On View

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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This week, to mark the 545th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth, conservators in Florence unveiled the newly restored Medici family chapel designed by the Renaissance master.
Their eight-year effort to clean the tomb was aided by an uncommon tool: bacteria.  
Starting in 2019, experts quietly introduced varying strains of bacteria to the marble sculptures of the New Sacristy, where multiple members of the Medici dynasty are entombed. The microbes promptly set about eating centuries’ worth of grime, glue, and other debris that had discolored the sculptures on the tombs. 
The bacteria were especially adept at tackling one substance tarnishing Michelangelo’s handiwork: organic fluids that had seeped from the long-rotted corpse of Alessandro Medici, a one-time ruler of Florence, whose body had been deposited in a sarcophagus without being properly eviscerated.
One hungry strain in particular, Serratia ficaria SH7, managed to do away with the stains caused from the fluid in just a matter of days, according to the New York Times.
“SH7 ate Alessandro,” Monica Bietti, the former chief of the Medici chapels museum who led the all-female team in the restoration project, told the paper last year.
The tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours, 1524-1534 at the New Sacristy, Medici Chapels, Basilica of Saint Lawrence in Florence, Italy, 2017. Courtesy of Getty Images.
Bietti, along with several other conservators on the project, spoke at the unveiling sponsored by the Academy of the Arts of Drawing this week.
“The restoration of one of the most symbolic places of art required knowledge, experience, and science, combined with the qualities of sensitivity and intelligence,” she said.
“For this reason, the work was tested from the start and then subjected to constant optical, methodological, and scientific checks.”
Michelangelo was commissioned to design the New Sacristy, located among the Medici Chapels in Florence’s San Lorenzo church, in 1520. The tomb’s frontispieces feature sculptures depicting two members of the Medici family—Lorenzo di Piero, Duke of Urbino and Giuliano di Lorenzo, Duke of Nemours—as well as figures symbolizing dusk, dawn, night, and day.
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Temptress and turncoat. Mother of a new nation. Chicana heroine. 
La Malinche has lived many lives in the cultural imagination since her death in the 16th century, as generations of people have appropriated her image to promote their own political agendas. Now, a landmark exhibition at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) explores the complex legacy of the woman and her impact on artistic culture on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border—the first major scholarly presentation to do so.
An enslaved Nahua woman who became Hernán Cortés’s interpreter and consort during his conquest of the Aztec Empire, La Malinche proved to be a key actor in one of the defining moments of world history. Whether she did so willingly or not, we don’t know. In fact, there’s much we don’t know about her life. And yet, for five hundred years, La Malinche has loomed large in modern Mexican legend.   
That much is evidenced by the 68 artworks that make up “Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche,” on view at DAM through May 8, 2022. (Following its presentation at DAM, the exhibition will travel to the Albuquerque Museum and the San Antonio Museum of Art). It’s an important presentation that doubles as a statement unto itself.
Antonio Ruiz, La Malinche (El Sueño de la Malinche) (1939). Photo: Jesús Sánchez Uribe.
The show took six years to pull together, with independent curator Terezita Romo working along with Victoria I. Lyall, DAM’s curator of Art of the Ancient Americas, and Matthew H. Robb, chief curator at the UCLA’s Fowler Museum. 
“This is the first time there’s ever been an exhibition like this,” explained Romo. “Even in Mexico, La Malinche’s story is always connected to Cortés—it’s always about the conquest. This exhibition really pushes that out. It’s more about this young indigenous teenager and what she did in terms, not only surviving, but of actually changing history.” 
The show is broken down into five sections, each devoted to a different personification of La Malinche’s legacy. The first, “La Lengua” (or “The Interpreter”), examines her role as an interlocutor between the Aztec and Spanish peoples, from Cortés’s first written description of her as “la lengua que yo tengo” (“my tongue”)—an appellative he used instead of acknowledging her name—to posthumous depictions of her as a woman empowered by language. 
Next comes “La Indígena” (“The Indigenous Woman”), which looks at how the racial designations imposed upon her by conquistadors forms the foundation of her mythology, an otherized object of beauty from a defeated people; and “La Madre de Mestizaje” (“The Mother of a Mixed Race”), an exploration of how, in the wake of the Mexican revolution, the country adopted La Malinche, the mother of Cortés first son, as as a symbol of a new mixed race. 
Santa Barraza, La Malinche (1991). © Santa Barraza. Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.
By far the biggest section of the show, “La Traidora” (“The Traitor”), focuses on the way La Malinche was depicted throughout much of the 20th century—as a person who turned her back on her people, inviting generations of ethnic cleansing. (Roma points out that the most prominent examples of this depiction “mainly came from men, which is not a coincidence.”) It was during this time that the word “malinchista” was popularized as a pejorative term for someone who prefers foreign cultures to their own. Even today, it’s through that word that most Mexicans know La Malinche at all. 
“One of the things we wanted to accomplish with the retelling of this story was to have those visitors who are familiar with her story reexamine their preconceived notions and to really understand how pernicious some of those metaphors can be,” said Lyall. “That her name is the basis of a slur that’s quite popular—this is a way of passively emphasizing the sexist and misogynistic view of a woman’s influence.” 
In response to this period of denigration, La Malinche was reclaimed as an icon of the Chicana movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. This is the subject of the fifth and last part of the show, a section that extends to today, looking at how her image has been embraced by a number of different communities, from feminists to trans activists.
Jesús Helguera, La Malinche (1941). © Calendarios Landin.
Despite the myriad ways in which La Malinche’s mythology has been exploited, she’s always resisted reduction, explained Romo. 
“That has always been the core of what has interested me about her—she was such a complex being,” the curator said. “It’s what makes her so powerful: she elicits these different representations from people.” 
Thanks to their work, more people will be bringing their own contemporary interpretations to her story. Prior to the opening of the show, DAM launched a series of outreach programs, trying to both gauge the perception of La Malinche in the community and educate people about her story.
“The best comment we had was, ‘How come there isn’t a Disney princess movie about her?’” Lyall recalled, laughing. “That was definitely not the avenue we wanted to go, but to me it really underlined how, even if our visitors don’t know who La Malinche is, once they hear her story, they are hooked.”
Jorge González Camarena, Lapareja (The couple) (1964). © Fundación Cultural Jorge González Camarena, AC. Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.
“Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche,” is on view at the Denver Art Museum now through May 8, 2022. It will travel to the Albuquerque Museum from June 11–September 4, 2022, and the San Antonio Museum of Art from October 14, 2022–January 08, 2023.
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He might technically be “the younger,” but he still died 500 years ago. He’s also responsible for the best painting show in New York right now.
I’m speaking, of course, of Hans Holbein the Younger, the German-Swiss artist who pushed Renaissance painting to new heights in the 16th century. Beginning in Basel, and later in England, where he served as court painter to King Henry VIII, Holbein made his mark with portraits of nobles, merchants, and scholars. Many of these works form a quietly momentous survey currently on view at the Morgan Library and Museum.
“Holbein: Capturing Character,” as the show is called, is billed as one of the only major solo exhibitions dedicated to the painter ever mounted in the United States. It might be the last we’re treated to in our lifetimes, too, being the product of the kind of intercontinental, inter-institutional collaboration that is exceptionally rare and exceptionally expensive.
“Holbein’s paintings and drawings are the crown jewels of museums that own them,” the show’s organizers, John McQuillen and Austėja Mackelaitė, said in a joint email to Artnet News. “Such institutions can be reluctant to part with their most prized pieces. Many of the works are also fragile, which can make travel difficult or even impossible.” 
Hans Holbein the Younger, A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?) (ca. 1526–28). Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.
Indeed, logistical concerns with loans, transport, and insurance were among the biggest obstacles McQuillen, Mackelaitė, and their fellow organizer, Getty Museum curator Anne Woollett, had to overcome in putting the show together. The multi-year process was made all the more complicated by the pandemic. 
The Holbein exhibition actually debuted last fall at the Getty in Los Angeles, but that version and the one on view at the Morgan differ in significant ways. Some institutions only agreed to loan certain prized pieces for a short period of time, allowing for inclusion in one, but not both, shows. The Frick, for example, lent Holbein’s portrait of Thomas More to the Morgan, and his painting of Thomas Cromwell to the Getty. Both pieces rank among the portraitist’s best. 
All in all, the exhibition features loans from 10 U.S. institutions and collectors, and 13 from overseas. Roughly 60 pieces spanning the artist’s entire career are included view, 31 paintings among them. Particularly significant gets for the museum include Holbein’s portraits of Erasmus of Rotterdam (circa 1532), A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?) (circa 1535–40) and Simon George (circa 1535–40). 
Hans Holbein the Younger, Simon George (ca. 1535–40). Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.
The Morgan and the Getty were responsible for the last American exhibition dedicated to Holbein, a smaller display of the artist’s drawings that took place in 1983 and 1984. “The fact that it has taken almost 40 years for a more comprehensive overview of Holbein’s artistic practice to be assembled in the U.S. speaks to the difficulty of negotiating loans of the artist’s works,” McQuillen and Mackelaitė said.
For the curators, Holbein’s work is just as compelling now as it was then—and perhaps even more so. 
“Holbein is one of the few artists who was extremely successful and popular in his own time, and whose work has never gone out of fashion,” they said. “His extraordinary mastery over the medium of oil paint led him to create highly naturalistic images, which are filled with tactile, closely observed details that simultaneously delight and seduce.”
Those details, the curators explained, are what make the artist’s output special. Whereas other painters focused on their sitters’ features, Holbein honed in on their physiognomy—the physical traits, that is that can reveal a person’s desires, disposition, or social status—as well as their garb. They are also the central preoccupation of the show (hence the title, “Capturing Character”).
“Although Holbein was not the only Renaissance artist who used portraits to create statements of visual identity for his patrons, the intensity of his preoccupations with these issues distinguishes him from many of his contemporaries,” the curators said.   
See more works from the Morgan’s exhibition below.
Hans Holbein the Younger, The Wife of a Court Official of Henry VIII (ca. 1534). Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.
Hans Holbein the Younger, Preparatory drawing of Simon George (ca.1535). Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.
Hans Holbein the Younger, Erasmus of Rotterdam (ca. 1532). Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.
Hans Holbein the Younger, Terminus, Device of Erasmus (ca. 1532). Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.
Hans Holbein the Younger, A Court Official of Henry VIII (ca. 1534). Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.
“Holbein: Capturing Character” is on view now through May 15, 2022 at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York.
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