March 24, 2022 • View in browser

Good morning. 🌧️ Today, the problems and pleasures of activist art, Seph Rodney writes about the Joan Mitchell retrospective in Baltimore, and John Yau writes about the new work of Julia Fish.

We also have an interview with the founders of Museum Crisis Center in Ukraine, an organization that helps museum workers during the current war.

And join me on Twitter Spaces at noon (EDT) today to discuss New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s culture policies and appointments. I’ll be joined by news co-editors Hakim Bishara and Valentina Di Liscia.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief 

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This Group Is Helping Museum Workers in Ukraine

The founders of Museum Crisis Center discuss what they are doing to help museum staff and save Ukraine's cultural heritage. | Lisa Korneichuk

WHAT'S HAPPENING

• After facing backlash, SVA Galleries withdraw from an exhibition that highlighted the plight of Russian artists and prohibited images of the war in Ukraine.

• NASA spots a massive debris cloud created by smashing celestial bodies, pointing to evidence of the type of collisions that form planetary systems.

FILM & OPINION

Arthur Jafa’s Medley of Joy Everlasting Versus Hell on Earth

The video installation akingdoncomethas is an epic montage of sermons and performances from Black churches. | Justin Kamp

A Rehang of Hopper’s Iconic "Nighthawks" Changes the Game

Psychologically, the work of both Gertrude Abercrombie and Hughie Lee-Smith enhance the otherworldly isolation of “Nighthawks.” | Hall W. Rockefeller

LATEST REVIEWS

Why Joan Mitchell’s Paintings Can Never Die

Unlike the more celebrated painters around her, she didn’t resolve herself to working the same issues over and over; she kept asking herself other questions, pushing the paint to do what it had not quite done before. | Seph Rodney

What Can We Learn From Italy's Early Leftist Modernists?

The artists in Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917 faced a real problem: how to represent injustices and project a hopeful vision of what changes were possible? | David Carrier

The Problems and Pleasures of an Activist Art Exhibition

I am often skeptical of protest art behind glass, yet I still cannot deny the pleasure of experiencing politically charged artworks in a venue making the effort. | Billy Anania

Julia Fish's Architectural Abstractions Are Joyful Enigmas

Fish's artworks elude every attempt to enclose them in language, and they resist explanation. They become something only a painting can be. | John Yau

IN MEMORIAM

Budjiardo “Budi” Tek (1957–2022)
Collector and founder of Shanghai’s Yuz Museum | CNN

Sumy Sadurni (1989–2022)
Photojournalist | New York Times

Hiram Maristany (1945–2022)
Photographer known for images of Spanish Harlem | New York Times

Artem Datsyshyn (1979-2022)
Ukrainian ballet star | Deadline

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