COURTESY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Race
National Geographic has come out with a new “Race Issue” and an editor’s letter headlined thus: “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.”
National Geographic
For the Village Voice, Siddhartha Mitter goes long and deep into the matter of Dana Schutz’s controversial painting of Emmett Till and ways it led, one year ago, to impassioned reactions around the world.
Village Voice
Ai Caramba
“It’s exactly like slave trading,” Ai Weiwei said to the Guardian in reference to a U.S-Australia refugee agreement. “You cannot deal with human beings by violating their [rights].”
The Guardian
Ai Weiwei also had something to say about the removal of presidential terms limits in China: “China has always been emperor state,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “It doesn’t matter if it has the title of communist, now capitalism. It’s a fatalistic society, so (if) it changes leader or not change leader, the system and the culture always stay the same.”
Reuters
What does a banana carved into the shape of Bart Simpson look like? It’s funny you should ask!
Atlas Obscura
Museums
Judy Chicago will be reinstating her 1972 group-exhibition project Womanhouse, this time as Woman House, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
The New York Times
In time with the announcement of a scheduled opening on October 4, the Washington Post has a detailed look at the expansion plans being put into action at the Glenstone museum in Potomac, Maryland.
The Washington Post
In Maine, the Portland Museum of Art will begin offering free admission to attendees aged 21 and under.
Portland Museum of Art
Some 50 art world luminaries signed an open letter condemning the firing of María Inés Rodríguez as the director of the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux.
Artnet News
Someone in Iceland had a point to make about a museum there.
Twitter
Criticism
Christopher Hawthorne, the architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times, is leaving the paper for a new job as chief design director for the city.
Los Angeles Times
For the New Yorker, Doreen St. Félix wrote about the stirring photography of Deana Lawson.
The New Yorker
Film
Jacques Goldstein’s Black Is the Color is a new 50-minute documentary about African-American art from 1867 to the present.
Hyperallergic
Misc.
Check out some crazy UFO art from England’s National Archives!
The Paris Review