November 1, 2022

Good morning. ⛅️ Today, artists in Brazil are breathing a sigh of relief after Lula da Silva defeated Jair Bolsonaro in a tight election. We're all relieved, at least for now.

Here in the US, two of the country's largest billboard companies rejected an artist-led campaign to encourage voting in Georgia, deeming it "inflammatory." That's just another reminder of the urgency of taking a stand in these midterm elections. There's no room for apathy when democracy itself hangs in the balance, in addition to reproductive rights and other consequential issues. Early voting in New York ends on November 6. Wherever you live, check your state or local election office, and please vote!

— Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor

Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter mistakenly argued that Piet Mondrian’s painting “New York City I” was hung upside-down for 75 years at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). While the painting was first displayed upside-down at MoMA in the 1940s, it’s been on view at Germany’s Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (upside-down) since 1980.

Brazilian Artists Celebrate Lula’s Comeback as President

“The last four years have been of orchestrated cultural destruction at the hands of the extreme right,” artist Laercio Cubas Jr. told Hyperallergic. | Rhea Nayyar

Latest News

• Since the latest climate protest trend is getting a little repetitive — though its message no less urgent — we got a little creative and ranked this weekend’s interventions. Using soup cans, of course.🥫

• The Canadian city of Calgary commissioned artist Annie Wong to create a site-specific work addressing the racist history of a park, but took down the work after only four days.

• Billboards designed by artists Deborah Kass and Cleon Peterson for a “get out the vote” campaign in Georgia were rejected by two of the largest billboard companies in the United States. The designs were critical of the Supreme Court as well as abortion and pro-gun legislation.

I Am Not a “Gypsy”

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A Joyous Carnival to Celebrate David Graeber’s Lasting Legacy

Artists gathered for the launch of the new David Graeber Institute, which will oversee the scholar’s archive of unpublished texts and pursue projects around climate change, debt, labor, and war. | Naomi Polonsky

REVIEWS

A Miniature View of Modernism’s Masters

Though smaller in size than the artists’ usual works, the works in Modernism in Miniature at the Norton Simon Museum gain their heft from their big-name creators. | AX Mina

Barbara Sullivan’s Contemporary Art of Fresco Painting

Sullivan’s frescos are original and surprising but also wry and even feisty; she both embraces and enhances the clunkiness of the medium, animating her subjects. | Carl Little

Dead People Prefer Photography, Apparently

Shannon Taggart’s book SÈANCE pictures the supernatural occurrences in the lives of Spiritualists, seekers, mediums, and other occult practitioners. | Sarah Rose Sharp

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