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Success! Your account was created and you\u2019re signed in. An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link.<\/p>\n –text-color: #FFFFFF; Support Independent Arts Journalism<\/p>\n As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today<\/a>.<\/p>\n Already a member? Sign in here.<\/a><\/p>\n We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, please join us as a member<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0Ahead of the Studio Museum in Harlem\u2019s reopening this November, Salamishah Tillet asked artists, curators, and educators about the institution\u2019s immense impact on their careers and lives in Harper\u2019s Bazaar<\/a>:<\/p>\n Rashida Bumbray (independent curator; Studio Museum staff, 2001\u20132006):\u00a0I came in 2001\u2014I believe in April. I was a page at NBC, which I hated. Thankfully, they laid us all off right after Thanksgiving. But I went, I think, to the very first of the \u201cUptown Fridays\u201d [series of parties] that Sandra organized. Then I saw a Whitfield Lovell installation,\u00a0Whispers From the Walls\u00a0[featuring a series of charcoal drawings of unidentified Black Americans based on photographs from the pre\u2013Civil Rights era]. I was walking around, and I just started crying. I saw Thelma standing there. I didn\u2019t know her, but she looked like she worked there. So I walked up to her and I was like, \u201cI want to work here.\u201d She gave me her card. I called her seven or eight times, and finally she was like, \u201cCome have an interview with me tomorrow.\u201d So I ran around to all my aunties in Harlem and got this really inappropriate outfit, like an oversize blazer and a brooch and things that I would never wear, and I went to this interview. Thelma was like, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m going to give you a six-month post. Are you interested in curatorial or education?\u201d And I just said, \u201cCuratorial.\u201d Sandra, Christine, and Lowery were all there. On the very first day, Lowery said to me, \u201cYou need to learn this shit, because some of us want to retire.\u201d<\/p>\n Lauren Haynes (head curator and vice president for arts and culture, Governors Island, New York; Studio Museum staff, 2006\u20132016):When I got to the museum, Lowery Stokes Sims had moved from director to president. [Golden succeeded Sims as director in 2005.] Lowery was working on very specific projects, including with some African objects in the collection, and I was also tasked to work with her on that. She was so warm, welcoming, and kind but also very smart and precise. To see these examples, particularly of Black women who were so stellar in what they were doing\u200a\u2026\u200aI was like, \u201cOh, right. There are people who look like me who do this work.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0Construction on the Sagrada Fam\u00edlia began over 140 years ago, and will theoretically wrap up next year. The New Yorker<\/a>\u2018s D. T. Max reports on the monumental project, the long saga of its completion, and how architects are negotiating staying true to Antoni Gaud\u00ed\u2019s ambitious vision:<\/p>\n Get the latest art news, reviews and opinions from Hyperallergic.<\/p>\n With the hundredth anniversary of Gaud\u00ed\u2019s \u201cvulgar\u201d demise approaching, Faul\u00ed agreed to let me observe the progress he and his team were making on the site. I first met him in May, 2024. He greeted me outside the basilica. Church officials had by then rescinded their unkeepable promise to finish by 2026, blaming delays caused by the pandemic. Faul\u00ed explained to me that the current goal was to have the Jesus tower complete by the end of 2025, so that the full height of the building could be celebrated on the centenary of Gaud\u00ed\u2019s death. \u201cDone\u201d would be a state of mind.<\/p>\n To my eyes, the building looked nearly finished, but Faul\u00ed suggested that I look at the side of the church where Gaud\u00ed had wanted to depict the history of humanity, from Adam and Eve to the Last Judgment. It had no fa\u00e7ade, narthex, portal, angel statues, or stone credos. Metal fencing covered some of the exterior. During the pandemic, Faul\u00ed had spent some time on a treatment, but the design was still being worked on; half his team was focussed on it now. How long would the fa\u00e7ade take to complete? He startled me with the answer: \u201cI would say maybe twelve years.\u201d<\/p>\n Faul\u00ed, who has his own\u00a0fam\u00edlia\u2014a wife and a daughter\u2014was sixty-four at the time. Would he still be around when the Sagrada Fam\u00edlia was truly done? \u201cLo que D\u00edos quiera,\u201d he replied\u2014\u201cWhatever God wishes.\u201d At one point, we peered over the shoulder of one of his architects, who was designing a snail-shaped stairwell for the unfinished fa\u00e7ade on a computer. Faul\u00ed pointed at the screen and explained, \u201cIt\u2019s a curling staircase to get you to the roof, but you also have a vertical column with electricity and data lines, which also plays a structural role, because it will help fuse the walls of the nave to the fa\u00e7ade.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0From the Atlantic to Ezra Klein\u2019s column in the New York Times, mainstream media\u2019s hagiography of Charlie Kirk is truly bizarre to behold. For Vanity Fair<\/a>, Ta-Nehisi Coates performs a razor-sharp dissection of the dangerous phenomenon:<\/p>\n Kirk subscribed to some of the most disreputable and harmful beliefs that this country has ever known. But it is still chilling to think that those beliefs would be silenced by a gunshot. The tragedy is personal\u2014Kirk was robbed of his life, and his children and family will forever live with the knowledge that a visual record of that robbery is just an internet search away. And the tragedy is national. Political violence ends conversation and invites war; its rejection is paramount to a functioning democracy and a free society. \u201cPolitical violence is a virus,\u201d Klein noted. This assertion is true. It is also at odds with Kirk\u2019s own words. It\u2019s not that Kirk merely, as Klein put it, \u201cdefended the Second Amendment\u201d\u2014it\u2019s that Kirk endorsed hurting people to advance his preferred policy outcomes.<\/p>\n In 2022, when Kirk was frustrated, for instance, by the presence of\u00a0Lia Thomas\u00a0on the University of Pennsylvania women\u2019s swim team, Kirk did not call for \u201cspirited discourse.\u201d Instead, while discussing a recent championship tournament, he said he would have liked to have seen a group of fathers\u00a0descend from the stands, forming \u201ca line in front of [Lia] Thomas and saying, \u2018Hey, tough guy, you want to get in the pool? \u2019Cause you\u2019re gonna have to come through us.\u201d Mere weeks before his death, Kirk reveled in Trump\u2019s deployment of federal troops to DC. \u201cShock and awe. Force,\u201d\u00a0he wrote. \u201cWe\u2019re taking our country back from these cockroaches.\u201d And in 2023, Kirk told his audience that then president\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0was a \u201ccorrupt tyrant\u201d who should be \u201cput in prison\u00a0and\/or given the death penalty\u00a0for his crimes against America.\u201d<\/p>\n What are we to make of a man who called for the execution of the American president, and then was executed himself? What are we to make of an NFL that, on one hand, encourages us to \u201cEnd Racism,\u201d and, on the other, urges us\u00a0to commemorate\u00a0an unreconstructed white supremacist? And what of the writers, the thinkers, and the pundits who cannot separate the great crime of Kirk\u2019s death from the malignancy of his public life? Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don\u2019t know. But the most telling detail in Klein\u2019s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself.<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0After learning that UC Berkeley sent the Trump administration a list of 160 faculty members and students, many of whom have protested the genocide in Gaza, Judith Butler penned a cogent reply to the school that the Nation<\/a> published this week:<\/p>\n Instead of treating the report according to procedure as you are obligated to do under both US constitutional law and University of California policy, you forward the allegation, unadjudicated to an office of the federal government. Whether or not the allegation is fair is of no consequence, it seems, for there has been an allegation, and that appears to be sufficient to forward my name to the DOE\u2019s Office for Civil Rights (clearly not my civil rights), where it will be on a list and used in whatever way that office and that government deems appropriate.<\/p>\n Will I now be branded on a government list? Will my travel be restricted? Will I be surveilled? Have you no compunction about submitting the names of \u201cmembers of the UC Berkeley community\u201d as you address us in your form letter, without having complied with basic rules of due process institutionalized in both US law and UC policy? In addition, students on visas and adjunct faculty unprotected by academic freedom are among those whose names were passed along. As we know from actions taken against students at Columbia, Harvard, and Tufts, to name a few, they are all potentially at risk of being detained, deported, expelled, harassed, fired, even abducted on the street.<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0Speaking of censorship, Karen Attiah writes on Substack<\/a> about her experience being fired from the Washington Post over her social media posts after Charlie Kirk\u2019s death:<\/p>\n I was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation\u2019s most diverse regions. Washington D.C. no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves. What happened to me is part of a\u00a0broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media\u00a0\u2014 a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful \u2014 and tragic.<\/p>\n I am proud of my eleven years at the Post. Beyond awards and recognition, the greatest honor has been working with brilliant colleagues and connecting with readers and writers around the world. To all who have supported me, read me, even those who disagreed with me\u2014 I say, thank you. You\u2019ve made me a better writer, thinker, and person.<\/p>\n But this is not the end of my work. I still believe in the power of the pen. My values have not changed.<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0Scarlett Harris reports on the hidden environmental costs of the plastic surgery industry, and where it intersects with waste across other surgical fields, for Atmos<\/a>:<\/p>\n Cosmetic surgery, meanwhile, has grown into its own rapidly expanding market. Currently valued between\u00a0$59.13 billion\u00a0and\u00a0$85.83 billion, the sector is projected to reach $160.47 billion by 2034.\u00a0The scale of the market hints at the scale of its footprint.\u00a0In 2020 alone, rhinoplasties in the United States produced an\u00a0estimated 6 million kilograms of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of nearly 6,000 cross-country car trips from Los Angeles to Boston. Globally, that number climbs even higher, with roughly 2.5 million additional rhinoplasties performed in the same year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Breast augmentation remains the most popular plastic surgery, and most implants are made of silicone. Despite\u00a0industry claims of sustainability\u2014somewhat justified, since the rubber-like material generates less medical waste than many single-use plastics\u2014silicone is still derived from fossil fuels and manufactured through an energy-intensive heating process. It does not biodegrade, and while technically recyclable, it requires specialized services not available to most people. Certain silicones and additives also carry health risks,\u00a0leaching into the environment\u00a0and, in some cases, even\u00a0our bodies.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Add to that the rise of\u00a0cosmetic tourism, with patients flying to countries like Mexico, Singapore, and Turkey for breast enhancements, cosmetic dentistry, and hair transplants. In the U.S. and other countries where health care and medical insurance is becoming untenable, it\u2019s no wonder people are traveling to circumvent these access gaps. So much so that\u00a0Vogue\u00a0recently published an\u00a0article\u00a0on the emergence of cosmetic tourism brokers to aid in this process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0Barnes & Noble is set to buy the beloved San Francisco chain Books Inc. soon, and LitHub<\/a>\u2018s Brittany Allen writes about the company\u2019s new strategy to temper its acquisitions with indie bookstore aesthetics and formats:<\/p>\n Allison Smith in\u00a0Modern Retail\u00a0observed the irony\u2014that B&N, \u201conce maligned as the big-box retailer that nearly killed the independent bookstore\u2026is now fashioning itself as their savior.\u201d Last year, my colleague Drew Broussard also considered \u201cthe enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend response\u201d to the Tattered Cover acquisition, in\u00a0a thoughtful op-ed.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that B&N has seen a funny turn of fortunes. After Amazon emerged as the true Sauron of the book business, and B&N itself\u00a0filed for bankruptcy in 2011, the company experienced a turn of public opinion. No longer the\u00a0Joe Foxes come to crush The Shops Around the Corner, we started to see those big empty buildings as peers in solidarity. Just another third space under threat.<\/p>\n But a lot of this rebranding is the direct result of James Daunt\u2019s (formerly of\u00a0Daunt Books) shrewd PR work. As\u00a0Publishers Weekly\u00a0and Smith have reported, since taking the reins in 2019, Daunt \u201chas increasingly borrowed from the playbook of independents themselves\u201d by pushing to decentralize buying decisions, empowering local managers, and\u00a0running each B&N store with its own character.<\/p>\n This \u201cplaybook\u201d casts the acquisitions of beloved local indies in something of a different light. Not that Daunt\u2019s been cagey about this. The behemoth-does-bespoke strategy, in which a large chain tailors its outlets to a community to echo a spirit (if not a letter) of indie-ness, has been successful across the pond. Especially at\u00a0Waterstones, the UK mega book chain that Daunt stewarded\u00a0before taking this job.<\/p>\n And though the CEO hastens to reassure skeptics that indie buy-outs are not an empire-building maneuver (\u201cThis is very much not Barnes & Noble roaming the countryside, looking for great indie bookstore chains and acquiring them\u201d), a sprinkle of healthy suspicion seems in order.<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0YouTuber Mina Le is here to make sense of the \u201cdeath\u201d of the celebrity interview<\/a>, which has drastically shifted in recent years:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2023\u00a0Make this man a museum docent<\/a> stat:<\/p>\n
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