Weekly Newsletter
An exclusive interview with Simone Forti, a pleating event at the Brooklyn Museum with a renowned designer, and poignant drawings by children in ICE facilities.
As the workday ended, watching the sunset over Brooklyn brought a sense of calm. A discarded collection of white roses in a golden frame leaned against a stack of black trash bags outside a house, standing out as the week’s most impactful art piece. A new church opened nearby, complete with a lobby outfitted with plush brown leather sofas, which I noticed while on a milk run for the kids. Passing a bookstore, a photobook by Hans Wilschut, titled Beirut, Epi-Centre Ville, caught my eye, documenting the effects of the 2020 blast on Beirut’s streets and its spirit. Despite my interest, I continued my walk and noticed a Honda Civic with the license plate “FATIGUE,” which reminded me of the sixth anniversary of the blast on August 4. At work, we released an article on the heart-wrenching drawings by immigrant children in ICE detention centers, which deeply moved me. Yet, hearing about the efforts to reinstate SAIC professor Savneet Talwar, who was unjustly suspended for encouraging students to imagine care for a pro-Palestinian protester, restored my hope.
During an open studios event in Brooklyn, I spoke with an artist advocating for “holding on to hope.”
“Isn’t hope for those without power?” I questioned. “Exactly,” she responded.
—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief
AI Companies Are Pulping Our Humanity
In 1553, Spanish physician and theologian Michael Servetus was executed for heresy, and only three copies of his The Restoration of Christianity survived. A particular copy, now housed at the University of Edinburgh, is thought to have been preserved by John Calvin, the very Protestant leader who ordered Servetus’s execution. Calvin, who once boasted of purging the church of a “pernicious monster,” likely kept the book out of a bibliophile’s zeal rather than any fondness for Servetus.
Despite Calvin’s questionable motives, he pales in comparison to AI companies like Anthropic, which buy, digitize, and destroy out-of-print books to train language models. While Calvin had religious justification, these AI companies lack even that. | Ed Simon
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Swann Auction Galleries is hosting its 7th LGBTQ+ Art Material Culture & History auction featuring Tom of Finland, Hugh Steers, Lorenza Böttner, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and more.
The sale will also include works consigned by the Detroit Queer Biennial and the Leslie Lohman Museum.
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News
- More than 400 members of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago community have renewed calls for Savneet Talwar’s reinstatement.
- Francisco Correa Cordero, founder of the downtown New York gallery Lubov, has passed away at 37.
- ICE released nine pages seized from children detained in Texas to podcast host Allison Gill after her lawsuit in March.
- Sixteen protesters were arrested after displaying banners with portraits of ICE victims on the Hart Senate Office Building’s marble floor.
- Trump proposed a historically low budget for the Smithsonian, while his appointees pursue other measures to cut funding for the museum and research network.
- Three of Pittsburgh’s pickleball courts have been transformed into vibrant artworks as part of Sharmistha Ray’s “Geometry of Play.”
- Staff at the Eric Carle Museum are pushing to unionize amidst claims of understaffing, lack of promotions, and poor working conditions.
- Unionized workers at the Victoria and Albert East Storehouse, a public museum storage site, unanimously voted to strike over alleged “Amazon-style” work practices.
- The new exhibition Help Wanted / Leave Now explores “Operation Wetback,” one of the United States’ harshest deportation campaigns against undocumented Mexican workers.
- After two decades of delays and recalibrations, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation will open its Frank Gehry-designed Abu Dhabi location on December 11.
- A new study shows that arts and culture organizations receiving more local government funding during the COVID-19 pandemic fared better in subsequent years.
- Art Movements: Gray Wielebinski’s scented artworks for Frieze London’s restrooms, Michelle Grabner’s gift to a Wisconsin museum, Gagosian’s shrinking real estate footprint, and other news.
From Our Critics
Interviews
Features
Kimsooja Comes Full Circle
Her first exhibition in Toronto in 30 years highlights her unwavering focus on the needle as a symbol of folding and unfolding, memory, and displacement. | Rea McNamara
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Guide
- Required Reading: A Renaissance altarpiece returns home, Yoko Ono at the Broad, the anti-AI writing movement, uncertain future for butterfly collectors, the harp’s resurgence, and more.
- In Memoriam: Remembering Milan KnĂžák, Simone Forti, Francisco Correa Cordero, and others.
- A View From the Easel: Connor Czora delves into the history of porcelain ceramics while teaching the next generation of potters in DC.
Opportunities
Residencies, fellowships, grants, and open calls from the Erie Canal Museum, Jentel Artist Residency, Princeton University, and more in our monthly list of opportunities for artists, writers, and art workers.
