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NCECA 2026 Annual Exhibition: “Absence Takes Form” Wasserman Projects, January 31-April 4, 2026 Curated by Adrienne Spinozzi by K.A. Letts From ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablets to the humble coffee mug at your local coffee shop, objects made of clay–cheap, easily acquired and easily worked clay—are synonymous with human civilization from its earliest days to the present. NCECA’s “Absence Takes Form,” a wide-ranging survey of contemporary ceramic art, on view from now until April 4 in Detroit, illustrates the almost limitless uses to which the medium can be put, from the ephemeral to the enduring. Unavoidably, the broad variety in technique, theme and concept from so many artists results in a collection that strains the audience’s ability to fully appreciate the work. The only solution, such as it is, is to slow down and try to appreciate each contribution on its own terms.         A diverse juried overview of current trends in ceramics, with entries by 35 clay artists, is installed in the spacious galleries of Motown’s Wasserman Projects, alongside a smaller, more focused collection by five invited artists. This intimate show-within-a-show highlights specially selected ceramicists whose work centers specifically upon the interplay of their cultural origins with each artist’s personal art practice. Adrienne Spinozzi, an associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and organizer of “Absence Takes Form,” describes the smaller group’s selection as intended to honor each artist’s personal, idiosyncratic identity, even as each borrows from broader cultural traditions, creating a new synthesis of past and present in the ongoing art history of ceramics.             Three of the invited artists, Adebunmi Gbadebo, David R. MacDonald and Anina Major, share roots in the African diaspora, though each takes from this boundless source in their own, highly personalized fashion. Adebunmi Gbadebo explores her familial connections in Nigeria as well as the trauma of her ancestors’ arrival in America as slaves. Employing materials from the site of her family’s enslavement—soil, cotton, water, rice, bones and archival data—she creates artifacts that give physical form to her ancestral history. Her two entries, At the Bottom of the Atlantic Ocean There’s a Railroad Made of Human Bones, II and Anna Eliza Clay William, Died Oct. 29, 1918, Age 24 years, are accompanied by a video documenting her process, Watch Out for the Ghosts (dir. Yvonne Michelle Shirley.) David R. MacDonald’s work, in contrast, emphasizes the timelessness and universality of the vessel as symbol and archetype. He explains, “The principal concern of my art is the articulation of the magnificence and nobility of the human spirit, and a celebration of my African heritage. The material I use is clay. The primary vehicle for expression, the vessel.” His two similar pedestal bowls in the exhibition, Ceremonial Bowl I and II, delicately balance the decorative with the monumental. Anina Major transmutes memories of her Bahamian grandmother’s basketweaving techniques into emotionally resonant clay artworks, her present honoring her family’s past. Her clay weavings, Silent Sentinel I and II, flank a video featuring the artist’s hands in the act of making, Handwaves.           Two other invited artists bring equally profound clay traditions from further afield. Egyptian ceramicist Ibrahim Said describes the philosophy that guides his art practice, “My interests lie in expanding on forms and principles rooted in my culture: namely ancient Egyptian pottery and Islamic arts.” Indeed, his two entries, the elegant vessel Gold Rings and the installation piece 99 Names of God, effectively express the refined geometry and deep spirituality of his native culture. Yaesookyung, of South Korea, creates broken vessels, elaborately mended in gold, that emphasize the fragility and ephemerality of all existence. She explains, “I have no intention of healing or fixing the objects. Rather, my work can be seen as glorification of the fateful weakness of being[s], including myself.” Her single entry in the exhibition, Translated Vase, glories in the golden, almost baroque, excrescence of the mended material. Its highly wrought intensity is quite different from the relative austerity of traditional Japanese Kintsugi ware to which her work is sometimes compared. Collectively, these artists demonstrate a diverse range of aesthetic approaches and illustrate the endless potentialities inherent in their shared medium.           The juried portion of “Absence Takes Form” (also curated by Adrienne Spinozzi) adopts an entirely different approach. Variety and virtuosity characterize the artworks. Excellence in craft and concept seem to be the shared theme here, and the artists deliver handsomely.           A few entries are created through the aggregation of small objects into large-scale installations, from the frolicsome figurative sculptures in Lisa Marie Barber’s Playground grouping to the more restrained collection of ghostly white porcelain artifacts in Things Fall Away by Pattie Chalmers. Particularly appealing is the stitched-together tile wall hanging by Karina Yanes. The images on each tile, painted in bright colors and outlined in black, along with the grid format, deliver a comic book appeal. Tiles II, by Ari Zuaro, brings to mind a particularly solid version of traditional Japanese Noren curtains. Like several other pieces in the exhibition, this artwork demonstrates clay’s protean ability to mimic other materials and uses.           Perhaps in a nod to Detroit as the site of this year’s NCECA conference, Tim Keenan has contributed Modernist Ceramic Sculpture of Contemporary Auto Worker, ironically offering the image of a robotic arm. Crucible with Exterior Spigot by Steven Montgomery continues the industrial theme.             Classic forms and traditional techniques are not overlooked; Robert King’s stately Matriarch is a dignified presence and Yael Braha’s shigaraki vessel, Topography of Becoming, continues the venerable ceramic practice often linked with the Japanese tea ceremony.An entirely different tradition is referenced in Yana Payusova’s charming pair of elaborately painted porcelain cats, Pussy I and II. Other artworks, like Hirotsune Yashima’s Statue of Yellow Monkey II and De la Tierra al Esperitu by Natalia Arbelaez, are potent exemplars of clay as material for figurative sculpture.

Jim Jarmusch: Father Mother Sister Brother January 9–22, 2026, Music Box Theater, Chicago, IL by John Thomure Jim Jarmusch’s latest film Father Mother Sister Brother is a quietly devastating meditation on family and mortality. Its themes manifest obliquely and elliptically across a triptych of conversations through visual, verbal, and symbolic motifs. Jarmusch masterfully layers character development in offhand comments and asides. The stilted conversation and non-sequiturs reflect much more truthfully our daily communications. The resulting film is as confounding as it is deeply moving.           The initial vignette opens with the bookish siblings, Jeff and Emily played by Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik respectively, driving through a snowy American suburb, as a group of teenagers skateboarding, suspended in slow motion. The pair anxiously discuss the impending visit with their father, brought to life by Tom Waits. Their worried conversation punctuated by quick cuts to the father scattering detritus across his house—books, blankets, boxes. The siblings debate whether they ought to be financially supporting him. Arriving at the father’s home, Jeff pops the trunk and pulls out a box of food, much to his sister’s indignant bemusement. The ensuing conversation is equal parts heartbreaking, comedic, and surreal. The father eventually invites his children to stay for dinner, but the pair deny his invite. The siblings question if they have ever really known or even personally related to their father as they drive away. They realize he has always been a stranger to them.           Meanwhile, the father cleans the clutter away to reveal how stylish and cool his house actually is. He descends from the second floor sporting a red velvet suit, flops down onto his dark forest green leather couch and calls an anonymous friend whom he asks out for dinner and drinks as he’s just scored some cash. The father then pulls a tarp off a pristine BMW before driving away, calling into question everything we previously witnessed.         The second vignette begins in Dublin with a mother, Charlotte Rampling as Catherine Russell, on the phone with her therapist relaying her anxiety about seeing her two daughters: Timothea and Lilith played by Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps. Timothea is more neurotic, though seemingly more stable while Lilith lives recklessly as a free-spirited grifter. We are introduced to the daughters as they drive to visit their mother. As Timothea drives, we again see a different group of skateboarders in slow motion until the engine sputters and stops. She makes a panicked phone call to the mother and an even more panicked call to roadside assistance. Lilith is being driven by her friend Jeanette. Neither seems to be coping with adulthood well.           When both sisters finally arrive at their mother’s house, she goes to prepare their annual tea in the kitchen. There is a cut to the sisters looking through a box of books bearing their mother’s name, indicating that she is a prominent fiction writer. Timothea comments that their mother would hate to see them looking at her work like this. Catherine announces that tea is ready. We get to see an immaculate spread of biscuits, cakes, jams, and the like. The bountiful repast only further accentuates the woefully anemic conversation. When asked about what each daughter is doing with their lives, Lilith makes dubious references to being very successful with a slew of influencer clients who accept spiritual guidance from her. Timothea reveals that she has secured a position on the local history society’s town council which selects local sites to preserve. Her accomplishment is met with indifference. A particularly revealing moment arises when the mother cheekily asks, “Shall I play mother?” to which the younger sister responds that she might as well start now.         The final section introduces us to a pair of twins in Paris, Billy and Skye portrayed by Luka Sabbat and Indya Moore. The pair meet at a cafe and commiserate over espresso, both sporting black leather jackets. We learn that their parents have recently died, though the reason is withheld from the audience for now. Skye is grateful that her brother took on the burden of cleaning out the parents’ apartment into a storage unit. Billy insists that it was no trouble and that he was happy to take on the responsibility. While driving over to their parents’ now vacant apartment in the family’s vintage car, they recount fond memories of driving in the car listening to music during which Skye looks out and sees, once again, another new gang of teenagers skateboarding down the street weaving through traffic. Arriving at the apartment building, Skye is surprised at how small the rooms feel now. As children, the space felt so massive. They examine old photos of their parents, pointing out how young and vital they appear. They lament and express their astonishment that their parents died in a small biplane crash. Their reverie is interrupted by Madame Gautier, the landlady portrayed by Françoise Lebrun. She informs the twins that they need to leave soon. The pair acquiesce and gratefully remember when Madame Gautier used to babysit them and allow their family to skate by if they couldn’t afford the rent. Skye and Billy take one last longing look before departing.             Standing in front of the storage unit, Billy reveals that about a third of their parents’ possessions were actually inherited from their grandparents. It is a powerful sentiment; the idea that our sense of self, our identities are conceived generationally through these material inheritances. The idea sounds imposing, however Jarmusch frames it through the visual of a tiny storage unit. A vast sprawling life reduced to a tiny box in a Parisian garage. Jarmusch’s latest film displays his mastery of class as a writer and director. This film is a close examination of family and mortality. Instead of telling a singular cohesive story, Father Mother Sister Brother

The Work of Art in the Age of Electronic Reproduction Jen P. Harris: “Tomboy” Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles January 10–February 14, 2026 by Michel Ségard This review is an experiment. Patricia Sweetow Gallery is in Los Angeles and I am in Chicago. At my request, the gallery has sent me high-resolution images of the works in Harris’s show, and I will be basing my review on those images. Today, most of us only see artwork on our laptop or smart phone in small, (often) low-resolution images. So, it is time that we owned up to the fact that more and more often our perception of an artist’s work is not from the original but from photographic/electronic reproductions. Walter Benjamin addressed the aesthetic issues regarding copies versus originals in his famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, originally written in 1935. For Benjamin, the issue of the loss of the original, as traditionally defined, centered on the development of lithography and, later, photography and (especially) film, where there was no original. He pondered on how this change affected our aesthetic notion of a work and how it affected the marketing of art. We are faced with similar issues with the development of computer technology. So, facing those issues, I have specified that the images be presented as large as possible. Using them, I will try to draft a cogent review of Jen P. Harris’s work, acknowledging the limitations that viewing only electronic versions of their work impose.   The nontraditional employment of fiber in works of art caught my attention at last year’s Expo Chicago. Kandy Lopez used fiber as paint strokes on massive “canvases of mesh;” Nathan Vincent knitted a life-sized locker room; John Paul Morabito wove beaded threads into large abstractions. The artist in this review, Jen P. Harris, combines a painted canvas with a woven layer over it. The vertical warp threads of the woven layer are separated with enough space to see the painting below, and the horizontal weft threads, likewise, do not occupy all the space; in fact, they usually occupy only a fraction of the area of the work. Therefore, the underpainting shows through, and each layer contributes to the formal composition.         What makes Harris’s pieces so remarkable are two things: the interplay between the forms in the paintings and the forms in the weaving and Harris’s remarkable color sense-—controlling bright, saturated colors without getting garish. Purely visually, the pieces are beautiful abstractions—until you look closer. Agora, shown below, is a perfect example of the fusion of layers. When you stand back away from the image of the piece, you see that Agora is actually a bust portrait—the woven weft outlines the forehead and cheekbone around the eyes while the underpainting defines the rest of the cheek and jaw, and a variety of variously colored warp threads and tightly woven segments define the upper torso.             This oscillation between warp, weft, and background painting to create a final image is an integral part of Harris’s style and can be read as a metaphor for “coming out” or expressing the status of being gender queer or nonbinary. Let us examine how that works in Feeling of Fury. On close inspection, this work appears to depict an act of fellatio. In the center, a female-like form, defined by an area of red warp that is constrained by shapes woven in pale blue, is rising out of a water-like area. Along with the arms of the figure rendered in the painted layer, descending male genitalia are painted in the background layer as they morph to become part of the face of the figure. The rest of the male figure is not depicted in the piece. The work is not prurient, rather, it is vaguely religious, hinting at the Moses myth. The uncertainty of what is transpiring, for me, reinforces the impression that this painting is about sexual identity.                   The title piece, Tomboy, is interesting in that a smiling cartoon-style bust of a figure floating in a pink bubble is entirely depicted in the background painted layer. The warp acts like a curtain covering the figure that is about to emerge through a central divide in the warp. There are a number of fully woven areas that seem to float, as if fish in a bowl. Two are especially prominent in the center of the work, a form that appears in many of Harris’s pieces. A small bust of a figure appears at the bottom of the composition, its head split by the divide in the warp—a chrysalis from which the pink face has emerged? Is this a metaphor for a dual identity—the real person being behind the screen of the warp?             Correlation offers a different perspective on Harris’s work as it is significantly smaller than the other works at only 18 x 14 inches, instead of the 44 x 36-inch dimensions of the other pieces. The warp threads are more colorfully dominant and individually significant while the fully woven segments are more prominent. This work suggests a torso in the background with dark blue and bright yellow painted segments on the left. Again, it is a depiction of an incomplete individual. This is a theme that permeates this show and hints metaphorically at the complexity of coming to terms with one’s sexuality.           As socially political as this work is, it is enhanced by its uncompromising beauty. This attribute is what attracted me to write about the show. So many works by artists that focus on the LGBTQI experience are drenched in anger and negativity (and rightly so). Harris manages to find a transcendent way to address this critical social issue. They share this approach with Antonius Tin-Bui, the Vietnamese American artist who works with cut paper and shows at Monique Meloche Gallery

Remembering Bert Menco 1946–2025 by Diane Thodos To be sure, Bert Menco was an eccentric and extraordinary artist, but exactly the same could be said about his personality. Born in Holland in 1946, Menco arrived in the United States in 1982 and worked and lived in Evanston for over 40 years before returning to his home country of the Netherlands in 2023. I still recall meeting him in printmaking class for the first time in 1993. One could not miss the colorful striped scarves he regularly wore, accompanied by often equally stripy shirts or waggishly colorful sweaters. Then there was his car—the multi-colored VW Golf Harlequin that matched his scarves, shirts—and sweaters. Wherever you saw that car, you knew that it had to be him! His Dutch accent could, at times, be somewhat impenetrable in a humorous way. He was ever ready to discuss politics, life, history, art, and culture, often laced with more than a touch of wild humor. When I would jokingly ask him an absurd question, he pitched me an answer that was twice as absurd. I never forgot his cartoonishly medieval version of our fast-food restaurants where “The Burger King and the Dairy Queen live in the White Castle.” He could be soft hearted, vulnerable and, at times, shy but also doggedly persistent when he set his mind to something.           He worked as a neurobiologist at Northwestern University, securing independent research grants to study the cellular biology of taste and smell. He published over 65 articles in international journals and other peer reviewed publications in addition to receiving numerous international awards. But I knew Bert primarily as a dedicated member of our printmaking group for almost 40 years, first at the Evanston Art Center, then at the North Shore Art League in Winnetka. He spoke of us as ”a great, great group of peers, for me especially important in the absence of close family in this country.”1 He mounted more than 20 solo shows of his work and received many awards and honors for his prints in more than 100 juried and invitational exhibitions. He often worked on large etching plates some which could take half a year to finish. Our whole group would wait in anticipation to see what new images he had arduously worked on as they came off the printing press—though sometimes his experimental print techniques could ruin the blankets. I never forgot when he put a small wasp’s nest through the press because it was made of “paper.” The result was an unforgettable mess. Yes, it was gross but also funny. His sense of humor was truly inimitable.           Bert was an irreplaceable part of the Chicago area art community—a kind of self-invented institution. He brought a European bohemian sensibility that kept us connected in a way that only he was capable of creating. Endlessly curious and social, he cultivated friendships with people from all walks of culture and life, always ready to talk about the best local museum shows, plays, and performances that were worth seeing. His prodigious appetite for literature inspired my own reading lists, whether it was Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, or Thomas Piketty. His house was like a small museum—a living slice of European culture, filled with books, prints, and paintings, including a sizable collection of prints by the surrealist Czech artist, Jiri Anderle. Then there were the curious mementos, ceramics, and assembled objects, such as a bizarre looking warrior mounted on a stuffed chicken that was itself mounted on bull’s horns. Nobody who visited his house ever forgot the warrior on the stuffed chicken!         He was a true supporter of the arts, organizing many group shows of local artists that gave the far-flung branches of our community opportunities to get to know each other. “This is a very honest artist’s town” Bert said, “with an incredible amount of talent, probably because so many of us have to struggle very hard to make it even a little bit.”2 He also got a number of our prints into the 10th Douro Printmaking Biennial in Portugal, transporting the work there himself. With ever a soft spot for culture and art in distress, he singlehandedly organized a local benefit to raise money for the Iraqi National Museum after it was looted in 2003. Ever active in politics, he would frequently fire off eloquent angry letters and emails to politicians against the defunding of arts, the war in Iraq, and of course, the fascist turn of our government. Bert would encourage us printers to continue our conversations after class, sometimes staying at a café or restaurant till two in the morning.         Bert was always passionate about his art influences, especially the works of Northern European old masters such as Hieronymus Bosch, Bruegel, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Modernist art inspired him as well, including the works of Marc Chagall, James Ensor, and the German Expressionists. Nearly every year, Bert would leave for his studio apartment in Amsterdam, making the rounds throughout Europe to see traveling exhibitions featuring his favorite artists, always recounting his adventures when he returned.           Of course, his art revealed deeper dimensions to everything we knew about him. The faces of his enigmatic characters are sweet and bitter, charming and grotesque, with dreamy expressions and sad eyes. They dwell in realms of fractured fairytales that scramble religious cultures and their iconography. Madonnas, harlequins, angels, devils, jesters, and imaginary beasts make regular appearances. It was easy to see the influence of the Belgian artist James Ensor (1860—1949) in Bert’s work, well known for his portrayals of bizarre masks and wildly grotesque caricatures that act out scenes of human absurdity and folly. Like Mark Chagall, Bert’s art often expressed the precarious lives of the European Jewish Diaspora, relating to the difficulty of everyday existence and the use of fantasy to express imagined means of escape. This comes as no surprise given

“Mythic Chaos: 50 Years of Destroy All Monsters” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI November 2, 2025–March 1, 2026 by Sean Bieri You should have been there, man. That’s the vibe upon entering Cranbrook Art Museum’s exhibition “Mythic Chaos: 50 Years of Destroy All Monsters”—the feeling that you missed out on a cool thing. All around is evidence of what must have been a wild and crazy scene going down around the University of Michigan in the mid-1970s. Tacked up near the entrance are Xeroxed flyers for phony lectures (“On Squares Interceding with Isosceles Triangles Throughout Art History.” “Theraputic Uses of Necrophilia,” etc.), that take the piss out of campus life while advertising strange theatrical performances. There are also actual flyers for midnight offerings of “insane music,” “crazy movies,” and “bizarre entertainment,” plus video clips and Polaroids documenting just such happenings. There are drawings hanging on the walls—portraits of Rat Fink-inflected weirdos by Mike Kelley and slinky, mysterious femmes by Niagara—plus mass media-mutilating collages by Jim Shaw and Cary Loren. And there’s a cluttered vitrine, standing in perhaps for a college apartment’s coffee table, one of a number of tableaux in the exhibition brimming with 20th century pop detritus/treasure: lurid horror comics and pulp crime novels; “Cootie” bugs, creature feature figurines, and corny rec room sculptures of pin-up girls and hobos; psychedelic rock show bills, and a looseleaf sheet sporting a hand-scrawled band logo and multiple cigarette burns. To the layman, it’s clutter; to the artists, grist for the mill. You probably think you had a good reason for not getting in on any of this, for not making the scene. Maybe you were nowhere near Ann Arbor or Detroit in 1974. Maybe you had to work the next day, or school—possibly grade school (I couldn’t go because my dad wouldn’t give me the car, mainly because I was seven). Maybe you were too cool, or not cool enough, or maybe you had “good taste.” Excuses, excuses. The fact is, you blew it, man—you should have been there.           Destroy All Monsters took its name from a 1968 Toho kaiju flick in which Earth’s most famous behemoths—Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, et. al.—are summoned to demolish the cities of the world. Likewise, Loren, Niagara, Kelley, and Shaw rose from the depths to stomp hell, artistically speaking, out of conventional societal norms. A countercultural arts collective formed during America’s post-hippie cultural doldrums, a proto-punk “anti-rock” band at a time when rock music was decidedly overripe (“We wanted to kill James Taylor,” said Kelley), DAM set itself up in a Victorian house dubbed “God’s Oasis” (a moniker swiped from a previous occupant) and proceeded to take up seemingly every medium they could get their hands on. Musically, they took inspiration from iconoclasts such as John Cage and Sun Ra, and from Luigi Russolo’s 1913 Futurist manifesto “The Art of Noises,” which urged musicians to explore the sounds of machines and urban life to create new forms of music suited to industrial realities. DAM’s earliest music was a screeching, droning, lo-fi cacophony layered with B-grade horror movie monologues and sci-fi warbles and whoops (search for their 1974-76 album on YouTube). Films shot by Loren to accompany the band’s music (as seen on a DVD compilation, Grow Live Monsters, released in 2007) were equally frantic: 8mm approximations of drive-in exploitation flicks starring costumed band members, Frankensteined together with found footage and embellished with psychedelic video effects. Loren’s photographs here from the God’s Oasis era reveal, among other oddities, a near-naked Shaw wearing an ersatz space helmet with a long plastic tube dangling between his legs, and Niagara sprawled on a cellar floor beside a kitchen knife, her bare midriff smeared with stage blood. (Cranbrook kindly warns visitors entering the gallery that the show contains images of sex and violence.)             DAM’s visual art continues the chaotic theme, as seen in Destroy All Monsters Magazine, a promotional vehicle for the band that also functioned as a record of the collective’s graphic activities. A sampling here of thirty pages from the original zine’s six issue run features Niagara’s trademark drawings of elegant vamps; irreverent collages (e.g., Jesus summoning a fleet of 1950s gas guzzlers from the Samaritan well); and of course zombies, vampires, werewolves, and mutants borrowed from movie magazines and comic books, all crammed onto the page, overlapping and fighting for space in classic cut-n-paste zine style, where legibility sometimes comes in second to attitude.             By 1978, personnel changes had left Niagara the only charter member of the Destroy All Monsters band (she was joined by members of the Stooges and MC5, who took DAM’s music in more straightforward punk-ish directions). They disbanded in 1985, but the original lineup returned in the ’90s for a series of concerts and re-releases of their ’70s material. DAM has persevered in one form or another since, sometimes producing new works such as the sculpture toward the center of the gallery—a foamy, yellowish glob of goo. Conceived of by Loren and Kelley and first built according to their faxed instructions for a show in Japan in 1996, this version (there have been a few around the world) was made by Cranbrook students specifically for this exhibition. It consists of a pile of plush and plastic toys, plus a small video monitor, glopped over with polyurethane foam. A wall plaque calls it “part structure, part landscape, part mediation on memory, the psyche, and spirituality.” In the context of a Destroy All Monsters exhibit, though, it can’t help evoking for me the titular alien from the 1958 horror picture The Blob, an unstoppable entity that swallows up whatever it encounters and incorporates it all into its monstrous matrix—not-unDAM-like idea, after all.             With many comebacks, reprints, re-creations, and compilations over five decades, the precise timeline of the whole DAM project sometimes got muddled for me—but then, that’s what Wikipedia is for. The

“REVELATION” Works by Jordan Nassar James Cohan at 48 Walker Street, September 5–October 4, 2025 by Paul Moreno I first became aware of Jordan Nassar when he was a young queer artist making artist’s books and zines. When I look back at his work in that milieu, I see a thread that connects to the art presented in “REVELATION,” his recent exhibition at James Cohan. Artist’s books and zines have the quality of objecthood. The viewer may get lost in an image within a zine, but that zine does not blend in and become part of the wall. The image in a zine is always an image in an object that has weight in your hand. Conversely, it is very easy to forget, when looking at art hanging on a wall, that the images you are looking at are not just images but are physical things.         Interestingly, what immediately struck me about was the presence that the works had as objects. The pieces on display, though hung on the wall, were not paintings or works on paper, but five large assemblages of textiles and a pair of impressive mosaics. When looking at these pieces, I found my mind pondering what their internal structure might be, imagining the weight they must possess, contemplating, in the case of the mosaics, how the walls supported this installation and how the works activated the room.         All the textiles were composed of various panels of hand-embroidered cotton on cotton. In each of these, one panel depicted a landscape. The other panels contained intricate geometric patterns. An elegant relationship was created between the geometric panels and the landscape panels through the use of the patterns.           In the geometric panels, there are, in fact, two patterns—one that is created by the areas that are embroidered as opposed to the areas which are not. For example, in When the sun does justice to life and death in the middle of the sky / a mask of steel descends over its face, two large panels consist of what I perceive as a feather-like pattern. The line work of the pattern is created by leaving thin lines of supporting fabric unembroidered. In the top panel, the vertical rows of “feathers” are chocolatey brown. The negative space is a steel gray. In every fourth row, the negative space is an electric blue. In the panels below it, the color pattern is reversed, feathers are gray and the negative space brown, and, in this panel, every fifth row of negative space is the electric blue. But the overall outline “feather” pattern remains the same and, in fact, remains the same in the third panel—the landscape panel. Here, the arbitrary color pattern of brown and gray disappears. This panel contains a depiction of a mesa of rich desert colors—ochre, fuchsia, gold, orange, sage. The mesa is surrounded by a perfect blue sky, an egg yolk sun, and a childlike grass green ground. However, the feather pattern continues and gives the landscape a veil, as though looking through a lace curtain or through the mistiness of recollection.           This play with pattern suggests a sense of whimsy, even while, the works simultaneously feel austere and minimal. There was a part of my eye that longed for the “feather” pattern in each panel to align perfectly with the next panel. But the fact that it doesn’t certainly felt like a choice made by the artist, or, a consequence of the nature of the materials themselves which were “made with the participation of Palestinian craftswomen living and working in Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Hebron.” In a piece like War in the Vacant Sky, where multiple patterns are employed on seven panels that surround an eighth which depicts a crescent moon, the juxtaposition of patterns that abut each other adds a certain charm or air of chance.           The textiles occupied one room of the gallery while in an adjoining room two mosaics filled the walls. The mosaics are quite an interesting project. Nassar recreated, or perhaps better said, reinterpreted or reimagined, two Byzantine mosaic artifacts from the fifth or sixth century which are presently located at BenGurion Airport near Tel-Aviv.             Bisan (Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out) (Deuteronomy 28:6) portrays a diagonal grid pattern of shell pink, pale blue, and ashy green. Each square of the grid contains a green and teal bird, reminding me of both Monk Parakeets and Pigeons. A burnt orange and gray mosaic frame runs along the edges. The quote from which the piece takes its title is inscribed in Arabic at the top. In the original mosaic, the birds wear red ribbons; Nassar eliminates that detail.           The second mosaic, Bethlehem-In-The-Galilee, was installed in a corner, with part on one wall and part on the adjoining wall. It hangs sideways, vis-a-vis the original, which may have been a decision based simply on making it fit. That choice however does bring every detail of the work to eye-level. It is also useful to keep in mind that this is all relative given that the original was installed as a floor. Within a frame of intertwined green, orange, and grey running key patterns are grape-vine medallions, each containing birds, animals, or flora. At one end, there is a sort of Palladian window or fan. All the elements are fanciful, colorful, and delightful in the way they add a peculiar soulfulness to the austere white cube gallery.           Together, the textile works, with their Palestinian origin, and the mosaics with their Byzantine lineage, combine the force of their pure physicality to create a palpable sense of place. By placing these selected works in this space, the artist has accomplished the creation of a site—not simply the display of

What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding Murals by Adam Cvijanovic Site specific installation at St Patrick’s Cathedral, NYC by Paul Moreno The newly installed set of murals at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, here, in New York City, is not a typical installation for me to take on as a writer about art. Befittingly, I will start with a confession: I am a practicing Catholic. Further, I am an employee of the Archdiocese of New York. I also, for a few years, served on a committee to commission new art for parishes therein. Given all of this, my reaction to these murals is not simply formal. I don’t think that anyone’s reaction could be, as this is not artwork made in a conventional context.         It is difficult to presume that these murals are not part of a legacy-building effort by the current Cardinal of New York, His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan, who commissioned the work. The murals occupy the cathedral’s narthex. (A catholic church traditionally would have its central axis run east/west with its main entrance at the western end. In modern cities, this east/west custom cannot always be followed and nowadays the narthex can face “liturgical west,” which is the name given to wherever the main entrance faces, so long as it is opposite the Altar, or “liturgical east.” In the case of St. Patrick’s, the narthex does face “Manhattan west” (about 29° north of true west). The narthex is a transitional space in a Church, a zone that exists between the outside world and the sacred space. Rules for art in this space are interesting in that those depicted need not be saints or holy people.         In the case of What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding, the 12 panels of the murals depict two groups of immigrants including some important historical Catholics. On the uptown wall, there are Europeans arriving by boat in a breezy and sunlit scene. Above these figures is a depiction of the Apparition at Knock —a nineteenth-century holy occurrence in which a group of Irish villagers witnessed a vision of The Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, John the Evangelist, as well as a lamb upon an altar, and a host of angels.           The immigrants depicted on the downtown side are people of color in contemporary dress, seemingly gathered and waiting, carrying tote bags and shopping bags. Among these people, the artist inserted a portrait of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, a turn of the century Sister known for her work with the poor, orphans, and immigrants. She was also the first sainted American citizen.         On the western wall, there are two quintettes, one on either side of what was once the main doors and is now a large window. One is an image of first responders to 9/11 above whom floats an angel holding a police officer cap and a fire fighter helmet. The other is a group portrait of five important American Catholic figures including Archbishop John Hughes, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha— the first Native American Saint, Venerable Pierre Toussaint—philanthropist, Dorothy Day— activist, writer and Servant of God, and Al Smith. They stand below an angel holding St. Patrick’s cathedral itself.             When viewing the part of the mural depicting these important Catholic figures, I felt for the first time, my heart reacting to this mammoth work not as a commission but as a work of art. I was suddenly very aware of the moccasins worn by St. Kateri Tekakwitha. They are leathery brown and dotted with beads that form white flowers with bright yellow centers. This small detail felt thoughtful and careful. I was then drawn to the large black boots worn by the first responders and then the bright sneakers work by the immigrant children. These figures’ feet are at viewer eye level in the murals. But the murals have a slight forced perspective that I associate with posters for soviet propaganda or superhero movies– the lowest parts of the figures are enlarged, and the upper parts reduced, giving the figures a towering quality. The subjects’ faces and postures convey a dignified humanity, but the composition elevates them to the heroic and compels the viewer to see the subjects’ strength.         The painting in and of itself is adroit in the best way. The artist, Adam Cvijanovic, displays a great deal of skill and commitment to the subject, prioritizing the story and references above his own showmanship. His painting is somewhat loose and has an easy confidence. It is exciting without tiptoeing into daring; it is what a person without a lot of exposure to art might assume portraiture at the turn of the twenty-first century might be, and therefore, these images possess a quality of having always already been there. This is a smart tack to take when adding new work to a sacred place that is approaching its 150th year.         The cathedral is a tough place in which to pray, let alone look at art. It is the Grand Central Station of Churches. When I visited during the first week of Advent, in mind to write about these murals, I arrived during Mass which provided an audial backdrop to the busyness of tourists walking their self-guided tour through the cathedral, surrounding those attending the Mass with an equally loud commotion. I watched people look at the murals, some taking a moment to ponder or read the signs about them, some not really noticing, some looking at their phone. I stood back and looked at the murals as a whole. I noticed how beautifully the artist’s addition of goldleaf rays shimmered —the holy spirit, I thought —but also an elegant architectural nod to the art deco Rockefeller Center across the street.         After having seen them, I was speaking to an artist friend about the murals. He joked

“Theaster Gates: Unto Thee,” A Collection of Collections Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, September 23, 2025–February 22, 2026 by Michel Ségard …Chicago artist Theaster Gates takes into his care collections of objects amassed or discarded by others. Through artistic intervention, he reveals their latent cultural value, elevating the objects to an archive that holds truths largely overlooked by history or institutional structures. By reinvesting in these objects, Gates has built a practice that centers what he refers to as “material redemption.”1   This quote from the introductory wall text of Gates’s exhibition clearly states the artist’s motivation. We are presented with a collection of collections that document his two-decade tenure with the University of Chicago, along with a few other collections that are essential to the artist’s psyche.         The first piece in the show is 2025’s Salon Mantle. It is comprised of Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square (1961) (the first work of art that Gates bought as a young man), materials from the late Japanese journalist Ei Nagata, wood-fired stoneware, a slab of marble from a demolished building, and a letter Gates tried to translate into Japanese, all on a steel base. It feels like a mantlepiece in someone’s home with mementos of dear friends or relatives on display, encapsulating what Gates appears to want you to feel about the entire exhibition—a sense of history and family.           To the left of the piece on the adjacent wall is an installation of three paintings and a long credenza. The credenza is from the Johnson Publishing Company. Above it, on either side, are three paintings by Gates, from left to right: Painting for My Father, Roof Portrait, and Defend the Black Community. It was mentioned to me by one of the curators that Gates did not think of these as paintings because of the materials used: rubber, wood, copper nails and, on the center one, felt and bitumen. Gates’s father was a roofer and the first two were created in his memory. Gates’s trepidation about calling them paintings was because he used tar. There is nothing wrong with these materials in contemporary painting; they have been used a number of times before, especially tar. Donald Sultan produced a whole series called The Disaster Paintings using tar and latex paint on Masonite. What is significant here is the homage Gates pays to his father by bringing the roofing materials into his art. Displaying them along with the Johnson Publishing credenza further ties Gates’s heritage with the sophisticated publishing and art world.           At the opposite end of the gallery spanning the width of the room , Black Revolution in Color is made from silkscreened images from the Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Sadly, it is placed so high that one cannot make out the images in any detail. Still, with the Johnson Publishing credenza placed on the opposite wall, this piece makes a fitting bookend to the exhibition. Below this mural is the Glass Lantern Slide Archive. This collection of 72,000 glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago Department of Art History was put in Gates’s care in 2009. He has since digitized the entire collection, samples of which are shown in the darkened room behind this wall. What we see is the card catalog-like cabinets that once housed the slides stretching all the way across the wall between the viewing room doors and, from a distance acting as an enormous plinth for Black Revolution in Color.           In the darkened viewing room are the pews from the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel which were removed for more flexible seating during a 2013 renovation. One can sit in these pews and view a sampling of the Glass Lantern Slide Archive. We can see what the University’s pedagogical approach was in the twentieth century. For me, it was also a nostalgic event; my sister was married in Bond Chapel in 1976.           Along the south wall of the gallery to the right of Art Histories: A Reprise and framed by doorways to the rest of the Museum’s gallery space is Slate Roof. This work  is made of a selection of slate tiles from approximately 9,000 donated to Gates by the University from an early 2000s renovation of Rockerfeller Chapel (the place where I was married in 1970). In memory of his father’s trade as a roofer, Gates has had that selection of tiles reassembled into a massive sloping roof-like structure. The piece is both large and small in scale. It occupies an entire wall of the gallery, yet the individual tiles are less than a foot square and show the wear and tear of 80 years in the weather, each telling an individual story of endurance. This dual scale perception occurs in many of the pieces in the exhibition. In the Glass Lantern Slide Archive, for example, we see the sweep of the drawers, then we are led to examine the individual drawers that resemble the traditional library card catalog. And in the two collections of books, we are caught by their expanse, and then become curious about the individual volumes.           On the north wall of the gallery between two doorways is a long four-shelf collection of books titled Walking Prayer, all in the same dark blue binding with gold embossed phrases on their spine. These phrases coalesce, sometimes clearly and sometimes not, into a kind of poem, full of shifts and non sequiturs: “In My Dreams / Don’t Change / Remain the Loyal / Colored Girl / I’ve Always Known / Holy, in Deed / Holy, in Color / Holy, Among Your Brothers and Sisters / Holy, Holy, La Toya / Holy Torkwase / Holy is Your Name / Holy is Our Love” reads one section; “It is Time for a New Order / And Lord Knows I Hope to See It

Raven Chacon: American Ledger No. 3 The Renaissance Society in association with the Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago, November 2, 2025 by John Thomure Originally commissioned by the Renaissance Society for their exhibition “Nine Lives,” Raven Chacon’s American Ledger No. 3 was unable to be staged due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly five years later, the Renaissance Society and the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago finally presented this third addition to his American Ledger series. The previous American Ledger scores dealt with reinterpreting significant events in American history and the third iteration is no different. This version was dedicated to Chicago journalist and anti-lynching activist, Ida B. Wells. The piece had a multifaceted presentation: a score printed upon a flag placed on the ground between the two female choirs, four xylophones, four large bowls filled with pennies, and a supplemental newspaper containing a collage of source materials with Chacon’s commentary. Everyone in the crowd discussed the entangling of these different aspects, drawing connections between the disparate elements of the piece.         Chacon’s score, printed on a flag, was sitting on the ground, surrounded by lines of folding chairs and an audience huddling together against the encroaching cold of winter. The score’s graphic visual language reconstituted common symbols and shapes culled from American history and Western music theory in order to call into question the dominant narratives of American society. Contemporaneous with these visual motifs, Chacon isolates sonic motifs in the enactment of the score as well. As the music developed, these disparate and scattered themes are knotted together into a powerful piece of indeterminate music (a compositional style pioneered by John Cage which sought to compose found sounds and chance operations into a music piece).           The four phases of American Ledger No. 3 were heralded by a single isolated drum hit—bang! The initial phase was inaugurated by the entrance of twin female choirs who lined up facing each other. They began tossing pennies toward four miniature xylophones arranged upon the corners of Chacon’s score. The sparse metallic percussive soundscape was occasionally punctuated by the soft euphonious ringing of the xylophone keys. The wind rustled as the onlookers whispered and gossiped, shifted around for warmth, and emitted a murmuring hum which lingered alongside the music.           Bang! The second phase began with the parallel lines of performers moving inwards towards each other. They started to intermittently sing a swath of chants. The muddled chorus was both pleasant and unpleasant in equal measure, changing from moment to moment. This music embodied a particular mono-no-aware (the pathos of things) attitude, or an appreciation of the impermanence and transience of life. The xylophone notes rise and dissipate, caught amongst the sea of percussive noise; the melody being treated with the same importance as the environmental sounds. The high-pitched rhythmic percussion and melodic xylophones acquired greater form and definition over time. The layers of sonic activity slowly became more dense, comparable to a fog. A definitive melodic theme began to gradually emerge amidst the chaos.         Bang! The third phase began. The music became more compacted and steady pulsating chords emerged from the lapping rondos sung by the opposing choirs. The tempo increased as a second drum stamps out a simple beat. The music now churned.         Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The two lines moved right up to the edges of the score and the voices began repeating their lines in harmony as a singular sonic unit. The waves of sound rolled over the audience until the drummers walked away. The singers departed sporadically following the dissipating drums. The singing and drumming grew fainter and fainter the farther they drifted away until it was silent.           In the newsprint pamphlet, Chacon asserts that this latest edition of the American Ledger series is concerned with how to reconcile our conflicting ideas of truth. My interpretation of American Ledger No. 3 is that the truth has become a complex subject in our current society, obfuscated by both the rise of technology and the deeply entrenched political divides which grow more distant and extreme by the day. How do we arrive at a consensus of truth? Chacon’s concept of truth is fragmentary; it is communal and emerges from a multitude of perspectives much like how the music itself developed.         Chacon states that he is hoping to discover in this piece, “an approximate shared understanding of the truth.”1 His marriage of experimental musical forms with his own radical politics of social justice is a refreshing and unique approach that was able to call into question predominant narratives of American society. Evoking Wells’ journalistic activism against brutal racial violence, Chacon revealed how the mythic symbols, images, sounds, and ideals of America are predicated on perpetrating violence against minorities.         American Ledger No. 3 began as chaotic noise but steadily grew into a desperate chant. The performers established connections, relationships, and solidarity the same way the vocal melodies and ringing xylophone notes concentrated into an epic demanding harmony. It was an apt sonic metaphor for the fraught and disorienting times we are living through across the world. The graphic symbols and sonic textures were arranged into new forms which compel the audience to think and consider their relationships to society. This performance affirms a composer who will clearly come to define avant-garde music going forward. John Thomure is a performance artist and writer currently based in Chicago. His performance and writing practices fixate on local art history, ecology, and exploring underappreciated artists and their archives. Footnote:  1 Excerpt from American Ledger No. 3 Pamphet