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 short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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