June 25, 2022 • View in browser

This week ended on a grim note, as the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, sending reproductive rights in this country 50 years backward and putting its own legitimacy at risk. But I believe that a dauntless resistance movement will eventually undo this injustice.

Continuing our coverage of reactions to the Supreme Court's assault on Roe v. Wade, we published two stories about artist Elana Mann’s protest rattles and Jenny Holzer's NFT for reproductive rights, released on the day of the divisive decision.

Also this week: Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was sentenced to five years in prison; a court allowed Tamara Lanier to sue Harvard University for “emotional distress” over daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors, archaeologists pulled a massive Hercules head from a historic shipwreck, and a study found that visiting museums can ease depression and chronic pain.

There's a lot more, including reviews of exhibitions by Lynda Benglis, Sanford Biggers, Tobi Kahn, and many other artists.

Also, don't forget to check out Isabella Segalovich's insightful and amusing picture essay on depictions of women's eyebrows throughout art history.

Enjoy your weekend and stay strong!

— Hakim Bishara, interim editor-in-chief 

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Elana Mann protest rattles from the series Shake, Rattle, Roll at the “Bans Off Our Bodies Rally,” Los Angeles City Hall, May 14, 2022 (all photos by Monica Orozco, courtesy Elana Mann)

Let’s Make Noise for Abortion Rights
Renée Reizman spotlights artist Elana Mann’s “protest rattles” when making noise is more crucial than ever.

As throngs of activists and demonstrators descend on the Supreme Court to protest its decision to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion, Mann’s works feel especially poignant — and urgent.

“I started making them because I was going to protests, and I have a very quiet voice,” Mann told Hyperallergic. “I wanted to make something that could project, make noise, and fill up space.”

NEWS THIS WEEK

An archaeologist assesses the possible Hercules head. (photo by Nikos Giannoulakis, courtesy the Return to Antikythera Project)

• Marine archeologists pull a colossal marble head of Hercules from the site of a historic, Roman-era Antikythera shipwreck.

• Cuba sentences artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara to five years in prison for “contempt, defamation, and public disorder.”

• Public artworks by Dahlia Elsayed and Saya Woolfalk bring the natural world into Manhattan's Penn Station through the Art at Amtrak program.

• A new study reveals that going to museums can improve feelings of depression, ease chronic pain, and more.

• Documenta covers a work by the Indonesian collective Taring Padi following criticism for depicting antisemitic stereotypes.

• Tamara Lanier can now sue Harvard for “emotional distress” over the continued reproduction and use of her enslaved ancestors’ daguerreotypes.

COMMUNITY: HISTORY & IMPACT

A collage from Disappearing Queer Spaces, authored by members of Columbia’s Queer Students of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (courtesy QSAPP)

The Disappearing Queer Spaces of the Harlem Renaissance
Jasmine Liu highlights a new project that explores queer histories that have been suppressed by gentrification and urban development.

Will Wilson’s Portraits of Survivance
Susannah Abbey speaks with the New Mexico photographer who has devoted years to surveying the environmental injustice against his people.

A Photographer’s Love Letter to LA’s Koreatown
Jeanha Park expands on “Koreatown Dreaming” and how it offers a personal look into the past lives and current struggles of this Los Angeles community.

REPRESENTATION & RESILIENCE

Jamea Richmond-Edwards, “This Water Runs Deep” (2022) (photo Seph Rodney/Hyperallergic)

A Show About the Great Migration Strikes a Timely Chord
Seph Rodney on A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration at the Mississippi Museum of Art.

At a moment when the future of this nation seems precarious and uncertain, A Movement in Every Direction demonstrates that Black Americans have been among this nation’s most stalwart heroes, despite being perceived through the lens of white supremacy as existing outside of its imagined borders. 

Asian Women and Nonbinary Artists Paint Their Major Feelings
Jasmine Liu on Wonder Women at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York.

An Exhibition Belies Stereotypes of Artists in the Southwest
Chelsea Weathers on 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now at Southwest Contemporary.

ON MENDING AND HEALING

Sanford Biggers, “Incognito” (2014) (photo © Sanford Biggers and David Castillo Gallery, courtesy the artist and David Castillo Gallery, Miami)

Sanford Biggers Cracks the Code of Quilts
Natalie Weis on Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch at the Speed Art Museum.

Repair and Healing in the In-Between
Amy Levine-Kennedy on Tobi Kahn the Phillips Collection and Formation: Images of the Body at the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts & Religion.

TRANSFORMING SCULPTURE

Lynda Benglis, "Yellow Tail" (2020), Everdur bronze (golden), 53 x 96 x 74 inches, edition of 6 (© Lynda Benglis/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe)

Lynda Benglis Basks in the Light of Her Art
Natalie Haddad on Lynda Benglis: Excavation at Blum & Poe.

Stanley Rosen’s Embrace of Vulnerability
John Yau on Stanley Rosen: Vessels at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects.

PERSPECTIVES IN DOCUMENTARY

Nadav Assor and Tirtza Even, animation still from Chronicle of a Fall (2021) (courtesy the artists)

A Film Asks: What Is Home? 
Lori Waxman takes a closer look at Nadav Assor and Tirtza Even’s immersive, feature-length video installation Chronicle of a Fall.

Its subjects are cultural workers who immigrated to the United States for the same reason anyone moves anywhere: in search of a better life.

But as becomes apparent through their conversations with one another, their partners, and the filmmakers, and in independent monologues, living in the US — especially under the Trump Administration, when the project was conceived and shot — is itself an unstable endeavor.

A Youthful Documentary Memoir Both Enthralls and Frustrates
Bedatri D. Choudhury reviews first-time filmmaker Rebeca Huntt's Beba, ofwhich she is “the lens, the subject, the authority."

An Emotional Documentary Follows Two Cattlewomen on the Range
Dan Schindel on Bitterbrush and how it defies the script of the stringently gendered Western genre.

MORE FROM HYPERALLERGIC

Unknown artist, "Mummy portrait of a young woman named Eirene from Egypt” detail (c. 1st century BCE–1st century CE), encaustic on wood panel (image via Wikimedia Commons)

A Brief History of Women’s Eyebrows in Art
Isabella Segalovich examines how women’s eyebrows have been sites of intense scrutiny throughout history.

As the most easily mutable facial feature, women’s eyebrows have often been sites of intense scrutiny and have gone through seemingly endless, rapidly changing trend cycles around the world.

Let’s take a quick tour of how these ideals have shown up in art across civilizations throughout history: from bushy, to bold, to completely bare. 

A Look at the Country’s Only Touring Black Rodeo
Lauren Moya Ford spotlights The New Black West, a celebration of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo’s rich community and unique identity.

Required Reading
This week, Title IX celebrates 50 years, the trouble with pronouns, a writer’s hilarious response to plagiarism allegations, and much more.

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