Artists

Donald Moffett Takes Abstraction to Its Visceral Extreme, Addressing Climate Change and the Tense Political Moment

Donald Moffett, Aluminum/White House Unmoored (still), 2004. Photo Dan Bradica Studio/©2025 Donald Moffett/Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York; Anthony Meier, Mill Valley The title of Donald Moffett’s latest exhibition, “Snowflake,” is a deliberate provocation.“I don’t identify as a snowflake,” he told me, a week before the opening of the show, his first New York solo …

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German Artist Gabriele Stötzer Survived Prison, Censorship, and the Stasi

Gabriele Stötzer, ‘Lippen mit Draht’, 1983. © Gabriele Stötzer, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Courtesy LOOCK Galerie, Berlin On the banks of a glacial river high in the Swiss Alps, in a subterranean stone room among the remnants of a 12th-century Benedictine monastery, one can find the photographs of Gabriele Stötzer.The images are small and rudimentary, …

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The Enduring Mystery of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, c. 1665 Mauritshuis Collection, The Hague, Netherlands. Digital image: Wikimedia Commons. Everybody loves a good mystery. That may explain why, for generations, art lovers have sought to learn the identity of the unknown subject in Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665–67). Her ineffable pose (looking …

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Martin Beck’s ‘Environments’ Art Summons New Age Sights and Sounds

Martin Beck, equilibrium: Dawn/Dusk in the Okefenokee Swamp (detail), 2023. Photo Manuel Carreon Lopez If you like the idea of zoning out and luxuriating in the sounds of a “Psychologically Ultimate Seashore” or an “Optimum Aviary,” you are not alone—and in fact are part of a lineage that traces back to a series of mind-altering …

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For Sculptor Sandra Poulson, Every Object Contains ‘Micro-Stories’ About Its Making

Sandra Poulson. Photo Dami Vaughan When Sandra Poulson was growing up in the Angolan capital of Luanda, her father used to tell her off by saying, in Portuguese, “Este quarto parece uma República!” The phrase, which translates to “This bedroom looks like a Republic!,” was an indirect order for her to clean up her room, …

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30 Must-See Masterpieces at the Louvre

Louvre Palace, Paris. Getty Images The Louvre, France’s most famous museum, which welcomes some nine million visitors a year, is on the verge of an immense renovation. After director Laurence des Cars mentioned the institution’s deteriorating condition in a memo, French president Emmanuel Macron announced that the revamp will see Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, …

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Why Edvard Munch’s The Scream May Be the First Modern Painting

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893 National Museum of Norway, Oslo. Digital image: Wikimedia Commons. Two paintings vie for the top spot in Western art history, earning them pride of place on countless postcards, posters, and tote bags among other forms of merchandise and mass media incarnations. One is Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, the other, Edvard Munch’s …

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