work was quite different. Fink, primarily a photojournalist, was given assignments. His artistic work would then be inspired by the assignments he had been given. Most of it was taken on a “tiny Sony point-and-shoot camera” that he “did just about everything with.”
“It bothered Larry that I didn’t work every day,” she said. “He called me an inspirational artist, and that’s true. I work when I feel like I don’t have any other choice but to start working. I know many of my artist friends have a much better daily practice than me, but also I have this enormous property to take care of, too.”
Larry Fink, Pigs at Stacia’s, Pennsylvania (2019). Courtesy Larry Fink/MUUS Collection.
The major convergence between the practices of the two artists, Shearer pointed out, is in the photographs Fink took of Posner’s work, and sometimes of her process. “There’s some fabulous photographs like one of her performing in the woods with a mask which is really very evocative of the myths and legends that come up in her work,” she said.
Posner said Fink was the only person she trusted to shoot her work because he could make her sculptures feel dynamic, true to how they look in person. “They had a presence,” she said. “I wouldn’t know who else to do it. I mean, a painting, I could ask any good photographer. But the sculptures, they became too static if anyone else photographed them.”
Posner met the already successful Fink in 1992 and joined him at his farm soon after. Fink built her a studio in their barn, and she took care of the homestead when he traveled for photo shoots.
“Larry was incredibly well-known and successful and worked for every major magazine,” Posner said. “So, he cast a big shadow. Having said that, he was always very supportive of my work. But Larry was away a lot working, and we had this farm.”
Installation view of “Larry Fink / Martha Posner: Flesh and Bone” at Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, Florida, 2024. Photo: Ryan Gamma.
She said they often helped each other with their work, but she didn’t see their artistic relationship until Barberie assembled the show.
“Larry could come in and talk and help if I was working on a painting or a large drawing. He could see where those things were going. His first wife is the great painter Joan Snyder, and I think that they had a firm collaborative relationship,” Posner said. “But my being a sculptor was more difficult for Larry to see.”
She recounted an instance when Fink invaded her studio and described something she was working on as a “complete disaster.”
“You are not allowed in here anymore unless you’re invited,” Posner shot back. But when he saw the piece finished, he said, “Fucking great, Posner.”
Barberie’s first instinct for Fink’s solo show, Posner said, was to have it reflect the contents of a book of the photographer’s work that they had planned to publish. But when Barberie visited Posner’s studio, the idea of the joint show struck him.
Installation view of “Larry Fink / Martha Posner: Flesh and Bone” at Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, Florida, 2024. Photo: Ryan Gamma.
“I was cranky [at the idea] because I had all my work wrapped up in a loft and boxed up, and my main concern, as I said, was caring for my husband,” she said. “But I schlepped up and unwrapped everything and pulled things out. But Peter’s a friend of ours. So, you know, it was very easy working with him.”
As she sorted through her work, she found pieces of hers she had forgotten about and some that had never been shown. Barberie would pick things out as she pulled them down, selecting what she described as “very personal pieces” like watercolors of animals directly from her sketchbook.
“I had no idea how it was going to work because I was so overwhelmed with Larry. And then, after Larry’s death, I was overwhelmed with everything you go through with an estate of a loved one who’s passed,” Posner added. “I just sort of released everything.”
Martha Posner, #MeToo (detail) (2018). Courtesy of Martha Posner.
And the show does include new work by Fink, made during 2020 as he spent more time at the farm. Fink was shooting as recently as six months before his death, while Posner’s latest work includes 2024 watercolors, painted after her husband’s passing.
“My studio is cold now. So, I’m just doing some small pieces in the house. But come the spring, I will do some more,” Posner said. She said her next work is inspired by the writings of Natalie Haynes, whose bestselling books examine the female characters of Greek mythology and how they were depicted.
“She’s recovering the stories of women. So, I’ve been doing a bunch of small watercolors based on Greek mythology and I’m very excited about retelling these stories,” she said.
Martha Posner, Mercy (2011-2016). Photo courtesy of Martha Posner
As for her life on the farm, Posner said it remains indistinguishable from her practice.
“I don’t separate myself from this place. And, the first time I came here, I think I fell in love with this place equally to Larry,” she said. “There are gardens all over the place which I planted slowly over 30 years and it’s just very hard for me to separate what my art practice is from who I am and where I live.
Larry Fink, Praying Mantis, Martins Creek, Pennsylvania (1978). Courtesy of Larry Fink/MUUS Collection.
“I don’t see a big difference,” she added, “between flooding a field with 500 tulips every year for the past 25 years and making something in the studio.”
“Larry Fink / Martha Posner: Flesh and Bone” is on view at the Sarasota Art Museum, 1001 South Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, Florida, through April 13, 2025. More

The Jigoku-zoshi (“Handscrolls of Buddhist Hell”) is a Japanese scroll from the late 12th century that graphically depicts naked, horrified monks running away from bands of vicious, animal-headed demons engulfed in flames.
Someone with limited knowledge of art history and the Buddhist religion might assume that the animalistic demons are the antagonists of this story, but it’s actually the monks who are at fault. That’s because the Jigoku-zoshi depicts the principle of treating all beings with respect and kindness—a principle these monks have failed to uphold, hence their being sent to hell.
Unknown, Shiva in the Form of Sharabha, Tantric Painting of Garuda (1830). Photo: Gift of Herbert Gordon Zahn, 1978.
The Jigoku-zoshi exemplifies the varied roles that animals and animal-related imagery play in Asian art, from Indian statues to Japanese scrolls. Those who wish to know more about this topic should consider paying a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s ongoing exhibition, “Mythical, Divine, Demonic: Animal Imagery in South Asian Art,” open until February 9, 2026.
“Animals,” the museum’s website explains, “appear everywhere in the art of South Asia,” a part of the globe that includes India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Unlike medieval Christian art from Europe, the animals seen in South Asian art rarely represent themselves. More often than not, they are the incarnations of gods, their adversaries, or their trusty companions, bringing either bounty or destruction to the mortal realm.
“Mythical, Divine, Demonic” takes specific animals—notably the lion, serpent, man-eagle, and chimera—and looks at the different meanings and identities that artists from various South Asian cultures and time periods have ascribed to them.
Unknown, Dancing Six-Armed Ganesha (9th century). Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art / The Luther W. Brady Collection.
The exhibition was curated by Neeraja Poddar, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Ira Brind and Stacey Spector Associate Curator of South Asian Art, and a research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Her interests range from ancient Hindu manuscripts to Nepalese painting traditions.
The first thing visitors will learn as they explore the exhibition is that South Asian cultures regard animals rather differently than the Christian, materialist West, which maintains a clear separation between the human world and the animal, which the former must conquer, control, and cultivate.
Unknown, The Goddess Varahi (c. late 5th – early 6th century). Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art / Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1977.
Conversely, Hindu and Buddhist cultures tend to see the human and animal world as part of a unified whole. Both religions believe in the idea of reincarnation, including humans reincarnating into animals and vice versa. Given this connection, it should come as no surprise that many Hindu gods and goddesses like Vishnu frequently assume animal or part-human, part-animal forms.
“Mythical, Divine, Demonic” features many paintings and statues depicting such manifestations. For example, a clay statue from the late 5th or early 6th century represents the Goddess Varahi, the female counterpart of Vishnu’s boar avatar, Varaha. Varahi also has the face of a boar or sow, but the body of a human.
Unknown, Ceremonial Cover (Rumal): Vishnu on the Cosmic Ocean (1700-1800). Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art / Stella Kramrisch Collection, 1994.
Many scholars regard Hinduism as one of the world’s oldest religions, so it is difficult to ascertain what specific animals were originally meant to represent. That said, boars are generally associated with wildness and overcoming challenges. This is fitting, considering Vishnu is said to have turned into Varaha to defeat a powerful demon named Hiranyaksha.
Also featured in “Mythical, Divine, Demonic” is a painting of Shiva in the form of Sharabha, produced around 1830. In Hindu iconography, this chimera is an amalgamation of different animals, and is arguably the most powerful of Shiva’s many incarnations. In this case, it is a part-bird, part-lion hybrid with eight legs, thus demonstrating just how complex and varied the coded animal motifs within South Asian art can be.
“Mythical, Divine, Demonic: Animal Imagery in South Asian Art” is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy, Philadelphia, through February 9, 2026. More

The Americans (1958) wasn’t the first photobook Robert Frank ever made. That would be 40 Fotos (1946), a hand-bound compilation of work which the revolutionary American photographer produced while still apprenticing in Switzerland. Frank made three more over the next six years—including a scrapbook for his soon-to-be wife, artist Mary Lockspeiser. This month, “Mary’s Book” gets a rare outing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Robert Frank, Spread from Mary’s Book (1949). © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation and © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Frank made this book during his first trip back to Europe after moving to America in 1947. Its images are aching and romantic, and Mary Frank held his relic tight. It ended up in the MFA’s collection only three years ago, courtesy of noted photography dealer Howard Greenberg.
Robert Frank, Tulip/Paris, From Flowers in Paris series; man holding tulip behind back (1950). Photo: © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Starting December 21, “Robert Frank: Mary’s Book” will present the original scrapbook in full for the first time ever, alongside a few other related photographs Frank produced in Paris around this same time. The exhibition joins a slate of shows celebrating the late photographer’s 100th birthday this past year. At the MFA, “Robert Frank: Mary’s Book” also helps commemorate a century since the museum started collecting photography.
Robert Frank, Paris, Trolley car with “CIRCUS” painted on side (1949). Photo: © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
This keepsake wasn’t made to be exhibited, but rather to be cherished, and the intimacy is palpable. More than 70 photos imbue icons of everyday life in Paris with pensive longing. These images play out across six pages nestled into each other, assembled and annotated in the photographer’s own hand. According to curator Kristen Gersh, “Mary’s Book” marked the first time Frank paired pictures with text.
Robert Frank, page spread from Mary’s Book (1949). © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation and © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The exhibition also marks the first time the public will be able to see the full scrapbook all at once. Each page will stand upright across specially designed cases, rendering both sides of every page visible.
Robert Frank, Paris, Cobblestone street (1949). © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The features of Frank’s work that made him a sensation 10 years later abound throughout these pages. Melancholy and buoyant curiosity intermingle. Frank clearly missed his lover back in America. He also maintained and displayed delight.
Robert Frank, detail from Mary’s Book (1949). © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation and © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“I am particularly drawn to the spreads on Parisian park chairs,” Gersh said in an email. “Frank described seeing the chairs pretty much all over Paris and wrote to Mary that when the chairs are alone, they seem sad—perhaps a reflection of his own emotions.”
Robert Frank, Paris, Folding Chair (1949). © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“Frank’s documenting of chairs includes pictures of both intentional and haphazard formations; he anthropomorphizes them and has these objects represent human feelings and emotions,” Gersh continued. “In the center left of one spread is a picture of a lone, partially folded chair resting in a fragile fashion on its collapsed legs. This chair standing alone is perhaps the chair most imbued with animistic qualities and Frank himself found lasting importance in this lone chair as it was found in a frame in his apartment at the end of his life.”
Robert Frank, Detail from Mary’s Book (1949). Photo: © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation and © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Couples reappear, too, and not just pairs of people, but also in more subtle forms, like a diptych depicting a double advertisement. Such moments demonstrate Frank’s adeptness with symbolism, which matured throughout his later film practice and after his move to Nova Scotia. “Mary’s Book” presents an unparalleled opportunity to encounter this titan a bit more personally.
Robert Frank, Paris Diptych; “Balzac Helder Scala Vivienne” poster (1949). Photo: © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“Robert Frank: Mary’s Book” will be on view fat the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston, Massachusetts, through June 22, 2025 More

A new exhibition at Prague City Gallery’s Stone Bell House arrays hundreds upon hundreds of Bruce Weber’s photographs. They represent the iconic body of work he’s created over a six-decade career, capturing his fashion photographs, magnetic images of celebrities, photojournalistic outings, and sweeping landscapes.
Installation view of “Bruce Weber: My Education” at Stone Bell House, Prague. Photo: Noe DeWitt, courtesy of Stone Bell House.
It’s an unlikely venue for a photographer who has long been entwined with American culture—from his portraits of such figures as Madonna and Joan Didion, to his commercial work with the likes of Calvin Klein, to his cinematic tribute to Chet Baker. Yet, over email, Weber, now based between Miami and New York, professed an abiding connection to the Czech capital, one that’s only grown since he first alighted on the city to photograph Heath Ledger for Vanity Fair 25 years ago.
“In his downtime, Heath would wander around the city taking pictures and chatting with people. I thought about him a lot when I was there this fall, his open and easy way,” he said about the late actor. “Prague has so many beautiful bridges over the River Vltava, which felt a nice metaphor for the connections we’re always trying to make as photographers.”
Bruce Weber outside the Stone Bell House, Prague. Photo: Noe DeWitt, courtesy of Stone Bell House.
At the retrospective, titled “My Education,” Weber’s variously energetic and intimate photographs make for a stunning juxtaposition against the gallery’s Baroque architecture.
Here, his images are grouped less by subject than textures: his reportage works butting up against celebrity portraits, his nature scenes meeting his dynamic nudes, his color images popping up amid his grainy black-and-whites. A separate room screens his films. Gathered in display cases and shelves around the gallery are the many, many books and magazines he’s filled with his photography. They’re testament to an ever-seeking eye.
Installation view of “Bruce Weber: My Education” at Stone Bell House, Prague. Photo: Noe DeWitt, courtesy of Stone Bell House.
“I could meet a farmer out in the countryside of Nebraska or be at Keith Richards’s house in the islands with his extended family—my curiosity is the same, and more often than not, something simple will happen that reminds me of what connects us on a human level,” he said.
Installation view of “Bruce Weber: My Education” at Stone Bell House, Prague. Photo: Noe DeWitt, courtesy of Stone Bell House.
Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1946, Weber rose through the ranks of the fashion world throughout the 1970s and ’80s, during which his work appeared in fashion catalogues and magazines including GQ, British Vogue, and Interview. He would go on to establish the rare practice that spans the commercial and fine art realms, while creating some of the most enduring, if not iconic, photographic images.
“I’ve never photographed somebody just because they were famous,” explained Weber. I have to be interested in what they’re passionate about, or how they put their own life experience into what they do.”
Bruce Weber, Elizabeth Taylor and Bonkers, Thousand Oaks, California (2005). Photo courtesy of the artist.
Throughout the decades, he’s shot models, athletes, musicians, actors, politicians, and writers; lensed campaigns for Versace, Louis Vuitton, and Abercrombie & Fitch; and produced four feature-length films. In latter years, he’s seen his work collected by museums including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Installation view of “Bruce Weber: My Education” at Stone Bell House, Prague. Photo: Noe DeWitt, courtesy of Stone Bell House.
In 2017, Weber faced accusations of misconduct from no less than 15 male models, with at least two suits brought against him alleging inappropriate behavior. Weber denied what he characterized as “outrageous claims”; the cases were dismissed or settled out of court. The fallout saw a German museum scrap its Weber retrospective, with Vogue severing its relationship with the photographer “for the foreseeable future.”
The cancellation did not last long. In the time since, Weber has received assignments from Hercules and ICON magazines, dropped a new book, The Golden Retriever Photographic Society, the first dedicated to his images of dogs, and premiered his documentary on Paolo Di Paolo in Copenhagen. His latest Prague outing appears part of a reemergence—a reminder of an oeuvre that remains highly affecting.
Bruce Weber, Louise Bourgeois in New York, 1996. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“It doesn’t matter whether a particular photograph was taken as part of a fashion campaign, as a random photograph on the street, or for a magazine’s portrait series,” said the show’s curator Helena Musilová in a statement. “Everything is brought together by Weber’s ability to capture a profound emotional charge, moments of vulnerability, intimacy, intense experiences, joy, pain, fatigue, love, triumph…”
Installation view of “Bruce Weber: My Education” at Stone Bell House, Prague. Photo: Noe DeWitt, courtesy of Stone Bell House.
To Weber, the show also frames a personal journey, as hinted at in its title. He pointed out some wall text in the gallery that reads: “When a kid from a farm town in Pennsylvania ends up with his photographs on the walls of Prague City Gallery, you know he’s got a story to tell.” It’s a narrative he hopes might resonate, even this far from home.
“I hope I’ve successfully communicated what it’s like to travel and open my mind to the world around me,” he added. “I think it’s a common impulse to want to leave home and go away to the ‘big city,’ just as many of us want to return home and feel the earth beneath our feet. I don’t agree with Thomas Wolfe’s claim that ‘you can’t go home again.’ I believe we’re always going home.”
“Bruce Weber: My Education” is on view at the Stone Bell House, Staroměstské nám. 605/13, 110 00 Staré Město, Czechia, through January 19, 2025. More

One of the stars of the 2022 Venice Biennale—and the first Roma artist ever to represent a country at one of the exhibition’s national pavilions—Poland’s Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is making her U.S. debut on New York’s High Line.
The artist is known for transforming used clothing into monumental hand-stitched figurative fabric panels celebrating the Romani people. For the High Line, Mirga-Tas has created a billboard featuring a bucolic scene of the Roma on the road, enjoying their traditional itinerant lifestyle.
“This is a special one because it’s an outdoor scene where you see a procession or a caravan of people walking through the landscape,” Cecilia Alemani, High Line Art’s director and chief curator, told me. “I think it fits very well with the High Line and the city of New York. But it is also a departure from the more intimate domestic scenes that she often does of a family around the table having a meal or sharing stories. This is a much more epic depiction of her people.” (Alemani curated the international exhibition at the 2022 biennale, but was not involved in the Polish pavilion featuring Mirga-Tas.)
The work, titled Beyond the Horizon, is the second in the High Line’s revived 18th Street billboard series, which kicked off in September with a work by Glenn Ligon. Originally used for advertising, of course, the billboard was a regular High Line Art venue for the first five years after the park’s opening, but was torn down in 2015 due to construction. Now, the parking lot where it once stood is becoming a public plaza, and the art is back.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas at Tate St. Ives, (2024). Photo by Lucy Green, ©Tate.
The piece is also the latest entry in Mirga-Tas’s “On the Journey” series, which reclaims art historical depictions of the Roma by subverting stereotypes portraying them as dangerous and frightening.
“This sort of iconography has not been created by the Roma people, but of course by other people, and so she’s trying to to completely turn it upside down and be more faithful to the joy of her own community,” Alemani said.
To date, most of Mirga-Tas’s career success has come in Europe, including three solo shows this year at the Västerås Konstmuseum in Sweden, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, and Tate St. Ives in Cornwall. She was also included in Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany.
“I can imagine that her work would be very well received here,” Alemani said.
On the occasion of the work’s unveiling, I spoke with Mirga-Tas about her first stateside project, how art history informs her work, and how she turns discarded textiles into vibrant works of art.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Beyond the Horizon (2024), adjacent to the High Line on the 18th Street Billboard. Photo by Timothy Schenck, courtesy of the High Line.
Had you ever visited the High Line before you were invited to do this billboard, and what do you think of the park? How does it feel to show in New York?
I never had a chance to visit High Lane, but when I was offered the opportunity to create a project for the billboard, I was really attracted by the idea and the place.
The idea of art in space, of sharing one’s work in a place where everyone can see it, is close to me. The proximity to the park, where whole families somehow mentally take part in this journey, is so symbolic. You have time to reflect and think.
With your first public artwork in North America, do you expect that your work will be viewed through a different lens here? Do you see any parallels between discrimination against and fear of the Roma in Europe and that of migrants in the United States?
In creating my work and choosing the subject that I am currently working on, I was motivated by the need to make visible how the Roma, Sinti, Travellers were historically portrayed: from the 15th century through the 20th century, the Roma image has been shaped in a stereotypical and stigmatizing way. Historically, we can see a similar treatment of other minority groups seen as “the Other,” including in the U.S., for example in how African Americans, Native Americans, or migrants were portrayed.
Through my work I reinterpret these historical images to retell the story of which I am a part. It is an act of artistic reappropriation.
I would like people to learn something about the Roma and Sinti, to take an interest in our community and to listen. After all, there are many Roma living in the U.S. too.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Beyond the Horizon (2024), adjacent to the High Line on the 18th Street Billboard. Image courtesy of the artist.
When did you start the “On the Journey” series and what inspired you to use works from art history to help reclaim representation of the Roma?
I have been working on this series for some time now, I think, since 2019. At the time, I relied on the famous 17th-century series of engravings, “Les Bohemiens” by Jacques Callot, which depict the Roma in a stereotypical way. I decided to change his narrative on Roma and Sinti to reclaim the image of the Roma, reappropriating what has been seized from us and what has stigmatized us through these images for centuries.
Let us remember that until the 20th century, all images about Roma were created by non-Roma, from an external perspective—stereotypical, damaging, often racist. They were and continue to be the basis for anti-Gypsyism.
Searching for similar depictions in museum collections in other countries, I realized that these images of the Roma, regardless of the country, are identical. Despite the difference in time, place, and group, they are all copies of each other. Having regained control over my image and representation, I decided to sew them back together, warm them up, dress them up and imbue them with Roma history.
For me, it is important to work in a certain way, choosing carefully how I reinvent these images and how I talk about them. The lives of the Roma people were not easy, so recreating their journeys does not have to be done in an aura of negative texts, emotions, or fear.
Reclaiming our subjectivity is a priority for every human being, to be able to speak for ourselves and decide our future and how we are spoken about. Art helps to reclaim representation and offers opportunities to retell one’s own story and perspective.
What are your first memories of seeing art and how did you decide to go to art school?
My first memories are of sculpture, liking gluing and chiseling something. I was drawing and sketching, and I don’t think I thought about art school at the time. It was only at the age of 15 that I decided to go to art school. I couldn’t imagine any other place for myself. To tell you the truth, my mother didn’t see me anywhere else either. 
But sculpture has always been close to me, so I decided to study sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Beyond the Horizon (2024), adjacent to the High Line on the 18th Street Billboard. Photo by Timothy Schenck, courtesy of the High Line.
Did you learn to sew from your family members?
I don’t think it was our tradition to sew, but surely manual skills helped.
My mother told me that after the war my grandmother sewed all her clothes by hand, and later also for her children. This was due to the lack of money for a wardrobe during the difficult communist times. If she had fabric or used clothes, she could alter or sew something herself.
I also remember the gatherings of all the women in our family who worked together to do things (me, my sister, and my cousins were small), such as peeling feathers for pillows or sewing duvet covers or pillowcases, with frills and lace. Such memories of collective work always stay in my mind.
How big is the team who helps you sew today? Are many of them family members?
Since the start of the project “Re-enchanting the World,” I have been working regularly with three assistants: Halina Bednarz, Gosia Brońska, and my aunt Stasisława Mirga. Of course, I can also count on the support of my whole family, especially the women in my family: my mum, my aunts, my cousins, my sister, and so on, to carry out projects for the Roma community. Sometimes I also work with friends from Roma organizations. It depends on the project.
“Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Beyond the Horizon: A High Line Billboard” is on view adjacent to the High Line at 10th Avenue and 18th Street, New York, December 13, 2024–February 2025. More

Open now at the Guggenheim in New York, “Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930” sees over 90 artworks from this fascinating historical moment, displayed in the museum’s iconic rotunda. The exhibition explores the international movement as it took shape in the French capital, looking at the impacts of art forms such as dance, music, and poetry on artists working in this mode.
Orphism was a short-lived, Cubist-inspired movement founded in Paris in the 1910s, as the advances of modern life were overturning traditional conceptions of time and space and artists, per the museum’s description, “engaged with ideas of simultaneity in kaleidoscopic compositions, investigating the transformative possibilities of color, form, and motion.” The poet Guillaume Apollinaire gave the movement its name in 1912, referring to the Greek musician and poet Orpheus, whom he saw as the representation of pure artistry.
Installation view,Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City. Photo: David Heald ©Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
In 1936, the founding director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Alfred J. Barr Jr., included Orphism in his famous flow chart, which traced the flow of influence between Modern art movements from 1890 to 1935. Orphism was the only one not indicated in Barr’s chart to have influenced any other artistic movements: it’s a dead end. The Guggenheim bills its exhibition as the first in-depth examination of Orphism, and, by contrast with Barr’s estimation, it makes an effort to demonstrate the enduring impact of this often-overlooked movement.
“We wished to frame the emergence of abstraction in Paris at a transformative and optimistic moment in time when myriad innovations altered conceptions of time and space, placing the notion of ‘simultaneity’ at center stage,” exhibition curator Vivien Greene told me in an email. “While art history generally considers many of these artists individually or in small subsets, and they often resisted labels, this endeavor allowed us to connect a transnational constellation of figures (many of whom were not French), and explore commonalities and differences between them.
“Ultimately,” Greene added, “we were most fascinated by all they shared: an investment in color theory, the commitment to expressing the experience of modernity and simultaneity, an interest in how other disciplines could play a tangible role in visual art—notably music, dance, and poetry—and the aspiration that painting could transcend the canvas and elicit multisensory effects.”
But who was at the center of Orphism? Here are five of the movement’s key players, all of them included in the exhibition.
Robert Delaunay, Circular Forms (1930). Photo: Kristopher McKay, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Robert Delaunay
One half of one of art history’s famous couples, Robert Delaunay met the artist born Sonia Terk in 1909 while he was a young artist establishing himself in the French capital. Sonia amicably left her marriage of convenience to the art dealer Wilhelm Uhde, and the pair married in 1910. In the decade he and Sonia would create their Orphist masterpieces, and he was also a member of the Munich-based Blaue Reiter movement, led by Wassily Kandinsky.
Sonia Delaunay
Born in 1885 in modern-day Ukraine, Sonia Terk was adopted as a child by a wealthy uncle who afforded her a lifestyle marked by travel and access to culture, setting her up for her artistic training in Germany at the turn of the 20th century. Sonia was more likely to refer to herself as a Simultanist than an Orphist. (In 1925, the Delaunays even trademarked the term Simultanism, which they preferred when describing their work. Simultanism referenced the visual impact of the color combinations they placed boldly together.) Her designs were not limited to canvas: her work was seen on catwalks and cars, film sets, and furniture. In 1917 she created the costumes for art critic and ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s production of the ballet Cleopatra (with Robert creating the stage designs), and she opened several fashion studios in her lifetime.
František Kupka, Disks of Newton (Study for “Fugue in Two Colors”) (1912). © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art.
František Kupka
Born in the Czech Republic in 1871, František Kupka studied at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts and Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts before becoming an illustrator in Paris. Deeply spiritual and fascinated by philosophy and theosophy, he meshed his interest in color theory and musical harmony with art. He began creating color wheels in the 1910s, inspired by Sir Isaac Newton’s 17th-century discovery that sunlight is made up of seven colors. This resulted in Kupka’s series of Orphist masterpieces, the Disks of Newton, some examples of which appear in the Guggenheim exhibition. Kupka’s Divertimento I (1935) was also restored especially for the show.
Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso
The Portuguese artist Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso was born in 1887 and died just 30 years later of Spanish flu. In his short life, he managed to build a reputation as a pioneer in Portuguese Modernism, and surrounded himself with Europe’s cutting-edge artists, becoming close friends with the Delaunays, whom he met while the couple lived in Portugal briefly during World War I. Like Robert Delaunay, De Souza-Cardoso exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show, displaying paintings that were heavily inspired by Cubism and Italian Futurism. Defying strict categorization, De Souza-Cardoso’s works in the Guggenheim show make clear the boundaries of Orphism and its place in an ever-evolving Modern art style.
Mainie Jellett, Painting (1938). Photo: National Museums NI.
Mainie Jellett
Creating her most significant works in the 1930s, Mainie Jellett is celebrated in “Harmony and Dissonance” as an artist who kept the Orphist style alive 20 years after the movement’s conception. Born in 1897 in Dublin, Jellett studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in the Irish capital. It wasn’t until she worked with Post-Impressionist Walter Sickert at the end of the 1910s that Jellett committed to a career as a painter, having continued piano lessons up until then with the hope of becoming a concert pianist. Jellett’s works are among several in the exhibition that were created in the 1930s and beyond, demonstrating the lasting influence of Orphism on young artists, long after the death of Apollinaire.
“Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910 – 1930” is on display at Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Aven, New York, until March 9, 2025. More