On View

American artist Winslow Homer is best known for his dramatic seascape paintings of fisherman and rescuers battling harsh maritime elements. But an expansive new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art aims to delve far deeper into the artist’s rich and varied life, as well as the lesser-known topics and subjects he explored.
“Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents” aims to reconsider the artist’s work “through the lens of conflict,” according to the museum. It features 88 paintings, including many from the museum’s own collection, along with roughly 65 loans from institutions and private collections.
Viewers may be surprised to learn in this skillfully organized show that the artist painted many images of the Civil War and Reconstruction, including depictions of its impact on the landscape, soldiers, and formerly enslaved people.
Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers (1876). © 2021 Museum Associates / LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY
“This is an important show of one of the most important American artists,” Met director Max Hollein said at a press preview last week. “Homer not only addressed complex social and political issues, but his work is  also about universal concerns: the fragility of human life and the dominance of nature.
“By focusing on the theme of conflict in Homer’s art, this exhibition presents a fresh understanding of his deeply thoughtful approach to depicting race, nature, and environment.”
The centerpiece of the show is The Gulf Stream (1899; reworked by 1906), considered one Homer’s most important works, and one of the first to enter the Met’s collection.
The painting depicts a lone Black man in a small boat on a turbulent sea threatened by sharks encircling the mast-less boat.
While some have interpreted it as a rumination on mortality following the death of his father, the painting “also alludes to the legacies of slavery and American imperialism as well as more universal concerns,” according to the museum. 
Sylvia Yount, who co-organized the show with Stephanie Herdrich, said discussions about the show stretch back to the summer of 2020, which was marked by racial justice protests across the U.S. and the world.
Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream (1899). Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The protests “made our specific approach to Homer that much more relevant as we all reckon with our complex histories and their consequential legacies,” Yount said. “Homer’s deeply humanist art has spoken differently to generations and we feel our examination of the darker undercurrents and tension between sentiment and struggle makes the production decidedly resonant for our viewers today.”
Yount and Herdrich put an interesting and timely spin on the show with a coda selection of works by contemporary artists including Elizabeth Columba, Hugh Hayden, Kerry James Marshall, and Kara Walker that respond to The Gulf Stream and other Homer works.
One gallery includes five works on paper from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for Gulf Stream (2003), Marshall’s reimagining of Homer’s canvas.
Marshall’s image “transforms Homer’s dramatic composition, with its uncertain outcome, into what has been termed an ‘allegory of liberation,’ rejecting Black trauma for Black joy,” the museum said in a statement.
Kerry James Marshall, Study for Gulf Stream (2003–04). Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Butler Family Fund, 2005. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Brooklyn-based artist Hugh Hayden, whose work Brier Patch was on view earlier this year at Madison Square Park, came to know Homer’s The Gulf Stream though Marshall’s revision.
Having adapted the subject matter through his own vision, the artist’s three-dimensional sailing vessel has 12 ribs and evokes a sea serpent that reflects both danger and salvation.
Hugh Hayden, Gulf Stream (skeleton study) (2019).©Hugh Hayden, Image courtesy Lisson Gallery
Also on view is a major diptych by Walker titled The Crossing (2017), that offers a response to both Homer’s The Gulf Stream and Emmanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware by addressing the realities of a precarious ship of state.
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In art history, some decades are defined by a singlular style. In the ‘50s, it was Abstract Expressionism; the 60s, Minimalism; the 70s, Conceptualism.
Now? 
“When we look back at this period of the 2010s, we’ll see that this was a moment of figuration,” Ruth Erickson, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) curator behind a new exhibition dedicated to eight of the genre’s brightest young exemplars, painters Aubrey Levinthal, Arcmanoro Niles, and Celeste Rapone among them.
On Erickson’s point, it would be hard to disagree. In recent years, artists have reanimated the form with eyes sensitized to art history’s propensity for omitting marginalized communities and recapitulating a colonial gaze. 
They’ve done so with tremendous success, filling galleries and museums—and auction lots and magazine covers—at dizzying rates. The demand has transformed these artists into merchandisable superstars, and their work into collector-bate—so much so, that discussions about the quality of their output are often discolored with the sickly greenish hue of money.   
Louis Fratino, Sleeping on your roof in August (2020). Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. © Louis Fratino.
Erickson had no intention of letting the market enter the chat for her exhibition in Boston, called “A Place for Me: Figurative Painting.” To her, the show’s prompt wasn’t framed around a question of why people are buying this kind of art, but something slightly different: Why is portraiture so prominent right now?
“I think each of these artists has a different way of answering that question,” Erickson said. The show, she said, is “really about resisting that sense of trying to clump them together and instead trying to highlight them as eight individual voices with a shared interest in a type of art.”
(Still, the market created some obstacles: in several instances, pieces the curator had earmarked for the exhibition were snatched up by collectors.)
Erickson organized the show one artist at a time, selecting one based on another, occasionally asking chosen artists who they thought should be included.
From that process emerged a group of relatively young, emerging talents, rather than established stars, their respective approaches to figuration as varied as their backgrounds. 
Gisela McDaniel, Created for Such a Time as This (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, London. Photo: Clare Gatto. © Gisela McDaniel.
Only one artist, David Antonio Cruz, was alive before the ‘80s. (He was born in 1974.) Viewers will find in his staged portraits of Black, brown, and queer sitters the show’s most “realistic” approach to figuration, though that’s not to say the artworks don’t leave room for interpretation.
The artist’s two diptychs in the show each feature overlapping imagery and gaps between the canvases—an acknowledgment, Erickson pointed out, of painting’s inability to truly communicate the human experience. 
The exhibition’s youngest artist, Gisela McDaniel (born in 1995), similarly points to what’s beyond her canvases. While painting portraits of women and non-binary people of color who have experienced personal or inherited traumas, the artist invites her sitters to record audio statements about their stories. 
“Many of the people in the paintings have difficult but important stories that other people need to hear. They’ve been erased historically,” McDaniel told Artnet News earlier this year. “With every single person, I ask for permission every step of the way, especially when I’m painting somebody. I can’t expect that back, but I hope when people experience my work, they walk away from it with a kind of awareness to move around people with respect. That’s a big reason I incorporate voice.”
Doron Langberg,Sleeping 1 (2020). Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, and Victoria Miro, London. © Doron Langberg.
Elsewhere in the ICA show are Louis Fratino’s (born in 1993) quotidian still lifes and moments of tender queer love, each enlivened with a kind of Cezannian perspectival play. Another artist, Doron Langberg (born in 1985), is drawn to similar scenes, but he finds sensuality through a softer, more Impressionist approach, with details that come in and out of focus like the first moment you crack open an eye in the morning.
In organizing “A Place for Me,” Erickson asked many of the participating artists why they painted figuratively. “The resounding answer,” she explained, “was because they paint what they love. It was so simple.” 
“I think it comes from this moment of empathy and humanism and softness that we’re at, where the blinders have been pulled back,” Erickson added. “We know that we should be spending time on the stuff that we love the most.” 
“A Place for Me: Figurative Painting” is on view now through September 5, 2022 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.   
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The Italian maverick artist Maurizio Cattelan is not afraid of death. In fact, the ultimate ending is the subject of the artist’s two new shows in Milan. Perhaps counterintuitively, Cattelan hopes these projects will shed light on how to live with pain and trauma in times of turmoil.
“These two works might not be explicitly connected with the tragedies of the pandemic nor the war, but how can you abstract them from the time we’re living?” Cattelan told Artnet News. “Art doesn’t exist without the reactions of the audience.”
The two single-work exhibitions—”Lullaby” and “YOU”—are, the artist says, “magnifying lenses for our secreted pains.”
Both shows opened in Milan last week as part of Milano Art Week, which saw an array of institutional and commercial openings as well as the return of Miart. The project comes on the heels of a high-profile exhibition by the artist at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, which drew even more visitors than the museum’s blockbuster Warhol show.
Lullaby (1994) by Maurizio Cattelan, reinstalled in Monumental Cemetery. Credits Zeno Zotti, Tempio Crematorio, Cimitero Monumentale, Milano, 2022.
“Lullaby” is a reinstallation of a work of the same name the artist created in 1994 and just donated to the city of Milan, where he currently lives. The installation is made of piles of sacks the artist filled with debris from a 1993 explosion and Mafia terrorist attack at the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC), which left five people dead and the entire city reeling.
Rather than show the work in a white cube, Cattelan opted for a much more visceral setting: the cremation room of the city’s Monumental Cemetery. Two piles of rubble sit on rail tracks that typically transport beds carrying bodies to the crematorium. Visitors must take a long and winding path to find the installation, which is on view until November 6, after which it will enter the collection of the Museo del Novecento.
YOU (2022) by Maurizio Cattelan. Credits Roberto Marossi. Courtesy the artist and MASSIMODECARLO.
“Lullaby is a symbol of a collective trauma: the dramatic bombs that have shaken Italy (and beyond) were targeting cultural sites, museums, and institutions and iconically represented an attack to the idea itself of the future,” Cattelan said.
The city reacted quickly to rebuild the damaged sites, trying to bury the wounds and recover from the shock, according to the artist. But the trauma lingers on, and the “debris is what remained as a physical obstacle to its complete removal.” The piles of rubble on the rail tracks, Cattelan concluded, are stories and narratives of mankind on “a linear path through history.”
YOU (2022) by Maurizio Cattelan. Credits Roberto Marossi. Courtesy the artist and MASSIMODECARLO.
YOU, on the other hand, is a new work unveiled at MASSIMODECARLO, which comprises a statue of the artist hanging from a noose in the green marble bathroom designed by Pietro Portaluppi. Dressed in a blue suit, the barefoot figure holds a bouquet of flowers in his right hand.
Cattelan maintains there is more to the work than the immediate shock of seeing it suspended from the ceiling. “Big changes, revolutions, traumas all bring uncertainty along. In fact all time is uncertain,” he said. “Lullaby and YOU are in good company. Looking back at my work, there’s clearly a sense of loss that connects them all.”
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The 80th Whitney Biennial, which opened for previews this week (and officially opens to the public on April 6) is simultaneously a wildly ambitious and a quietly reserved exhibition.
With 63 artists and collectives, the show is an attempt to depict America as it can, may, or should exist in a moment of deep political, environmental, and social uncertainty. Titled “Quiet as It’s Kept,” the biennial is anchored by every flash of hope and dread you can imagine: the pandemic, demands for racial and economic justice, the 2020 election—you fill in the blanks.
Amid all that, the show’s curators, David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, opted not to make any grand statements, but instead to offer a series of suggestions and hypotheses. Probably that was the right call.
The show, quite simply, bursts with ideas and provocations both gentle and pointed. So to help you take it all in (or to jog your memory), we’ve put together an extensive collection of images from the show.

Exterior
A piece in Rayyane Tabet, 100 Civics Questions (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Lobby
Renée Green, Space Poem #7 (Color Without Objects: Intra-Active May Words) (2020). Photo by Ben Davis.
3rd Floor
Installation dedicated to Cassandra Press. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation dedicated to Cassandra Press. Photo by Ben Davis.
Two of the readers displayed by Cassandra Press. Photo by Ben Davis.
4th Floor
Charles Ray, Burger (2021) and Jeff (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
A visitor interacts with Alejandro “Luperca” Morales’s  Juárez Archive (2020–ongoing). Photo by Ben Davis.
Lucy Raven, Demolition of a Wall (Album 1) (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Guadalupe Rosales, Kennedy Hall (2022) and 6th Street #2 (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Danielle Dean, Long Low Line (Fordland) (2019). Photo by Ben Davis.
Buck Ellison, The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, Steyr-Mannlicher Luxus in .027 Winchester, See Statement 11, New Nanny 2003 (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Ralph Lemon, a selection from an as-yet untitled series (2020–22). Photo by Ben Davis.
Eric Wesley, North American Buff Tit (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Andrew Roberts, CARGO: A certain doom (2020). Photo by Ben Davis.
Andrew Roberts, La horda (The horde) (2020). Photo by Ben Davis.
Paintings by Jane Dickson. Photo by Ben Davis.
Sable Elyse Smith, LAUGH TRACK, OR WHO’S THAT PEEKING IN MY WINDOW (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Adam Gordon, She throws children into the world (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Emily Barker, Death by 7,865 Paper Cuts (2019). Photo by Ben Davis.
Harold Ancart, The Guiding Light (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Jacky Connolly, Descent Into Hell (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Woody de Othello, The will to make things happen (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Alex Da Corte, ROY G BIV (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Leidy Churchman, Mountains Walking (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works from Lisa Alvarado’s “Vibratory Cartography” series. Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Rindon Johnson. Photo by Ben Davis.
Matt Connors, One Wants to Insist Very Strongly (2020), Occult Glossary (2022), I / Fell / Off (after M.S.) (2021), First Fixed (2021), and How I Made Certain of My Paintings (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Yto Barrada, A Day Is a Day (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Duane Linklater. Photo by Ben Davis.
Rock Lowe, Project Row Houses: If Artists Are Creative Why Can’t They Create Solutions? (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Pao Houa Her, from the series “After the Fall of Hmong Teb Chaw” (2017). Photo by Ben Davis.
Renée Green, Lesson (1989). Photo by Ben Davis.
James Little, Borrowed Times (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Dyani White Hawk, Wopila | Lineage (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Mónica Arreola, Untitled, from the series “Valle San Pedro” (2018). Photo by Ben Davis.
Documentation of the creator of Awilda Sterling-Duprey, …blindfolded (2020–ongoing). Photo by Ben Davis.
Awilda Sterling-Duprey, …blindfolded (2020–ongoing). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Veronica Ryan. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation paying tribute to the work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1980).
Work by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.
Jason Rhoades, Sutter’s Mill (2000) and Aria Dean, Little Island/Gut Punch (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Rose Salane, 64,000 Attempts at Circulation (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Rayyane Tabet, Learning English (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Stairs
One piece in Rayyane Tabet, 100 Civics Questions (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
5th Floor
Video installation by Tony Cokes. Photo by Ben Davis.
Denyse Thomasos, Displaced Burial/Burial at Gorée (1993). Photo by Ben Davis.
Michael E. Smith, Untitled (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Guadelupe Rosales and [foreground] Rebecca Belmore, iskode (fire) (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Cy Gavin, Untitled (Snag) (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Trinh T. Minh-ha, What About China? (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Dave McKenzie, Listed under Accessories (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Image from Raven Chacon, Three Songs (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Unattributed, Thomas Edison’s Last Breath (1931). Photo by Ben Davis.
James Little, Stars and Stripes (2021), Big Shot (2021), and Exceptional Blacks (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Coco Fusco, Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
N.H. Pritchard, Pages from Mundus: A Novel (1970). Photo by Ben Davis.
Image from Alfredo Jaar, 06.01.2020 18.39 (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Daniel Joseph Martinez, Three Critiques… (n.d.). Photo by Ben Davis.
Kandis Williams, Death of A (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
WangShui, Titration Print (Isle of Vitr:.ous) (2022) and Hyaline Seed (Isle of Vitr:.ous) (2022), and [on the ceiling] Scr:.pe II (Isle of Vitr:.ous) (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Na Mira, Night Vision (red as never been) (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Jonathan Berger, An Introduction to Nameless Love (2019). Photo by Ben Davis.

Installation dedicated to A Gathering of the Tribes/Steve Cannon. Photo by Ben Davis.
Ivy Kwan Arce and Julie Tolentino, Echo Position (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
Alia Farid, Chibayish (2022) installed on the deck at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Ben Davis.
Alia Farid, Palm Orchard (2022). Photo by Ben Davis.
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If a river could speak, what would it say?
That unusual question is at the heart of the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, on view at six venues across the city through June 13. The sprawling exhibition—called “rīvus,” which means “stream” in Latin—is organized around “a series of conceptual wetlands” in the ancestral lands of the Gadigal, Burramatagal, and Cabrogal peoples. Helmed by artistic director José Roca, it features 330 works by 89 participants.
After years of increasingly dire climate emergencies—droughts and catastrophic flooding, wildfires and deteriorating coastlines—it’s not hard to imagine that if waterways could speak, they would have plenty to say. That’s especially true in Eastern Australia, where devastating floods left two people dead and scores of buildings and artworks damaged earlier this month.
The artists respond in varied ways to the theme of rivers, evoking both the absence of water (in the form of empty water bottles) to its deep connection with storytelling and mythology. At the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, Caio Reisewitz’s large-scale collage, MUNDUS SUBTERRANEUS, takes its name from a 17th-century tome written and extensively illustrated by the German scholar Athanasius Kircher, who studied the systems above and below the Earth’s surface. Reisewitz applies Kirchner’s approach to his native Brazil, where deforestation threatens ecosystems, houses are built on stilts to avoid flooding, and politicians are advocating for infrastructure that literally paves over Native lands. 
Meanwhile, Manila-based artist Leeroy New created a fantastical sculpture attached to the Information & Cultural Exchange building from recycled plastic water bottles, bamboo, bicycle wheels, and other found objects. The work’s title, Balete, comes from a Southeast Asian tree of the same name, and the sculpture’s undulating form is modeled on the tree’s complex root systems, typically unseen by humans.
Other highlights include the work of artist and activist group Ackroyd & Harvey—Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey—who co-founded Culture Declares Emergency in 2019. Through a process they call “photographic photosynthesis,” the duo creates images to call attention to dwindling natural grasses around the world.
See more images from the biennale, organized by venue, below.
The Cutaway
Foreground: Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, The Substitute (2019). Background: Cave Urban, Flow (2022) (detail) and Ackroyd & Harvey; Uncle Charles “Chicka” Madden / Wanstead Reserve, Cooks River, Sydney, 2022; Lille Madden / Wanstead Reserve, Cooks River, Sydney (2022). Courtesy the artists. The Cutaway at Barangaroo. Photography: Document Photography.
Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, The Cutaway at Barangaroo. Photography: Document Photography.
Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, The Cutaway at Barangaroo. Photography: Document Photography.
Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, The Cutaway at Barangaroo. Photography: Document Photography.
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Badger Bates, Barka The Forgotten River and the desecration of the Menindee Lakes (2021–22); Wiimpatja Paakana Nhaartalana (Me Fishing in the Darling River) (2004); Warrego-Darling Junction, Toorale (2012); Ngatyi Yarilana (Rainbow Serpents having young) (2007); Barka (Darling River) (1992). Courtesy the artist. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photography: Document Photograph.
Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photography: Document Photograph.
Ackroyd & Harvey, Lille Madden / Tar-Ra (Dawes Point), Gadigal land, Sydney (2022).Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photography: Document Photography.
Naziha Mestaoui, One Beat, One Tree (2012). Courtesy the artist’s estate. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photography: Document Photography.
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
Caio Reisewitz, MUNDUS SUBTERRANEUS (2022).Courtesy the artist & Bendana Pinel Art Contemporain, Paris.
Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photography: Document Photography.
Marjetica Potrč, The House of Agreement Between Humans and the Earth (2022); The Time of Humans on the Soča River (2021); The Time on the Lachlan River (2021–22); The Rights of a River (2021); and The Life of the Lachlan River (2021). Courtesy the artist & Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin/Stockholm/Mexico City. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photography: Document Photography.
Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photography: Document Photography.
Yuko Mohri, Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo): Fieldwork, (2009–21).Courtesy the artist & Akio Nagasawa. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photography: Document Photography.

Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay Arts Precinct
Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi, Haukulasi (1995–21). Foreground: Clare Milledge, Imbás: a well at the bottom of the sea (2022) (detail). Courtesy the artist & STATION. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. Photography: Document Photography.
Foreground: Julie Gough, p/re-occupied (2022) (detail). Courtesy the artist. Background: Clare Milledge, Imbás: a well at the bottom of the sea, (2022) (detail). Courtesy the artist & STATION. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. Photography: Document Photography.
Yuko Mohri, Moré Moré (Leaky): Variations (2022). Courtesy the artist, Project Fulfill Art Space & Mother’s Tank Station Ltd. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. Photography: Document Photography.
Left to right: Aluaiy Kaumakan, Semasipu – Remembering Our Intimacies (2021–22). Courtesy the artist, Paridrayan Community elder women, Linkous Kuljeljelje, Chun-Lun Chen & curator Biung Ismahasan; Yoan Capote, Requiem (Plegaria) 2019–21 (detail). Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. Photography: Document Photography.

Arts and Cultural Exchange
Leeroy New, Balete (2022) (detail). Courtesy the artist. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Arts and Cultural Exhange. Photography:Document Photography.
Leeroy New, Balete (2022) (detail). Courtesy the artist. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Arts and Cultural Exhange. Photography: Document Photography.

National Art School in partnership with Artspace
Carol McGregor with Adele Chapman-Burgess, Avril Chapman and the Community of the Myall Creek Gathering Cloak, Myall Creek Gathering Cloak (2018). Courtesy the New England Regional Art Museum & the Myall Creek Gathering Cloak Community.
Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Lagoons and Lagoons and Lagoons (2021) (detail). Courtesy the artist & Fridman Gallery, New York.
Carolina Caycedo, Serpent River Book and Serpent Table (2017) (detail). Background: Yuma, or the Land of Friends, (2021). 2022, National Art School. Photography: Document Photography.
Left to Right: Carolina Caycedo, Elwha (2016) (detail); Watu (2016) (detail); Iguaçu (2016) (detail). Courtesy the artist. National Art School. Photography: Document Photography.
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They spend more time looking at the museum’s walls than anybody else—and now, for the first time, they’re deciding what art will hang there. 
For the Baltimore Museum of Art’s (BMA) newest exhibition, the security guards have taken on curatorial duties. The show, “Guarding the Art,” features 25 pieces from the BMA’s collection—including works by Louise Bourgeois, Grace Hartigan, and Mickalene Thomas—selected by 17 members of the institution’s security team. It opens to the public this Sunday, March 27.
The aim of the show, conceived by BMA board member Amy Elias more than a year ago, is to enliven the museum’s presentation—and invite some new perspectives along the way.
“‘Guarding the Art,’ is more personal than typical museum shows,” Elias said in a statement, since “it gives visitors a unique opportunity to see, listen and learn the personal histories and motivations of guest curators. In this way, the exhibition opens a door for how a visitor might feel about the art, rather than just providing a framework for how to think about the art.”
Alfred Dehodencq, Little Gypsy (c. 1850). Courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art.
To choose the works for the exhibition, the guards began meeting over video chat with members of the museum’s curatorial team last year. They were face with some large tasks: scouring the museum’s collection, narrowing down their selections, writing wall texts and catalogue entries, devising lighting schemes—in short, designing and staging an exhibition from tip to toe. (Each participant was paid for their curatorial work through a grant from the Pearlstone Family Foundation.)
“We were kind of nervous because these are serious folks and this is what they do,” said Dominic Mallari, who has worked at the BMA since 2018. “But it turned out that it was very welcoming and inviting.
For his contributions to the checklist, Mallari selected two artworks: a square, tie-dye-like canvas by Sam Gilliam, and a spare, little-known portrait of a Romani girl by French 19th-century painter Alfred Dehodencq. The latter, he said, stuck out to him among the many ornate paintings in the museum’s Jacobs Gallery of European Art. 
“It was the simplest one,” Mallari explained. “You have to use your imagination for it. It was just striking to me.”
Sam Gilliam, Blue Edge (1971). © Sam Gilliam. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles.
Simplicity was the reason that Alex Dicken, another guest curator, found himself drawn to his sole selection, a 1948 blue and yellow landscape by Surrealist Max Ernst. The artwork’s title doubles as a description: Earthquake, Late Afternoon. (Coincidentally, it also looks a lot like the Ukrainian flag.)
“When I think of Max Ernst’s paintings I think of these fantastical creatures and alien landscapes. What interested me about Earthquake, Late Afternoon was that they’re pretty much absent,” said Dicken, a recent philosophy grad from St. John’s College in Annapolis, who began working as a security officer in 2019 and recently switched over to the visitor services team.
“I was interested in the idea that it might have been trying to represent a natural disaster from a non-human perspective, detached from the immediate danger of the situation,” Dicken added. “That came out of investigating it further and thinking about the work.”
Dicken explained that, at the beginning of the process, he and his cohort tried to come up with a cohesive curatorial theme for the exhibition, but nothing stuck. Meetings moved from Zoom to the museum itself, and he even got together with other guards outside of work to tackle the topic. Still the question loomed. 
Max Ernst, Earthquake, Late Afternoon (1948).© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art.
With help from the art historian and curator Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims, who joined the project as a mentor, the group eventually stopped looking for a theme to tie all the curators’ ideas together and instead chose to embrace the multiplicity of perspectives.
“I know someone else started out the same way that I did, investigating the collection for works that had never been displayed before,” Dicken said. “Whereas others had very particular interests—for example wanting to display works from a particular culture or another interest of theirs outside of the museum, another area of study that they are interested in.”
“It really became more about talking about our specific experiences rather than forming a set of themes that would characterize the exhibition,” the guest curator went on. “Over time the focus became, ‘What are the diverse array of selections that various guards will make given their collective time in the galleries?’”
“Guarding the Art” will be on view March 27 through July 10, 2022 at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
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Across Honolulu, artists have installed their works in a palace, a shopping mall, museums, and botanical gardens as part of the 2022 Hawai’i Triennial, open now through May 8,
The theme of this year’s edition, curated by Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu, is “Pacific Century,” which takes the form of a multi-site exhibition to explore indigenous histories, immigration, colonialism, and Asia-Pacific and Oceanic identities through the lens of art.
The triennial features more than 60 participants comprised of 43 artists and collectives, including local figures with ties reaching back generations, as well as internationally renowned names like Ai Weiwei, Theaster Gates, and Jennifer Steinkamp.
Below, see highlights from the Hawai’i Triennial 2022:

Honolulu Museum of Art
Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Aue Away ft. Kaina Quenga and Anthony Aiu, Honolulu Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist and Honolulu Museum of Art.
Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Aue Away ft. Kaina Quenga and Anthony Aiu, Honolulu Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist and Honolulu Museum of Art
Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Aue Away ft. Kaina Quenga and Anthony Aiu, Honolulu Museum ofArt. Courtesy of the artist and Honolulu Museum of Art.
Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Aue Away ft. Kaina Quenga and Anthony Aiu, Honolulu Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist and Honolulu Museum of Art

The Bishop Museum
Chitra Ganesh, Untitled/Kapa Moon, (2022). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Honolulu.Courtesy of the artist and Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. © Chitra Ganesh. Photo: Kelli Bullock Hergert.
Gaku Tsutaja, ENOLA’S HEAD, (2021). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Honolulu. Courtesy of the artist and Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. © Gaku Tsutaja. Photo: Kelli Bullock Hergert.
Izumi Kato and Pacific Sisters, background center: Izumi Kato, Untitled, (2021). and (foreground) Pacific Sisters, Te Pu o Te Wheke, (2021). Courtesy of the artists and Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. © Izumi Kato. © Pacific Sisters. Photo: Kelli Bullock Hergert.
The Foster Botanical Garden
Installation view of Ai Weiwei’s Tree (2010); Iron Tree, (2020); and Tree (2010). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Foster Botanical Garden, Honolulu. Courtesy of the artist and Hawai‘i Contemporary. © Ai Weiwei. Photo: Lila Lee.
Installation view, Leeroy New, Balete (2022) and Taklobo, (2022). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Foster Botanical Garden, Honolulu. © Leeroy New. Photo: Lila Lee.
Installation view, TOQA, ,Midnight Smoothie (2021-22) Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Foster Botanical Garden, Honolulu. © TOQA. Photo: Lila Lee.
The Royal Hawaiian Center
Installation view: Momoyo Torimitsu, Somehow I don’t feel comfortable (2021). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Royal Hawaiian Center, Waikīkī. © Momoyo Torimitsu. Photo: Lila Lee.
Installation view: Momoyo Torimitsu, Somehow I don’t feel comfortable, (2021). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Royal Hawaiian Center, Waikīkī. © Momoyo Torimitsu. Photo: Lila Lee.
Installation view: “Hawai‘i Triennial 2022,” Royal Hawaiian Center, Waikīkī. Photo: Lila Lee.
Miao Ying, Hardcore Digital Detox (2018). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Royal Hawaiian Center, Waikīkī. © Miao Ying. Photo: Lila Lee.
Installation view: Sun Xun, The Ancient Distance Uncover the Mystery of Reality and The Mysterious History Lies in What We Can’t See No.1 (2021). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Royal Hawaiian Center, Waikīkī. © Sun Xun. Photo: Lila Lee.
Tsuyoshi Hisakado, Pause, (2022). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Royal Hawaiian Center, Waikīkī. Courtesy of the artist and Hawai‘i Contemporary. © Tsuyoshi Hisakado. Photo: Lila Lee.
Hawaii Theater
Installation view, Ming Wong, Bloody Marys-Song of the South Seas (2018). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Lila Lee.

Hawai‘i State Art Museum
‘Elepaio Press (Mark Hamasaki & Richard Hamasaki), Installation view, “‘Elepaio Press. Hawai‘i Triennial 2022.  Photo: Brandyn Liu.
Nā Maka o ka ‘Āina (Puhipau & Joan Lander), Installation view “Nā Maka o ka ‘Āina.” © Nā Maka o ka ‘Āina. Photo: Brandyn Liu.
Installation view: Piliāmo‘o, (Mark Hamasaki and Kapulani Landgraf), photographs from Ē Luku Wale Ē. © Piliāmo‘o. Photo: Brandyn Liu.
Tropic Editions (Marika Emi), Installation view, “Tropic Editions, CAFE.Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Hawai‘i State Art Museum, Honolulu.  © Tropic Editions. Photo: Vincent Bercasio.

The Iolani Palace
Jennifer Steinkamp, Queen Lili‘uokalani, (2022). Hawai‘i Triennial 2022, Iolani Palace, Honolulu. Courtesy of the artist and Iolani Palace. Photo: Leimaile.
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This spring, a massive trowel will touch down in the middle of the Channel Gardens inside Rockefeller Center.
The cerulean blue plantoir is the work of Claes Oldenburg and his late wife, Coosje van Bruggen, and will be the couple’s first public installation in New York City in more than 20 years.
In 2002, a red version of the work was on view as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition “Oldenburg and Van Bruggen on the Roof.”
Displayed alongside Architect’s Handkerchief (1999), Corridor Pin, Blue (1999), and Shuttlecock/Blueberry Pies I and II (1999), Plantoir was installed atop the museum’s building against the backdrop of Central Park, which helped to balloon the object into inflated, cartoonish monuments.
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggenon on May 29, 1987 next to the sculpture Apple Core in the Krefeld art gallery. (Photo by Wilhelm Leuschner/picture alliance via Getty Images)
When the pair met in 1970, Oldenburg was in the midst of working on Plantoir, and the two began collaborating on the work in 1975. Van Bruggen herself selected the original blue finish of the trowel in a nod to the colorful overalls that Dutch workers wore.
The comically oversized gardening tool—a 2,300-pound shovel made from aluminum, fiber-reinforced plastic, and steel—stands at more than 23 feet tall, and can withstand winds of more than 120 miles per hour.
Oldenburg and Van Bruggen wanted the work to be installed in an outdoor garden setting, making the Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens—the original location in 1801 of the Elgin Garden, the United States’s first botanical garden—prime (if miniature) real estate for the whimsical sculpture.
“Their new sculpture is an ode to the city at the time of its long-awaited reawakening,” Paula Cooper Gallery senior partner Steve Henry said in a statement.
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s Plantoir, Blue (2001/21) will be on view at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center from March 18 through May 6, 2022.
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