Shows & Exhibitions

Preparatory drawings for an unrealized second version of The Potato Eaters, Vincent van Gogh’s initially reviled early masterpiece, are going on view for the first time in an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The show, “The Potato Eaters. Mistake or Masterpiece?” features 50 letters, drawings, and paintings related to The Potato Eaters, including never-before-seen sketches from 1890 that demonstrate that the artist planned but never completed another version of the composition.
Visitors can also step into the painting, so to speak, posing for photographs in a life-size reconstruction of the humble cottage dining room immortalized in the work.
The original painting, completed in 1885, portrays the De Groot family sharing a simple meal of potatoes. Van Gogh painted the work while living in the Dutch village of Nuenen, in Brabant. The family members, whom he came to know well, appear in some of his other works of the period.
Visitors to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam pose in a reconstruction of the cottage in Vincent van Gogh’s 1885 painting The Potato Eaters in a new exhibition dedicated to the work. Photo by Tomek Dersu Aaron, courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
The artist hoped the work would convey the hard truths of peasant life, but painting was not well received. Van Gogh’s friend, the painter Anthon van Rappard, savaged the piece in a letter, insisting “You can do better than this,” and criticizing the proportions of the figures.
“What I’m trying to get with it is to be able to draw not a hand but the gesture, not a mathematically correct head but the overall expression,” Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo van Gogh. “The sniffing of the wind when a digger looks up, say, or speaking. Life, in short.”
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh with sketch of The Potato Eaters (recto). Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
“I really like that Van Gogh stands behind his own work,” exhibition curator Bregje Gerritse told the Guardian. “He says there is a certain life in it, writing that while, of course, there are technical mistakes but that technical perfection isn’t what he is after; it is the impression that it conveys about peasant life that is much more important, and that he is sure people will forgive him for that.”
Vincent van Gogh, Four People Sharing a Meal (1885). Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Despite the criticism, Van Gogh’s faith in the painting never wavered, even as his style evolved to include brighter colors.
“In 1887 he writes to his sister that he still considered this work to be one of the best he ever made,” Gerritse said.
And in the last months of his life, Van Gogh thought about revisiting his early painting, telling Theo, “I’m thinking of redoing the painting of the peasants eating supper, lamplight effect.”
Vincent van Gogh, Interior with Five Figures Around a Table (1890). Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
He asked for the original drawings he had made five years earlier and began working on new sketches in his mature style. The resulting drawings—unveiled to the public here for the first time—are a marked departure from the original work, with hatch marks instead of his previous dark shading and more naturalistic poses—a tantalizing glimpse of a Van Gogh masterpiece that never came to be.
“The Potato Eaters. Mistake or Masterpiece?” is on view at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, October 8, 2021–February 13, 2022. 
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When Marina Abramović re-created Joseph Beuys’s legendary performance piece How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), at the inaugural Performa Biennial at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2005, there was little hint that performance art was about to transcend its previously niche status. 
Since that initial outing, however, a parade of international artists—some well-known, others on the cusp of becoming so—have produced a vast, vibrant, and surprising body of installations, plays, dances, videos, and happenings. Along the way, Performa has arguably commissioned or presented a masterpiece or two. Says art historian RoseLee Goldberg, who founded and still helms Performa as director and chief curator: “We showed this work could reach a much different audience. We made people very curious.”
Seventeen years on, Performa can take some credit for the rise of the event-hungry experiential economy. It has altered or accelerated artists’ careers, changed the architecture and programming of museums, spurred copycat events, and encouraged artists to become multimedia and multi-platform. It has even presaged the rebirth of the creative collectives that are today fueling the NFT art market, And, not incidentally, it helped heal New York City after 9/11.
As the ninth edition kicks off on Tuesday, October 12, with a three-week slate of events conceived for outdoor locations throughout New York City, here is a look back at what mattered, and what’s coming.

2005
RoseLee Goldberg, founding director and curator of Performa. Photo: Patrick McMullan
Performance art is notoriously difficult to sell, so it is ironic that its rise coincided with a great art-market boom, during which the auction houses had (temporarily) grabbed the spotlight. Performance art as we think of it now is roughly a century old—dating back to the Futurist movement circa 1909—but collectors only knew it from grainy archival footage of 1960s–70s events that just looked peculiar. 
Building on this canon, however, and coming out of left field, Performa 05 was anchored by Abramović’s magnetic marathon of several classics of the genre. Her weeklong run of the Guggenheim’s rotunda was unlike much of what was available at the time as either culture or entertainment, and gradually grew packed with open-mouthed young people who might normally have been at the movies. They encircled Abramović, entranced. By the final days, the festival had a “don’t miss this” buzz. Performa had keyed into the FOMO that was later to grip the millennial generation.

2007
Christian Jankowski’s Rooftop Routine (2007), commissioned for Performa 07. Photo: Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa.
If Performa 05 seemed conjured out of thin air, by November 2007, the city and the artistic community were eagerly anticipating an even larger program. But the second edition went on to establish a recurring theme in Performa history: the big names often don’t end up doing the most important pieces.
Take the marquee event, Francesco Vezzoli’s interpretation of Pirandello’s 1917 play Right You Are (If You Think You Are), with a glamorous cast topped by Cate Blanchett. But, as its premiere was delayed into the night, art-world swells queued up on Fifth Avenue, cranky and smoking like Magritte chimneys (it was, after all, 2007). The New York Times dubbed the show “court entertainment in the guise of suburban dinner theater.”
Instead, celebrity-free pieces captivated: a claymation horror film by Nathalie Djurberg and the silly, delirious Rooftop Routine. On roofs in lower Manhattan, some two dozen performers spun in hula hoops in a piece choreographed by video artist Christian Jankowski. Was it just by chance that those very same rooftops had given New Yorkers a searing view of the Twin Towers four years earlier? The piece reclaimed those spaces. And the ebullient, wacky hula-hooping image became emblematic of Performa.

2009
Jennifer Rubell, Creation, the Performa 09 opening night benefit dinner. Photo: Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa.
By its third iteration, everybody wanted in: Guy Ben-Ner, Wangechi Mutu, Joan Jonas, and The Bruce High Quality Foundation were just a handful of participants. This year, Performa notched more than 150 artists and 80 locations.
But there was a problem: the Great Recession. Performa 09’s opening gala—designed by artist and “eventist” Jennifer Rubell—needed to skew spectacular, not glamorous. So, at Dia:Chelsea, hundreds of BBQ ribs sat in a heap under a dripping honeycomb as superstar chef Mario Batali ladled on sauce. The bar, inside a freight elevator, was self-serve. Guests commuted between floors deemed “heaven” and “hell.” Hell featured dessert and Jeff Koons: full-size replicas of his famous stainless-steel rabbit, made of chocolate.
The golden ticket was for Mike Kelley’s Day Is Done. Inspired by yearbook photos, it was one of Performa’s more successful dance pieces. The show combined a game of basketball, a horn section and, curiously but arrestingly, a parade of shiny, naked men carrying ladders.

2011
Ragnar Kjartansson, Bliss (2011), commissioned for Performa 11. Photo: Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa.
By now, Performa had found its groove, if not a fixed formula: a mix of dissonance and dissidents, visual opulence, inside jokes, nudity, and absurdity. Not all works were successful by any means. But this year Performa had possibly its greatest: the hypnotic Bliss.
“Hypnotic” is an overused adjective in the art world, but Ragnar Kjartansson’s show was exactly that—even narcotic. Simply put, a small group of opera singers and musicians performed the last three minutes of the gorgeous final aria of The Marriage of Figaro—again and again and again, for 12 hours. An act of beauty, insanity, will, and stamina, it was a cultural car crash scored by Mozart, with some performers seemingly running out of breath, others serving water to exhausted colleagues, some bouncing the melodies back and forth to each other as one singer seemed on the verge of giving up. Audience members sat for hours, and then returned for more.

2013
Rashid Johnson, Dutchman (2013), commissioned for Performa 13. Photo: Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa.
This was the year that performance art hit the mainstream, as Jay-Z danced with Goldberg and Abramović in a video. Performa inaugurated global “pavilions.” And Rashid Johnson tackled his first performance piece, a production of Amiri Baraka’s 1960s-era play Dutchman. 
A sauna in a Lower East Side bathhouse was used to replicate the tight quarters of a subway car. Wrapped in bath towels and slicked with sweat, art lovers gathered for a searing staging of the work in which a chat between a Black man and a white woman turns brutal.
Dutchman changed the course of Johnson’s career, Goldberg noted, putting him “in a new framework”: He decided he liked bigger projects.

2015
Edgar Arceneaux, Until, Until, Until… (2015), commissioned for Performa 15 and Malcolm McLaren Award winner. Photo: Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa.
This year’s most memorable piece, by artist Edgar Arceneaux, righted a historical wrong. In 1981, Broadway and Roots star Ben Vereen was invited to appear at the Reagan inauguration. His act was two-part, and controversial. In the first part, saluting the great black vaudeville performer Bert Williams, Vereen took the stage in blackface and belted a boisterous “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.” In the second part, Vereen, still as Williams, acted out an attempt to buy drinks for cheering members of the audience—but, in the piece, he was denied service.
ABC did not air the second half. Instead, it cut to commercial, then to Donny and Marie Osmond. Vereen was sharply criticized in the Black community for indulging in minstrelsy for seemingly little reason. Arceneaux’s play Until, Until, Until… restaged Vereen’s full performance. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.

2017
Threeasfour, Fest (2013). Presented by the Jewish Museum for Performa 13. Photo by Chani Bockwinkel, courtesy of Performa.
threeASFOUR, Fest (2013), presented by the Jewish Museum for Performa 13. Photo: Chani Bockwinkel. Courtesy of Performa.
South African artist William Kentridge, a Performa veteran, this time took the stage with a roar. His piece was based on a Dadaist work presented by Kurt Schwitters in 1932. Ursonate (primal sonata)’s series of nonsense sounds were transformed into a passionate lecture, opera, and conversation. Barbara Kruger, not to be outdone, took over a skate park on the Lower East Side.
More intimate was fashion collective threeASFOUR’s Fest. I brought, with some trepidation, my elderly aunt—for decades a seamstress in New York’s fashion business—to the show. In a series of actions around clothing that almost seemed religious, the audience engaged in ritual hand-washing, then pulled chunks of freshly baked bread from the performers’ outfits and shared the food with them. My aunt, 97, was mesmerized.

2019
Paul Pfeiffer, University of Georgia Redcoat Band Live (2019), commissioned for Performa 19. Photo: Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa.
Performa is rarely visually subtle, and this year, The Immortals, artist Samson Young’s interpretation of a Chinese folk tale, employed giant construction cranes lit in rainbow colors.
Paul Pfeiffer’s Redcoat Marching Band/R, staged at Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater, was even louder. Presenting a “soundtrack to one of America’s most popular mass rituals”—the football game—Pfeiffer orchestrated an unlikely juxtaposition. Fifty members of the University of Georgia band came playing and marching into the Apollo as, onscreen, the rest of the 400-member troupe joined in back in the university’s stadium.
There were scattered technical and sound problems. But one look at the nutty, glorious delight and raw confusion on the faces of the trumpet-blowing Georgia students swarming the Apollo was unforgettable.

2021
Sara Cwynar, Sahara from SSENSE.com (As Young as You Feel) (2020). Image courtesy of the artist
This year, Covid-19 has curtailed the crew to mostly U.S. artists, and trimmed the number of commissions to eight, all outside. They are staged at some of New York’s legendary locations: Top of the Rock, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Rockaway Beach among them. A telethon kicks off October 12. Everything will be streamed live.
This year’s slate includes commissions from Tschabalala Self, who wrote a play to be enacted at Jackie Robinson Park in front of sets she painted. Erika Beckman will mount an elaborate, anticapitalist Jack and the Beanstalk in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Sara Cwynar offers a searing look at the advertising industry, staged within a shuttered Fifth Avenue retailer. Kevin Beasley will create a sound sculpture of, and on, the Lower East Side’s Orchard and Rivington Streets.
Goldberg told Artnet News that when Performa first began, “New York was the star of the show, it couldn’t be anything else.” That fondness and focus returns this year—and, one hopes, so does the glorious “what-the-hell-is-going-on-here?” absurdity.

Performa 21 takes place October 12–31, at various venues throughout New York City and online.
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From the opalescent glazes of the self-proclaimed Mad Potter of Biloxi George Ohr to the art collective Gelitin’s simulation of sex with raw clay, ceramics have long been a site of avant-garde experimentation. Now, “Clay Pop,” a group show curated by Alia Williams at Jeffrey Deitch in New York, follows a cohort of artists pushing the medium forward in strange, wonderful new directions.
For the 36 artists included in the show, “the range of influences encompasses vernacular commercial imagery and artistic sources from African American assemblage to Walt Disney,” and everything in between, according to a statement from the gallery.
Seth Bogart’s How to Get Rid of Pimples, Valley of the Dolls, Hollywood Babylon, and DRUGS (all 2021). Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch.
Many of the works on view seem to recreate everyday objects, but if done by a mad scientist. Seth Bogard’s ceramics take the shape of well-loved paperbacks with lightly tattered dog-eared pages.
Then there’s Sally Saul’s forlorn-looking woman who’s a little rough around the edges. It reminds us of real life, but messier, and more fun to look at.
“Clay Pop,” curated by Alia Williams, is on view at Jeffrey Deitch, 18 Wooster Street, through October 30. See more pictures from the show below.
Masato Mori, Bamboo Dance (2021). Photo: Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch.
Installation view, “Clay Pop” at Jeffrey Deitch, New York. Photo: Genevieve Hanson.
Rubi Neri, Clay Pop (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Installation view, “Clay Pop” at Jeffrey Deitch, New York. Photo: Genevieve Hanson.
Installation view, “Clay Pop” at Jeffrey Deitch, New York. Photo: Genevieve Hanson.
Installation view, “Clay Pop” at Jeffrey Deitch, New York. Photo: Genevieve Hanson.
Genesis Belanger, Good Guy (2021) [detail]. Photo: Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Jessica Stoller, Untitled (embrace) (2021). Photo: Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Heidi Lau, Play I and Play II (2021). Photo: Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Devin B. Johnson, Adornment V (In which it was grown over), (2021). Photo: Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Untitled (2020). Courtesy the artist and kaufmann repetto.
Melvino Garetti, It’s Only a Matter of Time…I Haven’t Whipped Any Ass Around Here (2020). Photo: Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Seth Bogard, Valley of the Dolls (2021). Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Sharif Farrag, Big Dog (Guardian), (2021). Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Katie Stout, Frog Rider (2021). Photo: Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Bari Ziperstein, Farm Labor: Handwork + Technology (2021). Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
Sally Saul, Thinking Things Over (2021). Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
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A 3D-printed copy of Michelangelo’s David is at the nexus of controversy in Dubai, where exhibitors have obscured the figure’s genitals for fear that it might offend Islamic traditionalists. 
The 17-foot-tall sculpture, thought to be the most accurate facsimile of the Renaissance masterpiece ever made, spans two stories of a rotunda in the Italian pavilion at Expo 2020, which opened October 1 in the Dubai South district. Visitors can glimpse David’s top quarter, shoulders to head, from the upper floor, but his lower half, encased in glass, can only be viewed from the first floor—an area closed to the public. A concrete slab, meanwhile, effectively obscures the figure’s pelvic region. 
Davide Rampello, the pavilion’s artistic director, refused to call the gesture censorship, saying instead that the goal was to position the statue as a witness to the “theater of memory,” according to Corriere della Sera. It has to do with the pavilion’s curatorial conceit, a reflection on how our collective memories are being displaced by our increasing reliance on technology. 
A view from the Italian pavilion of Expo 2020, with the bottom half of the David replica. © Massimo Sestini.
“Michelangelo knew that without memory there can be neither science nor art,” Rampello told the paper. “Without memory, man loses the ability to tell the world. Here, this is a copy of the David to testify to that memory.”
“There have been no government censorships,” he added. “This staging is reproduced here as it might have been in Japan or Germany or anywhere else in the world.”
But others who worked on the project have been more candid about the practical concerns of exhibiting a naked statue in a heavily Islamic region such as the United Arab Emirates.  
“We even thought of putting underwear on the statue, or changing it altogether,” an exhibition staff member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “We understood too late that it was an error to bring a statue of a nude man to the Emirates.”

When reached for comment, representatives for the Italian pavilion explained that the display of the David duplicate is “functional, to allow visitors looking at the statue from the first floor of the Pavilion to see [it] at eye level.” That, Rampello explained, “is a totally different and more introspective perspective than the one tourists in Florence are used to enjoying when visiting the original.”
Regardless of the intention, the move has sparked hot takes aplenty online. Italian art historian Vittorio Sgarbi, for one, called the pavilion organizers’ “deference to the Islamic tradition” an “unprecedented, unacceptable, intolerable humiliation.”
The pavilion is part of Expo 2020, an international fair featuring dedicated presentations from more than 100 countries and organizations. Delayed by a year due to the pandemic, it is the first World Expo edition to be held in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region and remains on view through March 31, 2022. The replica of David was constructed from acrylic resin based on 3D scans of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, carved between 1501 and 1504 and now permanently on view in Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia.
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If you were lucky and happened to be at the right newspaper vendor in Germany on Friday, October 1, you might have picked up a copy of Asphalt—a publication that is sold to benefit poor and people struggling with homelessness. Within its pages, the art collective ruangrupa announced their artist list for the 2022 edition of Documenta.
The Indonesian group has named 51 artists or collectives who will participate in the show that is set to take open on June 18, 2022. More names may be added later. The street paper will be the official media partner for the major quinquennial exhibition. It is available by mail or email subscription.
Participants have been broken off into smaller groups, called “mini-majelis,” (majelis is the Indonesian word for council) and Asphalt reports that they have already begun working together. Ruangrupa will not comment about the details on the participants and organization structure until next week.
Left to right: Iswanto Hartono, Daniella Fitriap and Reza Afisina from the artist collective ruangrupa in front of the ruruHaus in the October issue of Asphalt with the complete artist list of the exhibiting artists of documenta. (Photo by Uwe Zucchi/picture alliance via Getty Images)
In the announcement, the nationalities of the participants are not mentioned—only their local time zone. Johannesburg’s Keleketla! Library, Nairobi-based Nest Collective, and Jimmie Durham are among those listed.
Tickets are now on sale for the exhibition. For the first time, one can also buy a “solidarity ticket” that can be retrieved by another person as a free ticket.
In 2019, Ruangrupa announced their concept for the exhibition would be lumbung, which is the Indonesian word for rice barn, a storage site for communally-produced rice. The collective has also announced several venues which are being used for the first time during the 2022 show, including the former site of a transport engineering company and Hallenbad Ost, a former Bauhaus-designed indoor pool.
The October issue of the street newspaper Asphalt, opened to the page with the complete artist list of the exhibiting artists of documenta 15. (Photo by Uwe Zucchi/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Here is the current artist list, apparently organized by “mini-majeli,” listed with the individual time zones they work in:
ikkibawiKrrr (KST)ook_reinaart vanhoe (CET)Richard Bell (AEST)Taring Padi (WIB) Wakaliwood (EAT)
Arts Collaboratory (diverse Zeitzonen)Black Quantum Futurism (EST)Chimurenga (SAST)Jumana Emil Abboud (EET)Nino Bulling (CET)Agus Nur Amal PMTOH (WIB)Subversive Film (CET, EET)
Cinema Caravan und Takashi Kuribayashi (JS)Kiri Dalena (PHT)Nguyen Trinh Thi (ICT)Safdar Ahmed (AEST)Sakuliu (TST)
Atis Rezistans / Ghetto Biennale (EST,WET)Marwa Arsanios (CET)Sourabh Phadke (WET,IST)Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh (BT,WT)*foundationClass* collective (CET)
Another Roadmap Africa Cluster (ARAC) (WAT,CAT,EAT)Archives des luttes des femmes en Algérie (WAT)Asia Art Archive (HKT)Centre d’art Waza (CAT)El Warcha (WAT)Graziela Kunsch (BRT)Keleketla! Library (SAST)Komîna Fîlm a Rojava (EET)Sada (regroup) (AST)Siwa plateforme – L’Economat at Redeyef (WAT)The Black Archives (CET)
Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture (ICT)Dan Perjovschi (EET)Fehras Publishing Practices (CET)Nhà Sàn Collective (ICT)The Nest Collective (EAT)
Hamja Ahsan (WET)Jimmie Durham (CET)La Intermundial Holobiente (WET,ART,EST)Pinar Öğrenci’ (CET)Saodat Ismailova (UZT)
Amol K Patil (IST)BOLOHO (CST)Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun (CST)CHANG En-man (TSTSa Sa Art Projects (ICT)
Alice Yard (AST)Erick Beltrán (CET)LE 18 (WAT)MADEYOULOOK (SAST)Party Office b2b Fadescha (IST,EST)Serigrafistas queer (ART)
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Russian brothers Mikhail and Ivan Morozov amassed one of the world’s strongest collections of Impressionist and Modern Art. But their world-leading collection was nationalized in 1918 after the Bolshevik revolution, and fell into obscurity for decades.
Now, for its exhibition, “The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art,” on view through February 22, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris has reunited around 200 artworks from the collection, which is now mostly dispersed between the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The works by Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Bonnard come from the first two museums, the works by Russian artists from the latter.
“Reuniting all these pieces from major collections was very complicated and an enormous diplomatic undertaking,” Anne Baldassari, the exhibition’s curator, told Artnet News. The diplomatic significance was evident at the opening, which was attended by French President Emmanuel Macron and the Russian culture minister, Olga Lioubimova.
Installation view of “La Collection Morozov. Icônes de l’art moderne,” at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. ©Fondation Louis Vuitton / Marc Domage.
The feat of showing the Morozov collection outside Russia for the first time is a “landmark” event, said LVMH’s president, and art collector Bernard Arnault. It was achieved partly thanks to the Fondation Louis Vuitton helping the Russian museums restore works by some of the artists and being involved in organizing the Morozov exhibition at the Hermitage in 2019.
This is the second exhibition at the Frank Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton that Baldassari has curated on major Moscow collectors—the first was devoted to Sergei Shchukin in 2016 and 2017. “[Had their collections not been seized during the Bolshevik revolution] Shchukin and Ivan Morozov had the idea of joining their collections to create a big museum, which would have constituted the most extraordinary museum on French art in the world,” Baldassari said.
The history of the Morozov collection is a family saga. Mikhail and Ivan Morozov, born in 1870 and 1871 respectively, were the great-grandsons of a serf. With five rubles from his wife’s dowry, their ancestor set up a ribbon workshop, which developed into a factory, and bought his family’s freedom. In a few generations, the family—who were Old Believers (opposed to reforming the Russian Orthodox Church)–became wealthy, philanthropic industrialists. The first room in the exhibition features paintings of their circle by leading Russian artists of that era, such as Mikhail Vrubel and Valentin Serov.
Auguste Renoir, Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary, Paris (1877).Coll. Ivan Morozov, 26 November 1904. Musée d’Etat des beaux-arts Pouchkine, Moscou / Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
At the turn of the last century in Russia, the upper social echelon spoke French and the Morozov brothers formed their stupendous collection on the advice of Parisian dealers such as Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard. Mikhail, who died prematurely at the age of 33, discovered Bonnard’s work in Paris and acquired the first paintings by Gauguin to enter Russia. His brother later commissioned Bonnard to decorate the main staircase of his mansion. Ivan Morozov adored the work of Cézanne—indeed, having tried their hand at landscape painting in their youth, the brothers felt affinity for the landscape genre—and acquired 18 works by him.
Black-and-white photographs displayed at Fondation Louis Vuitton give a sense of the splendor of Ivan Morozov’s mansion and its painting galleries. Some were taken by Maurice Denis, who was commissioned by Ivan Morozov to paint large panels on the story of Psyche for his music room, which has been restaged in the exhibition.
After the Morozov collection was nationalized in 1918, Ivan Morozov fled to Finland and died in Karlsbad, Germany, at the age of 49. The collection would form part of the Museum on Modern Western Art, which Stalin ordered to be closed in 1948, dispersing its contents between the Pushkin and the Hermitage. The Soviet state sold several works for economic reasons, including Van Gogh’s Café de Nuit (now in the Yale University collection) and Cézanne’s portrait of Madame Cézanne (now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum). But things could have been worse. “Stalin hated [Western] art and could have asked for its destruction,” Baldassari said of the danger posed to the collection.
The curator began researching the Morozovs by traveling to Russia and studying the archives in 2014. Several works, including a painting by Gauguin, that had “suffered in storage” were restored with support of French expertise and high-tech equipment. Others will require more elaborate restoration techniques in order not to risk damaging them. “Some of Van Gogh’s marvelous works couldn’t come—such as the only painting that Van Gogh sold in his life-time, Red vineyard in Arles,” Baldassari said. “Ivan Morozov purchased it from a young Belgian artist who had bought it from Van Gogh.”
Vincent Van Gogh, The Prison Courtyard, Saint-Rémy (1890). Coll. Ivan Morozov, 23 October 1909. Musée d’Etat des beaux-arts Pouchkine, Moscou / Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
However, Van Gogh’s The Prison Courtyard (1890), which he made while in the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence psychiatric hospital, has made it to Paris. The artist’s brother Theo had sent him a photograph of Gustave Doré’s drawing of a London prison’s courtyard which Van Gogh reinterpreted into a primarily greenish blue-hued painting, the conditions of the prisoners echoing his own confinement.
Further highlights include Matisse’s Moroccan Triptych (1912-1913) in rich blues, comprising a view from a window, a portrait of a young girl and an entrance to the Kasbah; Gauguin’s lush paintings of Tahiti; Picasso’s Cubist portrait of Vollard, the face dissolving into geometric shapes; Monet’s misty depiction of Waterloo Bridge, and Serov’s striking portraits of the Morozov brothers. What’s also fascinating is how a group of Russian avant-garde artists, the Cézannistes, were ardent followers of Cézanne.
Lifting the veil on this chapter of Russian history “is only at the beginning,” Baldassari says. “Now we need to go back to the [Russian] avant-gardes; there are a lot of points that remain obscure and more research needs to be carried out in Russian museums. What we’ve done on the Shchukin and Morozov collections is like lifting an enormous block; perhaps now more things will be able to come out.”
“The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art” is on view at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, through February 22, 2022.
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Between its two parts at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” has a staggering amount of work in it. The giant two-part career survey features all the hits by the 91-year-old icon of American art—the targets, the flags, the maps—plus enough obscure works and curatorial flourishes to make it feel like an event, despite the fact that Johns has not exactly lacked for major museum attention in recent years.
In the lead-up to the show, there was some gossip, aired in Deborah Solomon’s Johns profile in the Times, about the museum’s two curators—the Whitney’s Scott Rothkopf and the PMA’s Carlos Basualdo—not getting along. Whatever the case may be, the two shows don’t really feel like they offer dueling visions. They work together just fine.
It’s a lot of Johns to take in when stacked together, and the full pilgrimage to both locations might not really be necessary for all but the most extreme Jasper-heads. But those who do make the trip between New York and Philly will get a fittingly Johnsian two-part experience: two different views of the same subject, with mysteriously slightly different accents and colorings.
There’s more to be said in a proper review. While the thoughts come, here are some photos of “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror.”

Whitney Museum of American Art
The entrance to “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Jasper Johns, Untitled (1960-61) in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art . Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns, Target With Four Faces (1968) in the “Disappearance and Negation” gallery of “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Flags and Maps” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns, Memory Place (Frank O’Hara) (1961-70) in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art . Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Jasper Johns, Studio (1964) and Untitled (Halloween) (1998) at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns, Untitled (2011) in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “According to What” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney, with a display of Marcel Duchamp’s The Green Box from the artist’s personal collection at left. Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns, Studio II 1960) and Harlem Light (1967) in the “Leo Castelli, 1968” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney, recreating a 1969 show at Leo Castelli gallery. Photo by Ben Davis.
The “Savarin Monotypes” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Mirror/Double” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Jasper Johns, Painted Bronze 1960) at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of two versions of Racing Thoughts in the “Mirror/Double” gallery (left: 1984; right: 1983) at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Jasper Johns, Fall (1986) and Spring (1986) in the “Mirror/Double” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Jasper Johns, Dancer on a Plane (1979) at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Dreams” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Dreams” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns, Untitled (Leo Castelli) (1984) in the “Dreams” gallery. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Jasper Johns, Untitled (2018) and Untitled (2018) in the “Elegies in Dark” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of four versions of Jasper Johns, 0-9 at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Jasper Johns and the Whitney” in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Whitney. Photo by Ben Davis.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, with banners for “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror.” Photo by Ben Davis.
The entrance to “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Jasper Johns, Target (1958) and Star (1954) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Numbers” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Numbers” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Leo Castelli, 1960” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, recreating a 1960 gallery show by the artist. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Japan” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns, Usuyuki (1982) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Ushio Shinohara, Drink More (1964). Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns, Summer Critic (1966) in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of a display of ephemera related to Jasper Johns’s time in Japan at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Tomio Miki and Aiko Miyawaki from Jasper Johns’s personal collection, on view in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns’s copy of Folrades/Fizzles by Samuel Beckett, with illustrations by Johns. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Doubles and Reflections” gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Doubles and Reflections” gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Jasper Johns, Target (1992) and Two Flags (1985) in the “Nightmares” gallery of “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of the “Trial and Working Proofs” gallery in “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Display of Jasper Johns’s “Untitled” series of handprints (1998) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of Jasper Johns’s “5 Postcards” series at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Installation view of “Rolywholyover,” a prints show within “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by Ben Davis.
Looking at the floorplan and computer connected to Rolywholyover, an installation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an experimental installation for which a different configuration of Jasper Johns prints is generated every day. Photo by Ben Davis.

Prints from the Philadelphia Museum of Art on display in in-gallery storage as part of “Rolywholyover,” waiting to be selected and reconfigured. Photo by Ben Davis.
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What do Nike sneakers and Native American art have in common? For Vancouver-based artist Brian Jungen, it’s clear: they’re both highly commodified.
When the artist, who’s heritage is Dane-zaa, visited a Nike store in the early 1990s, he saw pristine leather and rubber shoes sitting in vitrines, like priceless relics, ogled and swooned over by throngs of visitors. The artist began to make connections between the color schemes, shapes, and patterns in the sneakers and those in native northwest coast masks. 
In an exclusive interview filmed as part of Art21’s “Art in the Twenty-First Century” series in 2016, the artist described the commonalities as a “strange coincidence,” and then got to work with the spark of an idea.
“There was this kind of illicit thrill I got,” he told Art21, in “buying these AirJordans and, like, immediately starting to kind of cut them up.” Carving up the shoes, Jungen creates new objects from the materials, which he sews together and reconstitutes as artworks that recall native masks from British Columbia tribes, as well as modernist abstractions. 
Brian Jungen, installation view of “The Evening Redness in the West” (2006). Photo: SITE Photography. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, courtesy of the Hammer Museum.
Jungen’s work is now on view at L.A.’s Hammer Museum as part of the “Hammer Contemporary Collection” series of exhibitions. For the installation The Evening Redness in the West (2006), the artist sliced up softballs to create skull-like objects, the sewing stitches creating garish skeletal grins in the leather. The skulls are attached to cords linking to a DVD player that blasts audio from old Western films, pointing to the history of colonialism and violence inflicted on native communities in Hollywood (and beyond).
In his work, Jungen subtly, yet deftly highlights the unsavory and exploitative aspects of consumer culture that are so often ignored, all while paying homage to his native roots.
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century series, below. “Hammer Contemporary Collection: Brian Jungen” is on view through October 31, 2021 at the Hammer Museum.
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This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series, like New York Close Up and Extended Play, and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
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