Would You Hang These Christmas Ornaments?

December 22, 2022

Good morning. 🌧️ It's starting to feel like Christmas (Western Christmas, at least), and it's again a chance to get creative with your tree decorations. As an inspiration, we give you a glimpse into an exhibition at the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit featuring thousands of Christmas ornaments that you never knew existed or should exist.

In a surprise announcement earlier this month, the Kochi Biennale in India was postponed just hours before its planned opening on December 12. Reporting from Kochi, writer Aastha D explains what went wrong and how organizers are scrambling to finally open the exhibition this week.

And in today's news of human folly and evil, vandals irreparably damaged 30,000-year-old Indigenous rock art in Australia by scrawling on top of the original drawings. This is happening too often in too many places around the world.

Lastly, read Gabrielle Selz's review of Dean Byington’s alarming but mesmerizing collage paintings, which take the world's largest mines as backdrops. See you tomorrow.

— Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor

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

WHAT'S HAPPENING

Aerial view of the Aspinwall House, one of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale's main venues (photo by Swanoop John; courtesy the Kochi Biennale Foundation)

Bureaucratic hold-ups and heavy rains have delayed the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, but artists and organizers are working to make it a reality.

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

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ART & FILM

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

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

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

IN MEMORIAM

Adrienne Mancia (1927–2022)
Film curator | New York Times

Philip Pearlstein (1924–2022)
American figure painter | Hyperallergic

Maya Widmaier-Picasso (1935–2022)
Archivist and daughter of painter Pablo Picasso | Euro Weekly News

Ronald Sherr (1952–2022)
Portrait painter for Nancy Pelosi and others | Portraits Inc.

Laddie Waters (1933–2022)
Artist of Baltimore scenes | Baltimore Sun

Elena Xausa (1984–2022)
Illustrator | New York Times

MOST POPULAR

Philip Pearlstein, Whose Paintings “Rescued the Human Figure,” Dies at 98

Messi World Cup Photo Deposes Egg as Most-Liked Post on Instagram

How a Landmark Feminist Show Got Erased From Collective Memory

Xylor Jane’s Cosmic Grids

In Praise of the Exhibition Catalogue