Weekly
December 24, 2022

We wish a very Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. We've made it through another year, and it's always valuable to step back and reflect on the last 12 months. It's freezing here in Brooklyn, and much of the United States and Canada, and I hope that wherever you are, you are able to take some time to enjoy time with those you love. 

This week, we published two essays about a landmark restaging of a classic feminist art exhibition. In the first essay, curators Amy Smith-Stewart and Caitlin Monachino at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum discuss how the research often proved difficult. And in the second, art historian and curator Alexandra Schwartz explores how and why Lucy Lippard's 1971 exhibition was erased from our collective memory. She writes:

In early 1971, second-wave feminism was still in its infancy and women artists were just beginning to organize an (ongoing) push for equal representation … Lippard’s act of curating the exhibition was an activist gesture, but she understood that change would come slowly and meet with resistance from all corners. In an interview some years later, she reported that she never actually proposed a feminist exhibition to The Aldrich. Rather, the museum invited her to curate a show on any topic of her choosing, and only later did she reveal that she would exclusively feature women artists.

 It’s a powerful reminder that we must always support the culture we believe in because often no one else will. It was incredible that these curators and the staff were able to excavate this show from the past for contemporary viewers eager to connect with that early feminist history.

Now, some good news for those following the repatriation debates as the Vatican "gifted" the Parthenon fragments in their collection back to Greece. 

And don’t miss the useful primer of documentaries about the Dominican Republic and the must-read reviews by John Yau about artists Philip Taaffe and Xylor Jane.

In the coming week, we'll be publishing our “Best of” lists, including our infamous Powerless 20. Stay tuned.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief

Detail of Cynthia Carlson, “Untitled Inscape #1” (1970), Oil on canvas, 60 x 42 inches (Photo: Jason Mandella; courtesy of the artist and Richard Saltoun Gallery, London)

How a Landmark Feminist Show Got Erased From Collective Memory

Art critic Lucy Lippard’s first outing as a feminist curator in 1971 has, until recently, been almost entirely absent from history. | Alexandra Schwartz

Behind the Scenes of Remaking a Feminist Milestone

Reflecting on the five-year process of unearthing and restaging Lucy Lippard’s 1971 exhibition Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists. | Amy Smith-Stewart and Caitlin Monachino

NEWS THIS WEEK

Pieter van Lint’s “Virgin and Child” remixed for 2023 (edit Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic)

• The “nepo baby” craze has set the internet ablaze with a slew of incredible memes.

• Philip Pearlstein, whose paintings “rescued the human figure,” died Saturday, December 17, at age 98.

• Pope Francis announces he would be repatriating all the fragments of the Parthenon Marbles held in the Vatican’s collection.

• In Australia, vandals permanently destroyed part of the 30,000-year-old Nullarbor Plain drawings inside the sacred Koonalda Cave.

• Lionel Messi’s World Cup victory photo has accrued some 64 million likes (and counting), becoming the most-liked post on Instagram.

APPLYING TO GRAD SCHOOL?

MFA, MA, and PhD Programs to Apply for by Early 2023

Organized by geographic region, a list of arts-related graduate programs to explore and apply to before deadlines close.

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IN THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT

John Keuhn's gingerbread interpretation of Madison Square Park in Manhattan (courtesy MCNY)

NYC’s Five Boroughs, Reimagined in Gingerbread

An exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York celebrates the Big Apple in the most seasonal (and tastiest) medium of all. | Elaine Velie

Modern Menorahs That Break the Mold

From a banana menorah to versions by Dalí and Peter Shire, artists have long remixed the traditional Hanukkah lamp. | Sarah Rose Sharp

What’s the Weirdest Ornament You’d Hang on Your Tree?

An exhibition on view at Detroit’s Henry Ford Museum features 7,000 Christmas ornaments, from the traditionally festive to the deeply bizarre. | Sarah Rose Sharp

DEEPER INTO ABSTRACTION

Philip Taaffe, “Painting with Diatoms and Shells I” (2022), mixed media on canvas, 24 1/2 x 39 inches (© Philip Taaffe; photo by Farzad Owrang, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York)

Philip Taaffe Digs Deeper Into the Rabbit Hole 

It seems Taaffe is looking at the present as an extinction event, and that one purpose of painting is to bequeath some record of history and time to the future. | John Yau

Echoes of Joy and Peril in Leda Catunda’s Textiles 

The Brazilian artist practices an erasure poetry upon textiles and assembles the results into evocative, semi-sculptural configurations. | Louis Bury

Xylor Jane’s Cosmic Grids 

The rules that structure Jane’s paintings take her to some place strange and fascinating, beautiful and perplexing, mind-boggling and riveting. | John Yau

VISIONS & EXPRESSIONS

Dean Byington, "The Letter" (2022), oil on linen, 54 inches x 44 inches (photo by Eugenio Castro, courtesy Anglim/Trimble)

A Devastating and Breathtaking Vision of Climate Change

Dean Byington’s Cassandra warning call in his art reveals the world we know as a facade teetering on the brink of collapse. | Gabrielle Selz

For Julie Buffalohead, Animals Express What Words Cannot

There’s something very funny — and unsettling — about Buffalohead’s paintings of animals engaged in human situations. | Emily Wilson

How Nancy Holt Anticipated the Influencer Age

Though Holt’s photos come from the mid-20th century, they anticipate 21st-century aesthetics and could be a backdrop in an influencer’s desert pilgrimage. | Renée Reizman

MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC

Detail view of “Puppet Show at the Wax Museum” in Outside the Palace of Me (2022) at the Gardiner Museum; Shary Boyle, “Judy” (2021) (courtesy the Gardiner Museum)

In Praise of the Exhibition Catalogue

Shary Boyle’s Outside the Palace of Me exhibition catalogue provides viewers with experiences that an in-person visit cannot. | Sarah Rose Sharp

Seven Recommended Films From the Dominican Republic

Whether documentary, experimental, or somewhere in between, there is no shortage of intriguing Dominican films through which to consider life on the island. | Michael Piantini

Life According to Annie Ernaux

The subject matter of The Super 8 Years could not be more mundane, but the Nobel Prize-winning memoirist’s musings elevate it to something far more compelling. | Dan Schindel

Airport Art Is Taking Off

Airports across the US have been taking art more seriously in recent years. Have a look. | Lynn Trimble

Required Reading

This week, a mysterious portrait of Joan Didion, considering Carolee Schneemann, privatizing libraries, Dalit discrimination, the “great internet grievance war,” and more. | Hrag Vartanian and Lakshmi Rivera Amin

COMICS

When Tuna Met Snoopy

Something strange happened when I watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" with my cat Tuna. | Casey Roonan