Art News. Vasari Codex

rate_review review schedule Mar 25, 2026 visibility 19 link 30 artists

2026 whitney biennial critics conversation

The 82nd edition of the Whitney Biennial has opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer. Featuring 56 artists from diverse global backgrounds, the exhibition explores themes of American empire, human-nonhuman relationships, and the impact of infrastructure. Early critical reactions highlight a pervasive sense of "horror" and bodily disturbance, with works utilizing AI, sculpture, and painting to address grief, war, and societal transformation.

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rate_review review schedule Mar 13, 2026 visibility 25 link 15 artists

critical reduction the 2014 whitney biennial 5409

The 2014 Whitney Biennial has debuted with a controversial three-curator structure, tasking Michelle Grabner, Stuart Comer, and Anthony Elms with organizing separate floors of the museum. This meta-review aggregates the initial critical reception from major publications, noting that the fragmented format has forced critics to evaluate the exhibition as three distinct shows rather than a unified vision.

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rate_review review schedule Oct 8, 2025 visibility 21 link 8 artists, 1 gallery

sam mckinniss jeffrey deitch review

Sam McKinniss's new exhibition "Law and Order" at Jeffrey Deitch in New York presents paintings of viral and iconic figures, including Jeremy Meeks, Luigi Mangione, Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl, and riderless horses running through urban streets. The show explores how social media blurs the lines between advertising, entertainment, and politics, capturing the experience of scrolling through online content. The article, part of ARTnews's Link Rot column by Shanti Escalante-De Mattei, examines McKinniss's attempt to illustrate the feeling of living in contemporary America through curated images of law enforcers and law breakers.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 23, 2026 visibility 23 link 5 artists, 1 gallery

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.

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rate_review review schedule May 4, 2026 visibility 20 link 12 artists

The Enigma of Alison Knowles

Lauren Moya Ford reviews the only book dedicated to Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, who died six months ago. The book, "Performing Chance: The Art of Alison Knowles In/Out of Fluxus" by Nicole L. Woods (2026), attempts to illuminate Knowles's life and work, but Ford notes that much of her personal life remains mysterious despite the author's efforts. The article is part of a broader books newsletter that also features new tomes on Hans Holbein’s portraits, Jan Staller’s photographs of Manhattan construction sites, and a discussion of a Black Panther family album at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

newspaper Hyperallergic open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Apr 13, 2026 visibility 24 link 3 artists, 1 gallery

Ai Weiwei and the Art of Keeping Your Mouth Shut

Dissident artist Ai Weiwei explores the corrosive nature of state control and self-restraint in his new book, "On Censorship" (2026). Drawing from a lifetime of persecution—including his father’s exile to a labor camp, his own 81-day detention in 2011, and recent digital erasure by Chinese AI—Ai argues that censorship fundamentally strips individuals of their humanity. He highlights how the mechanism of silencing has evolved from overt state violence in the East to a more insidious culture of self-censorship in the West, exemplified by the cancellation of his own 2023 exhibition at Lisson Gallery following comments on the conflict in Gaza.

newspaper Hyperallergic open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Nov 19, 2025 visibility 19 link 8 artists, 1 gallery

art david rimanelli alex katz matthew barney

The article reviews Alex Katz's latest exhibition at Gladstone Gallery in New York, featuring 11 large orange-and-white canvases depicting the road to his Maine home, alongside Matthew Barney's three-channel video work "DRAWING RESTRAINT 28" showing Katz at work on a ladder. The show, on view through December 20, 2025, pairs Katz's new paintings with Barney's video, continuing a collaboration first seen at O'Flaherty's gallery. Katz, now 98, reflects on his artistic evolution, citing Matisse's "The Red Studio" as inspiration while asserting his move away from literal representation.

newspaper Cultured open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Mar 26, 2026 visibility 15 link 3 artists

A Mirrored Monet review – painter reflects on his past in a musical with heart and humour

A new musical titled 'A Mirrored Monet' explores the life of Impressionist painter Claude Monet, focusing on his later years as he reflects on his youth, his artistic struggles, and the personal sacrifices he made, particularly regarding his first wife Camille. The production uses innovative set design to immerse the audience in the Impressionist style and features a strong cast portraying Monet and his contemporaries.

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rate_review review schedule Sep 1, 2025 visibility 17 link 18 artists

The Big Review | 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art at the Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne ★★★★★

The article reviews the exhibition "65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art" at the Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne. The show features over 400 works, including 194 loans from 78 lenders, spanning 11 rooms and a decade of planning. It highlights rarely seen bark masterpieces from Arnhem Land, such as Woŋgu Munuŋgurr's "Djapu’ miny’tji" (1942), and juxtaposes colonial depictions with Indigenous perspectives, including works by William Barak and John Glover. The exhibition is on track to become the most visited in the museum's history.

newspaper The Art Newspaper open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Apr 28, 2025 visibility 15 link 14 artists

Surprised by Jack: A Review of “Jack Whitten: The Messenger” at MoMA in New York

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is hosting "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," the largest survey ever mounted of the late abstract artist Jack Whitten, who died in 2018. The exhibition features 175 works spanning his sixty-year career, from early quasi-representational pieces to his innovative "slab" paintings made with a custom squeegee device and his later "tesserae" works that mimic glass tiles using acrylic paint. The show includes archival audio of Whitten discussing his creative process, which blended philosophy, craft, and science, and is curated by MoMA's Michelle Kuo, who knew Whitten personally.

newspaper Newcity Art open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Mar 4, 2026 visibility 22 link 3 artists

The Left Side of History: On Haile Gerima’s Black Lions—Roman Wolves

The article is a critical essay analyzing Haile Gerima's 2026 film 'Black Lions—Roman Wolves: The Children of Adwa,' focusing on its exploration of Italy's colonial occupation of Ethiopia and the repression of this history. The author uses a scene from Gerima's earlier film 'Teza'—featuring children playing near a decaying fascist monument in Ethiopia—as a starting point to discuss how colonial memory and trauma are cinematically excavated.

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rate_review review schedule May 18, 2026 visibility 5 link 8 artists, 1 gallery

Gabrielle Goliath Sounds a Call to Action in Venice

Gabrielle Goliath’s exhibition "Elegy" is presented as South Africa’s unofficial pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, after the country’s Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie overrode an independent committee’s selection of Goliath, citing her proposed inclusion of a memorial for Palestinians killed in Gaza. The installation features three video works in which singers sound a single note in tribute to victims of violence: a South African femicide victim, two women killed in Germany’s colonial genocide in Namibia, and Palestinian poet Heba Abunada. The show occupies the Chiesa di Sant'Antonin in Venice, curated with Ingrid Masondo, after a legal challenge against McKenzie was dismissed.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 9, 2026 visibility 14 link 4 artists

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.

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rate_review review schedule Feb 19, 2026 visibility 11 link 3 artists

Ballast review: emerging artist Isabella Kennedy considers submerged histories

Emerging multidisciplinary artist Isabella Kennedy has unveiled her installation 'Ballast' at Firstdraft in Sydney, a site-specific work that blends paper sculpture, video projection, and sound. The exhibition draws on the unfinished research of her late father, journalist Les Kennedy, regarding the 1941 disappearance of the HMAS Sydney II. Through delicate stitched paper forms and immersive blue light, Kennedy explores themes of familial grief, maritime history, and the meditative acts of remembrance that bridge personal and national narratives.

newspaper ArtsHub open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Apr 16, 2026 visibility 18

Art exhibit review: Fowler’s ‘Mountain Spirits’ highlights indigenous culture in the Philippines

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newspaper Daily Bruin open_in_new Read original