An eye-opening look at how contemporary political issues find their ways into the hushed halls of museums and galleries.
A broad-ranging account of arts activism.
Should Paul Gauguin be canceled? After all, New York Times arts and culture writer Nayeri notes, he “behaved as if the women and young girls he came across in Tahiti were exotic fruits, there for the picking.” It’s a question that cleaves a sharp division among camps: those who, particularly in Paris, resent the New York Times criticizing French curatorial mores and those who are quick to apply presentist standards of behavior to the past. There’s social justice, and there’s censorship, and sometimes the line between is difficult to discern, though Nayeri contrasts the top-down censorship of state and church with the bottom-up censorship of those who protest injustices based on ethnicity, class, gender, and culture. The author argues that the largest artistic institutions have been playing catch-up. Whereas not long ago one would have to search to find a woman or person of color headlining a show, lately curators have been engaging in provocative installations in which, for example, a work of Picasso is paired with a work by Black American artist Faith Ringgold that features echoes of Guernica, but now visually commenting on the race riots of the late 1960s. “As MoMA explained, this particular display was a way to depart from a purely historical, step-by-step presentation, and start a transgenerational dialogue,” writes Nayeri. Some of the come-lately efforts seem a touch feeble, some a touch desperate, as when, in the wake of the George Floyd murder, curators all over the U.S. and Britain scrambled to remake their exhibits to be more inclusive. Make no mistake, writes the author, inclusion is still lacking. Upon revisiting Ernst Gombrich’s canonical The Story of Art, she writes, “I couldn’t find a single woman artist, even though his book starts in prehistoric times and leads all the way up to American art of the 1950s.”
An eye-opening look at how contemporary political issues find their ways into the hushed halls of museums and galleries.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66260-055-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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