The striking similarities—and key differences—between two works currently on view in San Francisco In 1940, Diego Rivera painted a massive 74-foot mural for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. …

A pilgrimage in Rome reveals the relationship between objects and sacred experiences In April of 2019, a friend, knowing that I happened to be in Rome, sent me an article about the Scala Sancta (Holy Steps)—the marble stairs to the Pope’s private chapel that are said to have been walked…

My first encounter with Rodrigo Valenzuela’s work was through his video works like Diamond Box (2012–2013), in which the artist paid undocumented migrant workers an hourly rate to tell their stories for the camera. …

Last Saturday afternoon, my partner and I happened to have some time to kill in San Francisco and decided to see Judy Chicago’s performance “Forever de Young” at the de Young Museum, where the artist’s retrospective is currently on view. We arrived just after the museum closed and joined the…

Capitalists want to own the psychedelic movement. We can’t let them. In the May 13, 1957 issue of Life Magazine, nestled between a pastel ad for the Ford Fairlight and a feature about the actor who played the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, lies an infamous piece of…

An artist dreamed of a hyperconnected future. Now we live in it. On New Year’s Day, 1984, the artist Nam June Paik broadcast his first international satellite “installation” to an audience of some 25 million people in four countries. An hour-long montage of avant-garde music videos, dance performances, and animated…

Two exhibitions highlight the landscapes and abstractions of an underrated modernist In 2012, very few people had heard of the Swedish mystic and painter Hilma af Klint. Then, in 2013, her solo retrospective at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet became the most heavily attended exhibition by a Swedish artist in the museum’s…

Anti-“woke” hysteria both conceals and abets the actual suppression of left-wing voices on college campuses From the volume and frequency of high-profile media meltdowns over “woke” social justice activism on campuses, it would be easy to conclude that colleges and universities are sites of leftist indoctrination. …

Two artists use archival mugshots to radically different ends In 2020, the artist Dan Paz purchased and downloaded a mugshot of their deceased father from a third-party criminal-search website for $29.99. They then transferred this photograph onto a copper plate using an antiquated process known as photogravure. Using a scraper…