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(10/02/24 4:00am)
A lush patchwork of green once welcomed visitors to the Arthur Ross Gallery in the Fisher Fine Arts Library. Bold brushstrokes stood firm against a fragmented sky, capturing the resilience of two pine trees whose branches stretched daringly into the expanse. They stood together, their limbs entwined as if each offered the other strength to rise higher. Their leaves, tinged with a hint of crispness, suggested a drought—a subtle nod to the hardships faced by the artist David Driskell in his formative years in Appalachia. These trees, like Driskell himself, embodied a defiant resilience, a strength echoed in his art and in his life’s work: the elevation of fellow Black artists.
(09/30/24 5:22am)
I splatter acrylic paints on the wall of my environmental science teacher’s classroom. I infuse fluorescent yellows to render a lightbulb, add small stipples with my round brush to develop the fluffy texture of a tree, and layer shades of gray, dusk orange, and violet sky to depict the smokestacks of a power plant. My first ever mural, now a glowing display of vibrant colors and botanical imagery, proudly serves as a visual aid for renewable energy at my old high school. Though my mural project may seem small, it helped me find a second home in the “Mural Capital of the World” during an uncertain and sometimes intimidating transitory period of my life. But I couldn’t imagine a better place to start my college journey.
(10/07/24 4:00am)
At the boba shop where I worked this summer, I would often spend my time idly staring at the art on the walls. Among the canvases of blue lakes and rugged mountains, my favorite was an illustration of a pink cat perched atop a milk–tea bottle. With each piece of art marked with a price tag of $100, I found myself hoping that prospective owners would cherish these pieces made with hard work and clear, careful precision.
(09/11/24 4:00am)
What makes an exhibition so immersive that it seamlessly draws viewers into both its external world and inner life? In The Illuminated Body, a new art exhibition by Seattle artist Barbara Earl Thomas at the Arthur Ross Gallery, viewers are invited to explore this very question.
(09/04/24 4:00am)
Walking into the Institute of Contemporary Art on Penn’s campus, the inaugural work of the Entryways project greets you: Nontsikelelo Mutiti’s cut–vinyl depiction of ironwork and braided hair calls upon African craftsmanship and memories of the design and textures that have guarded her life. The curling imagery pays homage to the protective hairstyles and gates found in African communities around the globe: particularly, Mutiti’s motherland of Zimbabwe and neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The ornate visage adds to the otherwise flat, modernist architecture of the building.
(08/02/24 4:00am)
Late July afternoons in Athens, Greece are sweltering. Tourists choke the narrow streets, the pavements steam with a dense heat. The cool white basement of the Contemporary Greek Art Institute, tucked discreetly behind the central Syntagma Square, provides a welcome relief. For the first time, the National Gallery has sponsored an exhibition here, introducing the works of the Korean–American writer and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and placing them in dialogue with Greek artists.
(08/02/24 4:00am)
You know that scene in Elvis where the teenage girls in his audience start freaking out, shaking, screaming, sobbing, overcome by an intense, invisible hysteria? I always assumed that was exaggerated until I saw Cats. Not the OG Andrew Lloyd Webber musical or the horrendously CGI’d movie, but Cats: “The Jellicle Ball”—a queer reimagining that shines a light on contemporary Ballroom culture.
(07/19/24 4:00am)
Percival Everett reread Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 15 times before reimagining the classic in his newest novel, James. “Those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere,” writes literary critic Roland Barthes. Everett is sure to have read Barthes, an expert in semiotic theory, writing a baby–savant character in the novel Glyph. Everett’s James from the titular enslaved person’s perspective echoes Barthes’ sentiment, in a retelling in which a radically different story plays out.
(07/07/24 4:00am)
“Everybody, every subject position, and every demographic should be treated as if they could be the most interesting person in the world,” Asali Solomon tells Street. “And that’s the method by which we become more human while reading fiction, that the concerns of any person you see on the street should be something that should be deeply explored with all of the nuances.”
(06/21/24 4:34am)
Visibility is a certain tyranny: We should question how ways of seeing the world are constructed in order to draw our gaze to certain things. Why are only certain artists made visible to us? Certain works? It is through visibility—an alternate visibility—that a certain displacement of the status quo occurs, a displacement away from the expected ways of seeing, towards youthful creativity where new art is championed unabashedly.
(06/07/24 4:00am)
As a child, I could spend hours in a bookstore. Amidst the murmurs of fellow bookworms and the satisfying turning of pages, I wandered the kid’s aisle with my head tilted sideways as I traced the spines along the shelves and drew out books, meticulously deciding which would be my next pick. Although I would still happily spend hours in a bookstore today, my mind is full of the viral books I’ve seen on TikTok. Instead of looking for beautiful art covers, I spend a vast amount of time scouring the shelves for familiar names. Even when I do get roped in by an intriguing book, I instantly check its Goodreads rating—anything less than four stars is a waste of time!
(06/07/24 4:00am)
This is no ordinary house.
(05/03/24 4:00am)
Art has been an act of resistance throughout the ongoing war in Gaza. As the war has martyred poets, scholars, and artists, there is an exigency to preserve Palestine’s rich cultural legacy of art and scholarship in order to bear testament to its existence. A rallying cry, seared in the public consciousness, came in Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die,” which gained prominent attention online after he was killed on Dec. 7, 2023 by an Israeli airstrike. His haunting stanzas foretell a harrowing prophecy, professing “If I must die / you must live / to tell my story [...] If I must die / let it bring hope / let it be a tale.”
(04/29/24 4:00am)
Margaret Atwood is one of those writers whose name follows her legacy. At 84 years old, she collects titles and prizes in the literary world. An over–productive artist, she has published over fifty books—including books of poetry, novels, nonfiction, short fiction, children's books, and graphic novels. If her ability to dive into literary genres wasn't already proof of her multitude as a writer, Margaret Atwood is also a powerhouse at captivating an audience.
(04/17/24 2:25am)
Music Business at Penn arrived on campus this semester, but its already began establishing itself as an inexorable facet of Penn culture and a welcomed deviation for the many Penn students wrapped desperately in the finance straitjacket of Wharton.
(04/26/24 4:00am)
How can you not read a book that advertises itself as 'subject to one of the most notorious obscenity trials in history?' This line, emblazoned on the Penguin Modern Classics’ edition of The Well of Loneliness, is probably what entices most readers to work through this 400-page tome of seminal lesbian literature. However, today’s readers will be challenged to square the outrage that this novel caused with the apparent tameness of its content.
(04/10/24 5:59am)
“We’ve clearly coordinated this very carefully.” Celeste Ng’s opening comment is met with a round of laughter in the audience. She’s the guest speaker for the March 27 event at the Penn Museum's Widener Hall, which is starting 15 minutes later than advertised. No one’s angry at the late start, but they are impatiently awaiting to hear what wisdom the acclaimed novelist is soon to bestow.
(04/05/24 4:10am)
As an Art History major, and an avid consumer of all things relating to the art world, when I stumble into a gallery or attend an event centered around art, all my opinions and ideas feel somewhat intentional, very guided by the academic and critical art world around me. My mom, who has a keen eye and wonderful taste (I must give it to her), has not faced that same art world indoctrination. When she is presented with scores of extraordinary art, she does not seek out impressive chiaroscuro or innovative archetypal representations; Instead, she admires what draws her eye, what immediately evokes emotion, and more simply, what sparks joy and, as she puts it, “seems cool.”
(02/26/24 2:42am)
You can tell how admired someone's work is by how their academic peers celebrate their triumphs. At his winter book launch, it was clear that André Dombrowski is certainly well-recognized by fellow Art History scholars. After History of Art Department's celebration of Professor André Dombrowski's new book Monet’s Minutes: Impressionism and the Industrialization of Time, I sat down with the author in his out–of–a–movie Jaffe Building office to talk more about his process.
(03/15/24 1:04am)
Labels like ‘hysteric’ or 'madwoman’ have been used to persecute women since the 18th century. Why, then, are women today voluntarily self-identifying as ‘sad girls’? Why has the Twitter account above garnered hundreds of thousands of followers—and is this a step forward, or a step back? These tweets come from Melissa Broder’s originally anonymous Twitter account, which was the launchpad for her rise to fame. Broder has now published three critically acclaimed novels and multiple poetry collections. She is often invoked as an icon of the ‘Sad Girl’ movement: the gloomy teen-girl aesthetic that first came to the internet ten years ago, encapsulated by Tumblr images of crying girls and Lana del Rey lyrics. Broder’s position within the movement is exciting because her work has carved a novel intersection between internet popularity and literary status. Her internet niche is polarizing: some deplore internet Sad Girls, while others see them as exhibiting defiant feminism. Audrey Wollen, one of the Sad Girl movement’s champions, describes it as ‘the proposal that the sadness of girls should be witnessed and re-historicized as an act of resistance, of political protest’. Wollen argues that when women like Broder share their rawest moments online, they explicitly overturn the historical silencing of female sadness, allowing women to overcome shame about their mental health.
