Apr 29, 2021 • View in browser

Good morning. 🌧 Today, newly discovered stone-age crystals challenge prevailing notions about our human origins, an interview with the couple who are spearheading Bard College’s Center for Human Rights and the Arts, and reviews of Roy Andersson, Paul Pescador, and Precious Okoyomon.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief

Thinking About the Intersection Between Human Rights and the Arts

In early 2021, Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish relocated from Beirut to spearhead the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College.

Katie Kheriji-Watts

What's Happening

In a move that activists have called “a game of musical chairs,” MoMA named Marie-Josée Kravis as the new chair of its board of trustees.
The discovery of stone-age tools and crystals in the Kalahari Desert disrupts the prevailing notion that human origins were linked to coastal environments.
Check out the docuseries The Politics of Street Vendors in Los Angeles, premiering on LACMA’s YouTube channel on International Worker’s Day (Saturday, May 1).

Latest Reviews

An Artist’s Crash Course in Government

In a series of PSA-style videos, Paul Pescador poses questions about government that quickly unravel into a nightmarishly complex knot of existential crises.

Caroline Ellen Liou

Absurdist Scandinavian Musings on Loneliness

Roy Andersson’s About Endlessness presents a series of elaborate vignettes about isolated characters.

Dan Schindel

Precious Okoyomon Envelops Us in the Textures of Black Mourning

At Performance Space New York, Okoyomon enables a sense of communion amid unrelenting loss.

Zoë Hopkins

From the Comics Archive

Neanderthals Were Artists Too

The discovery of the oldest cave paintings thus found suggests that Neanderthals may have been the first artists on Earth.

Jack Sjogren