October 24, 2022 • View in browser

Good morning. ☁️ and Happy Diwali to our readers who celebrate it. Today we start with sad news about the death of the New Yorker's veteran art critic Peter Schjeldahl on Friday. Our condolences go to his family and loved ones.

In other news, the story of a Michigan art dealer who conned senior citizens, Brazil's crackdown on women clowns, the Dallas Museum of Art's special lenses for color-blind patrons, and have you ever seen a close-up of an ant's face? It will haunt you.

Also, we began publishing a series of articles produced in collaboration with the Arts & Culture MA concentration at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. We’re happy to support and feature the work of these emerging art writers. Today you can read about an exhibition by Omar Ba and a spoken word performance written by Felwine Sarr, whom you might know from the Savoy-Sarr Report on the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage, commissioned by the French president Emmanuel Macron. And, of course, there's lots more. 

— Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor

New Yorker Art Critic Peter Schjeldahl Dies at 80

With little formal training in art history or practice, Schjeldahl dove into criticism simply out of a passion for art. | Jasmine Liu

WHAT'S HAPPENING

Kazuya Sakai, "Integrales II (Edgard Varèse) (1979), presented in normal color (left) and with color blind view conversion by Enchroma (right) (© Kazuya Sakai's estate; courtesy Galeria Vasari and DMA)

• The Dallas Museum of Art is providing color blindness alleviation lenses to visitors with red-green deficiencies to help improve their art-viewing experience.

• Archaeologists discover rare 2,700-year-old stone carvings in Iraq during the excavation of Mosul’s ancient Mashki Gate.

• The FBI raided the home of Michigan art dealer Wendy Halsted Beard who swindled senior clients in a  $1.6M fraud scheme.

• Photos from the 48th Annual Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition show the true artistry of nature at its most detailed.

LATEST IN ART

The Brazilian Women Clowns Fighting Back Against Bolsonaro

Palhaçaria feminina, or female clowning, is uniquely situated at the crosshairs of the president’s rhetoric against women, artists, and leftists. | Sage Behr

Juan Sánchez's Nuyorican State of Mind

From painting to photography, the artist’s sophisticated hybrid aesthetic echoes the very condition of being Nuyorican. | Arlene Dávila

The V&A Wanted to Subvert Toxic Masculinity but Ended Up Reinforcing It

The exhibition Fashioning Masculinities lets men have their cake and eat it too. | Olivia McEwan

CONFRONTING COLONIZATION

Unboxing the Origins of Civilization

With cardboard paintings, Omar Ba honors African cultures and challenges the Eurocentric view of history. | Anne Whiting

Hope and Agony According to Felwine Sarr

Traces — Speech to African Nations is a spoken word piece with music written by the acclaimed Senegalese scholar and performed by the Burkinabé actor Étienne Minoungou. | Minh Le

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