Seeing by Hand
June Leaf, the late American artist known for her tactile, hand‑driven creations, is the focus of the traveling retrospective "Shooting from the Heart," which presents over 150 works spanning 75 years. The show arranges her paintings, sculptures, drawings, and kinetic metal pieces thematically, reflecting her belief that all media are interconnected. Leaf’s practice—where carving becomes painting and motion fuels drawing—centers on feeling objects with her fingers, a philosophy echoed in works like *Figures Coming Out of Hand and Head*. Upcoming Steidl releases and a documentary by Jem Cohen aim to deepen public access to her legacy.
Manet and Morisot: Game On
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Cleveland Museum of Art have opened “Manet and Morisot,” an exhibition that juxtaposes Édouard Manet’s iconic *Balcony* with Berthe Morisot’s *The Artist’s Sister at a Window*. The show revisits a 1870 episode...
Inflatable Life
Paul Chan’s latest show at Greene Naftali revives his signature “Breathers”—inflatable nylon figures powered by hidden fans. The exhibition, now approaching twenty pieces, includes standout works like the five‑member “Tokener Ecstasis” ring and the surreal “Too Spirituale! (after Leibniz).” Chan’s sculptures blend the eye‑catching...
Drawn to the Void
The National Gallery’s "Drawn to the Void" exhibition, curated by Christine Riding and Lucy Bamford, reunites ten of Joseph Wright of Derby’s late‑1760s canvases, including the striking "Two Boys Fighting Over a Bladder." The show highlights Wright’s pioneering use of...
Visions of Depravity
Ceija Stojka, a Romani survivor of Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Bergen‑Belsen, is the focus of a new show at New York’s Drawing Center. The exhibition showcases the small, expression‑laden canvases she began creating in her mid‑fifties to record the horrors of...
Art for Our Age of Chaos
The Whitney Biennial 2026 and the New Museum’s “New Humans: Memories of the Future” open in Manhattan, showcasing works by more than 50 and 100 artists respectively. Both shows juxtapose room‑filling installations with tiny, whisper‑like pieces, a curatorial tactic meant to...
A Clearing of the Ground
Small liberal‑arts colleges are in crisis, with 89 closures or mergers since 2020 and a quarter of private institutions at risk. Hampshire College, the last high‑profile experiment in progressive, no‑grade education, announced on April 14 it could not enroll enough students...
After the Mystics
Lauren Kane, managing editor of The New York Review, discusses how medieval religious art—especially the Cloisters’ “Spectrum of Desire” exhibit—reveals a surprisingly erotic and transgressive side to the Middle Ages. Her academic background in religion at Yale Divinity School sparked a...
The Hardy Men
In 2022 Jonathan Keeperman, a former UC‑Irvine lecturer and right‑wing provocateur, launched Passage Press to build a reactionary cultural apparatus that counters the left’s dominance in arts and media. The boutique publisher quickly gained notoriety, hosting a “Coronation Ball” attended...
Everything but The…
Art Newsletter No. 42 reviews the illustrations featured in the New York Review’s April 9 and April 26 issues, highlighting the cover painting “Orange Squeeze” by Rachel Domm and a series of bespoke artworks commissioned for individual essays. The newsletter explains the editorial choice...
A Widening Gulf
Adam Hanieh’s essay highlights how the UAE’s wealth from oil has been transformed into a sprawling petrochemical, plastics and fertilizer empire that underpins global food and industrial supply chains. Dubai’s Jebel Ali port and its financial hub link Asia, Africa and...
A Workingman’s Surrealist
American sculptor H.C. Westermann, whose career was sparked by witnessing the 1945 USS Franklin disaster, built a lifelong obsession with a “death ship” motif that fuses wartime trauma with pulp‑era imagery. The Art Institute of Chicago’s “Anchor Clanker” exhibition, presented by...
The Emirates on the Tightrope
On March 22, President Donald Trump warned he would strike Iranian power plants if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed, prompting Iran to threaten retaliation against UAE utilities. The UAE’s foreign minister rejected the intimidation, while senior officials advocated a UN‑backed...
Namwali Serpell on Toni Morrison, Criticism, and Narrative Empathy
Namwali Serpell, Harvard professor and novelist, released *On Morrison*, a collection of essays dissecting Toni Morrison’s five landmark novels. In a *Private Life* podcast interview, she and host Jarrett Earnest explore Morrison’s literary techniques, public‑intellectual role, and lasting cultural impact....
Novels of the Future
Aaron Matz’s review of Dan Sperrin’s *State of Ridicule* argues that literary political satire has faded because modern governance is too intricate and mass culture overwhelms traditional mockery. He notes that television and streaming now host the most incisive satire,...
Misjudgment at Nuremberg
The 2026 film “Nuremberg” dramatizes the post‑World II trials, centering on prison psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) and his uneasy rapport with Nazi leader Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe). Adapted from Jack El‑Hai’s book, the production aims for an epic thriller but ends up resembling a...
Living Through the Civil War
George Templeton Strong, a 19th‑century New York lawyer, leveraged his Wall Street connections to become a leading civic figure during the Civil War. In 1861 he was appointed treasurer of the United States Sanitary Commission, which raised roughly $25 million (about...
Blood in the Game
Lee Clay Johnson’s *Bloodline* and Carl Hiaasen’s *Fever Beach* use dark humor to dissect America’s rising violence, corruption and environmental decay. Johnson follows a delusional ex‑car salesman in rural Tennessee who amputates his own hand to claim a mythic Confederate legacy, while Hiaasen...
The Throwaway Planet
The article traces plastic’s evolution from a wartime novelty to a global pollutant, noting that WWII accelerated synthetic polymer production for military gear. Today, plastics underpin a consumer culture that discards roughly one ton per person, accounting for over half...
The Painter’s Shadow World
Morgan Meis’s three‑book *Three Paintings Trilogy*—covering Peter Paul Rubens, Franz Marc and Joan Mitchell—posits that a painting functions as a "second world" or shadow realm distinct from life and death. He argues that artists shift in and out of this existential space, using the...
A Devotee of Deception
Domenico Starnone, the celebrated Italian novelist, has published his latest work, *The Old Man by the Sea*, a reflective memoir of an aging writer who values distance and linguistic precision over passion. The narrative follows an ex‑teacher narrator confronting his...
‘To Share Is Our Duty’
The newly released volume “The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf” adds over 1,400 previously unpublished letters to the author’s corpus, bringing the total to more than 5,000 pieces of correspondence. Edited by long‑time Woolf scholars Stephen Barkway and the late...
‘Tell Me Your Worst’
Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck, renowned for her indirect portraiture, instructed models to look away, a practice reflected in her self‑portraits that balance evasiveness and assertiveness. Born in Helsinki in 1862, she earned a scholarship to the Finnish Art Society’s drawing...
Syphoning Morale
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth praised aggressive actions in the early weeks of the Iran conflict, while the Pentagon rolled out a new memo that sharply curtails the editorial freedom of the historic *Stars and Stripes* newspaper. The eight‑page directive,...
Rivals of the Landscape
The Tate Britain exhibition “Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals” commemorates the 250th birthdays of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, displaying over 150 paintings, sketches and objects that dramatize their historic rivalry. Curator Amy Concannon stages the 1831 Royal Academy hanging...
Crowds and Lovers
The forthcoming NYRB edition of John Berger’s novel G. opens with an essay that revisits a 1915 scene in Trieste, where the protagonist G. and Slovenian immigrant Nuša discuss a forged passport amid wartime intrigue. A butterfly landing nearby suspends...
Interminable Ignorance
The essay argues that human ignorance has historically powered imagination, giving rise to myths, religions, and early social structures, as noted by Vico and Nietzsche. Modern science, driven by a relentless will to knowledge, has delivered unprecedented benefits but also...
Deciphering Dame Muriel
Frances Wilson’s latest biography, "Deciphering Dame Muriel: Electric Spark," offers a fresh examination of Muriel Spark’s formative years, education, and personal relationships. Wilson traces Spark’s Scottish‑Jewish heritage, her celebrated school days at Gillespie’s, and her marriage to math teacher Sydney...
The Marbles & the Muses
In September 2006 a marble foot from the Parthenon frieze was reattached in Athens, marking the first return of a Parthenon piece since the early 1800s. The gesture sparked renewed calls for the full repatriation of the Elgin Marbles, now...
Mother Daughter Sister Wife
Ottilie Mulzet’s new anthology, *Under a Pannonian Sky*, gathers poems by ten Hungarian women born between 1922 and 1972, foregrounding a “Pannonian” identity that stretches beyond modern Hungary. The collection, translated by Mulzet and six collaborators, challenges the perception that...
Richard Hell on and Poetry as a Way of Life
Richard Hell, the seminal punk‑rock figure, joins NYRB’s Private Life podcast to discuss his novel *Godlike*. The book, first published in 2005, has been reissued by NYRB Classics with a new afterword by Raymond Foye. *Godlike* fuses Hell’s 1970s New York...
The New War on Speech
On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order claiming to end "government censorship" and restore free speech, accusing the prior administration of pressuring social‑media firms to silence dissent. The order asserts that no federal officer may abridge the speech...
‘Dirty Work’
S. Yizhar’s 1949 novella Khirbet Khizeh dramatizes the forced expulsion and burning of a Palestinian village during Israel’s 1948 war, drawing on his own experience as a Givati Brigade officer. The real village, Khirbet al‑Khisas, was identified in 1978, confirming the author’s claim...
A Most Particular Life
The early modern diary of Swiss physician Felix Platter, chronicling his teenage journey from Basel to Montpellier in 1552, has been reissued in a new paperback edition. The English translation, originally produced by Seán Jennett in 1961, now features a foreword...
God’s Impertinent Prophets
Naomi Baker’s *Voices of Thunder* uncovers a hidden wave of seventeenth‑century English women who wrote, preached, and staged prophetic acts amid religious turmoil. From blood‑stained Quaker protests at St. Paul’s to the radical visions of Seekers, Ranters and Levellers, these dissenters...
All of Us Yahoos
Dan Sperrin’s State of Ridicule offers an 800‑page, Roman‑to‑2010s survey of English satire, arguing that satire is fundamentally political and serves as a tool for interpreting power. The book adopts a “longue durée” label but actually traces decade‑by‑decade political events, pairing each...