January 8, 2022 • View in browser

As expected, our Powerless 20 list was a hit, as most of us are exhausted of the status quo of celebrating the powerful, rich, and connected. It really tiresome, isn’t it.

This week, Sarah Bond highlights the most important archeological discoveries of the last year, our list of must-see exhibitions in NYC and LA, and reviews of Barbara Kruger, Lubaina Himid, Raúl de Nieves, Norman Lewis, Jonny Negron, and more.

And tomorrow (Sunday, January 9), you will receive the first email exhibition by our inaugural Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators. Curator Tahnee Ahtone has prepared a digital exhibition that presents images of important Kiowa paintings never bshared with outsiders before now. I hope you’ll spend time with the works and use the opportunity to learn more about Kiowa culture, heritage, and aesthetics.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief 

Wool fibers dyed pink-purple hue (image by Dafna Gazit, courtesy the Israel Antiquities Authority)

The Top Archaeological Discoveries of 2021
From the earliest material evidence of tea to ancient depictions of ghosts, we've gathered ten fascinating finds that came to light in a rather dark year.

NEWS THIS WEEK

New US Postal stamps honoring Black and Native American sculptor Edmonia Lewis (courtesy the US Postal Office)

• On January 26, the US Postal Service will release a new stamp honoring prominent Black and Ojibwe sculptor Edmonia Lewis.

• Works by Kafka, Hemingway, and Zora Neale Hurston shed their copyright on Public Domain Day.

• Faith Ringgold’s mural at the Rose M. Singer Center in Rikers Island may head to the Brooklyn Museum, although some question its relocation.

• A CT scan of the mummy of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep I gives us an unusual look at the physical traits and the ornaments concealed within.

• A Missouri county's painfully redesigned seal is a Photoshop atrocity.

WHAT TO SEE AND DO IN NYC AND LA THIS MONTH

There’s plenty to look forward to in Los Angeles this month, including the Underground Museum reopening with what will surely be a knock-out show of Noah Davis’s paintings.

In New York, the mood is reflective and inward-looking, as artists consider mirrors and windows, the people we’ve lost, and the punitive and patriarchal systems that were built to fail us.

LATEST IN ART

Barbara Kruger, "Untitled (Truth)" (2013). Collection of Margaret and Daniel S. Loeb (Digital image courtesy the artist)

A Barbara Kruger Retrospective Mixes Capitalism and its Critique
Debra Brehmer on Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You, I Mean Me, I Mean You at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The installations position the audience to perform — you may wonder: Is this one giant set up for Instagram? Are we mice in a maze? Kruger continues to show how the media addiction that characterizes contemporary culture prevents so many of us from fully seeing and understanding the power of what we succumb to.

The Restless Spirit of Lubaina Himid
Naomi Polonsky on Lubaina Himid at Tate Modern.

Identity and Transformation in the Art of Raúl de Nieves
Megan N. Liberty on Raúl de Nieves: The Treasure House of Memory at the ICA Boston.

Norman Lewis, "Eye of the Storm" (1973), oil on canvas, 51 1⁄8 x 87 1⁄2 inches (© Estate of Norman Lewis; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY)

The Transcendent Power of Black in Norman Lewis’s Abstractions
David Carrier on Norman Lewis: Shades of Blackness at Bill Hodges Gallery.

Black paint has many artistic meanings for modernists… For Lewis, working with black seemed to open up his art. The abstract paintings in Shades of Blackness show the varied ways he incorporated the color.

Jonny Negron’s Darker Portraits of Party Life
Jennifer Remenchik on Jonny Negron: Spirits at Château Shatto.

The Getty, Google Arts, & Banana Craze Create Three Online Shows Worth a Visit
Seph Rodney on La fiebre del banano (Banana Craze), Mesopotamia presented the Getty, and Klimt vs. Klimt — The Man of Contradictions presented by Google Arts and Culture.

Sherman Chaddlesone (Kiowa, 1947–2013), "Kiowa Hand Game" (2007), 24 inches by 26 inches, Kiowa Tribe Art Collection at the Kiowa Casino in Devol, OK (courtesy the author and used with permission)

Kiowa Murals Embody Kiowa Language, Culture, and Community
Curator Tahnee Ahtone expands on the mural work of artists Parker Boyiddle, Jr., Sherman Chaddlesone, and Mirac Creepingbear and the role of art in the Kiowa culture.

The murals reveal the artists’ traditional instruction in Kiowa aesthetics, from calendar-keeping to hide-painting and back to petroglyphs... The murals illustrate our belief that all people have a purpose and how we share an intent to work together.

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MORE FROM HYPERALLERGIC

From The Matrix Resurrections (2021), dir. Lana Wachowski (image courtesy WarnerMedia)

A Return to The Matrix Explores Binary Thinking
Juan Barquin reviews The Matrix Resurrections and how it embraces "existing within binaries and embracing multiple facets of life." 

Characters’ bodies and presentations inside and outside the Matrix now look more alike; there’s less emphasis on code-switching and idealized images, and more interest in showing how people can be their true selves in a realm where their lives are not consistently in danger. 

How the Face of Rio de Janeiro Radically Changed Over Five Centuries
A new digital atlas, imagineRio, reveals how the city’s urban evolution has unfolded from its 16th-century roots to the present day.

The Necessary Art of Leisure
Luke Williams explores bell hooks’s perspective on rest as “a dynamic place for creative engagement and imagination of the world.”

New York City’s Treatment of the “Fearless Girl” Harms Artist Rights
Todd Fine: "By failing to consider the artist’s interests or opinions, the city is setting extraordinary precedents... that blow up custom and fair practice."

Required Reading
This week, a massive digital version of Rembrandt’s “Night Watch,” academics on Twitter, transgender and nonbinary methods of art history, the immorality of diet culture, and more.

OPPORTUNITIES IN JANUARY

From Stamps School of Art & Design’s 2023 Witt Residency to open faculty positions at George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, we’ve gathered a full list of grants, fellowships, and open calls for artists and art writers this month!