Weekly

September 24, 2022 • View in browser

The fall season officially started this week, and here in New York, it quickly announced itself with a sudden drop in temperature. Let's take a moment to cherish what was our first semi-normal summer since COVID-19 broke, and hope that the pandemic continues ebbing despite the cold weather.

One of our biggest stories this week highlights the voices of Native artists in the conversation about Michael Heizer's massive City land art installation in the Nevada desert. It's time to look beyond the media hype about this work and consider its problematic erasure of Indigenous history.

Also this week, Bay Area artists and curators debunk the rumors that their art scene is dying after the departure of two blue-chip galleries, the Bushwick Open Studios festival in Brooklyn returns messier than ever, and many other stories worth reading as you dust off your winter coats and jackets. Be well.

— Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor

City (1970-2022) (© Michael Heizer; photo by Eric Piasecki, courtesy Triple Aught Foundation)

What Do Native Artists Think of Michael Heizer’s New Land Art Work?

Jasmine Liu investigates how characterizations of the artist’s newest work ignore questions of place and locality that are central to Indigenous thinking.

“[Heizer’s] father — being an archaeologist, anthropologist, and somewhat historian — would know that people were killed off. People were removed from these lands,” Diné artist and composer Raven Chacon told Hyperallergic when asked about descriptions of the geographical area around City as empty and featureless. “So that’s what we’re looking at: people replacing those that were displaced with their own monuments.” 

NEWS THIS WEEK

The Byzantine floor mosaic underneath farmer Salman al-Nabahin's olive grove. (photo by and courtesy Ahmed Zakot)

• A Palestinian farmer accidentally discovers a Byzantine floor mosaic underneath his olive grove. 

• A new investigation confirms that Israeli forces intentionally killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

• Posters by an anonymous collective of NYC tenants call out the city marshals’ role in perpetuating homelessness.

• Researchers hypothesize that a now-dried-up branch of the Nile helped transfer materials in the building of the pyramids at Giza.

• Psychiatrists in Brussels can now write “museum prescriptions” as part of a pilot program evaluating the impact of art institutions on mental health.

• Three people were arrested during a protest denouncing Asia Society for hosting Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the country’s former dictator.

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AMPLIFYING CRAFT HISTORIES

Ai Weiwei’s “Tiger, Tiger, Tiger” (2015) demonstrates new ways contemporary artists are looking at craft and resurfacing it unconventionally (photo Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic)

Announcing the Inaugural Center for Craft Archive Fellows

Xenobia Bailey, Jeffrey Gan, Elizabeth G. Greenlee and N.E. Brown, Siera Hyte, Maru López, and Olivia Quintanilla will contribute to a Hyperallergic Special Issue on underrepresented craft histories in 2023.

TRANSFORMING GRIEF

A memorial in Highland Park, Illinois, organized by artist Jacqueline von Edelberg, honors the victims of the Highland mass shooting on July 4, 2022 (photo Alisa Solomon/Hyperallergic)

Highland Park Artist Helps Her Community Transform Grief Into Action

Jacqueline von Edelberg is “gently curating” an interactive memorial to the victims of the Highland Park mass shooting in Illinois.

Whatever happens to the installation she has helped to sustain as a space of public encounter, exchange, and restoration, von Edelberg holds out one hope: “That anguish turns into action.”

— Alisa Solomon

CALLING FOR CHANGE

Shin reclaimed mounds 19th century pearl buttons, a fashion craze that obliterated mussel populations in the Mississippi River (photo by David Evan McDowell)

Jean Shin Wants to Change the Tide of Pollution and Extinction

The artist’s Freshwater installation at Philadelphia Contemporary features a living, breathing fountain, mussels and all.

Shin’s work is about more than the mussels themselves, it’s also a reflection of Philadelphia’s artisans, scientists, and more determined members of the human realm coming together to change the tide. 

— Isabella Segalovich

In Salt Lake City, Air Is a Concern and an Artistic Medium

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts presents works exploring what it means to utilize air as an artistic medium.

Tackling the Myth of the American West

Stephanie Syjuco’spoints to the role that museums play in perpetuating narratives about the people, places, and events of the American West.

DEPICTED IN PAINT

Aubrey Levinthal, “Crab Shack” (2022), oil on panel, 20 x 16 inches (courtesy Monya Rowe Gallery, New York)

Aubrey Levinthal Chronicles the Estrangement in Everyday Encounters

Finding her subject matter in ordinary, everyday encounters, Levinthal hints at a subject’s interiority and to the way strangers are separated from each other.

Her use of color and her sense of scale are in service of her subject matter, which explores passing moments and the different unvoiced feelings, such as tenderness, that are stirred up when we have a transaction with a stranger. 

— John Yau

Alyssa Monks Captures the Energy and Anxiety of Being in Paint

With the numerous self-portraits Monks has painted throughout her career she offers her “self” to the viewers while also generating a sense of dissolution.

Jordan Casteel Won’t Rest on Her Laurels

"I was curious to see Casteel’s first exhibition since her New Museum show. I was not disappointed." — John Yau 

ART SCENES

Carlos Villa‘s “Painted Cloak,” (1971) (photo by Joseph McDonald, courtesy the Estate of Carlos Villa and SFMOMA)

Rumors About Death of the Bay Area Art Scene Are Greatly Exaggerated

Emily Wilson speaks with the local artists and curators that took issue with a New York Times report announcing the demise of the local art scene.

“I was like, ‘Are you serious? You’re trolling us again with the whole LA long shadow?’” said Lagaso Goldberg. “The article shouts out [Diego] Rivera and [Kehinde] Wiley and [Ansel] Adams, but there’s also Manuel Neri and Kathy Acker and Dewey Crumpler and Bernice Bing, and Carlos Villa of course — those histories power this place. We have a legacy of activism and organization here.”

Bushwick Open Studios Returned, But the Artists Didn’t Know

Several artists told Hyperallergic that they had to learn about the event just a day before it opened.

Artists Find Inspiration in Uncertainty at Arts in Bushwick

Every artwork at Arts in Bushwick seemed to be in dialogue with the uncertainty and unpredictability of the moment.

PIVOTAL PHOTOGRAPHY

On October 25, Agins will receive the Lucie Award for Photojournalism at New York’s Carnegie Hall. (photo Briana Ellis-Gibbs/Hyperallergic)

Michelle Agins on Perseverance and Photographing Martin Luther King

The second Black woman ever hired as a New York Times staff photographer, Agins built her career at a time when photo editors gave very few assignments to women — much less to women of color.

Her intimate images show her ability to form invaluable connections to any subject, allowing her audience to feel their emotions. Her stylistic choices capture moments profoundly, whether in black and white or in vibrant color.

Agins remains rare in the industry.

— Briana Ellis-Gibbs

Some Sisterhood for Any Woman Attempting to Go It Alone

The Only Woman is a deeply satisfying array of women artists, writers, medical students, politicians, and even criminals, all pictured among their fellows.

These Photographs Were Made in Protest

The camera became the center of Chauncey Hare’s life, and a tool for awakening his political consciousness.

MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC

Still from Parsley (courtesy Visit Films)

Parsley Brings a Haitian-Dominican Massacre to Light

Director José María Cabral’s intention to bring a horrific history front and center is much needed for a massacre that remains a footnote in Dominican society.

The film revolves around the pregnant Marie and her husband trying to survive, but Parsley demands that audiences bear witness to the state-sanctioned genocide that has plagued the island of Hispaniola for nearly a century.

— Michael Piantini

Indie Filmmakers Shine a Light on the American South

Documentaries about xenophobia, Black gospel music, and hazing are trenchant explorations of social issues in the South.

Artist Slammed for Matching Instagram Photos to Open-Camera Footage

Critics of the project say artist Dries Depoorter is engaging dangerously with surveillance culture.

Museum Rentals Are a Recipe for Disaster

This is what happens when boozed-up patrons party next to priceless mosaics, statues, and vases.

Required Reading

This week, a Keith Haring drawing from his bedroom, reflecting on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, you’re not descended from Vikings, the death of 𝒸𝓊𝓇𝓈𝒾𝓋𝑒, and more.

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