My people are wringing their hands and tearing their hair out over the early presidential election returns: How could it be so close?After all we’ve been through, with the lying and the white nationalists and the children in cages and the 230,000-plus dead from Covid-19, how could this election be so close as still to be unresolved? How could tens of millions of our fellow citizens still have voted for Mr. Trump?I don’t know, though I nod along with some of the guesses: white resentment, evangelical Christianity, macho-masculinity, anti-abortion, the fate of retirement accounts and restaurant jobs.This question and its possible answers were not upmost in my mind’s eye, for I focused on images of voters, of all political beliefs, queuing up in circumstances as varied as rain in Georgia, cold in Montana and heat in Arizona. Older people with their walkers standing patiently for hours. Indigenous Americans on horseback riding 10 miles to vote. Parents, their kids on their shoulders. Lines stretching for blocks, nearly as long as the lines of cars at food pantries a few months ago. The vertical shapes of Americans standing in wait to vote one after another, in their masks and, for the most part, socially distanced. An estimated 100 million voters cast their votes early, with rounds of applause often greeting first-time voters.These images of this U.S. election seemed familiar to me, but foreign, recalling other elections in other places, such as South Africa in 1994 at the ending of apartheid. South Africans stood with stunning patience, outdoors in the elements, as though voting expressed an existential need that overrode bodily comfort.What was I witnessing now? Americans in 2020 re-enacting the South African voters of 1994?In my visual imagination, images of such determined voters come mostly from other places. The important exceptions are Southern — the American South in the 1960s, where Black voters stood in bunched-up lines in Birmingham and Selma, Ala., to cast votes after the bloody, yearslong campaign for civil rights and the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In serried ranks, the opposite of our Covid-19 distancing, they squeezed into newly accessible civic spaces.The American historian in me can reach farther back to envision determined voting, to Reconstruction, to the image on the cover of Harper’s Weekly of November 1867, with A. R. Waud’s illustration of Black men lined up to deposit ballots into partisan urns.At the front of the line stands an old graybeard in ragged clothing, workingmen’s tools in his pocket. He is dark-skinned, evidently formerly enslaved. Behind him stands a light-skinned dandy in curls and cravat, and behind him, a decorated Union soldier. These three lead a line of voters of varied classes and darkness of skin.This Harper’s image used to seem so timebound to me, so clearly belonging, with the 1960s images, to our American past, for the United States is not like that. The United States is exceptional.The congratulatory notion of American exceptionalism doesn’t usually tempt me. There’s just too much bloodshed and anti-democracy to make me think that Americans somehow avoided the perils of class conflict and hereditary aristocracy. What is white supremacy if not a hereditary aristocracy based on the ideology of race?Nonetheless, I take pride in what my fellow Americans have now pulled off, so far at least. An upwelling of faith in the epitome of citizenship, voting.Despite the erection of walls around businesses and even the White House, this election and its reckoning are unrolling peacefully. This is not to be taken for granted in the world we live in. Other countries routinely experience political violence. In the United States, we don’t expect that, and our exemption is not to be taken for granted. Americans should be proud of the marvel of peaceable elections.I realize that quoting a taxi driver is a tired journalistic trope, but let me share the observation of my most memorable taxi driver, who was taking me home in the fall of 2000.He was listening to “All Things Considered” and said he was following the outcome of the presidential election, whose settlement in Florida seemed interminable to us both. The driver, who was new to America, was following this story with admiration, struck as he was by its character, its lack of resorts to arms.I hadn’t thought of it that way, having taken for granted this feature of American democracy.But what about now? As I write, the outcome of the 2020 presidential election has not been determined. People are afraid. Walls have gone up. Some are rattling their automatic weapons and telegraphing their readiness to take to the streets. Will our exemption from fear hold? Or will these armed protesters — like those invading the Michigan State Capitol in April, May and September — waving Confederate flags reappear? Will those advised to stand down no longer stand back?So far, we remain within my taxi driver’s scenario of settlement according to law. But much depends upon leadership. As I write, President Trump has falsely claimed victory, cited voter fraud and promised legal challenges to official state results.A wink toward Proud Boys and Boogaloos might well end this current run of American exceptionalism and take us back not only to the practices of other less democratic countries, but also to our own shameful past of violent disfranchisement.Nell Irvin Painter is a professor emeritus of history at Princeton University and the author of “The History of White People.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

The strike hit a house in the city of Jabaliya, which has repeatedly come under attack as the Israeli military presses an offensive in northern Gaza.Israel’s military struck a house in northern Gaza where displaced families were sheltering on Sunday, killing at least 34 people, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense, the main emergency service in the territory.Dr. Mohammed Al Moghayer, a spokesman for the group, said that 14 children were among the dead after the strike in the city of Jabaliya on Sunday morning. People were still trapped under the rubble, he added, warning that the death toll was likely to rise.Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reported that the house, which was “crowded with residents and displaced people” was destroyed. It said that a “large number” of wounded people were taken to the nearby Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.In response to questions about the strike on Sunday, Israel’s military said it had struck “a terrorist infrastructure site” in Jabaliya where militants who posed a threat to troops had been operating and that it had taken “numerous steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.” The military, which said that the details of the incident were under review, did not provide evidence for its claims.Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabaliya, said that his hospital was receiving “distressing calls about people trapped under the rubble” on Sunday but was unable to provide help. Kamal Adwan is one of the last semi-functional hospitals in northern Gaza, but has been damaged by Israeli attacks and a raid over the last weeks.Jabaliya has come under repeated attack as the Israeli military has stepped up an offensive in areas of northern Gaza over the past month, saying it was trying to eliminate a regrouped Hamas presence there. Israel’s military has issued widespread evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza and Israeli troops, tanks and armed drones have bombarded the area almost daily.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Leafy antique wall hangings are having a resurgence in the design world, showing up in even the most modern rooms.Picture a tapestry hanging on a wall and the setting is likely a rambling manor house. Lately, however, ornate European examples have been appearing in less expected places, including contemporary Manhattan apartments. “Just as they did in castles in Belgium in the 15th century, tapestries provide an enormous amount of visual impact, warmth and artistry,” says the New York-based interior designer Billy Cotton, 42, who recently installed one as a stand-in for a headboard in an eclectic apartment on the Upper East Side. “They bring something unique that art or wallpaper just doesn’t.”European tapestry, as an art form, dates back at least as far as the Middle Ages, when intricate, outsize weavings depicting everything from wildlife scenes to biblical stories were woven by hand on looms using wool, silk and even gold and silver thread. During their first surge in desirability, between the 15th and 18th centuries, they were found exclusively in the grand abodes of royals and aristocrats — not only because of their prohibitive prices but because of the vast wall space required. Thick and dense, they also acted as insulation, making them ideal for drafty castles. (Henry VIII was a fan.)According to Jim Ffrench, 60, a director at the gallery Beauvais Carpets in Manhattan, antique wall hangings remained as expensive as important oil paintings and other fine art until around the time of the Great Depression, when they fell out of fashion and lost value. “The concept of them being a decorative or secondary art form is very much a mid-20th-century conceit,” he says. “But the upside is that, today, even the best tapestries in the world are still cheaper than a Basquiat.” While that’s a high bar — and figurative woven scenes are relatively rare and priced accordingly — simple verdure tapestries, which depict lush landscape scenes, and fragments of larger pieces can often be found for less than $1,000.In the New York City bedroom of the interior designer Billy Cotton, a verdure tapestry that he found at a Paris flea market acts as a headboard.Blaine DavisA rare wool-and-silk panel woven in Brussels in the early 1500s and depicting a betrothal scene hangs on the wall at the Manhattan showroom of the textile dealer Vojtech Blau.John Bigelow Taylor“The palette and scale of tapestries can lend a room a beautiful openness because, oftentimes, they have an interesting sense of depth in their compositions,” says Adam Charlap Hyman, 34, a co-founder of the New York- and Los Angeles-based architecture and design firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero. In the living room of his New York City apartment, an early 18th-century verdure tapestry — inherited from his grandmother and made in Aubusson, a French town famed for its weaving — takes up almost an entire wall, framing a curved 1970s sofa by the German designer Klaus Uredat.The Manhattan-based architect and designer Giancarlo Valle, 42, often incorporates tapestries with nature scenes — known as cartoons — into his projects because, he says, “they’re like lenses into another world.” Recently he hung a 14-foot-high 17th-century Flemish piece above a midcentury chest of drawers in a client’s otherwise minimalist New York apartment. The piece, which he acquired from an estate, is part of a four-panel set, other panels of which hang in the palatial English manor houses Holkham Hall in Norfolk and Mamhead in Devonshire. “I think their rise in popularity fits in with the larger trends we’re seeing in the art world now for figurative paintings, real life scenes and historical-looking works,” he says, adding that “tapestries are great for rooms that need a big storytelling element or have a very large wall.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

He wrote extensively about the New York art scene in the 1960s and ’70s, then shifted to become a prominent street photographer.Max Kozloff, a leading art critic who helped readers of The Nation and Artforum navigate the array of movements that followed Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s and ’70s, and who later became a well-regarded photographer in his own right, died on April 6 at his home in Manhattan. He was 91.His wife, Joyce Kozloff, said the cause was Parkinson’s disease.As a writer, Mr. Kozloff established himself early on. He became the art critic for The Nation in 1961, when he was a 28-year-old doctoral student at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. He became an associate editor at Artforum three years later and eventually became the editor.He wrote extensively about painting, especially those New York artists who were pushing beyond the waning dominance of Abstract Expressionism, like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. And he tussled with older critics, especially Clement Greenberg, whose ideas he found too doctrinaire to be useful in a time of proliferating artistic movements.Though Mr. Kozloff was far from ideological, he was interested in the ways ideology and political context shaped artistic production.In perhaps his most famous essay, “American Painting During the Cold War,” published in Artforum in 1973, he argued that Abstract Expressionism, precisely because it claimed to exist outside of politics, served as a handmaiden of postwar American dominance, showing the world that a techno-liberal powerhouse could foster great art.As a student of photography, Mr. Kozloff was especially interested in what he considered street photography — seemingly random, spontaneous images of anonymous people engaged in mundane activities.University of New Mexico PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are cancelling events, while the Trump campaign scheduled a new rally The coronavirus outbreak threatens to upend the organisation of the US presidential election and strike a blow to Donald Trump because of his reliance on big campaign rallies. Democratic rivals Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders both cancelled rallies in […] More