On View

A finger-licking exhibition dedicated to Cheetos’s beloved Flamin’ Hot flavor has debuted at Gallery 1202 in the Bay Area, just as a new biopic about the snack’s purported inventor hits streaming platform Hulu.
Ruben Dario Villa, a 35-year-old former graphic designer for Apple and Google, curated the show, simply titled “Flamin’ Hot,” about a product he said carries such strong sentiments of nostalgia that it brings people together in a time of increased divisiveness in the United States.
“I think nostalgic connection points are things that we can all have in common,” he told Artnet News.
Dario Villa said the inspiration for the exhibition loosely came from thinking about the first time he tried Flamin’ Hot Cheetos when he was nine-years-old.
“My mom was a health and recycling nut before that was a thing and tasked me with bringing some tortillas from the grocery store,” he said. “I thought, ‘ooh, I’m going to be slick, and buy some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and some tortillas in two separate transactions.’”
Dario Villa, laughing, added that he forgot to purchase the snacks separately and began eating the Cheetos on the way home from the store. “I thought I could scratch the Hot Cheetos off the receipt with my Cheeto-dusted fingers but my mom, worried I was taking too long to come home, walks towards the supermarket and catches me literally red-handed.”
Dario Villa said he built the exhibition around that experience, expressing it in what he called a “Chicano-style interpretation of pop culture to tap into that source of malaise we have as a collective.” He had already been working on a piece inspired by his youth and using Flamin’ Hot Cheetos dust when he was invited by the gallery to curate the show, an offer that coincided with the release of the Hulu film, Flamin’ Hot.
Installation view of “Flamin’ Hot” at Gallery 1202. Photo courtesy of Rubén Dario Villa.
“I’m first-generation, my parents are immigrants from Mexico, and I kind of sit at the intersection of American culture,” he said. “So, it’s like an insider-outsider perspective that’s very much informed by the historical art context of like Andy Warhol.”
Dario Villa said he’s inspired by artists that “have a sense of humor” and did an open call for the show on social media because he didn’t want to exhibit artists that are “too established” for his fun-themed show.
Ultimately, more than 50 artists submitted with around 26 selected for the show with a mixture of mediums—ranging from Lorena Cortez’s sculpture of a Cheetos bag being tantalizingly emptied into a bowl, to Hey Ruca’s painted reimagining of Cheetos’s mascot Chester Cheetah, to Hortencia Martín’s skate deck carrying telltale signs of Cheetos dust,
“There’s a still life of Hot Cheetos that’s just so beautiful,” Dario Villa said.
The artist said the show opened with a street fair vibe, not the “traditional charcuterie and wine vibe,” with food trucks and plant vendors. At the end of the day, he hopes that Richard Montañez—the purported creator of the spicy snack—will make it out for the closing of the show on August 12.
See more images from the show below.
Princessa Xicana, Hot & Hashi (2023). Photo courtesy of Gallery 1202.
Berenice Hernandez-Baltazar, hot Cheeto fingers (2023). Photo courtesy of Gallery 1202
Pete Dimas, Flaming Lips (2023). Photo courtesy of Gallery 1202.
Installation view of Rubén Dario Villa’s Hot Ass (2023) at “Flamin’ Hot.” Photo courtesy of Rubén Dario Villa.
“Flamin’ Hot” is on view at Gallery 1202, 7363 Monterey Street, Gilroy, California, through August 12.
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Stepping into the National Gallery of Victoria’s “Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi” exhibition feels akin to entering a Post-Impressionist funhouse, quiltlike in its vibrant patchwork of galleries. The buzzed-about exhibition, co-organized with the Musée d’Orsay, showcases a remarkable selection of Pierre Bonnard’s late 19th-century paintings as well as curation of works by his contemporaries—all set within a colorful salon-like scenography designed by Mahdavi.  
Installation view “Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi” 2023. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Photo by Lillie Thompson.
Through clever cutouts that echo the favored window motif in the French artist’s paintings of interiors, visitors encounter sprawling pattern-filled vistas, layered to dizzying effect. “The whole show is about being immersive; the Nabi artists wanted you to enter a world where you can be surrounded by art rather than just looking at it,” says the award-winning French architect and designer of Iranian-Egyptian origin. Derived from the Hebrew word navi meaning “prophet,” the Nabis—a late 19th-century artist movement that included Bonnard—ushered in a new era of design-based art, including everything from furniture to commercial illustration. 
Creating punchy, art-filled environments has become Mahdavi’s calling card. In 2014, she was tapped to design The Gallery at sketch London—arguably, Instagram’s most iconic restaurant—which she made into a plush pink haven to juxtapose British artist David Shrigley’s graphic, yet whimsical works on view. The design was so successful, Mahdavi’s three-year project lasted eight years, and in 2022, she was asked to redesign the space to complement British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare’s quilts, sculptures, and masks.  
The Gallery at sketch, London, 2014 Photography © Thomas Humery
Mahdavi’s Charlotte velvet bubblegum-hued armchairs, as made famous by sketch, are among her furnishings sprinkled throughout the Bonnard exhibition, which opened this June for a four-month run. “Pierre Bonnard” is the latest of NGV’s Melbourne Winter Masterpieces, an exhibition series that aims to draw tourists to Melbourne during the off-season months. It was organized in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, which holds the largest collection of the artist’s work. Sourced from numerous public and private collections, it features more than 100 pieces by the Nabi titan known for his luminous palette, as well as his contemporaries, such as Édouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton. Organized chronologically, the exhibition charts Bonnard’s shifting subject matter as he moves from urban Paris in the 1890s, encapsulated in street and theatrical scenes, to the South of France, where from the 1920s onwards he focuses on natural landscapes and quiet moments at home.  
Installation view “Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi” 2023. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Photo by Lillie Thompson.
To make Bonnard’s work, which spans paintings, photography, and the decorative arts, more accessible to Australian audiences, NGV enlisted Mahdavi to conceive the exhibition’s scenography—and, indeed, the pairing is undeniably a match made in polychromatic heaven. The conversation began five years when NGV leaders visited her Parisian studio. Upon viewing the catalogue for the museum’s groundbreaking 2018–19 exhibition, “Escher x nendo | Between Two Worlds,” in which Japanese design studio nendo responded to Dutch artist M.C. Escher’s work, Mahdavi was instantly inspired. “It was a very unusual and forward-thinking combination,” says Mahdavi, an admirer of both creative forces. “It was a new way of having a conversation between art and design.”  
Installation view “Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi” 2023. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Photo by Lillie Thompson.
Also particularly novel to Mahdavi was the blending art and commerce in the museum context—nearly all her furnishings in the exhibition are available for purchase via her showroom. For nearly a decade, auction houses have tapped interior designers to create vignettes (both digitally and in real life) that ground the art and objects they aim to sell. However, for a major museum to give a contemporary designer such a prominent voice (not only within the scenography but even the actual exhibition title) is daring—and possibly the future. 
Installation view “Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi” 2023. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Photo by Lillie Thompson.
“In large art museums, especially those with massive 19th-century art collections, I’m sure [the extent to which we incorporated Mahdavi’s vision] would be considered a bit sacrilegious. Many museums worry about an over-presence of someone else in the room beside the artist,” says Miranda Wallace, NGV’s Senior Curator of International Exhibition Projects. Perhaps indicating a changing landscape, this spring the Musée National Picasso-Paris opened a Picasso exhibition with artistic direction by British designer Paul Smith. “The freedom we gave India, and the way she responded to Bonnard through the environment she created, fit the nature of his work so perfectly. It’s not a forced complementarity.”   
“Like Bonnard, I always work with my own memory of colors,” says Mahdavi, who shares how her nomadic childhood, during which she moved from “Technicolor” America to Germany, “a lost paradise of color where everything was black and white,” was formative on her aesthetic. Because Bonnard only worked from his memory (he’d sketch a scene after the fact and jot down notes recalling the lighting during a specific moment), Mahdavi found inspiration in the artist’s “distortion of reality,” reflected in his peculiar palette, flattened perspectives, and scenes conflating interiors and exteriors from different locations. “The same way that there’s an abstracted value to Bonnard’s paintings, the exhibition is designed like an abstraction of a home,” explains Mahdavi. Incorporating her own furnishings was one tactic to give NGV’s expansive galleries a more domestic scale. “It’s as if Bonnard is inviting guests into his home.” 
Installation view “Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi” 2023. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Photo by Lillie Thompson.
Especially from his earlier years, many of Bonnard’s works are small format. “To give him a bigger voice” and demonstrate the distinctive way he produced “vibrations through pattern,” Mahdavi extracted details from wallpapers and fashions in his paintings, computer manipulated them, and blew them up into backdrops for the exhibition. “We wanted people to understand the strength and modern value of his art,” says Mahdavi of the mise en abyme effect. The carpets’ designs, too, stemmed from the painter’s interiors. Mahdavi’s heavy pattern use, complemented by solid walls in splashy colors, also hark back to the typically fully wallpapered homes of Bonnard’s day without feeling old and stuffy.  
“We know that people love immersive experiences, but how do you make a meaningful connection between the environment and the work?” says Wallace on bringing historical artwork to new audiences. “The ambition is that you transport people on a conceptual and intellectual journey back in time, as well as into an artist’s vision of the world.” Given the endless creative possibilities that Bonnard’s homes afforded his art (his bathroom alone accounts for the setting of dozens of photographs and portraits of his wife, Marthe), the pairing of Bonnard’s œuvre with a contemporary interior designer makes sense; the choice of the bold, yet shrewd Mahdavi is what makes this exhibition evade gimmickry. Intentionally with very few digital components, the show is a reminder that spectacle and immersion can be achieved without flashy tech. In that regard, the NGV’s “Pierre Bonnard” is a much-needed antithesis to the trend of soulless projection-based shows à la Klimt and van Gogh. 
Installation view “Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi” 2023. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Photo by Lillie Thompson.
“Bonnard said that ‘museums are filled with homeless works,’” says Wallace. ‘With India’s display, Bonnard’s artworks are rooted in a fertile and appropriate ground because it’s all about that notion of looking and enjoying the surroundings. The pleasure of the painting’s details comes to the fore and makes them feel fresh.” 
As for the cadence of shows featuring an external collaborator, Wallace believes NGV director Tony Ellwood is “very keen to push the envelope with Melbourne Winter Masterpieces,” and that “we will look for opportunities where there is a subject that allows us to really engage with design because it is such a fundamental part of this institution.” However, “having the right pairing is not necessarily an annual thing.”  
“As a museum, we are increasingly challenged to diversify what we’re offering,” Wallace continues. “If we are going to do a show about a European man from the 19th or 20th century, the question becomes ‘how can we also then make sure we are presenting something that wouldn’t have been done 30 years ago?’” 
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Natalie Frank has never been confined to the white cube. That’s particularly true now for the 43-year-old artist who, in addition to opening a new exhibition of works at Miles McEnery Gallery, just saw the release of two books and a big-budget tv show featuring her fantastical drawings.  
On view at Miles McEnery is “The Raven and The Lion Tamer,” Frank’s first solo show in New York in over a decade. It comprises examples from two recent, related bodies of work.  
The first is a suite of expressionistic mixed-media pictures of women with lions. Most subvert the dynamic you might expect: in Frank’s world, the cats are docile and the women are wild. In one canvas, a lioness licks the red-bottomed sole of a masked woman whose arms are tied behind her head. Whether the restraints are for safety or performance, is unclear; either way, the scene is charged with a frisson of danger. 
Natalie Frank, Raven III (2022). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery.
Rounding out the show at Miles McEnery are seven gouache and pastel chalk drawings Frank created for a new book on the collected writings of Edgar Allan Poe. The artist draws inspiration from Poe’s best-known poem for the series, called The Raven, but she departs from typical depictions of the tale.  
Instead, Frank focuses on Lenore, the narrator’s lost lover. In some cases, she’s shown as a bird or a goddess; in others, her form is harder to pin down: Is she a vision? A dream? A memory? 
“The Raven and Lion Tamers series explore the possibilities of losing and commanding control,” wrote Jonathan Rider, Director of FLAG Art Foundation, in an essay for the show. “Operating within tense psychological spaces—a mourner’s chamber or a ring at the center of a circus—Frank’s fantastical images both complicate and exaggerate already heightened emotional states and circumstances. 
“What Frank brings to light through these bodies of work,” Rider continued, “is the glory and tumult, the messiness and complex vulnerability of attempting to maintain the illusion of control.” 
Natalie Frank, Raven I (2022). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery.
The book for which Frank painted those and other illustrations is Poe’s Phantasia, published earlier this year by Arion Press. The artist also illustrated a collection of another horror writer’s work: The Wounded Storyteller: The Traumatic Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann, which was released by Yale Books in May. 
Eagled-eyed viewers can also spot Frank’s drawings and notebooks in The Crowded Room, a new Apple+ miniseries. Tom Holland, the show’s star, plays a New York artist in 1979 who is arrested for a shocking crime—one he swears he didn’t commit.  
See more images from “The Raven and The Lion Tamer” below: 
Natalie Frank, Raven VI (2022). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery.
Natalie Frank, The Lion Tamer II (2022). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery.
Natalie Frank, Raven V (2022). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery.
Natalie Frank, The Lion Tamer IV (2022). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery.
Natalie Frank, The Lion Tamer III (2022). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery.
Natalie Frank, Raven II (2022). Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery.
“Natalie Frank: The Raven and The Lion Tamer” is on view now through July 22 at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York.  

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Absurdity takes centre stage in a new retrospective of sculptural works by the playful Austrian artist Erwin Wurm at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in northern England. Over decades, Wurm has become know for works that interrupt our everyday perception of the world, distorting or anthropomorphizing familiar objects and poking fun at rigid societal norms.
“Trap of the Truth” is named for the philosophical interrogations of René Descartes, emphasizing the inevitable subjectivity of our interactions with the world. Among the highlights are Wurm’s famed “One Minute Sculptures,” like Idiot (2010) and Ship of Fools (2017), performative works in which a human fails to use an everyday object in the proper way and ends up trapped in a ridiculous position.
Several new, unseen sculptures include Big Step (2022), which lampoons society’s obsession with conspicuous consumption by inflating a Hermès Birkin bag and allowing it to take on a life of its own atop long, slender legs.
Visitors to the exhibition will note that there is hardly a subject or medium that Wurm has shied away from. “At some point I came to realise that everything surrounding me can be material for an artistic work, absolutely everything,” Wurm said in a press statement. “To begin with, because I had no money and worked relatively quickly, I used scraps of wood and cans. Then I used old clothing, which did not cost anything, before ultimately realizing that I could actually use anything around me. That was the decisive step, as then anything was possible.”
The mega survey includes more than 100 works, pairing 55 sculptures indoors and 19 outside with paintings, drawings and photographs that give wider context to Wurm’s ideas.
Check out some of the works for the exhibition, on view through April 28, 2024, below.
Erwin Wurm, Truck II (2011). Photo: Rafal Sosin, © Studio Erwin Wurm.
Erwin Wurm, Big Kastenmann (2012). Photo: © Studio Erwin Wurm.
Erwin Wurm, Crash Long (2022). Photo: Ulrich-Ghezzi, © Studio Erwin Wurm.
Erwin Wurm, The Idiot II (2003). Photo: © Studio Erwin Wurm.
Erwin Wurm, Big Step (2022). Photo: © Studio Wurm.
Erwin Wurm, Eames (2021). Photo: Markus Gradwohl, © Studio Erwin Wurm.
Erwin Wurm, Modesty (2021). Photo: © Ulrich Ghezzi, courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

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A major new retrospective at the Southhampton Arts Center is giving due recognition to the Scottish photojournalist Harry Benson, who has spent over seven decades capturing some of pop culture’s most legendary figures. Featuring musicians, models, actors, and athletes, “A Moment in Time: Iconic Images by Harry Benson” runs until July 15.
Born in Glasgow in 1929, Benson started out as a tabloid photographer before landing a job at LIFE magazine. His work has also been published in TIME, French Vogue, Newsweek, People, Architectural Digest, Town & Country, and Vanity Fair, and his subjects have included the Kennedys, Dolly Parton, Michael Jackson, Barbara Streisand, and Queen Elizabeth II. Making best use of this unique access to high profile subjects, Benson has a knack for producing images that feel natural and carefree.
Henry Benson visiting the exhibition at Southampton Arts Center. Photo: Rob Rich.
“Having started my career on London’s Fleet Street, I work very quickly and try not to influence the person I am photographing,” he told Artnet News. “I photograph what I see and what I see should inform.”
Now aged 93, he is still snapping away and has shared a behind-the-scenes glimpse at his most exciting jobs in a new Magnolia Pictures’ documentary Harry Benson: Shoot First.
One of Benson’s best known images is an action shot of The Beatles having a pillow fight at the George V Hotel in Paris in 1964. The band’s high spirits must have been buoyed that night by the news that I Want to Hold Your Hand had topped the American charts and they were invited to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Benson traveled with them on their American tour and never returned to the U.K.
Two decades later, in 1992, he visited Truman Capote near his summer home in Wainscott, Long Island and immortalized the writer’s carefree excitement as he paced over the dunes towards the beach. “Truman was a tough man who was always ready to oblige for a photograph; he is truly missed,” said Benson in a press statement.
Truman Capote in the sand near his summer home in Long Island in 1982. Photo: © Harry Benson.
One day in 1971, Benson was walking home from the offices of Life magazine when he saw Francis Coppola in conversation with Al Pacino and Diane Keaton outside Radio City Music Hall. Instinctually, he grabbed his camera and within moments had secured a behind-the-scenes shot of the filming of The Godfather, which remains one of the most celebrated movies of all time.
Al Pacino and Diane Keaton speaking to Francis Ford Coppola on the set of The Godfather in 1971. Photo: © Harry Benson.
In one 1978 snap, New York’s breathtaking skyline, which frames the twin towers, is as much the artist’s subject as are actress and singer Liza Minnelli and her friend, the acclaimed fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick, known mostly as simply Halston. The pair are seen sharing a moment of laughter at his atelier on the 21st floor of the Olympic Tower.
Actress and singer Liza Minnelli with her friend, the fashion designer Halston, in New York City in 1978. Photo: © Harry Benson.
Among the many musicians and rock stars who have posed before Benson’s camera is The Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger, who was performing at Madison Square Gardens in 1969. Memorably, Tina Turner and Janis Joplin also took to the stage as opening acts.
Portrait of Mick Jagger in 1969. Photo: © Harry Benson.
Benson also turned his lens back on the magazine world, authoring a portrait of one of its greatest titans, Diana Vreeland. The Paris-born fashion writer was editor-in-chief of American Vogue from 1963 to 1971 and later a special consultant to the Costume Institute as the Met.
Portrait of former Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland. Photo: © Harry Benson.
The rapturous whoops and cheers of students at Harrow School in London take centre stage of a photograph documenting Sir Winston Churchill’s visit to his alma mater in 1960. The boys greeted their former prime minister with an updated rendition of their school song, adding the line “and Churchill’s name shall win acclaim through each new generation.”
Sir Winston Churchill visits his alma mater Harrow school in 1960. Photo: © Harry Benson.
“A Moment in Time: Iconic Images by Harry Benson” is on view until July 15 at the Southampton Arts Center.
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A new online exhibition of artworks by Black artists from Africa and its Diaspora explores the misrepresentations of Black identity by A.I., which they say offers “a fragmentary, perhaps even violent, picture.”
As is now well understood, data, and consequently A.I., reproduces the same human biases that are ever-present in our everyday real lives. In response, “In/Visible” on the digital art platform Feral File brings together work that is “defiantly visible” by Black artists who are using A.I. to tell stories despite its inevitable shortcomings.
“Black artists using A.I. today have to work harder than their white counterparts to get results that they feel accurately represent them,” Senegalese curator Linda Dounia told Artnet News. “They achieved this with persistence and stubbornness, endlessly re-prompting, correcting distortions, and editing out stereotypes. While Black artists should be celebrated for the incredible persistence they show using a tool that barely understands them, it really shouldn’t be this hard for them to participate in the emergence of new technologies.”
Classic examples of A.I. bias in Dounia’s experience include face and body distortions, lack of detail or definition of features like hair and inability to understand cultural references like types of braid or attire. “A prompt about a ‘building in Dakar’ will likely return a deserted field with a dilapidated building while Dakar is a vibrant city with a rich architectural history,” she also noted of A.I.’s replication of common stereotypes.
“For a technology that was developed in our times, it feels like A.I. has missed an opportunity to learn from the fraught legacies that older industries are struggling to untangle themselves from,” she added. “‘In/Visible’ is a way for Black artists to feel less lonely in their experience of A.I., to have their challenges expressed in a way that resonates materially and emotionally, to reject the normalization of their exclusion in emerging technologies.”
In her curatorial statement, Dounia further elucidated the ways in which data fail to adequately capture ambiguity, while also failing to offer an “objective” reflection of our reality. “Logical measurements of the mysteries of the universe and instruments capable of pulverizing elusiveness to its most objective bits,” is how she described data. “Yet, what we measure, and where and how we measure it, are affected by who we are and our positionality relative to others.”
“In/Visible” is currently on view on Feral File. Preview works from the exhibition below.
Adaeze Okaro, Planet Hibiscus, #33. Images courtesy of Feral File.
Minne Atairu, Blonde Braids Study II. Images courtesy of Feral File.
Linda Dounia, Chez Jo. Images courtesy of Feral File.
Zoe Osborne, Summer Edition. Images courtesy of Feral File.
Nygilia, Confetti. Images courtesy of Feral File.
Serwah Attafuah, PERCEIVED. Images courtesy of Feral File.
AFROSCOPE, Proof of Spirit – Act II. Images courtesy of Feral File.
Arclight, UNTITLED. Images courtesy of Feral File.
Rayan Elnayal, Cities and spaceships. Images courtesy of Feral File.
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More than 20 years ago, Hugh Nini and his partner Neal Treadwell were browsing in an antique shop in Dallas, Texas, when they came across a 1920s photo of a young male couple in which they were sure they saw clandestine love. Struck by the risk the pictured couple had taken by showing themselves intertwined physically, in everyday clothing in an American suburb, Nini and Treadwell saw themselves. 
Their collection of images of men in love now encompasses more than 4,000 photographs from about 1850 to 1950, spanning events like the Civil War, two World Wars, and the Great Depression, and coming from all across the world. A selection was published in a book, Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850s-1950s, in 2020. Reviewing it in Rolling Stone, Jerry Portwood said it was “gorgeous” and called it “a promise we keep to these forgotten men, acknowledging their devotion, who loved despite all the odds.”
Portwood also hoped the book would become a museum show, and at Geneva’s Rath Museum (the temporary exhibition space of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire), he now has his wish with the exhibition, “Loving: the Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell Collection.” Zurich-based artist Walter Pfeiffer helped to curate the show from a selection offered by Nini and Treadwell. The show came as a result of museum director Marc-Olivier Wahler meeting the book’s publishers in 2019.
Photograph, undated, with a note: “Edward and his chum.” Courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell collection © Loving by 5 Continents Editions
The photos and the subjects are anonymous, and the men pose as straight couples might: in bed, on board a ship, in a photo booth, or even simulating a wedding. They include workers, businessmen, students, and servicemen. 
And they’ve mostly stayed anonymous despite the exposure in the book, which was published in various languages around the world simultaneously.
“Surprisingly, we have had no one reach out to say that they are related to anyone in our book,” said the collectors in an interview with the museum. “However, people who have our book have sent us photos of their relatives that they believe could be a part of our next book.”
There is one couple which has been identified, according to the collectors. 
“A professor from Vienna, and others, have reached out to us saying that the couple on pages 210/211 are in fact Rupert Brook, a famous poet, and Duncan Grant, a famous artist, both from the U.K.,” they said. “If you look at photos of these two men from the early 1900s, they are more than similar. They are a match.”
“One enduring philosophical question is: ‘If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’” the collectors asked in their book. “The correct answer is yes—or no. If these couples loved each other and memorialized their love with a photo, but no one else saw it, did their love exist or matter? This book is filled with fallen trees whose sound, though delayed, is now being heard for the first time.”
See more photos from the show below.
Photograph, 1951, with a note: “1951”, “Davis & J.C.” Courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell collection © Loving by 5 Continents Editions
Photograph, United States, undated. Courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell collection © Loving by 5 Continents Editions.
Photograph (n.d.). Courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell collection. © Loving Continents Editions.
Photograph, United States, undated. Courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell collection © Loving by 5 Continents Editions.
“Loving: the Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell Collection” is on view at the Rath Museum, Rue Charles-Galland 2, 1206 Geneva, through September 24.
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When the Museum of the City of New York decided to mark its centennial with a massive show exploring what the city has meant to artists, let’s just say it did not lack for exhibits.  
More than 400 objects have been assembled for “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture,” all capturing how the city has served as muse, setting, and subject for visual artists, filmmakers, writers, fashion designers, and musicians over the past century. The stories they have told in and about New York City have been as abundant as they are diverse. 
“Nobody feels neutral about New York,” Sarah M. Henry, the museum’s chief curator and interim director, told Artnet News. “The warts-and-all quality to this observation and the ways in which artists have drawn attention to the flaws of New York is as much part of the story as the odes to the things that we love about the city.”
Installation view of “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo: Brad Farwell for Museum of the City of New York.
The show is divided into distinct segments.

Tempo of the City surveys visual representations of the city streets evoking both joy (as in Sex and the City) and stress (Taxi Driver); Destination NYC spotlights New York’s most iconic spaces, from its beaches to its rooftops; At Home in New York explores how artists have depicted the comforts and challenges of living in the city.  

Interactive exhibits dot the show, including a sound installation loaded with 100 songs inspired by the city’s five boroughs and a digital bookshelf, masterminded by design studio Dome Collective, where visitors can listen to books read by the likes of Matthew Broderick, Ronnie Chieng, and Tessa Thompson.  
A highlight, though, is You Are Here, an installation that immerses viewers in more than 400 film scenes shot of and about New York. Do the Right Thing and Ghostbusters are represented, as are clips from Working Girl to Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Midnight Cowboy, all cleverly and thematically stitched together by production company RadicalMedia.  
Installation view of “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo: Brad Farwell for Museum of the City of New York.
A vast project, MCNY planned and pulled the exhibition together over five years, a period that overlapped with 2020’s lockdowns. According to Henry, it was a moment that surfaced for the museum team how New York’s distinct qualities could also make it most vulnerable to a pandemic. That discrepant view, as the show points out, is just the tip of the complexity of inhabiting—let’s face it—the greatest city in the world. 
“We’re not the visitor center and New York doesn’t need it either,” said Henry. “What the exhibition is about is these conflicting perspectives, experiences, and emotions that a place as complicated and challenging as New York City can evoke.” 
Here are eight unmissable highlights from the exhibition.

Edward Hopper, New York Movie (1939) 
Edward Hopper, New York Movie (1939) at “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture.” Photo: Min Chen.
One of Hopper’s lesser-seen works, on loan from MoMA, this painting depicts an usher, pensive against the backdrop of an opulent movie theater. The painter’s signatures are in full bloom here—from the visual sumptuousness of the New York setting to the haunted atmosphere of urban alienation. 

The robe and gloves Robert De Niro wore in Raging Bull (1980) 
Robe, trunks, and boxing gloves from Raging Bull at “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture.” Photo: Min Chen.
One of the most striking costume choices in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-sweeping film, this ensemble, designed by John Boxer and Richard Bruno, was most prominently seen in scenes recreating boxer Jake LaMotta’s bouts at Madison Square Garden. It will only be on view for three months. 

Alice Neel, 108th and Madison (1945) 
“I love you Harlem,” artist Alice Neel wrote in her journal in the early 1940s, “for the rich deep vein of human feeling buried under your fire engines.” That affection for her neighborhood, Neel would also paint into her street scenes that immortalized El Barrio, she wrote, for “your poverty and your loves.” This particular oil depicts the city’s sanitation workers going about their job not far from the MCNY itself. 

Elinor Carucci, Emma in Her Room, Shelter-in-Place Time, Corona Days (2020) 
Elinor Carucci, Emma in Her Room, Shelter-in-Place Time, Corona Days (2020). Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery.
Over lockdown, photographer Elinor Carucci turned her camera onto her own family in isolation, capturing her husband and teenage twins, Eden and Emma (seen here), sheltering in place in their 950-square-foot apartment. Her series would illustrate not just an individual, but a shared reality—further mirrored in Kadir Nelson’s Homecoming (2021), a painting, included in the show, that depicts the bliss of a post-vax reunion.  

The pendant from Uncut Gems (2019) 
Pendant from Uncut Gems, with the Carrie Bradshaw tutu ensemble from Sex and the City. Photo: Brad Farwell for Museum of the City of New York.
You know that highly meme-ed scene from Uncut Gems where Adam Sandler, playing a jeweler, holds up this diamond-encrusted Furby pendant and declares, “I started this shit”? Well, that object is here, the work of designer Catherine Miller who oversaw the molding, casting, and setting by hand of the 14-carat gems on the instantly iconic medallion.  

Jimi Hendrix’s handwritten lyrics for “My Friend” (1968) 
Jimi Hendrix’s handwritten lyrics. Photo: Min Chen.
Hendrix lived in New York City for four years starting in 1966, during which he left his mark on studios like Electric Lady and apartments in Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side. The city, too, left its mark on the musician, who, in his song “My Friend” transformed Harlem into a fantastical setting for an encounter with “a stagecoach full of feathers and footprints.” 

The T-shirt Chloë Sevigny wore in Kids (1995) 
T-shirt from Kids. Photo: Brad Farwell for Museum of the City of New York.
Straight from Sevigny’s own collection, this T-shirt saw her character Jennie through one life-changing day of hard partying, drug use, sex, and skateboarding in Larry Clark’s seminal film Kids. Sevigny calls the item one of her “most treasured possessions.” 

Faith Ringgold, Tar Beach (1988) 
Faith Ringgold, Tar Beach (1988) at “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture.” Photo: Min Chen.
Ringgold’s story quilt, which narrates the creative reveries of the artist’s eight-year-old heroine Cassie Louise Lightfoot, is included here for its framing of a Harlem rooftop as a site for socializing, dreaming—and flight. “My women are actually flying,” Ringgold said of her “Women on a Bridge” series, of which this quilt forms a part. “They are just free, totally.” 
“This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture” is on view at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave, New York, through June 21, 2024. 
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