Category: Reviews

Themes of mobility, property, gentrification, shelter, possession, and dispossession take on new forms in “After the Plaster Foundation, or, ‘Where can we live?’,” group show at the Queens Museum that features work by a dozen contemporary artists. The ever-sardonic Sondra Perry reconfigures a backhoe to consider the defunct Seneca Village—a free Black land-owning community complete… Continue reading “After the Plaster Foundation, or, ‘Where can we live?’” @ Queens Museum (Sep 16th 2020 — Feb 28th 2021)

On view now at the Morgan Library & Museum, Betye Saar: Call and Response is the first exhibition to examine the relationship between Betye Saar’s sketches, travel notebooks, found objects, and completed works. From pieces dating to the 1970s to a new sculptural installation to never-before-shown collages from the Morgan’s collections, the cumulative display is a jewel… Continue reading Betye Saar, “Call and Response” @ The Morgan Library & Museum (Sep 12th 2020 — Jan 31st 2021)

For Minjung Kim, the material of the artwork is like one’s own skin—and the vibration of the material takes on the tenor of emotions themselves. Curated by Boon Hui Tan, the former director of the Asia Society, this solo show is Kim’s first career survey. Trained by a Korean ink and watercolor master as a… Continue reading Minjung Kim @ Hill Art Foundation (Mar 4th 2020 — Mar 31st 2021)

Jordan Casteel’s first solo New York City museum show is simultaneously intimate and anonymous. The exhibition’s title comes from Within Reach (2019), Casteel’s painting of strangers on the subway, in which one of the father’s arms drapes tenderly over the boy who scrambles into his lap, while the other, to regain his balance, leans on the lap… Continue reading Jordan Casteel, “Within Reach” @ New Museum (Feb 19th 2020 — Jan 3rd 2021)

In “Mutualities,” Cauleen Smith’s solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art—also her first one-person-show at a major New York City institution—the Los Angeles-based artist created immersive installations for two of her video works: Pilgrim (2017) and Sojourner (2018). Either piece, in its own way, relays a pilgrimage of sorts. At the same time, the narratives weave together… Continue reading Cauleen Smith, “Mutualities” @ Whitney Museum of American Art (Feb 17th 2020 — Jan 31st 2021)

The Whitney Museum presents a sweeping exhibition that traces the cultural exchange between Mexican muralists and their American students and contemporaries. Following more than a decade of upheaval in Mexico, the end of the Mexican Revolution by the early 1920s gave way to a groundbreaking approach in the country. The artists and intellectuals behind what… Continue reading “Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945” @ Whitney Museum (Feb 17th 2020 — Jan 21st 2021)