Sunset over Brooklyn at the end of a workday puts my mind at relative ease. A discarded still life of white roses in a golden frame resting against a pile of black trash bags outside someone’s house ends up being the most memorable art installation of the week. A new storefront church opens near my house; I see it one night when I go to buy milk for the kids. It’s got a lobby with fancy-looking brown leather sofas for the faithful to sit comfortably on. I pass by a bookstore and see a photobook by Hans Wilschut titled Beirut, Epi-Centre Ville. It traces the impact of the devastating blast of 2020 on the city’s streets and soul. The book piques my interest, but I keep walking and see a Honda Civic with a license plate that reads “FATIGUE.” I pull my phone out to snap a picture of it, and get reminded that it’s August 4, the sixth anniversary of the blast. At work, we publish a piece about desperate drawings made by immigrant children held in ICE detention camps. It breaks my heart to pieces. News about community members fighting to reinstate SAIC professor Savneet Talwar, who was unjustly put on leave for asking students to imagine treatment for a pro-Palestinian protester, put my heart back together again.
Outside an open studios event in Brooklyn, I talk with an artist who makes the case for “holding on to hope.”
“Isn’t hope for people who have no power?” I ask her. “Exactly,” she says.
—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief
AI Companies Are Pulping Our Humanity
After Spanish physician and theologian Michael Servetus was burnt at the stake in 1553 for religious heresy, only three surviving copies of his The Restoration of Christianity would be spared from the bonfire. One particular copy, now held by the University of Edinburgh library, is ironically believed to have been personally saved by the Protestant leader John Calvin, who was responsible for Servetus’s execution in Geneva. Anyone familiar with Calvin, who bragged in a letter that he had “purged the Church of so pernicious a monster,” knows that the book wasn’t preserved due to affection for Servetus, but rather a bibliophile’s sentiment — even a doctrinaire, zealous, tyrannical bibliophile.
And yet, as bizarre as Calvin’s motivations might have been, he’s still not as noxious as the artificial intelligence companies, including Anthropic, that have been involved in bulk purchasing, digitizing, and then pulping out-of-print books to train their large language models. Calvin at least had the excuse of his God; AI companies don’t even have that. | Ed Simon
Swann Auction Galleries is hosting it’s 7th LGBTQ+ Art Material Culture & History auction featuring Tom of Finland, Hugh Steers, Lorenza Böttner, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and more.
The sale will also include works consigned on behalf of the Detroit Queer Biennial and the Leslie Lohman Museum.
News
- Over 400 members of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s community resume calls for the reinstatement of Savneet Talwar.
- Francisco Correa Cordero, the founder of the downtown New York gallery Lubov, dies at the age of 37.
- ICE releases scans of nine pages seized by children detained in Texas to podcast host Allison Gill after she filed a lawsuit in March.
- Police arrest 16 protesters who unfurled banners bearing portraits of Immigration and Customs Enforcement victims on the marble floor of the Hart Senate Office Building.
- Trump proposed a historically low Smithsonian budget as his appointees push other measures to stifle funding at the museum and research network.
- Three of Pittsburgh’s pickleball courts are transformed into vibrant artworks as part of Sharmistha Ray’s “Geometry of Play.”
- The Eric Carle Museum staff are pushing to unionize due to allegations of understaffing, a lack of promotions, and poor workplace conditions.
- Unionized workers at the Victoria and Albert East Storehouse, a publicly accessible museum storage site, vote unanimously to strike over alleged “Amazon-style” working practices.
- The new exhibition Help Wanted / Leave Now traces “Operation Wetback,” one of the United States’s worst deportation campaigns against undocumented Mexican workers.
- After 20 years of delays, allegations, and recalibrations, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation will open the doors to its Frank Gehry-designed Abu Dhabi outpost on December 11.
- A new study finds that arts and culture organizations that received more funding from local governments during the COVID-19 pandemic tended to fare better in subsequent years.
- Art Movements: Gray Wielebinski’s scented artworks for Frieze London’s bathrooms, Michelle Grabner’s gift to a Wisconsin museum, Gagosian’s real estate footprint shrinks, and other news.
From Our Critics
The Fruitless Search for Vermeer’s Personal God
A recent biography spends too much time speculating about the Dutch artist’s religious beliefs and not enough exploring other mysteries, including his possible use of a camera obscura. | Natasha Seaman
Ellen Pau’s Elegy to a Vanishing Hong Kong
In the video art pioneer’s first US exhibition, water’s changing states become a metaphor for the city. | Gladys Lou
The Scent of Ancient Rome in St. Louis
An exhibition makes a case for the sensuality of these marble sculptures, recreating the perfumes and balms that once adorned them. | Eileen G’Sell
Interviews
Simone Forti Talks Yoko Ono, Dance, and Aging in Never-Before-Published Interview
“I remember sitting with Yoko on a ledge on the PS1 roof and talking together comfortably,” said the late performance artist. “It was restful.” | Julia Bryan-Wilson
Anna Boghiguian on Weaving Armenia
“The gift of being alive is developing a garden in oneself,” the Armenian-Egyptian artist told Hyperallergic, “and to move towards heaven.” | Avedis Hadjian
Features
The Day I Pleated With Iris van Herpen
A show at the Brooklyn Museum invites guests to work alongside the Dutch fashion designer in her recreated atelier. | Livia Caligor
Kimsooja Comes Full Circle
Her first exhibition in Toronto for 30 years captures her single-minded focus on the needle as a metaphor for folding and unfolding, memory and displacement. | Rea McNamara
Guide
10 Art Shows to See in Los Angeles This August
Betye Saar’s wearable art, Alfredo Ramos Martínez’s mountain ranges, the world’s largest pop-up book, three South Asian artists redefine monumentality, and more. | Matt Stromberg
Community
- Required Reading: A Renaissance altarpiece returns home, Yoko Ono at the Broad, the anti-AI writing movement, an uncertain future for butterfly collectors, the harp is hot again, and more.
- In Memoriam: Remembering Milan Knížák, Simone Forti, Francisco Correa Cordero, and others.
- A View From the Easel: Connor Czora mines the history of porcelain ceramics while teaching the next generation of potters in DC.
Opportunities
Residencies, fellowships, grants, and open calls from the Erie Canal Museum, Jentel Artist Residency, Princeton University, and more in our monthly list of opportunities for artists, writers, and art workers.
