Required Reading

This week, the oldest mummies in the world, whitewashing an autocrat, a useful reading list about Ukraine, SPLC released their new report on hate, seeking a new language around race, and more.

Alone in the Dying of the Light

One thing that comes across in the drawings of Rackstraw Downes is the austere, almost monastic life he has lived in order to make art.

Was Jacques-Louis David Really That Radical?

Rather than accentuating his radicalism, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition makes Jacques-Louis David a compelling case study in opportunism and survival.

Bits and Pieces of Our Mortality

The images in Vik Muniz’s exhibition Scraps tempts that implicit human tendency to fill in the blanks, complete that which is partial, fragmentary.

Painting that Exhilarates the Eye and Mind

It can be tempting to compare these historical Indian paintings with familiar examples from the Euro-American canon but that would do a disservice to these artworks, which are revelatory on their own.

Required Reading

This week, the artist representing Ukraine at the Venice Biennale speaks, Israel’s Holocaust museum is embroiled in controversy allegedly trying to protect an oligarch, Ray Johnson in Chicago, the problem with queer influencer activists, and more.