November 5, 2022

Good Morning. ⛅️ If you've been online this week, you'll know that Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has been one of the main topics of conversation, partly because it represents a changing of the guard at one of the most popular social media sites. What this means for news and media is unclear, particularly since Twitter has not only been a useful watercooler for journalists, like yours truly, and politicians, but also because digital artists (especially those who make and sell NFTs) have been a vocal presence on the platform.

In some ways, Twitter has always been an outlier — for instance, it is the only social media platform that openly allows nudity, and even porn. I've never heard of artists who dip their toes into those topics on Twitter complaining about censorship, unlike on Meta's Facebook and Instagram platforms, or even LinkedIn and newcomer TikTok. If you're looking for a concise summary of the problems facing Musk, I recommend Nilay Patel's "Welcome to hell, Elon" article over at The Verge. We'll definitely be keeping our eye on things to see how this will impact creative communities.

Now, let's talk art. Check out our reviews of Pachi Muruchu by John Yau, N.V. Parekh by Mallory Cohen, Wangechi Mutu by Catherine Yang, and Bernd and Hilla Becher by Julia Curl. 

I also recommend Valentina Di Liscia's excellent consideration of the contentious history of a Mexican Modernist cave house, which is part of a current exhibition at the Noguchi Museum in Queens, NY.

And you've probably noticed how much work we've been doing to improve the quality of our already excellent opinion pieces. This week, the Met's deal with the Greek government is dissected by scholar Yannis Hamilakis, who writes, "no member of the Greek archaeological and museum community has come out in support of it, and to my knowledge, no specialist on Greek archaeology and heritage anywhere in the world has defended it." It's a must-read.

But before you dive into this week's email, I wanted to ask if you'd support us by joining our membership program. We rely on member support to fund our team of editors and writers and can't continue to do this without your support.

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— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief

Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Misunderstood Oeuvre

Critics who have deemed the photographer couple’s work outmoded and detached are simply wrong. | Julia Curl

WHAT'S HAPPENING

• An American Alliance of Museums (AAM) volunteer committee focused on museum studies voted unanimously to resign from the organization’s Museum Studies Professional Network (MSN) after its chair was asked to sign a code of ethics that mandated “loyalty” and limited public criticism of AAM.

• The National Portrait Gallery has revealed its newest commissions, including works by David Hockney, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Robert Pruitt.

• A Piet Mondrian painting was found to have been hanging upside down for the last 75 years.

• 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.

• Disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor has received a 10-Year prison sentence for trafficking over 2,600 individual objects worth over $143 million.

• Joan Didion’s art collection is up for auction. The trove of artworks includes a photograph by Patti Smith, pieces by Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, and more.

• Catrinas and colorful alebrijes are among the unmissable works on view for Mexico Week at Rockefeller Center.

OPINION

Sorry, But This Is Not “Repatriation”

The Met’s deal with the Greek government to “repatriate” billionaire Leonard Stern’s Cycladic art collection is not what it seems.  | Yannis Hamilakis

I Am Not a “Gypsy”

Often, there is a disconnect between the museum world and Roma representation. One exhibition at the National Gallery of Art proves that it doesn’t have to be this way. | Cristiana Grigore

Finding Strength as an Artist With Chronic Illness

When the profits from every sale are dumped right back into medical costs, what does the balance of surviving and creating even look like? | Denise Zubizarreta

REVIEWS

Reclining Men Reading Radical Books

Artist Pachi Muruchu merges his radical beliefs and resistance to colonialism with a complex sense of color and the moods it can conjure and inflect. | John Yau

N.V. Parekh and the Rise of Studio Photography in East Africa

Isolde Brielmaier’s book I Am Sparkling illustrates how Parekh’s studio became a place for sitters to assert their agency in a changing world. | Mallory Cohen

Wangechi Mutu Is Urgently Optimistic About the Future

Mutu’s imposing sculptural characters magnify her decades-long collage practice as sites of cultural, psychological, and sociopolitical transformation. | Catherine Yang

Phoebe Adams Memorializes the Ephemeral

Adams's imaginative recreation of our everyday surroundings in her paintings is a reminder of how fleeting and transmutable the material world can be. | John Yau

ARE WE SCARED YET?

The Spookiest Images of Early Photography

From creepy Victorian post-mortem portraits to Félix Nadar's horrifying shot of the Paris Catacombs, we’re definitely never sleeping again. | Sarah Rose Sharp

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

ALSO....

The Contentious History of a Lost Cave House in Mexico City

The disappearance of “Casa Cueva,” a model of which is on view at the Noguchi Museum, pitted two great artists against each other in one of the most divisive episodes in Mexican contemporary art history. | Valentina Di Liscia

In Venice, the Roma People Take Center Stage

The history of the Roma and Sinti in Poland and Europe is that of marginalization, exclusion, misrepresentation, and persecution. | Viktor Witkowski

Opportunities in November 2022

From residencies, fellowships, and workshops to grants, open calls, and commissions, our monthly list of opportunities for artists, writers, and art workers.

Required Reading

This week, Elon Musk trolls, getting your news from TikTok, cacti music, and more. | Hrag Vartanian and Lakshmi Rivera Amin

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