William S. Smith

Artists included in major biennial exhibitions, like the ones opening in Venice and at the Whitney Museum in New York this month, can find themselves subject to countervailing expectations. These events are significant now in part because they have featured significant artists in the past. Selected contemporary artists become part of a tradition of lasting importance... Read more

It’s hardly possible to imagine Donald Trump and the crowds who gather at his rallies finding much to value in the contemporary art that is discussed and celebrated in these pages. Still, Trump’s supreme tackiness, his know-nothing world of gold veneer, masks a more complex relationship between the American far-right and the art world. .. Read more

Writing in the nineteenth century, British art critic John Ruskin argued that an artist’s work is invariably shaded by his moral fitness. .. Read more

How could cultural integration happen without flattening productive differences? To what extent are networks of artistic exchange conducive to expanding markets? What would a postcolonial museum look like?.. Read more

In “The Creative Act,” a short essay from 1957, Marcel Duchamp argues that artmaking is never truly a solitary activity. .. Read more

There was a distinct feeling that art market actors had run headlong off a cliff but had not yet mustered the courage to look down. .. Read more

There are many Andy Warhols, some at odds with each other... Read more

By identifying the unique aspects of a given city, the Atlas column shares something with biennials and other recurring exhibitions... Read more

The art world has a carbon problem. Long-haul air travel—the lifeblood of biennials and art fairs—contributes to climate change like few other activities... Read more

Though we publish this magazine every month for readers of the present, it’s also true that we are producing a document for posterity... Read more

Though much maligned, the white cube offers something singular: an environment for presenting and contemplating new forms and ideas... Read more

Stan Douglas’s massively scaled images bear the weight that history paintings once did. .. Read more

Some artists don’t wait for institutions to interpret and label their work... Read more

The social gains of the postwar period were not bestowed by especially generous plutocrats. People fought for the city they wanted. .. Read more