Category: visual

“The 2017 Whitney Biennial was organized in one era and exists in another. I leadingly asked the show’s two 30-something Asian-American curators, Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks, if they altered anything after the election. Nodding with patient understanding but unshaken, both firmly said, “We didn’t change course.” By all rights then, this is the first, last, and only Hillary Clinton biennial. But that doesn’t mean it is out of step, nice-y nice, disconnected, or just so many snowflakes from another era. Instead and pressingly, even with wild up and downs, flaws and all, the 2017 Whitney Biennial is the best of its kind in some time.

“The mood is, by turns, anxious and dark, even sinister, but also, at times, expectant, guardedly hopeful. Everyone is on edge. The show presents a nation, and the sensibilities of its artists, in a period of transition, with violence cresting, identities in flux, and some brave souls hatching plans. A sea change is coming, though it is unclear if its effect will be disastrous, momentous, or something more complicated. Call it the biennial on the brink.”

“Fearless Girl represents basically everything that’s wrong with our society,” argues Jillian Steinhauer. “Could there possibly be anything more patronizing than two massive, male-dominated capitalist companies” – advertising giant McCann and investment firm State Street – “installing a branded statue of the most conceivably non-threatening version of womankind in supposed honor of a day devoted to women’s equality that was founded by the Socialist Party?” Do you think Steinhauer has a point?

From Philadelphia to Seattle, American cities are banking on parks and public spaces to drive social and economic progress. “Parks may not seem particularly urgent compared with the latest gangland murder epidemic; but the effort in Chicago to improve and expand them has, neighborhood by neighborhood, delivered long-term rewards. A few downtown showpieces, like the urbane Riverwalk and glamorous Millennium Park, have reaped immense financial windfalls for the city. Barack Obama’s presidential library in Jackson Park promises to become a major new attraction and help rejuvenate that part of the South Side.”

Absolution (ca. 1900) has a quality most people would never associate with Rodin’s muscular sculpture – it’s fragile, made up of three plaster pieces with fabric draped on top. Emily Sharpe reports on how conservators stabilized the piece and transported it (very carefully) to the Musée Rodin in Paris.

Of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the Great Pyramid of Giza survives to this day and the fate of five others is documented. But what became of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon has remained a mystery; some scholars aren’t certain they even existed. But ISIS’s destruction of a shrine on the ancient site of Nineveh may have revealed the key to that mystery. Or perhaps not. The connection involves a chain of historical references that may not hold up – but Noah Charney explains that chain and how it might be plausible.

“In recent years, museums have been making a greater effort to have a voice in social activism and respond to pressing problems of the day. The big question is when and how art museums should take a public position and try to effect change, or at least initiate a community discussion on a topic.”

“They’re using design and technology to tackle everything from climate change to social justice, and they are doing so not as lone geniuses toiling away in the dark, but in collaboration with clients, neighborhoods, and cities. The starchitecture era is dead.”