alex da corte modern art museum of fort worth review 1234749431

Alex Da Corte's mid-career survey, "The Whale," is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, featuring works that repurpose pop-cultural icons like Disney villains and Mariah Carey to explore themes of erasure and violence. The exhibition includes pieces such as *A Time to Kill* (2016), which obliquely references the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting through an inverted Elsa standee, and *The Great Pretender* (2021), which removes Lily Tomlin from a TIME magazine cover to comment on queer erasure.

christian marclay one hit wonder clocks doors brooklyn museum 1234747681

Christian Marclay's latest supercut film, "Doors," is now on view at the Brooklyn Museum after stops in Boston and Europe. The 50-minute looped video compiles scenes of famous actors opening and closing doors from various movies, following the success of Marclay's 2011 hit "The Clock," a 24-hour video-clock that synchronizes on-screen timepieces with the viewer's actual time. The article critiques "Doors" as a less profound, more self-obsessed work that lacks the emotional resonance of its predecessor.

lorna simpson met museum painting survey review 1234743323

Lorna Simpson's paintings are the subject of a new survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, titled "Source Notes," on view through November 2. The show features over 20 paintings created between 2014 and 2024, marking the first exhibition to survey Simpson's output in this medium. Curated by Lauren Rosati, the exhibition aims to provide an overview of her painterly practice while connecting it to her collage work, with two vitrines displaying her collages to illustrate the fluidity between the two practices. Simpson, best known for her photography from the 1980s, debuted her paintings at the 2015 Venice Biennale organized by the late curator Okwui Enwezor.

Isaac Julien review – Gwendoline Christie meets a cyborg starfish in a pleasure-seeker’s postmodern parlour

A new film by artist Isaac Julien, featuring actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie as science-fiction deities, is on view at the Cosmic House in London. The 25-minute work, which incorporates themes from Octavia E. Butler's novel *Parable of the Sower*, explores concepts of change, interconnectedness, and fluid identity through a visually rich, postmodern lens.

Tracey Emin’s Cult of the Self

A major retrospective of Tracey Emin's work, "A Second Life," is on view at Tate Modern in London. The exhibition presents the artist's deeply personal and confessional body of work, including iconic pieces like "My Bed" and "Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made," which chronicle intimate experiences of love, trauma, and self-exploration through text, objects, and raw imagery.

jack whittens 9 11 01 moma 2634165

Jack Whitten's monumental mosaic-painting "9.11.01" (2006) is the focus of this article, which examines the work on view at the Museum of Modern Art. The painting, created in response to the September 11 attacks, uses abstract forms—a cracked black pyramid with dagger-like spines and bootprints—to evoke the trauma of that day. Whitten, who witnessed the first plane strike from his studio in Manhattan, embedded ash and wreckage fragments into the surface, blending abstraction with historical memory.

Why Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Go-Go Dancer Piece Remains Subversive

The New York Times examines the enduring power of Felix Gonzalez-Torres's 1991 performance piece "Untitled" (Go-Go Dancing Platform), in which a go-go dancer performs on a pedestal for a brief, scheduled period each day. The work, currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, uses the dancer's absence as a central component, creating a poignant metaphor for queer presence and loss.

How to Extract the Story of Appalachia

The artist collective GRIT has issued a sharp critique of Fia Backström’s exhibition, "The Great Society," currently on view at the Queens Museum. The authors argue that Backström, a European artist, engages in "extractive" storytelling by focusing exclusively on trauma, environmental disaster, and poverty in West Virginia. They contend that the exhibition’s aesthetic choices—such as inverting landscape photographs and omitting human subjects—flatten the region's complexity into a spectacle of misery that alienates the very community it claims to represent.

Jule Korneffel Finds Meaning at the End of Light

Artist Jule Korneffel's solo exhibition 'In Search of Lost Light' is on view at Spencer Brownstone Gallery through May 2. The show features seven paintings from 2023 to the present, including a site-specific wall work, that explore themes of fading light, memory, and melancholia through a nuanced palette of grays and blues.

When the story has already been told -- ‘Gordon Parks: The South in Color’ at Jackson Fine Art

Gordon Parks: The South in Color, curated by Dawoud Bey, is on view at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta through June 13. The exhibition celebrates the 20th anniversary of The Gordon Parks Foundation and the 70th anniversary of Parks’ 1956 Life magazine feature on segregation in the South. The show presents a broader selection of Parks’ photographs than the original magazine spread, including iconic works like In-Home Barbershop, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956. The article, written by a photographer and writer for ArtsATL, reflects on the experience of seeing Parks’ work in person and contrasts the gallery presentation with the editorial framing of the Life feature.

A Baroque Too Baroque: Reflections on the Colossal Exhibition in Forlì

Un Barocco troppo barocco. Riflessioni sulla colossale mostra di Forlì

A massive exhibition titled "Barocco: il gran teatro delle idee" (Baroque: The Grand Theater of Ideas) is on view at the Museo Civico San Domenico in Forlì, Italy. The show, curated by a committee of six, ambitiously attempts to define the Baroque across the 17th and 18th centuries, extending its scope to include France and Spain, and even suggesting its echoes in the 20th century. It features approximately 300 works, including paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts.

Latent Energy: A Review of Bernard Williams at Elmhurst Art Museum

Bernard Williams' solo exhibition "Crossings" is on view across the Elmhurst Art Museum campus, including its parking lot and the Mies van der Rohe house. The show features sculptures, paintings, and installations that reference African American history, such as the "Spirit of Bessie Coleman" works honoring the pioneering aviator, and "Cowboy Dream" with its roosters and cowboy figure. The exhibition's title and layout deliberately avoid linear narratives, instead forcing viewers to navigate a fragmented path that mirrors the complexities of historical memory and racial injustice.