« Dire qu’il y a des imbéciles pour puiser des consolations dans les beaux-arts . » Sartre, La Nausée.
Running indefinitely:
Sotheby’s Madison Avenue
945 Madison Ave at 75th Street
Sotheby’s has moved into the Building Formerly Known as Breuer. Two steps from the Met and miles away from the crowds. Also, free. Also, the staff are extremely pleasant. Also, fewer signs to tell you what to think. You’re on your own.
[Gallery 746 North can be reached though the passage on the right as you enter the American Courtyard.]
Virtue Signaling Alert. A workmanlike abstract expressionist, successful enough in his lifetime, is handed a retrospective suggesting (erroneously, from all the evidence), that he was neglected in his lifetime because of his Native American roots. The show is announced by a huge banner on the Museum facade, a banner covering a greater surface than the exhibition itself. Which exhibition is tucked in a corner, right next to the Native American galleries.
Stojka was an Austrian Roma and a survivor of Ravensbrück. Hopefully her work survives the Drawing Center’s pedantic approach. Go for the art. It’s remarkable. On its own terms. Which happen not to be the terms of the Center.
March 29 through June 28, 2026
Raphael: Sublime Poetry
Metropolitan Museum of Art
There’s a French expression, c’est quand même pas mal, meaning, “despite the fact that everyone says this is good, it’s good, actually.” This could be said of the Raphael show at the Met: it’s vast, it’s thorough, it’s of the highest quality and consistency, it corrects a good number of settled myths. Also it’s Raphael, and I could have told you that and considerably more, but I’m an art critic, not an art historian. That was a previous life.
To paraphrase Goethe, “When you look at a Raphael you don’t become something, you learn something.” Fuck that.
WOID XXV-20
April 4, 2026
Paul Klee in the End Times. Klee’s Angelus novus couldn’t make it out of Israel. Still trying to scream as the bodies pile up.
[Gallery 758 can be reached from the back of the Japanese Galleries on the second floor, through the mezzanine on the second floor, or by taking the elevator to the second floor from the passage on the right as you enter the American Courtyard.]
Weak tea. Don’t go overboard.
“The problem isn’t that she fails because she’s a decorator, no more than the kettle-drummer fails for playing the kettle-drum. The problem is, that she fails on her own terms, which happen, incidentally, to be the terms of an interior decorator. I hate to think how she’d fail if she were an artist.”
April 12 through August 22, 2026
Marcel Duchamp
Museum of Modern Art
Reviewed:
“The scandal of Duchamp, as far as the critics are concerned, is not that the shovel is transfigured into a work of art; it’s that the work of art remains a shovel for all that.”
Through August 23, 2026
Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennial has already won the prize for most irritating web site:
“Rather than offering a definitive answer to life today, this Whitney Biennial foregrounds mood and texture.”
You’ve let me down, Oh Whitney Guru…
May 7 through September 7
China: Through the Looking Glass
Metropolitan Museum of Art
No way this can be as bad as its press release:
At its core, Said interprets Orientalism as a Eurocentric worldview that essentializes Eastern peoples and cultures as a monolithic other.
While neither discounting nor discrediting the issue of the representation of “subordinated otherness” outlined by Said, this exhibition attempts to propose a less politicized and more positivistic [sic] examination of Orientalism as a site of infinite and unbridled creativity.
9 May through 22 November 2026
Venice Biennale
Normally I would cancel my plans to fly off to Venice in order to protest the Biennale’s shameful abdication to the Zionist State. On the other hand, the best of the Biennale will likely be outside the confines of the Giardini. For instance:
Or:
A continuation of the Gaza-focused performance that was rejected by the South African Minister for ahem Culture.
Through December 30
Frida and Diego: The Last Dream
Museum of Modern Art
You’ve seen the garish opera production, now see the garish, over the top installation passing for an exhibition. Or rather, don’t.
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