Studies of museum patronage mostly focus on social class. That's not the whole story.
Art
Editor: Stephen Best
Past Editor: Anne Higonnet
Fascism’s Cultural Behemoth
Milan 1919: Fascism was founded as a movement almost exactly a century ago, by journalist and agitator Benito Mussolini along with a gaggle of World War I ...
What Did We See in Color TV?
For those seeking to break up with their phones, or just decrease their screen time, tech ethicist Tristan Harris recommends starting with a quick technological fix ...
The Book of Faces
I’m not actually sure if I should call Jessica Helfand’s Face: A Visual Odyssey a book. I mean, it looks like a book. It has text, divided into sentences, paragraphs, and sections. It’s on pages ...
Smiling Donors, Bored Recipients: Free Food In America
People lining up for free food are often tired, bored, and shabbily dressed ...
Design with Disability
The “Accessible Icon” by Brian Glenney and Sara Hendren began as design activism: the artists defaced existing disability access symbols with red and orange vinyl stickers. Today, their so-called ...
“What Invisibility Looks Like”
Richard S. Leghorn, the Pentagon official who coined the phrase “Information Age,” in 1960, never thought it would catch on. More than half a century later, no ...
Do Images Still Help Us See?
Contrary to what its title might suggest, Hito Steyerl’s latest collection of essays does not explain how to avoid customs charges at dubious borders. Much more ...
Joni Mitchell’s Ferocious Gift
When Joni Mitchell first came to prominence, in the late-1960s “Summer of Love” era, she was often perceived as a kind of “poetess” or “nightingale” folk ...
“The Political Body”: Radical Women and Latin American Art
Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 was conceived 10 years ago ...
Painting while Shackled to a Floor
What does it mean to make art with limited resources, under constant surveillance, when incarcerated in some of the most restrictive and punitive institutions in the modern American prison system ...
The Art of (Not Forgetting) War
Many of the images in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibit World War I and the Visual Arts depict the war in such violent detail that their authors ...
Selling Veterans
George W. Bush is selling veterans. His book of paintings, Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors, is not, by his account, an apology or expression of guilt. In an ...
