No one has given up more than US art museums which, with few exceptions, have stopped doing meaningful work on or related to historical US art.

Our nation's art history is so much more interesting and layered and topical than the way it is presented in art museums, sigh.

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Denzil Forrester in "Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón" @mcachicago.bsky.social, William Wylie's new "The Eighty-Eight." manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

OMB is forcing “the Smithsonian to spend congressionally appropriated funding in a way that’s ‘consistent with the FY 2026 President’s Budget’ in order to receive it. The president’s budget differed widely from what Congress ultimately chose to fund.” www.notus.org/trump-white-...

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Denzil Forrester in "Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón" @mcachicago.bsky.social, William Wylie's new "The Eighty-Eight." manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

The NYT is using "first major solo survey on Long Island" as the peg for a story today. 🤣😂🤣 (It's a terrific artist, so the peg is extra-bizarre.)

Our nation's art history is so much more interesting and layered and topical than the way it is presented in art museums, sigh.

We've taped nearly all the Modern Art Notes Podcast episodes that will air through the summer, and they're terrific. So many generous artists, especially.

Oh look, yet another way Charles Sheeler mischievously winked at - and updated - Ralph Waldo Emerson. www.instagram.com/p/DZH4cxQESy...

The case against the arch — from the great Sebastian Smee, now an @theatlantic.com staff writer. www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

Catherine Wagley smartly ignores the faux 'crisis in art criticism' and instead explains that as the NYC art world finally moved past its white-men-only decades, Roberta Smith and Peter Schjeldahl clung to the past, which made criticism irrelevant there. www.artnews.com/art-in-ameri...

This is tortured mealy-mouthedness. Media outlets, especially the New York Times, need to be willing to refer to white supremacy as "white supremacy."

Three hundred and forty-six pages of pure rage.

Catherine Wagley smartly ignores the faux 'crisis in art criticism' and instead explains that as the NYC art world finally moved past its white-men-only decades, Roberta Smith and Peter Schjeldahl clung to the past, which made criticism irrelevant there. www.artnews.com/art-in-ameri...

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! "Miró and the United States" at The Phillips Collection; a Parasol Prints survey at the Addison! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! "Miró and the United States" at The Phillips Collection; a Parasol Prints survey at the Addison! manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

From childhood through most of my 40s, I was a tennis super-fan. I traveled to tourneys, knew the players' games, all of it. Over the last half-decade I've drifted away, substantially because the sport has decided it's just fine with misogyny and racism. www.espn.com/tennis/story...

the clear takeaway here is that the administration wants to unlawfully seize the smithsonian and make it a temple for white supremacist “history” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/28/a...

👀 There may be some things you may wish to comment in my recent @theatlantic.com essay...

👀 There may be some things you may wish to comment in my recent @theatlantic.com essay...

1. There was no such thing as the Hudson River School. It was and is a fabrication. Thoughtful scholars don't perpetuate fictions such as this. 2. Good painters did not hew to what was in their field of vision. Painters were and are not transcriptionists. 3. Sigh.

Trump’s proposed D.C. arch represents what American artists have used arches to warn against for centuries, Tyler Green argues.

Our foundational republicanism is under attack... and Trump is using a millennia-old symbol of republicanism to celebrate his corruption of it. In The Atlantic, I explain how and why artists have called on us to be vigilant, and why their calls are au courant.

Our foundational republicanism is under attack... and Trump is using a millennia-old symbol of republicanism to celebrate his corruption of it. In The Atlantic, I explain how and why artists have called on us to be vigilant, and why their calls are au courant.

Artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Cady Noland, and Kahlil Robert Irving have told us that we need to be vigilant to maintain our foundational republicanism; Trump's arch stands for the corruption against which they warned.

Artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Cady Noland, and Kahlil Robert Irving have told us that we need to be vigilant to maintain our foundational republicanism; Trump's arch stands for the corruption against which they warned.

This Bierstadt-Earl installation at the Worcester Art Museum is intense. Two paintings made 60+ years apart argue for European-American claims to Native land taken after violence and, at Yosemite, genocide. This is one way White people have told stories about 'our' land, destiny, &c.

A failure of MOCA's "Monuments" was that it exhibited these sculptures but did zero art historical (or historical) work on them. Now MOCA simply sends them back to their homes. (Did the catalogue do any such work? Who knows? Still waiting. A huge institutional self-embarrassment.)

Any art institution that publishes an exhibition catalogue without an index should be forced to atone by making PDFs of their catalogues - with newly added indices - available for free.

The best critical take on the Met Gala, the embarrassing, self-defeating costume party that lessens the art museum that insists upon it, ever.

Exuberant exhibition, exuberant episode!

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Leasho Johnson and Laura Facey from @mcachicago.bsky.social's "Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón!” manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

Be sure to stay for the last two sentences. The future of the Smithsonian, what its museums are and do post-Trump, remains an open, under-discussed question.

The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration just confirmed it is targeting West Potomac Park for its GAH sculpture park. In January, when WaPo first reported Trump's target GAH site, I explained why we should take this neo-Redeemer project seriously. www.instagram.com/p/DTffj1XEaq...

🚨 New Modern Art Notes Podcast! Leasho Johnson and Laura Facey from @mcachicago.bsky.social's "Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón!” manpodcast.com/portfolio/no... 🍎: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... 🔊: open.spotify.com/show/25SUibT...

Be sure to stay for the last two sentences. The future of the Smithsonian, what its museums are and do post-Trump, remains an open, under-discussed question.

Better than the left, the right understands the power of art to influence the United States. This has been true since at least 1890. (In a related story, the book on which I'm now working is about this.)

The odious #plexijail installation trend is spreading. This is among the worst. 🤮 If you're going to do this, just exhibit a page in a book instead.

It is both outrageous and incompetent that Los Angeles did not secure free admission as it handed over land in a public park.

Better than the left, the right understands the power of art to influence the United States. This has been true since at least 1890. (In a related story, the book on which I'm now working is about this.)

If this is how you're opening your Frederic Church bicentennial exhibition, you're arguing that he's old-timey, and that his art is precious and inert. This is an epic fail. Organizers should reconsider.

It is both outrageous and incompetent that Los Angeles did not secure free admission as it handed over land in a public park.

One imagines that Lauder saw what latter-day institutional Philadelphia did to the Barnes Foundation, and is preempting institutional New York City from doing the same thing to his private museum.

The odious #plexijail installation trend is spreading. This is among the worst. 🤮 If you're going to do this, just exhibit a page in a book instead.

If you are a white artist or historian of US art and your practice doesn't engage white supremacy or segregation, and their resurgence + expansion, you're basking in the comfort of privilege.

Hoping Detroit takes the lighting design in its special exhibition gallery more seriously than it takes lighting design in its collection galleries.

If you are a white artist or historian of US art and your practice doesn't engage white supremacy or segregation, and their resurgence + expansion, you're basking in the comfort of privilege.

Do not miss Sebastian Smee's review of Victoria Johnson's "Glorious Country," a biography of Frederic Church. Here's some of the reason Smee's review and Johnson's book are so valuable (plus some background on why I started researching Church's pictures). www.instagram.com/p/DYPPqEnkX6...

Do not miss Sebastian Smee's review of Victoria Johnson's "Glorious Country," a biography of Frederic Church. Here's some of the reason Smee's review and Johnson's book are so valuable (plus some background on why I started researching Church's pictures). www.instagram.com/p/DYPPqEnkX6...

If you are a white artist or historian of US art and your practice doesn't engage white supremacy or segregation, and their resurgence + expansion, you're basking in the comfort of privilege.