We want public art to interrogate social injustices, fill us with love and joy, and brush aside human flaws, but it rarely ever lives up to these expectations.
Opinion
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It’s Time to Rewrite the Canon of Women Artists
Katy Hessel’s new survey of women artists leaves out men, but also falls short of offering a new take on feminist art history.
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75 Years After the Palestinian Nakba
P21 Gallery in London assembles an eclectic artist collective to commemorate and count the consequences of the Palestinian Catastrophe, 75 years later.
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How a Stolen Nepali Statue Found Its Way Home
A long-lost Vajradhara sculpture that resurfaced in a Hong Kong collection highlights scholars’ responsibility to mediate between communities and the art market.
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The Dangerous Allure of the Royal Aesthetic
The pomp and pageantry of King Charles’s coronation follows the playbook of authoritarian theatrics.
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Why We Never Visited Michael Heizer’s City
We counted down the minutes until we hit the stretch of highway closest to the installation, but we didn’t stop.
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The Caste Bias of Tech Platforms
From Twitter and Instagram to matchmaking apps, tech companies have helped modernize the caste system instead of dismantling it.
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Why Is The Met Gala Honoring an Islamophobe With Nazi Roots?
The Costume Institute is willfully ignoring Karl Lagerfeld’s bigoted views and his family’s concealed Nazi past.
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Arts Grantmakers Must Change Their Ways
The nonprofit industrial complex in the US has failed artists. Rocío Aranda-Alvarado and Lane Harwell of the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression team suggest nine ways to change that.
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Why Depressing Art Is Good for You
From Ilya Repin to Charlie Kaufman, artists who explore the darkest human impulses can give us hope and inspire us to be better.
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We Need More Nuance When Talking About Repatriation
Patricia Marroquin Norby, the Met Museum’s curator of Native American Art, reflects on the lesser-discussed everyday challenges of repatriation work.
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Why Charging Admission to Rome’s Pantheon Is a Bad Idea
What is the excuse for charging people for something that was free for 1,900 years?
