Shows & Exhibitions

When Susie M. Barstow was in search of artistic inspiration, she would head to the mountains, sketchbook in tow, reportedly hiking as many as 25 miles a day while capturing views of the natural landscape.
This dedication to her practice is all the more remarkable considering Barstow began her career in the 1850s, at a time when bloomers were still considered daring attire for women.
“Going out in long heavy woolen skirts and heels and petticoats and all of these layers was so cumbersome,” Nancy Siegel, an art history professor at Maryland’s Towson University and curator of a new exhibition on Barstow, told Artnet News.
“So there were bloomers, trousers worn under a short skirt. And women like Susie would raise the hems of their walking skirts. Some women wore boy’s tennis shoes, or would use a clothes pin to pull their dress up almost to create pantaloons while they were hiking,” she added. “There were lots of ways that women carefully and strategically manipulated their dress so that they could navigate the landscape.”
Unknown photographer, Portrait of Susie M. Barstow (ca. 1870). Private Collection, Photo by Dennis DeHart.
Born in New York City in 1836, Barstow was among some 50 women who were part of the Hudson River School, painting in the tradition started by Thomas Cole. Now, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, the home of the founder of the movement, is hosting Barstow’s first ever retrospective, “Women Reframe American Landscape: Susie Barstow and Her Circle/Contemporary Practices.”
In 2010, the museum had staged “Remember the Ladies,” the first exhibition dedicated to the movement’s women, curated by Siegel and art dealer Jennifer Krieger. A decade later, Betsy Jack, director of the Cole house, reached out to Siegel about organizing a follow-up show, this time focused on a single artist.
Barstow—who has more than 100 documented paintings—soon emerged as a natural choice, both due to her success during her lifetime and the availability of her work, as well as a wealth of archival materials preserved by her surviving family members (much of which they recently donated to the Albany Institute of History and Art).
Susie M. Barstow’s paint box (ca. 1876). Private Collection. Photo by Dennis DeHart.
“I had access to hundreds of letters and photographs and personal memorabilia, like her certificates from school and the tickets that she saved from seeing the Columbian Exposition, as well as hundreds of drawings and watercolors as well as paintings,” Siegel said. “It was this incredibly unique opportunity first to find that much existing biographical material about any artist, much less one of these women of the Hudson River School.”
The result is a two-part exhibition pairing work by Barstow—who already had one piece in the Cole house collection—and other women of the Hudson River School, with that of contemporary women artists responding to the landscape. It’s a collaboration between Siegel, who handled the historic material (and also wrote a new monograph about Barstow), and Thomas Cole National Historic Site chief curator Kate Menconeri and assistant curator Amanda Malmstrom, who enlisted the show’s living artists.
Ebony G. Patterson, …the wailing…ushers us home…and there is a bellying on the land… (2021) in “Women Reframe American Landscape” at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Photo courtesy of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, New York.
A total of 13 contemporary artists each made new work, some site-specific, for the show: Teresita Fernández, the Guerrilla Girls, Marie Lorenz, Tanya Marcuse, Mary Mattingly, Ebony G. Patterson, Anna Plesset, Jean Shin, Wendy Red Star, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Cecilia Vicuña, Kay WalkingStick, and Saya Woolfalk.
“In this exhibition, we wanted to recenter women in the canon of American art, and then expand and complicate how we think about in a landscape today, because it feels like we’re in this really urgent moment,” Menconeri told Artnet News.
Teresita Fernández, Small American Fires in “Women Reframe American Landscape” at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Photo courtesy of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, New York.
Some of the works speak to contemporary concerns about the land and the environment, such as the Fernández installation Small American Fires, a series of 12 of wood panel graphite drawings of fire and a dramatic charcoal wall drawing. It’s inspired by the destructive power of fire, especially as climate change fuels more deadly blazes, but also its potential for rebirth, and the long Indigenous history of using fire to promote new growth.
Other pieces tie into the history of the Hudson River School and the Cole house more directly, like a new Guerrilla Girls poster installed in the stairway decrying the exclusion of women and artists of color from the movement—and its idealization of a landscape quickly falling victim to rampant industrialization.
Guerrilla Girls, .Guerrilla Girls Reality Check: The Hudson River School (2023) in “Women Reframe American Landscape” at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Photo courtesy of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, New York.
Cole, of course, was an early environmentalist who used his work to advocate for the preservation of the natural landscape. In his preserved studios, the curators have placed a site-specific installation by Lorenz, featuring sculptures she’s crafted from plastic and other detritus collected in New York City waterways, as well as video footage of her excursions by boat.
“Rather than painting the landscape like Cole did, Marie brings people into the landscape through this project called The Time and Tide Taxi—it’s very intrepid,” Menconeri said. “In our post-industrial moment, the land is filled with flora and fauna and plants, but also plastics and particles and toxins. So the work is really exciting. The land is damaged and it’s imperfect, but this is where we are, and she still kind of embraces it.”
Marie Lorenz’s site-specific installation in Thomas Cole’s studio in “Women Reframe American Landscape” at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Photo courtesy of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, New York.
And then there’s Plesset’s American Paradise, a new edition of the catalogue for the 1987 Hudson River School show of the same name at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art that did not include a single woman. Plesset’s version of the publication is open to the title page and frontispiece, which now features a Barstow painting, creating an alternate history where the accomplishments of women are included and properly appreciated.
“We felt that bringing art about land and the landscape by contemporary women artist into and in conversation with the historic interiors of our 1815 main house was important to complement and expand upon the Susie Barstow presentation in the new studio,” Malmstrom told Artnet News.
“I like to think of Susie Barstow and her circle as the founding mothers of the Hudson River school. They paved the way for future women artist to engage with the landscape,” Siegel added.
Anna Plesset, American Paradise (Second Edition) 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The exhibition also includes a number of historic paintings by Julie Hart Beers, Fidelia Bridges, Charlotte Buell Coman, Eliza Greatorex, Mary Josephine Walters, and Laura Woodward—women artists who showed alongside Barstow and are equally deserving, Siegel insisted, of rediscovery.
“For so many years, the scholarship has focused on the male artists of the Hudson River School,” she said, “Hopefully, this show will usher in a new curatorial era of solo exhibitions devoted to these 19th-century women landscape painters.”
Susie Barstow Skelding, Susie M. Barstow in Her Brooklyn Studio (1891). Private collection. Photo by Dennis DeHart.
Born to a middle class family in Brooklyn, Barstow studied art at the Rutgers Female Institute and Cooper Union in New York. Though there were certainly still obstacles for women interested in a professional art career, Barstow benefitted from changing attitudes about women in the second half of the 19th century.
“There was a reform movement that acknowledged the importance of women exercising,” Siegel said. “Women were riding bicycles, they were hiking, they were getting outdoors—fresh air was considered to be really restorative.”
Susie M. Barstow, The Floor of Yosemite (1889). Barstow Family Trust Collection. Photo by Chrome Digital.
And Barstow took full advantage of that new freedom of movement, extensively hiking the Catskills and Adirondacks in New York, as well as New Hampshire’s White Mountains and trips overseas to Europe and to other parts of the U.S.
She also never married or had children, which freed her of many of the domestic responsibilities that so often limited women’s art careers. Barstow did, however, have a companion, a fellow landscape artist named Florence Nightingale Thallon, with whom she lived and traveled for some 20 years.
Susie M. Barstow, Early October Near Lake Squam. Collection of Suzanne H. Arnold Gallery, Lebanon Valley College Fine Art Collection, Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Photo by Andrew Bale, courtesy of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, New York.
“I don’t want to speculate in terms of whether this was a relationship of a sexual nature, but I would certainly say it was a very intimate friendship,” Siegel said.
Though we may never know the full details of her personal life, what’s clear is that Barstow worked incredibly hard in her 87 years. Early in her career, Barstow wrote that “I will overcome every obstacle to success.” Remarkably, she did just that.
Susie M. Barstow, The Ruins of Kenilworth Castle (1880). Barstow Family Trust Collection. Photo by Chrome Digital.
“Susie Barstow was incredibly well known. Her work sold for comparable prices as her male counterparts, and she showed in all the exhibitions that men like Asher B. Durand and Albert Bierstadt were showing in,” Siegel said.
“But there’s this moment of art historical amnesia in the interwar years between, after World War I and before World War II and all these women artists seem to disappear,” she added. “And now it’s time that we’re writing them back into history.”
“Women Reframe American Landscape: Susie Barstow and Her Circle/Contemporary Practices” is on view at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 218 Spring Street, Catskill, New York, May 6–October 29, 2023, and at the New Britain Museum of American Art, 56 Lexington Street, New Britain, Connecticut, November 16, 2023–March 31, 2024. It will also travel to the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 700 North 12th Street, Wausau, Wisconsin. 

More Trending Stories:  
Barbie’s Real-Life Hot Pink Malibu Dreamhouse, Complete With Ocean Views and a Roller Rink, Is Available to Rent on Airbnb 
A Frank Frazetta Painting of a Brawny Warrior Sold for $6 Million, Making It the World’s Highest-Priced Work of Comic Book or Fantasy Art Ever 
A German Museum Came Up With an Insanely Low-Tech Solution to Protect Its Rembrandt Canvas From a Leaky Ceiling 
A U.S. Judge Permanently Banned Digital Artist Mason Rothschild From Selling His ‘MetaBirkin’ NFTs, Handing a Win to Hermès 
A 17th-Century Double Portrait of Black and White Women, Said to Be of ‘Outstanding Significance’ Will Remain in the U.K. 
This Famed Dollhouse Is Hung With Tiny Original Artworks, Including a Miniature Duchamp. Here Are Three Things to Know About the One-of-a-Kind Treasure 
Elisabetta Sirani Painted in Public to Prove Her Work Was Her Own. Here’s How She Became a 17th-Century Star—and Why She’s Being Remembered Now 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

Naples and Paris share a checkered history, one bound by Catholicism, pastry, and a centuries-old artistic exchange—and fractured by conflict and Napoleonic occupation. Its principal art institutions, however, are getting along famously.
The Capodimonte Museum has just sent 70 Renaissance masterworks to get cozy with period counterparts from the Louvre’s collection. It’s a six-month show, one whose opening saw the French and Italian presidents in attendance, and the Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, joyously declare “it’s Neapolitan season.”
“Naples in Paris”, which is set to run through January 24, 2024, is being billed as the largest-ever exhibition focused on the Italian Renaissance. It may well be and, even if size isn’t everything, it’s a well-curated affair. All the great Italian painters are present and accounted for—Michelangelo, Massacio, Raphael Caravaggio, Bellini, Titian, Artemisia Gentileschi and more—with Capodimonte filling in the gaps in the Louvre’s inestimable collection (since the 17th-century French Kings Louis III and XIV preferred the Venetian and Roman schools over the Neapolitan).
Caravaggio, The Flagellation (1607). Image: courtesy Capodimonte.
It’s a remarkable and rare collaboration between two vast European museums. Though, with the former Bourbon royal palace undergoing major renovations through 2024, “Naples in Paris” has come about more through pragmatism than fraternal love.
Sylvain Bellenger, Capodimonte’s director, is also hoping associating with the world’s most famous museum might draw attention to the Naples institution. “Many visitors will already be familiar with some of the masterpieces in the Capodimonte collection,” Bellenger said in a statement, but the museum is “still unknown by the public at large” since most tourists head to Pompeii and Herculaneum instead. Maybe this grand outing will do the trick.
Massacio, La Crucifixion (1426). Courtesy: Capodimonte
The exhibition is spread across three separate spaces inside the former seat of the French monarchy. The Grande Gallerie, as the name suggests, makes the biggest statement. Thirty-one Capodimonte paintings are interwoven with the Louvre’s works by Titian, Caravaggio, and Guido Reni. Standouts are Massacio’s The Crucifixion, a work backed in brilliant gold that brings the viewer to the level of Mary Magdalene, who swoons at the feet of Jesus, her hands contorted. Differently captivating is Parmigianino’s Portrait of a Young Woman, a figure who in dress, pose, and gaze seems of an indeterminable age. To Bellenger’s point, she’s a figure we recognize, though we might not know which museum she lives in.
In the Salle de l’Horloge, the institutions turn to drawings, or cartoons, of which Capodimonte boasts more than 30,000. The most celebrated here were inherited from Fulvio Orsini including Raphael’s Moses before the Burning Bush, a charcoal work of no flame and full expression, with the prophet crouched and calm in the presence of his lord. Another is Michelangelo’s preparatory cartoon for the Vatican’s Group of Soldiers, exhibiting intricate armor work and a quiet intimacy not commonly associated with 16th-century military men. The Louvre, in response, offers up work by Raphael and his pupil Giulio Romano.
Michelangelo, Group of Soldiers (1546–50). Image: courtesy Capodimonte.
The Salle de la Chapelle takes a broader focus, staging a miscellany of wonders from Naples: an El Greco and a Titian here, a miniature Filippo Tagliolini sculpture and a gilded casket of silver and crystal there. It’s a space that shows the full diversity of the Capodimonte collection, largely courtesy of its Farnese and Bourbon families.
The two museums “are symbols of the historical links between France and Italy,” des Cars said in a statement. “This exceptional and unprecedented partnership is a perfect example of my vision for the Louvre’s future role in Europe and museums.”
See more images from “Naples in Paris” here:
Raphael, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (1514–15). Image: courtesy The Louvre.
Parmigianino, Portrait of a Young Woman (Also known as Antea, c. 1535). Image: courtesy Capodimonte.
Annibale Carracci, Pietà with Saint Francis and Saint Mary Magdalene (1600–25). Image: courtesy the Louvre.
Annibale Carracci, Pietà (1599–1600). Image: courtesy Capodimonte.
Correggio, Venus and Cupid with a Satyr (1524–27). Image: courtesy the Louvre.
Titian, Danae (1544–45). Images: Capodimonte.
José de Ribera, The Clubfoot (1642). Image: courtesy the Louvre.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1612–13). Image: Capodimonte.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

During the colonial period, the camera became something of an imperial device, as Western images defined narratives about the history, culture, and identity of the African continent. Now, in its first major exhibition of contemporary African photography, the Tate Modern in London is showcasing the work of a new generation African artists using the medium on their own terms.
“A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography” features 36 artists—working in photography, video, and installation—who represent different generations and a wide span of geography. Each offers their own unique perspectives on Africa and its relationship with the wider world, informed by history while looking to the future with hope.
The exhibition is curated by the museum’s international art curator, Osei Bonsu, together with assistant curators Jess Baxter and Genevieve Barton and former assistant curator Katy Wan.
“It’s not a traditional photography survey. I don’t really think that Africa can be summarized or distilled into one large exhibition,” Bonsu told Artnet News. “This was more of an attempt to tell very specific stories about Africa through the lens of artists who were either living and working on the continent, or were paying homage to many of the traditions and visual practices that, in my opinion, best reflected the way that we see photography in Africa.”
Khadija Saye, Andichurai, “in this space we breathe” (2017). Photo courtesy of the artist.
Osei Bonsu: “Khadija Saye was an artist who tragically died very young. But rather than focusing on the circumstances surrounding her death, we really wanted to show her contribution to the landscape of contemporary African photography.
An artist of Gambian/British heritage, Khadija’s work is testament to her mixed faith upbringing, with a Muslim father and a Christian mother. These images are an attempt to ground herself within that spiritual understanding of her own identity through the traditional Gambian rituals.
It’s a tribute to her ancestral background and faith through photography. She used a wet collodion tintype process, which was popularized in the 19th century and is rarely practiced any longer. It’s a labor intensive process that leaves much to fate and to chance.
When the artist spoke about the experience of working this way, she related it to kind of spiritual transcendence in which the process becomes somewhat of a kind of a means of surrendering to the chemical outcome. The process captures these very irregular and almost kind of ghostly presences of herself.”

Zina Saro-Wiwa’s “Invisible Man: The Weight of Absence”
Zina Saro-Wiwa, from “The Invisible Man” (2015). Photo courtesy of the artist.
Osei Bonsu: “Zina Saro-Wiwa is an artist of Nigerian heritage who is based in the U.S., but grew up in the U.K. She worked as a journalist and is widely recognized for her work as a filmmaker and as an artist.
In “Invisible Man,” you see the artist reckoning with the her experience of loss in her own family, notably the death of her father, a climate activist and Nobel Prize nominee. She is posing in these photographs in a mask, because when one puts on a mask, you enter a realm between the living and the ancestral world.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, masks became very desirable objects, both as objects of ethnic culture and for the avant garde. But these masks were part of the way that African people related to their environment, the cosmos, to their ecosystems, and are still part of a living culture. The mask still has a very particular relationship to environment and to the way people relate to the ecosystem, which is under threat due to ongoing extractive practices particularly in relation to oil.
There’s a beautiful quote on the artist’s website saying that she was told that these masks were too heavy for women to carry. So, she had her own mask commissioned as a protest against this very gendered practice of excluding women from the politics of masquerade.
“Invisible Man” is one of the more poetic attempts for an artist to think about African history and cultural heritage, but really through their own lived experience.”

Sabelo Mlengani’s “Country Girls”
Sabelo Mlangeni Couple Bheki and Sipho, 2009. From the series “Country Girls.” Photo courtesy of Tate and the artist.
Osei Bonsu: “Sabelo Mlengani is a South African photographer who grew up in the province which is where the “Country Girls” series was shot. It’s a very personal reflection of LGBTQ life within the South African countryside.
We often associate these queer lives with kind of cosmopolitan environments, but there are also queer people who fashion their own identities within the countryside. The artist makes his subjects visible through these very intimate family portraits that both celebrate the kind of communities that are portrayed, but also think about their precarity and the vulnerability.
What he does by looking at this community is to upend or challenge many of the assumptions that people have that this is a recent trend or it’s kind of Western import. Queer culture, queer subjectivity is actually part of everyday life and very much in the spirit of the country.
We’ve included the ‘Country Girls’ series in an area of the exhibition titled ‘The Family Portrait,’ because we often see more conventional or normative depictions of family. This was an attempt to think about a more expanded idea of family that had more to do with one’s chosen family rather than one’s biological family.”

Dawit L. Petros’s “The Stranger’s Notebook”
Dawit L. Petros, Untitled Epilogue II Catania Italy (2016), “The Stranger’s Notebook.” Photo courtesy of the artist.
Osei Bonsu: “Dawit L. Petro is an artist, now based in Chicago, whose family migrated from East Africa to Canada. In this work, he’s thinking about the longer histories of migration and border crossing, and his own experience as an outsider in many contexts.
This series was created over a year-long period of traveling Africa to Europe along the Mediterranean coast, retracing the journeys of migrants seeking better lives—the kind of sites of journeys of border crossings that we know often end in tragedy.
In the photographs, taken in Sicily and Mauritania—sites of arrival and departure for migrants—the subjects are holding mirrors that [reflect] back to the viewer, revealing coastline, power lines, all of these kinds of liminal spaces beyond the reach of the camera. ‘Stranger’s Notebook’ is a meditation on the ways in which we often aren’t able to humanize those who are the statistics on the global news reel, whether it be the refugee crisis or successive forms of of economic migration around the world.
It’s an attempt to grapple with the complexities of what it means to represent a subject that is unrepresented. And it makes you think not only about the contemporary implications of migration, but the much longer interconnected history and relationship between Africa and Europe.”
“A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography” is on view at the Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG, July 6, 2023—January 14, 2024.

More Trending Stories:  
A Tourist Who Was Arrested for Carving His and His Girlfriend’s Names Into the Colosseum Is Begging for Forgiveness 
Archaeologists Found an Ancient Marble Bust That May Have Belonged to Caligula at the Bottom of an Italian Lake 
German Archaeologists Find a 3,000-Year-Old Bronze Age Sword So Well Preserved That It ‘Almost Still Shines’ 
Barbie’s Real-Life Hot Pink Malibu Dreamhouse, Complete With Ocean Views and a Roller Rink, Is Available to Rent on Airbnb 
A U.S. Judge Permanently Banned Digital Artist Mason Rothschild From Selling His ‘MetaBirkin’ NFTs, Handing a Win to Hermès 
A 17th-Century Double Portrait of Black and White Women, Said to Be of ‘Outstanding Significance’ Will Remain in the U.K. 
This Famed Dollhouse Is Hung With Tiny Original Artworks, Including a Miniature Duchamp. Here Are Three Things to Know About the One-of-a-Kind Treasure 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

Would you let a robot wash you? This question was posed by artist group Blast Theory while investigating the ethics of artificial intelligence in care systems. The Brighton-based collective is showing in “A.I.: Who’s Looking After Me?” at Science Gallery London (until January 20), which brings doctors, patients, artists and scientists together to explore key issues surrounding A.I. and care.
“In a care setting, being washed by a robot is a realistic possibility,” Blast Theory’s Matt Adams told Artnet News. “There’s this tension where you might not want a robot to do something so intimate; you want human contact. But the flip argument is, it’s better for a robot to wash you so you’re not dealing with the embarrassment of another person; you have some privacy. There are these tensions between what impersonal means versus private.”
Fear and suspicion of A.I. is escalating, raising questions of privacy, artistic authenticity, and human redundancy. The exhibition avoids easy resolutions, exploring the entangled benefits and risks of artificial intelligence in contemporary life. “A.I. is here,” Siddharth Khajuria, director of Science Gallery London, told Artnet News. “It’s not dystopian or future hopeful. It’s present and messy.”
The gallery, connected with King’s College London, combines diverse knowledge bases. “We need to bring different perspectives together to grapple with increasingly knotty societal problems,” said Khajuria. “The projects that feel messy in the best sense are collaborations between patient groups, medical engineers, and artists. When you encounter them, it will be tricky to know whose imagination has led or shaped it.”
Installation view, Wesley Goatley, Newly Forgotten Technologies (2022).Courtesy of Wesley Goatley. Photo by George Torode.
Projects include sound artist Wesley Goatley’s immersive installation about defunct voice assistants and Fast Familiar’s exploration of the romance potential of a machine which has learned everything about love on the internet. For Vine, Dr Oya Celiktutan, Head of the Social A.I. & Robotics Lab at King’s Department of Engineering, collaborated with soft robotics studio Air Giants and King’s students Jeffrey Chong, Theodore Lamarche and Bowen Liu. The result is a “huggable” robot, which interacts emotively with visitors.
“I’m interested in non-verbal communications between people,” Celiktutan told Artnet News. “I’m interested in how we can imitate that with robots so they can be clear and build trust with humans. This robot really doesn’t have any resemblance to a human, but with this basic shape it can communicate and connect using nonverbal movements.”
In stark contrast with the violent image of robots often stereotyped in movies, Vine invites trust and touch. “One of the big questions is ‘What can we do to make a robot seem more approachable?’” said Chong. “Also, what can a robot do for you to be able to trust and want to interact with it? What buttons can it press on the human brain or what behaviours can it display to make you think of it as a conversational partner?”
Vine’s cuddly appearance raises the question of aesthetics in robotics. “Soft robotics are interesting because they look cute,” said Lamarche. “I think a lot of the time people are scared of A.I. because of job replacement, but soft robotics see a lot of interest in the health sector where there are not enough people. There is an example the PARO robot, which is a little seal. It can be used for dementia patients and has a gentle soothing light to keep people physically and mentally interacting.”
Installation view, “AI: Who’s Looking After Me?” at Science Gallery London, King’s College London, 21 June 2023 – 20 January 2024. ©George Torode.
Artist Mimi Ọnụọha delves behind the scenes of A.I., focusing on the human workforce that enables it to run. While the end user may see A.I. as independent from humans, many systems require vast amounts of manual tagging. Ọnụọha’s The Future is Here! investigates the working spaces of the crowdsourced labour force, which largely operates remotely from bedrooms, front rooms and cafes in the Global South.
“It’s so tedious and intense,” Ọnụọha told Artnet News. “It’s important work but they won’t be paid the same as A.I. specialists or researchers. A.I. saves time, but whose time?” She points out the similarities between this labour distribution and the injustices of longer-running industries, such as fast fashion. “They are old patterns of labour architecture, but the aims are for this new technology.”
Ọnụọha does not call for an about turn on our relationship with these technologies, but a considered approach to their use. “We need to insert a little friction into how people approach these tools,” she said. “What is this ecosystem and how do we want it to be? What types of power differentials are we considering? If folks can consider this while at the same time holding the potential of A.I., I think that’s great. We’re past the point of being able to throw it out. The question becomes how to think strategically.”
Mimi Onuoha, The Future is Here! (2019). Courtesy of Mini Onuoha.
While most of the projects focus on human relationships with A.I., Blast Theory invites a third species into the conversation: house cats. For Cat Royale, the group, its collaborators, animal behavioral experts and welfare officers set up a controlled experiment. For 72 hours over three-hour stints, cats were observed interacting with a robotic arm offering a “game” every six minutes, such as dragging a feather or throwing a ball. The system gradually learned each cat’s response, calculating the happiness levels of each game and adapting its offerings.
Of all animals, cats added an interesting dimension because of their standoffish nature. “Cats are famously imperious, opinionated and not biddable,” Adams said. “There was something interesting about a cat out of all animals that we have a close relationship with. They aren’t going to just be gulled into accepting something.”
The resulting video raises questions about the role of humans. Naturally, this kind of care system in the home could supplant the owner. “There were moments where the robots were playing a game with a cat and it almost felt like the cat was enjoying it more than if it was playing with a human,” said Adams. “The human is kind of an interrupting, disrupting factor. The cat wants to do prey behaviour, but if a human is there, they are making noises and have emotional weight. They might be a power figure, potentially the owner of the pet. Of course, that is threatening to us humans who want to be special.”
The exhibition is a timely reminder of the extent to which A.I. is entangled with humans, reflecting the good and evil that already exist within our structures. “Ultimately robots are what we make of them,” said Chong. “I think the reason scary robots are so popular in the media is because it reflects a fear that we have of other humans. It’s a reflection of the danger inherent in humanity.”
Kahjuria agrees with this take, highlighting the importance of questioning the underlying prejudices that underpin A.I. systems. “There’s so much emerging technology that is deliberately presented to feel magical and sleek,” he said. “But ultimately, all A.I. is the result of humans in a room making decisions, and there is usually a certain kind of person in those meetings and a certain power dynamic. Those conversations embed value systems and prejudices into the products they churn out. I hope the show will remind people just how human this stuff is.”
“AI: Who’s Looking After Me?” is on view at Science Gallery London, King’s College London, through January 20, 2024.
More Trending Stories:  
A 17th-Century Double Portrait of Black and White Women, Said to Be of ‘Outstanding Significance’ Will Remain in the U.K. 
Art Industry News: South Korean Student Thought a Museum Wanted Him to Eat the $120,000 Duct-Taped Banana + Other Stories 
This Famed Dollhouse Is Hung With Tiny Original Artworks, Including a Miniature Duchamp. Here Are Three Things to Know About the One-of-a-Kind Treasure 
The Brooklyn Museum’s Much-Criticized ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ Show Is Actually Weirdly at War With Itself Over Hannah Gadsby’s Art History 
A Collector Clinched a Rare 17th-Century Terracotta Sculpture for a Record $2.85 Million at a French Auction. Now, the Louvre Is Snatching It 
The Venice Biennale Has Announced the Highly Anticipated Curatorial Theme of Its 2024 Art Exhibition 
A Couple Renovating Their Kitchen in Denmark Found an Ancient Stone Carved With Viking Runes 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

The crowd at this weekend’s Glastonbury Festival won’t just be in thrall to headliners including Lizzo and Arctic Monkeys—they’ll also be treated to a good dose of art. In addition to the event’s inaugural arts program (with special guest star Jeremy Deller), Glastonbury will be premiering David Hockney’s new A.I.-assisted work across the video screens of its main stage tonight, June 23. 
Created in collaboration with the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA), the digital piece is based on Hockney’s 2014 painting The Dancers V, part of a series on the same subject. The acrylic features a group of vibrantly clad dancers holding hands in a loose ring, their kineticism mirroring that of Matisse’s Dance (1909–10).
“I got them to go round in a circle, then I would say stop and draw one, and I slowly built it up,” the British painter said about the creative process behind the work. “Now, I’ve moved out of the room and put them in a landscape—on top of the world really.”
From left: David Hockney, The Dancers V (2014), and The Dancers removed by A.I. Photo: © David Hockney and CIRCA.
Working off his iPad and using A.I., Hockney has now removed the dancers from the work, leaving only the cerulean landscape. This new computer-generated piece has been further developed into a one-minute video titled I LIVED IN BOHEMIA BOHEMIA IS A TOLERANT PLACE, intended to spread the good word on harmony through Bohemianism—a fitting message for a work debuting at a festival borne of the hippie culture. 
“Really cannot believe that we have the living legend that is David Hockney creating these wonderful paintings for our stages this year,” said Emily Eavis, a co-organizer of the Glastonbury Festival. “We are truly honored to show this work for the first time immediately before our very special guests on the Pyramid Stage this evening, and then across our main stages over the weekend.” 
“David Hockney and Glastonbury is a match made in heaven,” added Josef O’Connor, CIRCA’s founder and artistic director.
David Hockney. Photo by Justin Sutcliffe.
This project marks Hockney’s second partnership with CIRCA, the first of which saw the artist’s digital work, Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long (2021), splashed across massive billboards in six major cities in May 2021.  
Just as notably, I LIVED IN BOHEMIA logs Hockney’s continued forays into new media, as part of his ongoing inquiries into perspective. His latest adventure with A.I. follows his fax prints, iPad drawings, and 2022 immersive experience, “Bigger & Closer (Not Smaller & Further Away).” 
“It’s been 100 years since perspective was last discussed, with Cubism,” said O’Connor, who also curated Hockney’s Glastonbury piece. “I suppose now that things are being generated by robots, we have to look even closer with entirely fresh eyes.” 

More Trending Stories:  
The Brooklyn Museum’s Much-Criticized ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ Show Is Actually Weirdly at War With Itself Over Hannah Gadsby’s Art History 
A Collector Clinched a Rare 17th-Century Terracotta Sculpture for a Record $2.85 Million at a French Auction. Now, the Louvre Is Snatching It 
This Famed Dollhouse Is Hung With Tiny Original Artworks, Including a Miniature Duchamp. Here Are Three Things to Know About the One-of-a-Kind Treasure 
A Writer Is Calling Out the British Museum for Using Her Translations of Chinese Poetry in an Exhibition Without Permission 
The Venice Biennale Has Announced the Highly Anticipated Curatorial Theme of Its 2024 Art Exhibition 
A Couple Renovating Their Kitchen in Denmark Found an Ancient Stone Carved With Viking Runes 
Rubens Painting Lost For 300 Years and Misidentified When Last Sold at Auction Will Star At Upcoming Sotheby’s Sale in London 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

The curator and artistic director of the 60th Venice Biennale, Adriano Pedrosa, has announced the driving theme of next year’s exhibition. It will explore the notion of the foreigner, and center its focus on those on the margins, namely exiles, émigrés, and outsiders.
The title and theme, “Foreigners Everywhere,” was announced today, June 22, in Venice by Pedrosa. The artistic director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo hails from Brazil, and is not only the biennale’s first Latin American curator, but, more remarkably, its first to come from the Southern Hemisphere.  The mammoth art event in Italy is set to run from April 20 to November 24, 2024.
The concept of the 2024 show has a dual meaning for Pedrosa. The planned theme not only suggests that wherever we go in the world we will encounter those that we perceive to be foreigners, but also that “no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly and deep down inside a foreigner yourself,” according to the curator. He added that artists are no strangers to this feeling.
The title is borrowed from a series of works by the conceptual “collective artist” Claire Fontaine, which was founded in Paris in 2004 by the Italian artist Fulvia Carnevale and the British artist James Thornhill, who are currently based in Palermo, Italy.
Their series Foreigners Everywhere consists of simple neon signs with the slogan written in different languages. In each case, the term carries a strange ambiguity over whether we should read the statement as fact or threat, although it was taken from the name of Stranieri Ovunque (as the phrase translates in Italian), a Turin-based anarchist collective known for its anti-racist activism in the early 2000s.
Tourists and locals enter the Biennale’s Central Pavilion during the 59th International Art Exhibition on April 20, 2022 in Venice, Italy. Photo: Stefano Mazzola/Getty Images
Pedrosa told press that “the backdrop for Claire Fontaine’s work is a world full of multiple crises concerning the movement and existence of people across countries, nations, territories, and borders, which reflect the perils and pitfalls of language, translation, ethnicity [in] expressing differences and disparities conditioned by identity, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, wealth, and freedom.”
For his curated exhibition, Pedrosa promises to focus on artists who are immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, exiled, and refugees, especially those who have moved between the Global South and the Global North. As the Italian translation of “foreigner” as “straniero” shows, however, the word also evokes the idea of a stranger more generally. To this end, the exhibition will also include all manner of marginalized artists, including those that are queer, designated “outsider,” or indigenous and therefore “frequently treated like a foreigner in their own land.”
For many artists, this status of “foreigner” drives the themes or narratives in their work, but Pedrosa was keen to note that other artists “delve into more formal issues with their own foreign accent.” Works that reflect this mode of innovation will appear throughout the exhibition, as will historical 20th century works from underrepresented modernist movements that flourished throughout the Global South. Finally, a spotlight will also be placed on the Italian artistic diaspora that emigrated to Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Arab world among other places, where they contributed to the development of modernism internationally.
The Venice Biennale is the art world’s biggest international event—there were 80 national pavilions in 2022—and it is always welcoming new exhibitors. The Republic of Benin will participate for the first time at the 60th edition next year.
More Trending Stories:  
The Brooklyn Museum’s Much-Criticized ‘It’s Pablo-matic’ Show Is Actually Weirdly at War With Itself Over Hannah Gadsby’s Art History 
A Writer Is Calling Out the British Museum for Using Her Translations of Chinese Poetry in an Exhibition Without Permission 
Beeple Collector Metakovan Is Suing Twobadour, Claiming His Ex-Partner Is Falsely Taking Credit for Buying the $69 Million NFT 
The Site of Caesar’s Assassination in Rome, Until Recently Only Visited by a Colony of Stray Cats, Is Now Open to Human Tourists Too 
Anna Delvey’s New Hustle Is a Podcast of Frothy Conversations With Artists, Writers, and Fellow Fraudsters—and It Could Be Illegal 
This Famed Dollhouse Is Hung With Tiny Original Artworks, Including a Miniature Duchamp. Here Are Three Things to Know About the One-of-a-Kind Treasure 
Rubens Painting Lost For 300 Years and Misidentified When Last Sold at Auction Will Star At Upcoming Sotheby’s Sale in London 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

“A picture may be worth a thousand words,” Bernie Krause is fond of saying, “but a soundscape is worth a thousand pictures.” The sound artist and bioacoustician has been tirelessly researching and recording the soundscapes of the natural world for the last 50 years. Trekking around the planet, he’s captured every wild sound imaginable, from charging elephants and clicking whales to chattering monkeys and trilling birds. Lots of birds. 
Krause has coined a scientific term for these wildlife concerts: biophony. Krause’s recorded biophonies—more than 5,000 hours from 15,000 species in 2,000 habitats, terrestrial and marine—are now part of a new art and sound exhibition in San Francisco called “The Great Animal Orchestra.” It’s a stirring show to see in person, not only for its life-affirming aural environments and dazzling data-driven displays, but also for the emotionally charged—if inconvenient—truth that animal numbers are in steep decline in every ecosystem around the globe. 
Bernie Krause. Courtesy of the Exploratorium.
Named after Krause’s book of 2012, the powerful show runs through October 15 at the Exploratorium on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. (The science and technology museum was the first of its kind when it was founded in 1969 by physicist Frank Oppenheimer, who studied museums in the U.S. and abroad on a Guggenheim fellowship before conceiving it.)
The brainchild of Hervé Chandès, artistic managing director of Fondation Cartier, “The Great Animal Orchestra” began its world tour in 2016, becoming part of the foundation’s collection. For its Paris debut, Cartier commissioned an original work by the New York-based Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, as well as photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto and Manabu Miyazaki. The exhibition has since traveled to Seoul, Shanghai, London, Berlin, Sydney, and New York.
“This moment is very touching for all of us, and especially me,” said Chandès at the San Francisco opening, via video from Paris. He explained that it was through reading Krause’s book that he was inspired to create the immersive exhibition and support it through Cartier. “Aesthetics are the gateway to knowledge and ‘The Great Animal Orchestra’ is a meeting point of art, science, beauty, knowledge—and, of course, a warning about the decline of the wild world, biodiversity, and the beauty of life itself.”
The San Francisco stop is the West Coast premiere and the nearest to Krause’s home in Sonoma, northern California. That’s where Chandès visited Krause and his wife Katherine in 2014, auditioning samples from the couple’s vast archive of animal sounds and first imagining the format for “The Great Animal Orchestra”—which, he mused, amounts to “the art of paying attention.”
View of the exhibition “The Great Animal Orchestra” by Bernie Krause and United Visual Artists. Courtesy of the Exploratorium.
The show’s centerpiece is a stunning immersive installation by United Visual Artists. The London-based collective worked closely with Krause to convert his field recordings into life-size visualizations, or spectrograms, in effect creating a three-dimensional environment that envelops the viewer. In a darkened room at the center of the exhibition, these spectrograms flicker on as an animal chorus becomes audible, lighting up the walls of the space with detailed visual representations of sound—the upper registers populated by birds and insects, while mammals and natural elements such as wind or water occupy the middle and lower registers, respectively. The spectrograms are reflected in a pool of water to complete the meditative sensation of communing with nature.
For Krause, the moment he equated assorted animal calls to an orchestral arrangement was profound, hence the title of the show. “The idea that these are proto-symphonies, proto-orchestrations has been revelatory to me,” he told Artnet News. “If you look at a score by [classical musician Pierre] Boulez, for instance, it doesn’t look a lot different from the streaming spectrograms in the exhibition, particularly where the habitat is healthy.”
However, as the exhibition illuminates over and over, the world’s habitats are not all healthy. The reason for that has to do with another term Krause has coined: anthrophony. Human encroachment has led to a dramatic loss of animals in the wild, and therefore a steep drop in their corresponding sounds on Krause’s recordings.
A display showing the biophonies in various parts of the world. Courtesy of the Exploratorium.
Naturally, that has been disturbing for Krause, who interprets the few remaining animal sounds on his recordings as a cry for help. “We’re doing our best to help them,” he explained. “One of the reasons I’m working with the art world is because if I write a scientific paper and it gets published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, where I had one published last month, six people are going to read it. In the seven or eight venues that ‘The Great Animal Orchestra’ has been exhibited so far, a million and a half people have seen it.”
Krause has always been interested in sound; early on, it was in music that he heard his calling. In the 1960s, he performed with the Weavers, alongside folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger, and later formed a group called Beaver and Krause. The duo helped introduce the Moog synthesizer to pop music at the time, contributing the machine’s whirs and whizzes to songs by the Doors and the Monkees. Then even they came out with an album, In a Wild Sanctuary, that incorporated Krause’s earliest efforts at recording soundscapes. 
But, Krause lamented, “When I was working in the music world, I was always in enclosed rooms without any windows. I never saw the outside, and that made me really depressed, and also quite sick.” So he pivoted to Hollywood, producing the soundtrack for major films like 1979’s Apocalypse Now. This, too, proved to be a letdown. He said he and others were hired and fired by the director, Francis Ford Coppola, multiple times, leading to low morale on the set.
Disenchanted with Hollywood, Krause went back to school, earned his Ph.D. in creative sound arts and entered the realm of soundscape ecology, with the aim of conserving species. “It’s a struggle to be good animals,” he said, “but life demands that of us.”
“The Great Animal Orchestra” by Bernie Krause and United Visual Artists. Courtesy of the Exploratorium.
At the crux of Krause’s work is a holistic approach to recording animal vocalizations. That is to say, in unison rather than isolation. “One of the things that Bernie does when he’s building an archive of sound,” said his wife, Katherine, on hand for the Exploratorium opening, “is to try to viscerally connect with the world that those creatures live in—a world we really will never be fully privy to.”
“We need a Rosetta Stone to make that leap,” interjected Krause. “And we’re looking for that. I think we’re probably very close.” Turning philosophical, he continued, “You know, I’m reminded of a discussion I had with [experimental musician] John Cage in 1989. We were talking about animal sounds, which he likened to found art, and he said, ‘Transformation is the key to life and its expression through art. That is the real mystery of the creative nature.’”
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

There is a Duke of Wellington statue outside Scotland’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), and for more than 40 years, Glaswegians have capped it with a traffic cone. When local authorities devised a scheme in 2013 to raise the statue higher so it couldn’t be reached by impromptu hatters, there was public outcry and a petition that rapidly gathered thousands of signatories. The cone stayed, a monument to the city’s playful sense of humor.
Banksy has called it his favorite work of art in the UK and a major reason why his first official show in 14 years (and there have been several unofficial ones) will be staged at the Scottish institution.
“Cut & Run”, which is on view from June 18 to August 28, takes people inside the practice and thinking of one of the world’s most famous street artists, through artworks, artefacts, and personal items—including his toilet—many of which have never been exhibited before. This intention is clear from the first room, in which visitors pass through a replica artist’s studio with a rack of spray cans and an appropriately disorganized work station.
The opening room of Banksy’s “Cut & Run” at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. Photo: Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images.
The works on display span from 1988 to the present, with Banksy’s original stencils for some of his most famous pieces featuring prominently, ones he claims he’d long hidden for fear of being charged for criminal damages.
There’s Kissing Coppers, the 2004 black and white work of two male police officers getting intimate that first appeared outside a pub in Brighton, the U.K.’s LGBTQ+ capital. There’s his Port Talbot stencil that highlighted the region’s poor air quality with an open-armed boy playing in snow-like ash. There’s one of a young female gymnast performing a handstand from his “Borodyanka, Ukraine” series which Banksy sprayed as a protest to the country’s invasion by Russia.
Banksy’s Basquiat being stop and searched (2017) on show in Glasgow. Photo: Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images.
“Cut & Run” presents other provocations of the non-graffiti variety, including a riot police helmet transformed into a disco ball, and the Union Jack-patterned stab vest he made for British rapper Stomzy, ahead of his 2019 Glastonbury headline slot.
Visitors are also treated to a detailed run through of Love is in the Bin, Banksy’s 2018 work that shredded itself moments after selling for $1.4 million at Sotheby’s (it sold fora whopping $25.4 million at the same auction house three years later).

GoMA, which is run by the city council, is understandably delighted to have been chosen as the stage for an official Banksy exhibition. “Street art has become one of Glasgow’s signatures,” councillor Susan Aitken, the leader of Glasgow City Council, said in a statement. “There’s no one who’s done more to put street art at the heart of culture, politics and society than Banksy. We’re delighted Banksy has chosen Glasgow to host their work.”

More Trending Stories:  
London’s National Portrait Gallery Responds to Rumors That Kate Middleton Pressured It to Remove a Portrait of Princes William and Harry 
French Archaeologists Decry the Loss of 7,000-Year-Old Standing Stones on a Site That Was ‘Destroyed’ to Make Way for a DIY Store 
Excavations at an Ancient Roman Fort in Spain Have Turned Up a 2,000-Year-Old Rock Carved With a Human Face and Phallus 
Looking for an Art Excursion in New York This Summer? Here Are Four Perfect Itineraries That Combine Nature and Culture 
Art Buyers Stopping Off in Zurich on Their Way to Art Basel Found Heady Exhibitions and a Market in Transition: It’s Now a Buyer’s Game 
Researchers Find a Megalodon Tooth Necklace in the Titanic Wreckage—But the Rare Object Will Probably Have to Stay at the Bottom of the Sea 
Archaeologists in Peru Used A.I. to Discover Ancient Geoglyphs of Killer Whales, Two-Headed Snakes, and Other Creatures Carved Into Land 
Is Time Travel Real? Here Are 6 Tantalizing Pieces of Evidence From Art History 
Nicolas Party Honors Rosalba Carriera, the Rococo Queen of Pastels, in a New Installation at the Frick 
Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More