Contemporary Art and Culture
Walking into the space at 86 Bowery, you are greeted by a calm, welcoming exhibition, the walls warmly lit and filled with a wide array of drawings, paintings, and sculptures, featuring works by 24 artists. The exhibition title is Bonesetter, based on the idea of a bonesetter, an individual in many cultures who resets broken bones and dislocations.
Continue reading “Bonesetter: Dislocations, Connections and Synergies”
Across trippy, iridescent seas, massive, eerie interiors, and uncanny, translucent forms, Tom LaDuke composes intimate “letters” to the cultural ghosts that shaped him—poetic reflections on perception, memory, and the subtle currents of emotional drift.
Continue reading “Tom LaDuke’s Dream Sets for a Lost Message”Love letters straight from your heart
Keep us so near while apart
I'm not alone in the night
When I can have all the love you write
– Love Letters by Heyman and Young
Colorful, mixed-media exhibitions bring vibrancy to the winter season with splashes of exhilaration and discovery.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: NYC Exhibitions in December 2025”
During her more than thirty years at the Montclair Art Museum, Dr. Gail Stavitsky, Chief Curator, has shaped the institution’s vision through exhibitions that deepen public understanding of art history while highlighting under-recognized artists. Her work extends beyond the galleries to publications that introduce new scholarly perspectives — including the recent catalogue accompanying Tom Nussbaum: But Wait, There’s More! In this interview, Dr. Stavitsky discusses her curatorial approach and the ideas guiding the Museum’s current exhibitions by Tom Nussbaum and Christine Romanell.
Continue reading “Curatorial visions at Montclair Art Museum”
Yi Hsuan Lai exhibits her works in a solo show at SoMad, a femme- and queer-led art space that serves as a platform for emerging artists to experiment, collaborate, and challenge conventions. SoMad comprises a combined gallery and artist residency program, a production house, and an event space. The name “SoMad” reflects both the physical location — south of Madison Square Park — and the collective’s frustration with the current landscape of resources and support structures available for emerging artists, particularly artists from marginalized communities.
Continue reading “Yi Hsuan Lai: The Ontology of the Body at SoMad”
It began, as many enduring ideas do, over wine and conversation. Michael David, painter, curator, and gallerist of M. David & Co., was speaking at a dinner with Judy Pfaff about her close friend and early champion Al Held. The talk drifted to another dear friend, Elizabeth Murray, and then to her admiration for Frank Stella. From that exchange evolved the idea for Singing in Unison, Part 12: Painting in Space, curated by Michael David, and now on view at Art Cake in cooperation with The Brooklyn Rail.
Continue reading “Singing in Unison, Part 12: Painting in Space”
In the quiet hum of Freight + Volume, myth breathes anew — through clay, through oil, through the occulted pulse of memory and transformation. Elizabeth Insogna’s luminous ceramics rise from ionic pedestals like ancient offerings, while Jorge K. Cruz’s visceral canvases create a kaleidoscopic backsplash, drawing viewers into a dialogue between the sacred and the subversive.
Continue reading “Myth as Metamorphosis at Freight + Volume”
Curator Martina Tanga had been reflecting on the ideas behind Learning With Trees – Artists for Climate and Environmental Solutions long before the exhibition took shape. In 2022, she read Ben Rawlence’s The Treeline, a book tracing how the Boreal forest is shifting under the impact of climate change. That reading sparked the idea that trees could serve as a highly accessible and disarmingly effective way to approach conversations about climate change.
Continue reading “Learning with Trees-Artists for Climate and Environmental Solutions”
I’m deeply grateful for Boston’s university galleries—they consistently fill the gaps left by the local commercial gallery scene, which has been diluted, in my opinion, by the pressure to cover rent. These institutions reliably bring high-quality, thoughtful art and ideas to the city. A short but not exhaustive list would include the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, the Aidekman Arts Center at Tufts, MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, and the Harvard Art Museums.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions in November 2025”
Just as a solitary action can cause a ripple effect, the sharing of unique ideas can inspire and transform existing systems to include and support different communities. The exhibitions this month demonstrate genuine curiosity and meaningful activation, leading to a trend of revisionist histories in art, institutional displays, or familial archives. Curators Jennifer Zwilling and Nicole Pollard reinvent how gallery exhibitions should be interacted with and ask the question of how clay can assist in caring for mental health at The Clay Studio. Artists Mahsa Attaran, Monica Hamilton, Hanieh Kashani, and Anna Schwartz create a language to describe the power of memory as they mine through personal photographs and materials at Automat Collective. Calero Rodríguez establishes her own History of Art, incorporating Latino, Afro, and Carribean imagery in masterly assembled collages at Taller Puertoriqueño.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: Philadelphia Exhibitions in October 2025”