May 08, 2024

Good morning. The day after the Met Gala is typically a time of joyous irreverence, when those of us whose invite got lost in the mail go online to collectively revel in such frivolities as Rihanna resembling an omelette or the fact that cis men always dress the same regardless of theme. This year felt different, with most memes focused on the cruel irony of hosting a Met Gala as the world crumbles all around us. Staff Reporter Rhea Nayyar has the highlights.

Also today, Hunter College’s MFA thesis show, a previously misattributed Caravaggio heads to the Prado, and Courbet's glass-protected "Origin of the World" gets painted over with the phrase "MeToo" in a surprise performance at the Centre Pompidou-Metz.

And in our Opinion section, the artist Ridikkuluz writes about Germany's crackdown on a pro-Palestine symposium in Berlin, while Columbia University art journalism professor Alisa Solomon describes a moving seder dinner with her students at the now − dismantled Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

— Valentina Di Liscia, News Editor

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The Most Dystopian Memes of the 2024 Met Gala

Online, parallels to the Hunger Games saga abounded as the lavish display of wealth proceeded amid several international humanitarian crises.

Rhea Nayyar

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Musée de la Villa les Camélias Presents Four Decades of Painting by Mitchell Johnson

La révélation de Meyreuil explores the relationship between the artist’s early work from Europe with recent paintings made in the US.

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LATEST NEWS

CHURCH, POETRY, & STRESS BALLS

Ecological Crisis Echoes Through the Church of San Lorenzo

Restor(y)ing Oceania provides a powerful sense of the devastation faced by Pacific Islanders — and the ecosystems that may soon be lost.

Anna Souter

When “Made in China” Becomes a Poem

Rather than deduce manufacturers’ intentions with typo-ridden clothing, the collective New York Shanzhai Lyric trains attention on the artistic value of these texts.

Livia Caligor

What Do Dolphins and Stress Balls Have in Common?

At Hunter College’s MFA thesis show in Manhattan, six artists decode modern life through unusual, surprising, and joyful installations.

Rebecca Schiffman

IN OPINION

Celebrating Seder at Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment

The student protest was a most fitting setting for a peaceful, focused, and deeply moving Passover seder.

Alisa Solomon

The Palestine Congress That Never Was

Inside Berlin’s censorship of a Palestine solidarity conference that police shut down as soon as it began.

Ridikkuluz

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