I walked into the second floor gallery just as the choir began imitating the sound of pigs being slaughtered. “Four Industries,” the mesmerizing centerpiece of Mexico City-based artist Tania Candiani’s exhibition Sounding Labor, Silent Bodies at the Contemporary Arts Center, is a three-channel video installation in which an a cappella women’s choir mimics the sounds […]

For decades, from the 1950s through 1970s, Slim Aarons (1916-2006) recorded the lives of the “rich and famous” He caught them at their favorite watering holes: Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, Park Avenue, Capri, Gstaad, the French and Italian rivieras. You name it and he was there. He was a documentary photographer as sure as Walker […]

Cincinnati Art Galleries is on the bandwagon of regionalism with its current offering entitled: Panorama of Cincinnati Art 2020. The Queen City stands out historically in the Midwest region as a hotbed of art, music and culture. In the fine art field, the confluence of collecting, commissioning, and teaching legacies resulted in supporting a flourishing […]

Little need be said about the strangeness of 2020: A year inundated with historic events has brought to a standstill the customs and contact that once defined our lives. In March, as the reality of the pandemic set into Los Angeles, museums and galleries closed with the lockdowns, leaving in their wake a slew of […]

2020 was a terrible year for most of us, between a rampaging and terrifying pandemic and a bizarre election that tested the very limits of democracy, but it was a splendid year for fiction.  I’m offering my annual “best fiction of 2020” list this year, as I have for decades now.  My list is very […]