COURTESY PIXABAY
Timely
Here’s a good primer on why the precise nature of the Emmett Till photograph controversially painted by Dana Schutz in the Whitney Biennial might have made painting it almost exactly the wrongest thing to do. [The New Republic]
A Q&A with Claudia Rankine about the Racial Imaginary Institute, a collective endeavor currently taking shape. “Our name ‘racial imaginary,’ “ she says, “is meant to capture the enduring truth of race: It is an invented concept that nevertheless operates with extraordinary force in our daily lives, limiting our movements and imaginations.” [Artforum]
A senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute makes a case for defunding the NEA and successfully sets fire to a straw man of his own making. [The National Review]
Artists
11 female art teachers pick their favorite female artists. [New York]
A profile of artist James N. Kienitz Wilkins, who figures in the intriguing film program of the Whitney Biennial. [Frieze]
Jonas Mekas will show photographs of WWII-era displaced persons at Documenta. [The Art Newspaper]
12 artists made visual representations of songs from Radiohead’s OK Computer to mark the album’s 20th anniversary. [Pitchfork]
Thinking
Sales of poster board and foam board in a certain week in January rose 33 and 42 percent, respectively. The cause? People making protest signs with their art supplies. [The New York Times]
In the specialist journal Nature, a review of “On the Origin of Art,” a scientific query of a show in Australia featuring proposed origin stories by evolutionary theorists such as Steven Pinker. [Nature]
James Wolcott pays touching tribute to New York Review of Books editor Robert Silvers, upon whose death this week “the reign of the New York intellectual as paragon, bete noire, highbrow subverter, inside operator, and political conscience has come to final rest.” [Vanity Fair]
Miscellany
Corrina Mehiel, an artist and teacher who was working with Mel Chin, was found murdered in a rowhouse in Washington, D.C. [NBC Washington]
Choreographer Stephen Petronio shows his wall to the Times. [The New York Times]
A video history of Sara Berman, keeper of a curious closet recreated by her daughter Maira Kalman at the Met. [The New Yorker]
David Lynch’s Eraserhead is 40! [The Guardian]