Documentary filmmaker and installation artist Kate Levy considers herself an activist — a title often bandied about by artists these days — which Levy embodies sometimes as a participant rather than as a documentarian. “My work always has a political analysis — namely anti-exploitation and anti-racism,” Levy told Hyperallergic. “I […]
Read More
Truth is a largely subjective and challenging aspect of human existence, especially in these politically divisive times. Physical objects present a shared reality and an external point of reference, to which we can relate (though not always agree). Consider the artist Sophie Eisner, who creates an armature for the kinds […]
Read More
Jewish continuity — that is, the relationship between older and younger generations of Jewish people — is always a concern within the community. The Jewish Museum of Maryland is tackling this discourse in partnership with the New Jewish Culture Fellowship (NJCF), currently presenting work byfellows and guest-curated by NJCF fellow, […]
Read More
Nothing really prepares one for the experience of entering the Huckleberry Explorer’s Club (HEC), a small museum in a duplex in Detroit’s burgeoning Core City neighborhood whose ground floor houses a general store full of secondhand oddities for sale at throwaway prices. The project is a collaboration between author and […]
Read More
It is the most human tendency to take the place where you were raised for granted — a site literallygranted to you upon your entry into the world. Some of us never leave our place of origin, which makes it hard to develop any real perspective about it, while others […]
Read More
DETROIT — Art clubs were a popular phenomenon around the turn of the 20th century, cropping up in major cities across the US. Several, like the National Arts Club in New York (est. 1898) and the California Art Club in Los Angeles (est. 1909) are still in operation, some 100 […]
Read More
For artist Liz Cohen, photography initially seemed well-suited to serve her natural curiosity about the lives of others, but she quickly had to reckon with a sense of voyeurism that left her standing apart from her subjects. Her first big project, CANAL, was a four-year work of street photography and […]
Read More
Artists are fundamentally problem solvers. They are generally understood to be solving problems of a personal-expressive nature, or perhaps ones related to community, and occasionally political or environmental problems. They are not often considered the front line for solving, say, problems of city infrastructure. But maybe they should be. If […]
Read More
Let’s conjecture that the world of fine art is best geared to recognize and promote those artists who approach artmaking as a career. Careerism among artists enables MFA programs, blue-chip galleries, auction houses, annual and biennial art fair circuits, and other institutions that inextricably make artistic means meet capitalist ends. […]
Read More
Though its origins are somewhat disputed, a popular maxim holds that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” — which is a sideswipe at music criticism, specifically, but might also be more broadly interpreted to mean that certain expressive media cannot be effectively used to convey a sense of […]
Read More