The Jewish-German photojournalist Gerda Taro’s brief life was filled with firsts. She is widely considered to have been the first woman photographer assigned to the frontlines and, unfortunately, the first to die on assignment. Today would have marked her 108th birthday, and Google is celebrating her considerable legacy with a doodle on its homepage. Taro,…
On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was black, was shot outside the Cuddel Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio by police officer Timothy Loehmann, who is white. Rice would die the following day from gunshot wounds to the torso. At the time of the shooting, Rice was carrying a black Airsoft gun, a toy,…
Thanks in no small part to J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey,” radio show whiz kids have long held a special spot in the Jewish-American imagination. But it may surprise some that the real world purpose of “Quiz Kids,” a 1940s trivia show, was to promote Jewish intelligence during a time when Jewish lives were most…
On August 12, 1958, the photographer Art Kane positioned himself on the south side of East 126th Street and shot a photo that would become iconic. Kane was on assignment for Esquire, which was preparing an issue on jazz, and he had gotten the most remarkable talent in Harlem to assemble for the occasion. Sonny…
At the end of World War II, fascism seemed to have met its well-deserved end, a result far from inevitable when the conflict began. The New York Historical Society exhibit “Rockwell, Roosevelt, & the Four Freedoms,” open through September 2, reminds visitors how fragile democracy appeared at the time. While American men served overseas, women’s…
Currently at the Neue Galerie, the exhibition “Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of 1930s,” is as fateful as its title suggests — devoted to paintings, photographs, prints and drawings made under the lengthening shadow of Nazi terror. It’s a show suffused with anxiety and denial. Many of the artists were representatives of the…
In his obituary in the August 12, 2004, issue of The New York Times, Leon Golub is described as “an American painter of expressionistic, heroic-scale figures that reflect dire modern political conditions.” His new exhibition at the Met Breuer, “Leon Golub: Raw Nerve” suggests the artist’s vision — violent, cruel, red in tooth and claw,…
The nicest way to view the Jewish Museum’s new exhibit “Marc Camille Chaimowicz: Your Place or Mine,” the London-based artist’s first solo show in the United States, is alone. As the last straggler at a recent preview showing of the exhibit, I wandered in near solitude through the playfully arranged last section, called “Le Jardin…
On a recent Saturday, the photographer Nan Goldin, best known for her mid-1980s photo series “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” led a protest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Standing in front of the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, the low, rectangular reflective moat that surrounds the Temple swarmed with orange pill bottles that had been…
Five women have accused Richard Meier, a Pritzker Prize-winning architect famous for designing Los Angeles’s Getty Center, of sexual misconduct, according to a March 13 New York Times article. The alleged episodes span 30 years and include descriptions of groping, indecent exposure and forcible kissing. After being informed of the allegations, Meier announced that he…
The Trump administration has proposed a cut to funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and other cultural organizations in its 2019 budget — but a new report provides evidence that US cultural exports represent an extremely important sector of the economy. On March 7, Hyperallergic reported on a new study from the US…
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