A group of School of Visual Arts (SVA) students and alumni staged a moving pro-Palestine demonstration last night, May 16, during an exhibition opening at the institution’s Flatiron Gallery in Manhattan. For over 45 minutes, the activists read the names and ages of children killed in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack, demanding the school’s…
Category: Arts Entertainments
Striking Parsons Students Withdraw Artwork From Thesis Exhibition
A group of fine arts students at Parsons School of Design has withdrawn artwork from their BFA thesis exhibition amid an ongoing strike to pressure the New School to divest from companies connected to Israeli military interests. Opening of the Seeds of Solidarity exhibition (photo Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic) In lieu of the official exhibition, the students…
Hundreds Attend Historic “Counter-Commencement” for Columbia Students at NYC Cathedral
In the middle of her commencement speech, actor and poet Amanda Seales stepped away from the rostrum and turned around with a flourish to show the back of her graduation gown, right below the keffiyeh she was wearing. The words painted on the gown read, “Master’s in Revolution.” It was a fitting beginning to the…
Required Reading
‣ This week marked 39 years since the Philadelphia police bombed the MOVE Black liberation group, killing 11 people and destroying dozens of homes. For WHYY, Cory Sharber reports on a memorial held in honor of the victims and their families’ ongoing fight for their remains, reportedly held by major museums: Africa Jr. said while…
Spray-Painting “Me Too” on a Courbet Is Not the Feminism We Need
On May 6, two feminist activists entered Centre Pompidou-Metz in France and spray-painted Gustave Coubert’s 1866 work “The Origin of the World” with the “Me Too” slogan. Artist Deborah De Robertis claimed responsibility for the action, saying her intention was to “call on all women, with or without vulvas, all intersex, trans and non-binary people,…
How the Black Meme Turns a Trope Into a Trap
In the months preceding its release, Legacy Russell’s Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us (2024) generated a considerable amount of literary notoriety. The curator and writer’s second publication details the story of memetic Blackness — the migration and circulation of Blackness as material — deftly stitching together analyses of accounts from…
After Shift to Indigenous Governance, Forge Project Names New Fellows
Forge Project 2024 fellowship winners (clockwise from top left): Delbert Anderson (Navajo/Diné), Schon Matthew Duncan (United Keetoowah Band of the Cherokee Indians), Donna Hogerhuis (Stockbridge-Munsee), Lindsay McIntyre (Inuit), Mikayla Patton (Oglala Sioux Lakota), and Sterling Anthony Schreiber II (Stockbridge-Munsee) (images courtesy Forge Project) The Native-led arts and culture advocacy organization Forge Project announced its 2024…
How the Met Gala Catalyzed a “Celebrity Block Party”
On the night of May 6, between dress adjustments, pearl placements, and camera flashes at the controversial Met Gala, 27 protesters were arrested on the Upper East Side during a pro-Palestine demonstration while Israeli forces seized the Rafah crossing that displaced Palestinians relied on for their evacuation to Egypt. In response to the celebrity silence…
Preserving the Art of Palestinian Taṭrīz 76 Years After the Nakba
Every May 15 for the last 76 years, Palestinians around the world commemorate the Nakba (Arabic for “the catastrophe”), during which 750,000 Palestinians were permanently displaced from their homelands as a result of the establishment of the State of Israel. During this mass exodus, the ancient embroidery practice known as taṭrīz or tatreez became an…
Bakpak Durden Traces a Birthmark’s Lineage
DETROIT — Above a little snarl where Detroit’s major freeways meet in the middle of the city, a towering mural rises into view. Painted by Smug, the artwork depicts city native painter and muralist Bakpak Durden in a larger-than-life calling card that suits its unexpectedly approachable subject perfectly. “Smug was one of the artists that…