All but one of the song titles on Body Sound, the debut album from experimental string trio Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart, line up nicely-a few words, usually two, usually nouns, separated by a vertical line. The straight line in the middle means different things in different disciplines. In computing, it's called a 'pipe' and serves as a conduit. In poetry, it denotes a pause or break. In music, it marks the beginning and end of measures.
"These works are an exploration of the human body's elasticity and capacity to metamorphose. Informed by my own experience of pregnancy and the birth of my first child last year, these paintings are a meditation on physiological transformation and the body's underlying animalistic and mammalian nature."
Kamrooz Aram is everywhere this year, from Mumbai Art Week to the Whitney Biennial, and critic Aruna D'Souza is grateful. She pens a beautiful meditation on his work, reading his abstract paintings as not simply a denunciation of Western modernism nor a reassertion of Islamic visual motifs, but something else entirely - something gestural, exuberant, riotous, and incomparably his own.
The new New Museum is many things: contemporary, perhaps, but also a science, history, anthropology, and many other museums in one. It echoes the desire of its patron class to own the world and its affiliated courtier class to deliver it to them on a silver platter, or encased in perforated metal, in this case.
On Franklin Street in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, one non-commercial gallery fosters 'a small, stubbornly human space for friction.' Friction—the ubiquitous buzzword that captures the simultaneous delight and discomfort of doing things the slow way—is at the heart of artists Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré's current show at Subtitled NYC. It also reflects the overall spirit of this little exhibition space and of a burgeoning movement to reject our culture of optimization in favor of a bumpier, more intimate, less alienating experience.
As a child, I imagined a place far behind our own sky. A planet with its own weather, its own atmosphere, its own logic entirely. It was my own version of science fiction. How did it feel on this planet? Was it snowy, windy, or could you sense the first green breath of spring-I called it Planet Z.
What began as a passion for collecting became a responsibility. She not only believes in the artistic genius of women, but she wants society in general to hold men and women artists in equal esteem-and to place the same monetary value on their work.
Many of these posters are the only surviving proof of certain shows, with no recordings of plays, and certain films, having been lost over time. They offer a history of Black Americans trying to counter harmful stereotypes and provide vital and humanizing contributions to a growing Black culture.
This year, we opted to sort our spring guide into categories, the better to match your mood. There are the shows everyone's talking about - big names like Duchamp and Raphael (seriously, how is this the first major survey of his in the city?), Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. There are major surveys, like the New Museum's inaugural show in its expanded building, MoMA PS1's Greater New York triennial, and of course, the Whitney Biennial.
In 2024, art collector Christian Levett opened Europe's first museum dedicated to women artists in a little town in the south of France. But for those of us who can't make the trip to the Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum, or FAMM), the American Federation of the Arts (AFA) has arranged the next best thing: a blockbuster touring exhibition about women artists of the Abstract Expressionist movement, featuring some of the highlights of the FAMM collection.
The exhibition centers the visibility, agency, and radical joy of Black women, celebrating love as a generative force-of liberation, self-definition, and community. Through richly textured compositions and her iconic rhinestone-studded surfaces, Thomas depicts her subjects-friends, family, lovers, and cultural figures-with a confidence and sensuality that reclaims spaces where Black women have been historically overlooked or misrepresented. With this exhibition, she becomes the first African-American artist to receive a major solo presentation at the Grand Palais.
"Color, color relationships, pattern and form are the hallmarks of Mitchell Johnson's achievement. Contemplating the growth and movement of his efforts over the years, we experience his intent, instinct and intuition. We become aware of his affinities with Morandi and Albers, and with Bonnard, Vuillard and Fairfield Porter. Johnson has remarked that he tries to "combine Morandi's feeling for composition with Albers' intelligence about color." And he exhibits an inspirational and perhaps emotional relationship with the work of Fairfield Porter."
Taking over the museum's transformed school building starting April 16, the cross-borough survey will celebrate MoMA PS1's 50th anniversary with a bevy of site-specific installations, new commissions, and rarely seen work by 53 artists and collectives living and working across New York City. A complete list of participants is included at the end of this article. This year, Greater New York will coincide with the Whitney Biennial for the first time in the show's history.
CHICAGO - With her iconic long dark hair curtaining her demure countenance, Yoko Ono has been in my personal pantheon of women makers for most of my life. When I was a distraught teenager in a midwestern suburb, she was there - singing discordant arias from my bedroom stereo. Her siren call couldn't quite be deciphered, but, like a feminist signal from afar, it cut through the fog of oppressive cultural forces.
Sprouting from the roof of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, artist Rose B. Simpson's newly installed bronze sculpture "Behold" has its gaze fixed on the cityscape before it. The Tewa of Khaʼpʼoe Ówîngeh artist, herself a mother, crafted a tender portrait of an interconnected parent and child that "asks us to be human with each other, to change our narrative through wonder, witness and a foundation in the soft warmth of our humanity," she said in a statement.
Two years ago, the annual Under the Radar festival (which showcases international, experimental and multidisciplinary theater) was unexpectedly canceled by the Public Theater, its longtime presenter, due to financial issues. In response, the festival was quickly reconceived as a citywide effort involving several other theater companies, allowing it to move forward. The festival, now in its 21st edition, returns this month with productions at theaters across the city from Jan. 7 to 25.