Looking for a moment of peace amid the holiday Zooms? The Rubin Museum has a few tactile ideas that allow for a little re-centering.

In the galleries, exhibitions by Sheida Soleimani, Steve DiBenedetto, and Torey Thornton offer some food for thought in these final days of 2020.

If you’re wrapping up some last-minute holiday shopping (who, me?), why not add a Hyperallergic membership to your list — a perfect gift for friends, family, and a great way to support the stories that matter most. (Plus, get a free tote, special discounts, and more!)

Happy holidays.

The slippage between self-expression and commodification is one salient subject of exploration in Torey Thornton’s Does productivity know what it’s named, maybe it calls itself identity?, on view at Essex Street through January 9. 

The show frames a broader problem for artistic production in an image-saturated age: transparency, legibility, and even sincerity are fetishized, but whom does this self-styling serve?