On View

From its punny title on down, the Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibition “It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby” was designed to start a conversation. Love it or hate it, it’s hard to deny that the show, which looks at the artist’s complicated legacy through the eyes of Gadsby, an Australian comedian best known for the Netflix special Nanette, has succeeded in that regard. 
Even before it even opened, the show elicited the kind of fervent takedowns you rarely see from art critics these days. Then, just as quickly, the backlash brought on its own backlash. Only three days out from the opening it already feels like we’re in the third or fourth wave of “takes.” (Which in itself is a little funny, because both sides of the debate have accused the other of indulging in the kind of rapid, vapid opinions that dominate Twitter discourses, not legitimate art-historical ones.)
“There’s little to see. There’s no catalogue to read. The ambitions here are at GIF level, though perhaps that is the point,” wrote New York Times critic at large Jason Farago of the exhibition in a review last week. The show, he argued, “backs away from close looking for the affirmative comforts of social-justice-themed pop culture.” 

“It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby” at the Brooklyn Museum gives the audience permission to ignore what challenges them, and to ennoble a preference for comfort and kitsch, @jsf, our art critic, writes.https://t.co/22PVtnTBaq
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 2, 2023

Gadsby is after a revisionist history with the show, which is one of 50 international exhibitions presented on the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death. The comedian aims to redress Picasso’s legacy with a consideration of his fattened ego and misogynistic tendencies, his documented abuse of women and colonialist imagery.  
But the gesture extends beyond show’s titular artist too. For Gadsby, Picasso represents Modernism writ large; he’s the male “genius” in a decades-long movement of male geniuses, many anointed at the expense of equally talented women artists. 
In response, Gadsby has paired a selection of (mostly minor) Picasso pieces with works by pioneering women artists of the 20th and 21st centuries— Nina Chanel Abney, Dara Birnbaum, Käthe Kollwitz, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, and so on. These creators may be also geniuses in their own right, but their works’ connection to Picasso has been seen as tenuous at best.    

The Brooklyn Museum has dismissed negative reviews of “It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby,” which opened to the public today after being panned in ARTnews and the New York Times. https://t.co/Od6ef1lR6q
— ARTnews (@artnews) June 2, 2023

“The function of a public museum (or at least it should be) is to present to all of us these women’s full aesthetic achievements,” Farago wrote, before offering an alternative location for Gadsby’s presentation: “There is also room for story hour, in the children’s wing. 
That “Pablo-matic” engages in a skin-deep, pseudo-historical investigation of its chosen topic is an opinion shared by other critics too. Artnews’s Alex Greenberger wrote in a review of the “disastrous” show that its “problem—Pablo-m, if you will—is not its revisionary mindset, which justly sets it apart from all the other celebratory Picasso shows being staged this year to mark the 50th anniversary of his death… It is, instead, the show’s disregard for art history,” he wrote, noting that Gadsby studied art history in college only to abandon it out of frustration “with its patriarchal roots.” 

But while these and other biting reviews circulated online, some pointed out that they came mostly from male critics. “So many angry, hysterical reviews from male art critics must mean that Pablo-matic @brooklynmuseum is saying something really important,‘” wrote the feminist collective Guerrilla Girls, which has a piece in the show, in an Instagram post. 
Meanwhile, Lisa Small, a Brooklyn Museum curator who, along with colleague Catherine Morris, helped Gadsby organize the exhibition, posted a picture of herself laughing with the comedian. Its caption read: “that feeling when / It’s Pablo-matic / gets (male) art critics’ knickers in a twist.” (Morris reposted it with the caption “An @nytimes columnist got VERY EMOTIONAL about our show.”)
Australian author Kaz Cooke summed up the sentiment in a Twitter post of her own: “So far male reviewers of @Hannahgadsby’s co-curated Brooklyn Museum Picasso show have slagged it for being about Picasso, not being enough about Picasso, not being funny enough, not being serious enough, having the wrong paintings by women, & having paintings by the wrong women,” she wrote. 

Shortly after the show opened, Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak weighed in, too. “To those who question whether Gadsby’s voice belongs in this exhibit, I would simply ask: Whose interests are threatened by including it? Or, who benefits from excluding it?” She wrote in an op-ed for the Art Newspaper. 
“[‘It’s Pablo-matic’] is not about cancelling Picasso. Quite the opposite,” Pasternak continued. “Cancelling means refusing to engage. Refusing to have the conversation. Refusing complexity. Ours is an exhibition that invites complexity. And I’m confident Picasso can handle a little complexity. In fact, he invited it.” 
“I’m also confident that our audiences can handle complexity, too.”
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Keith Haring’s linework has graced subterranean tunnels and art’s loftiest exhibition halls. This month, however, marks his first museum retrospective in Los Angeles. “Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” animates 10 galleries at the Broad, the culmination of a decade of effort first started by the museum’s namesake founder Eli Broad—the late businessman who got his start as a collector buying the work of Haring and his downtown friends in the 1980s.
Despite the commercial successes of Haring’s approach to accessible art—like his 1986 Pop Shop—“Art Is For Everybody” honors Haring’s political activism. The show features more than 120 artworks and relics that offer shocks of topical vigor, both on and off the canvas, from paintings to experimental videos, ephemera and more. In addition to drawing from its own holdings, the Broad has secured 67 loans from the Keith Haring Foundation and 42 from private collectors.
“The exhibition offers the opportunity to see work from the full arc of the artist’s career,” curator and exhibitions manager Sarah Loyer told Artnet News. This includes work Haring made as a student at the School of Visual Arts, through to his passing at age 31 from AIDS-related illness.
“Art Is for Everybody” opens with a striped room highlighting Haring’s Day-Glo paintings. Music culled from his mixtapes transports viewers to Tony Shafrazi Gallery circa 1982. After exploring Haring’s affinity for the graffiti scene’s many moving parts, like hip-hop and breakdancing, the show illustrates how his work grew more fervent with time.
“He addressed topics from nuclear disarmament during the Cold War Era to religion at a time when the Christian right promoted abstinence-only education despite the growing AIDS epidemic, as well as police brutality, racism, patriarchy, and capitalism,” Loyer said.
The show closes with Haring’s AIDS activism, then presents a spread of work by downtown art stars like George Condo and Jean Michel Basquiat, who collaborated with the force that was Keith Haring.
In organizing the show, Loyer came to appreciate that Haring worked with the “confident line” as his primary medium. “If you look closely, you can see it change over time, from the earliest spray-painted works to intricate compositions filling massive unstretched tarpaulins,” she said. Though “Art Is for Everybody” offers universal delights, like a crown Haring helped create for Grace Jones and the pink leather suit Madonna wore to his 1984 birthday party, the show chiefly demonstrates Haring’s ability to blend criticism with optimism through many resounding lines.
After its showing at The Broad, “Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” will travel to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada. Take a peek below.
Keith Haring, Untitled (1982). Private collection. © Keith Haring Foundation
Installation view of “Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” at the Broad, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the Broad.
Installation view of “Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” at the Broad, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the Broad.
Keith Haring, Untitled (1988). © Keith Haring Foundation
Keith Haring with LA II (Angel Ortiz), 3 Piece Leather Suit (1983), leather and paint. © Keith Haring Foundation
Installation view of “Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” at the Broad, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the Broad.
Keith Haring, National Coming Out Day (1988), poster. © Keith Haring Foundation
Installation view of “Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” at the Broad, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the Broad.
Keith Haring, Untitled (1985). © Keith Haring Foundation, The Broad Art Foundation
Keith Haring, Reagan’s Death Cops Hunt Pope (1980). © Keith Haring Foundation.
Installation view of “Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” at the Broad, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com. Courtesy of the Broad.
“Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody” is on view at The Broad, 221 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, through October 8.
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For the past two decades, Katherine Bernhardt’s schtick has been throwing everyday stuff onto the canvas in exuberant, messy, color-pop paintings. Ketchup, hamburger, toilet roll, toothbrush, cigarette—to scan a gallery of Bernhardts is to see an artist who works instinctively, one who eyes something near-at-hand and then makes it massive, flat, and drowning in a sea of color.
Most recently, that thing within reach has been Pokémon cards. Bernhardt’s son began collecting the cards during the pandemic and soon she too was a fan. Bernhardt captures the fun, vibrant escapism of the Pokémon universe in her new show at David Zwirner Hong Kong—deep breath—“Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art,” set to run through August 20.
Installation view of “Katherine Bernhardt: Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art” at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, 2023. Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Most of the paintings on display in her first solo venture in Hong Kong replicate the formal components of a Pokémon trading card: a rectangular portrait with a delineated border and inscribed with the Pokémon’s Hit Points (HP), energy type, and skill moves, written in both English and Japanese.
As ever, Bernhardt is not one for pompous titles. Surfing Pikachu (2021) is as expected: a gleeful Pikachu racing through a sea of swirls on a pink surfboard. Chansey (2021) is typically affable, clutching her lucky egg that appears like a golden acorn, and labelled “#113” as per her Pokédex number.
The difference is in the execution. With Pokémon cards, which Nintendo released under the art direction of Ken Sugimori in 1996, the image appears glossy and computer-enhanced, the layout balancing artwork and gameplay information. Bernhardt’s “cards” have no such constraint. Colors collide and merge, and her creatures dominate the canvas, poking through borders in striking gestures that echo signature movements known from Nintendo’s video games.
Installation view, Katherine Bernhardt, Pikachu Pikaball and Ditto VMax Ju Ju (2021). Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
This blurred, bold effect is a product of the frenetic pace at which Bernhardt works. In a process she has followed for much of her career, outlines are first hashed out in spray-paint, next she lays the canvas on the floor and layers on watered down acrylic paint, hence the bleeding of colors. Oftentimes, Bernhardt attacks multiple paintings simultaneously.
The rough repurposing of pop culture subjects is something of a Bernhardt staple. She’s previously painted Darth Vader, Pink Panther, Garfield, E.T., typically on hot tropical backgrounds. The show notes proclaim the St. Louis born artist is challenging “high-low dichotomies of contemporary painting” and by extension questioning art world value systems.
But she might just as readily be making Pokémon paintings because they’re fun.

“There was some criticism, like, ‘Oh, great choice of subject matter to paint.’ Like, what do you want me to paint? War zones and people dying and kids being killed? There’s enough of that on TV and in the real world,” she told the South China Morning Post.

“The art, for me, it’s more like an escape. And a world you can go into that’s colorful and good.”

See more images from the show below.
Installation view of “Katherine Bernhardt: Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art” at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, 2023. Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Katherine Bernhardt, Chansey (2021). Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Katherine Bernhardt, Gengar and Mimikyu Tag Team GX Poltergeist Horror House (2021). Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Katherine Bernhardt, Galarian Rapid Dash (2023). Photo courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.
Katherine Bernhardt in her studio, St. Louis, 2023. Photo: Whitten Sabbatini.
“Katherine Bernhardt: Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art” is on view at David Zwirner, 5–6/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong, through August 20.
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In 1966, Ernest Cole fled his native South Africa, never to return. The nation’s first Black freelance photographer, he carried with him a secret cache of images documenting the evils of apartheid—photos he knew that could never be published in the county of his birth.
Instead, he went to New York City, where Magnum Photos and Random House published his House of Bondage, exposing South Africa’s horrific apartheid system to the world. The groundbreaking book became international news, helping fuel the anti-apartheid movement.
In 1968, Cole wrote in Ebony that he wanted his photography book “to show the world what the white South African had done to the Black.”
“I knew that if an informer would learn what I was doing I would be reported and end up in jail,” he continued. “I knew that I could be killed merely for gathering that material for such a book and I knew that when I finished, I would have to leave my country in order to have the book published. And I knew that once the book was published, I could never go home again.”
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Handcuffed blacks were arrested for being in a white area illegally. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
But Cole‘s fame was short-lived. He gave up photography in the 1970s, and died destitute, at just 49 years old, in 1990. His original negatives were believed to have been lost.
Until a few years ago, that is. In 2018, Cole’s heirs found 60,000 negatives in a Stockholm bank vault. Now, the first exhibition featuring works from Cole’s rediscovered archive is on view at at FOAM, the Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam.
“Ernest Cole: House of Bondage” showcases Cole’s pioneering work, and the obstacles he overcame in order to capture the groundbreaking images of oppression.
Born in 1940, Cole started taking photographs at just eight years old. South African authorities greatly restricted the movement of Black people, but Cole was able to change his registration to the less constrained category of “colored.” (One of the tests was whether or not a pencil would get stuck in your hair.)
This relative freedom of movement gave Cole the ability to photograph shocking scenes of South Africa life.
He went to the mines, where men lined up to be processed for grueling manual labor, living in harsh barracks far from home. He went to schools where Bantu children worked on the floor due to lack of desks. He visited Black servants working for white families, their living quarters furnished with milk crates and newspaper carpeting.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Students kneel on the floor to write. The government did not always provide schools for black children. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Other photos show Black men handcuffed and young boys behind bars, arrested for being caught in a white neighborhood. There are packed segregated trains, the Black passengers clinging precariously to the outside of the cars in order to travel during rush hour, and overcrowded hospitals with Black patients in desperate need of treatment.
When Cole finally published House of Bondage in 1967, the images shocked the world—as the artist knew they would. Ahead of the FOAM exhibition, Aperture reissued the book, introducing this first-person account of the everyday violence under apartheid to 21st-century audiences.
See more photos from the exhibition below.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. It is against the law for black servants to live under the same roof as their employers. In a private home, servants would have a separate little room in the backyard. She lives on the edge of opulence, while her own world is bare. Newspapers are her carpet, fruit crates her chairs and table. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Servants are not forbidden to love. The woman holding this child said: “I love this child, though she’ll grow up to treat me just like her mother does. Now she is innocent.” Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Acres of identical four-room houses on nameless streets. Many were hours by train from city jobs. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. Africans throng Johannesburg station platform during late afternoon rush hour. The train accelerates with its load of clinging passengers. They ride like this through rain and cold, some for the entire journey. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. With no room inside the train, some ride between cars. Which black train to take is a matter of guesswork. They have no destination signs and no announcement of arrivals is made. Head car may be numbered to show its route, but the number is often wrong. In confusion, passengers sometimes jump across tracks and some are killed by express trains. Whistle has sounded, train is moving, but people are still trying to get on. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
Ernest Cole, from House of Bondage. These boys were caught trespassing in a white area. Photo ©Ernest Cole, courtesy of Magnum Photos.
“Ernest Cole: House of Bondage” is on view at FOAM, Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam, Netherlands, January 26–June 14, 2023. 
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It’s been 30 years since Ethel Schwabacher had a proper solo show in New York City. But in the 1950s, she was at the forefront of the Abstract Expressionist movement, showing vibrant canvases with bold colors, fluid brushstrokes, and even snippets of poems at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York.
“Ethel was a poet as well, so she would put lines of her poetry in her paintings—which for the 1950s was way ahead of its time,” Christine Berry, cofounder of New York’s Berry Campbell Gallery, told Artnet News.
Now, the late artist—who has work in the collections of institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—is having enjoying a well-deserved revival at Berry Campbell.
At the Chelsea gallery, a nearly sold-out exhibition is on view through this weekend. The works, priced at $165,000 to $400,000—far above the artist’s auction record of $56,250, set in 2020, according to the Artnet Price Database—focuses on the artist’s works from the 1950s.
Ethel Schwabacher, Seasons and Days: July (1955). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
For decades, the Schwabacher estate was represented by Anita Shapolsky Gallery, an elderly dealer on the Upper East Side who stages about three shows a year out of her townhouse.
The past few years have been a moment of rediscovery for many other women of the Ab Ex movement, with the acclaimed Mary Gabriel book Ninth Street Women, and in the landmark 2016 Denver Art Museum show “Women of Abstract Expressionism.” But it seemed as though Schwabacher—one of the 12 artists in the Denver show—might be left behind.
Enter Berry Campbell, which also represents the estates of Judith Godwin and Perle Fine, two of the other women in the Denver show.
When the dealers got in touch with the artist’s son, lawyer Christopher Schwabacher (who for years represented Parsons), they were shocked if delighted to discover hundreds of paintings, not seen for decades, carefully packed away in storage. That included the show’s centerpiece, Prometheus, a 1959 canvas that had to be unrolled and stretched for the occasion.
Ethel Schwabacher, Prometheus (1959). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
“These all have Betty Parsons labels on the back,” Berry said. “It’s incredible.”
The artist continued painting until her death in 1984, and the dealers hope to build an appreciation of Schwabacher’s oeuvre with a series of shows spanning her entire career.
“Originally, we thought we would have to do a retrospective since no one knew who she was—but the paintings were so strong,” gallery cofounder Martha Campbell added.
When Artnet News visited “Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s),” it was a busy afternoon.
Ethel Schwabacher (ca. 1955). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Christopher Schwabacher and his wife, Hannelore, had stopped by to visit, and there were repair men in the space—a construction project next door had dropped an anvil on the gallery skylight, causing pane of glass to shatter. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the paintings were not damaged.
Christopher Schwabacher, now age 81, was unfazed by the incident, and happy to share childhood memories of his mother painting—a widow, she would put on classical music to drown out the noise of him playing with his sister, Brenda Webster, while she worked. The living room was pressed into service as an art studio.
“I’ve never seen so many paint tubes of paint. As kids we were fascinated by them,” Christopher Schwabacher told Artnet News. “When we could sort of let loose and not be so careful was when she would bring her brushes out to the faucet in the pantry to wash them.”
Decades later, the artist’s son is hopeful the time is ripe for a reappraisal of Schwabacher’s career—and he sees the skylight incident as a good omen: “We have a smashing success right here!”
See more paintings from the show below.
Ethel Schwabacher, Origins I (1958). Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Pennington: Return and Departure of Birds (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Return No. 3 (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Steps of the Sun (1957). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Ethel Schwabacher, Return and Departure (1956). Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
“Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s)” is on view at Berry Campbell, 524 West 26th Street, New York, New York, April 20–May 26, 2023.
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Commuters on the London Underground passing through Gloucester Road station are in for an unexpected treat. On a disused platform, British performance artist Monster Chetwynd—born Alalia Chetwynd, and formerly known as Spartacus and Marvin Gaye—has installed giant statues of lily pads, toads, and other amphibian creatures.
The exhibition, titled “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily,” is on view until May 2024. It’s inspired by the history of the station as it connects to the Great Exhibition of 1851, staged by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, held in nearby Hyde Park in the famed Crystal Palace designed by the architect Joseph Paxton.
A former gardener, Paxton drew on the structure of the water lily and its ribbed veins to come up with his modular design for the groundbreaking building. In Chetwynd’s work, the animals—beetles, lizards, salamanders, dragonfly larvae, tadpoles, and tortoises—are working together to build the Crystal Palace.
“Normally my work is linked to bad taste and disarming humor, but these look oddly delicate, almost like Wedgwood porcelain,” Chetwynd told the Guardian, marveling over the craftsmanship of the original Crystal Palace. “To read that each pane of glass was individually hand blown—I get really genuinely excited about things like that.”
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
The first performance artist ever nominated for Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize, in 2012, Chetwynd is known for her offbeat works. She has enlisted both friends and strangers to take part in elaborate costumed parades, built a creepy indoor children’s playground called The Idol in East London, and has an ongoing film project, Hermito’s Children, about a transgender detective investigating a woman who died from orgasming on a dildo seesaw.
For her new Art on the Underground commission, the artist was on hand for the unveiling, clad in a glittery pink body suit and a blonde wig. This was Chetwynd’s costume for the Fact-Hungry Witch, a character in her film Who named the Lily?, currently on view in the station. It presents a history not only of the Amazonian lily and the Crystal Palace, but also of the subway, architecture, industry, and colonialism.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
“The poetic connection between a Lily from the Amazon (that smells of pineapple and entraps beetles in its pink interior overnight) and the arches and rumbling tunnels of Gloucester Road, this connection needs to be brought forward,” Chetwynd said in a statement. “How history is re-examined and allowed to be accessible is also in need of discussion.”
The installation also includes seven poster artworks in the station, which each hide clues for an interactive detective hunt that the artist hopes will engage local families.
“I’m hoping that when people see the work on the platform that they’re delighted, and they get some joy from it, because it’s quite fun and playful,” Chetwynd told the BBC. “I also hope that are interested and intrigued into the history that I researched.”
See more photos of the installation below.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd with her exhibition “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by Benedict Johnson.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd, “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” (2023). Gloucester Road Station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Photo by GG Archard.
Monster Chetwynd’s “Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily” is on view at Gloucester Road Station, South Kensington, London, U.K., May 2023–May 2024. 
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The sari debuted in the Indus Valley around 2800 B.C.E. Here in the 21st century, it’s undergoing “conceivably its most rapid reinvention in its 5,000-year history,” according to the Design Museum in London. It’s been reimagined as the gown sari, which is still sparking debates. Other rebels are dressing theirs down with sneakers.
In London, lead curator Priya Khanchandani has spearheaded “The Offbeat Sari,” the first-ever museum show dedicated to the timeless garment, presenting 60 genre-defining specimens from recent history, some for the first time in the U.K. Standouts include a sari woven from steel and another from discarded x-ray film, and the first-ever sari to grace the Met Gala, an iridescent Sabyasachi design that Indian biotech executive Natasha Poonawalla wore last year.
“The Offbeat Sari” unfolds over three sections: “Transformation” explores the recent stylistic innovations filling in new chapters for the sari, “Identity and Resistance” incorporates cultural context and the wearers’ roles in such shifts, and “New Materialities” concludes with a deep dive into the sari as a textile.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
“The evolution of the contemporary sari returns us to the founding principles of Indian design, devised post-independence and intertwined with post-colonial ideologies,” Khanchandani told Artnet News. “It also reflects a new generation in today’s India who, 76 years on from independence from colonial rule, are freed from the weight of postcolonial baggage, and are bolder in exploring their identity.” The open market, digital culture, and rising confidence in Indian craft has also had an impact, she added.
“The Offbeat Sari” balances the universal and unique. Though one donned by Lady Gaga does appear, Khanchandani questions the impulse to peg the sari’s import to potential global adoption. On a research trip to India, she visited numerous designers featured throughout this show. “It was wonderful to get to know their work,” she said, “but what I didn’t expect was to uncover so many smaller studios whose creativity and ideas are transforming the sari into fresh, radical clothing in ways that I never imagined.”
Surprises abound for viewers, too—including a sari and baton belonging to feminist Gulabi Gang leader Sampat Pal and saris worn by a skateboarder, a mountain climber, and more.
See more images from the show below.
China town sari from Ashdeen’s Chinoi-sari collection, 2017. Photo Hormis Antony Tharakan
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
Concept sari by Tarun Tahiliani in foil jersey, 2010. Photo courtesy of the Design Museum, London.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
The Quilted Sari from the HUEMN Fall ’17 Collection, 2017. HUEMN. Photo: Pankaj Dahalia. Model Rachi Chitakara.
Installation view of “The Offbeat Sari” at the Design Museum, London. Photo: © Andy Stagg for the Design Museum.
“The Offbeat Sari” is on view at the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London, through September 17.
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Swifties, rejoice! The Museum of the Arts and Design in New York has dedicated an entire floor to exhibiting a hoard of costumes, props, and jewelry worn by Taylor Swift over her decade-plus, Grammy award-winning career.  
Across “Taylor Swift: Storyteller,” fans will find ensembles she donned in music videos for tracks including Shake It Off (2014) and Bejeweled (2022), guitars she wielded in live performances, and concert attire designed by couture houses. These 50-some artifacts are displayed alongside live projections of Swift’s music videos and wall-sized blow-ups of her handwritten lyrics.
As hinted at by its title, the exhibition is intended to showcase Swift’s storytelling prowess, which has grown in scope and ambition throughout her 10-album-strong discography and expanding videography.
“The music is telling you a certain story and she uses costumes and props in order to build upon those stories and characters she’s creating,” Tim Rodgers, MAD’s director, told Artnet News. “Like all artists, she is taking that into other realms—there’s fantasy woven into this, notions of larger archetypes.” 
“All Too Well” outfit, designed by Marina Toybina. Photo: Bruce M White.
The show was masterminded by Swift’s management company, 13 Management, which approached MAD specifically after seeing images of its Machine Dazzle retrospective. The showcase was put together in the short span of two months—a “speedy” sprint, in Rodgers’s words, to coincide with Swift’s current The Eras Tour, which rounds the tri-state area at the end of May. 
There is every likelihood at the exhibition will be inundated by ardent Swift devotees (hence the timed entries and a gift shop stocked with Taylor Swift merch), but Rodgers is adamant that you don’t have to be a deep-dyed Swiftie to get sucked in. 
“Yes, this is about Taylor Swift, but this is about something bigger than Taylor Swift,” he said. “This is really about our own culture and how it is that women are being presented, thought about, and written about. These are the ideas that we wanted to explore.” 
Below, we’ve picked five highlights from the show ahead of your own inevitable visit.

1. The cheerleader and ballerina ensembles from “Shake It Off”
The cheerleader and ballerina outfits from the “Shake It Off” video (2014). Photo: Bruce M White.
Swift’s video for “Shake It Off” made her the only female artist to hit a three-billion view count on YouTube, but also illustrates her wont of playing to and against archetypes. The four-minute clip sees her don personas from an inept break dancer to an inept performance artist, aided by vibrant costuming. Two of the most iconic, the ballerina (bearing hints of The Black Swan) and cheerleader (“You Belong to Me” callback, anyone?), are included here, encapsulating Swift’s inquiry into “notions of what women are supposed to be, can be, or should be,” per Rodgers. 

2. One spangly guitar
GS6 sparkle guitar #3 by Taylor Guitars. Photo: Min Chen.
Quite likely Swift’s most recognizable instrument, this GS6 acoustic guitar, bejeweled with Swarovski crystals, is manufactured by Taylor Guitars (no relation) and harks back to the musician’s Speak Now era (c. 2010–12). It is not the only model out there though: the one on view is labeled guitar #3 and yet another one is now accompanying Swift on her The Eras tour. 

3. This cat-themed outfit from “Look What You Made Me Do”
An ensemble, featuring a sweatshirt by Gucci, boots by Christian Louboutin, and cat mask, from the “Look What You Made Me Do” video (2017). Photo: Min Chen.
Will Taylor Swift ever run out of archetypes? Don’t bet on it. Her 2017 video presented us with a whole new slew of characters, including one dressed in an oversized Gucci hoodie sequined with a tiger’s face and wearing a cat mask. It’s in this costume that Swift is filmed amid a rifled bank vault, dollar bills at her Louboutin boots, practically inviting all manner of cat burglar puns.

4. The flamingo lawn ornaments from “You Need to Calm Down”
From left: Agent Provocateur robe from the “You Need to Calm Down” video (2019); a Versace ensemble worn by Swift to the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards; and an ensemble with a shirt by Marina Hoermanseder, shorts by Yves Saint Laurent, brassiere by Fleur de Mal, boots by Irregular Choice, and yard ornaments by Ohuhu from the “You Need to Calm Down” video (2019). Photo: Bruce M White.
The video for Swift’s 2019 single is less a music video than a series of random celeb cameos (RuPaul! Katy Perry! The guys from Queer Eye!). But the real star turn comes from, of course, the flamingo ornaments that generously bedeck Laverne Cox’s trailer park lawn. Produced by art supplies company Ohuhu, the objects are here paired with the spiffy costume Swift wore in the video, an ensemble of designs by Saint Laurent, Marina Hoermanseder, and Irregular Choice. 

5. A painting of Taylor Swift’s cat, Benjamin Button
Painting of Benjamin Button, set against wallpaper by Rebecca Graves, from the “Lover” video (2019). Photo: Min Chen.
Did you know Taylor Swift loves cats? She has three of them, christened with names like Meredith Grey, Olivia Benson, and Benjamin Button. The last, who she adopted after he appeared in her “ME!” video, is immortalized here in a painting, artist unknown, peering out endearingly from a misty blue backdrop. If you can’t view it in person, the work can also be glimpsed in (where else) another video, 2019’s “Lover.”  
“Taylor Swift: Storyteller” is on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, through September 4.
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