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    Can Shoplifting Be Justified? This Artist Wants You to Decide.

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    Dries Verhoeven has constructed a replica grocery store for his latest provocative performance.Between two aisles of a grocery store, a woman is having a destructive meltdown. She opens a jar of applesauce, spits in it and returns it to the shelf. She squirts a tube of mayonnaise onto the floor, then smears tomato sauce from a container on her chest.Climbing the shelves, she recites a soliloquy on the joys of shoplifting. “Why call it stealing?” she says, with surprising calm. “I call it a love affair.”All of this takes place within a giant glass box on the stage of the International Theater Amsterdam as part of the six-hour performance installation “Everything Must Go,” by the Dutch artist Dries Verhoeven. Through Thursday, spectators can enter and exit the theater during the performance to peek into the box or can watch the performer unravel on TV monitors displaying CCTV footage.It is the latest disquieting offering from Verhoeven, 49, who combines elements of theater and visual art to create performances that are engineered to leave the audience trembling.“I’m quite a nervous person, and I like this feeling of nervousness, because it means there’s something at stake,” he said, while the glass box was being assembled at the theater earlier this week. “When we’re nervous, we are activated.”The installation takes place over six hours …Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times… and features disquieting elements to unsettle the audience.Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesWe 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

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      Met Museum Surrenders Artifacts Thought Looted From Iraq

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      The Manhattan district attorney’s office said the objects had been identified as illicit during an investigation of an art dealer suspected of having trafficked in stolen antiquities.Three ancient artworks that for years had been part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and are now thought to have been looted were returned on Monday to the Republic of Iraq, the Met and the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in statements.The artworks were recovered following criminal investigations into looted art, including one into the British antiquities dealer Robin Symes, the district attorney’s office said. Mr. Symes, who died in 2023, was long suspected by investigators to have been a trafficker.The artifacts were returned in an official ceremony at the district attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan that was attended by Met officials and representatives from Iraq.“Through the Museum’s cooperation with the Manhattan DA’s office, and as a result of its investigation into Robin Symes, the museum recently received new information that made it clear that the works should be repatriated, resulting in a constructive resolution,” the Met said in a statement.The artifacts include a Sumerian vessel made of gypsum alabaster dating to around 2600 to 2500 B.C., which passed through Symes’s hands and was given to the museum in 1989 by a private collection; and two Babylonian ceramic sculptures, a head of a male and a head of a female, dating to around 2000 to 1600 B.C.The head of a male was sold by Symes to the Met in 1972; the head of a female was a gift from the same private collection in 1989. All three were seized by the district attorney’s antiquities trafficking unit earlier this year.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

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      Thaddeus Mosley Shapes Universes in Wood

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      In a spectacular exhibition at Karma Gallery, the 98-year-old artist makes hardwood sculptures that burst with vitality and variation.The first sculpture in Thaddeus Mosley’s spectacular show “Proximity” is an assembly of four roughly wishbone-shaped pieces of carved walnut that stands 6 ½ feet tall. He calls it “Arboreal Choreography.” Seen from the gallery’s front door it does indeed bring to mind a well-dressed dancer in a self-conscious pose, thumbs in braces, one toe raised. From the end of a nearby bench, though, it becomes a complex jungle of shadows, creases, cracks and reinforcements, with brown and off-white tones so rich and various that you’d almost think he painted them on. As you pass alongside, it all becomes something else again.Mosley, who was born in 1926, has also worked in assemblage, sourcing miscellaneous objects from a Pittsburgh junkyard owned by Andy Warhol’s brother; one piece in the current show is mounted on a found lamp stand. In the past few years he’s also taken up casting, and a group of his recent bronzes will soon be installed in City Hall Park in Manhattan. But since he started making sculpture in Pittsburgh in the 1950s, the Pennsylvania native has chiefly worked with hardwood, enlisting every last bit of its natural aesthetic splendor, as Noguchi did for stone.Mosley’s “Flight Form,” 2023, in which a rounded, hollow mass of dark brown walnut sits horizontally atop a ballet-toe-shaped column. via the artist and KarmaMany of the pieces in “Proximity” express more singular thoughts than “Arboreal Choreography.” There are stools, wooden embraces, and several notched spirals that culminate in a majestic, nine-foot-tall column topped by a jaunty half pipe. Two sculptures made of locust wood are so shiny and yellow that they call to mind glazed French confections, at least for the moment. (Exposure to the air will eventually turn them brown.) It’s not that any of these things are simple — you could almost see “Curvilinear Reach” in a graduate-level math course — just that they’re easily taken in as wholes. Still, even in the most straightforward pieces, Mosley weaves together heady pairs of opposites: stillness and motion, curves and straight edges, intimacy and grandeur, conscious intention and organic growth.“Sonic X24” leans back like a debonair narwhal, and in “Crossroads,” a blade-shaped length of walnut notches a semicircular piece that evokes a slice of melon. In “Flight Form,” a rounded, hollow piece of dark brown walnut sits horizontally atop a ballet-toe-shaped column.Viewed from the middle of the room, it brings to mind a flayed beef carcass of the kind that Chaim Soutine liked to paint, a bulging, numinous stand-in for the universe itself. But Mosley ends his universe with 12 square projections, as if to impose some human order and decision onto the natural world. From the other side the same form reveals a crackling cavity full of esoteric mystery.Thaddeus Mosley: ProximityThrough May 23, Karma Gallery, 549 West 26th Street, Manhattan; (212) 717-1671, karmakarma.org. More

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      ‘Love, hope, community and resistance’: ACLU to unveil 9,000 sq ft quilt for trans rights

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      “It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t anxious,” Abdool Corlette said while discussing his latest project with the American Civil Liberties Union, Freedom to Be. An award-winning film-maker and head of brand at the ACLU, Corlette has been working for nearly two years with hundreds of trans people across the country to create a 9,000 sq ft quilt, composed of 258 panels that are packed with responses to the question: what does freedom mean to you?Corlette is anxious because Freedom to Be is all about trans joy and trans freedom, and it will make a defiant stand for both on 17 May in Washington DC in spite of the war that Donald Trump has waged against the trans community since his inauguration.“We have been doing everything we can to create contingency plans to make sure we have every scenario accounted for,” Corlette said. “This is what keeps me up at night, making sure our guests are safe.”This was not the celebration that Corlette had hoped for. When Freedom to Be kicked off in September 2023, it was focused more around combating the tsunami of anti-trans legislation that has taken over statehouses since 2020, as well as the related wave of anti-trans rhetoric that has seeded the ground for such legislation. The first two prongs of the campaign have already occurred: with the first, Corlette helped tell the stories of trans kids whose lives had been transformed by gender-affirming medical care, and with the second he spearheaded a rally on the steps of the supreme court on 4 December 2024, in conjunction with oral arguments in the case of United States v Skrmetti. The eventual ruling on that case will decide on the legality of bans against gender-affirming care for trans minors.The third prong of Freedom to Be happens this weekend as part of WorldPride, an annual global celebration of the LGBTQ+ community that just happens to occur in DC this year. The festivities will play out during the upswing of one of the most virulently anti-queer governments in US history, and, already, attenders from all over the world have pulled out, as have many of the event’s corporate sponsors.View image in fullscreenIn spite of the potentially dangerous situation, Corlette is hoping that the trans community will be able to find joy as he publicly displays the completed quilt. “I want someone who is feeling heavy to walk into that space and see that across the United States there’s 9,000 sq ft of messages of love, hope, community and resistance,” Corlette said. “Joy is what I want to blanket that day.”Lee Blinder, founding executive director of Trans Maryland, took part in helping create some of those messages that Corlette hopes trans people and their allies will see in DC. On 9 February this year, less than three weeks into the Trump administration, Blinder walked into a local queer bar to host more than 100 members of the trans community in creating squares for the quilt. According to Blinder, coming together to make the quilt instilled hope amid the onslaught against trans people that filled Trump’s first weeks in office. “People walked into that room feeling extraordinarily grateful to be there,” Blinder said. “There were these gorgeous multicolored sewing machines; there was so much thought and intention that went into the event. Multiple people came up to me and said, ‘We’re so grateful that y’all had this event. This is what I needed.’ It was really nice to be there and take time out of that impossible week.”Blinder’s comments speak to the power of being in community, even when confronted by the profound threats to basic human rights and bodily autonomy posed by the Trump administration and Republican-led state governments. It is a power Blinder is quite familiar with, as for years they have led Trans Maryland in hosting weekly trans support groups and organizing a program in which trans people help each other with name and gender marker changes. “It’s trans people who have been through the process helping other community members,” they told me.View image in fullscreenBlinder plans to be in DC for the unveiling of the Freedom to Be quilt, and they are extremely thrilled to be participating. “I’m really excited to see it all stitched together in person,” they said. “I saw all the quilt squares stacked there [in the bar] after everyone had made them – there’s this pool table in the space, and they’d lay them out there where we could see a little bit of the vision of how they would all come together.”Blinder echoed many who have posed art as an important element in fighting back against the Trump administration and other anti-LGBTQ+ governments. In particular, they see the way that art can bring together communities, while also opening minds and hearts, as integral to pushing back against authoritarian political movements. “The process of creating art has been a longstanding element of resistance for the trans and queer community,” they said. “It’s a key component with the resistance against fascism – it’s played a key role in the past, and I think it will continue to play a significant role in the resistance as it is right now.”According to Corlette, working with trans people at a particularly dangerous time for the community has been a powerful and often painful experience, as he has built personal relationships with individuals who have been harmed by repressive governmental policies. “Individuals who were storytellers in the first part of this campaign have had to pick up and leave their home states for fear of safety for their own bodies,” he said. “That’s what makes it so personal.”View image in fullscreenCorlette hopes that Freedom to Be will not just reach trans people and their allies but also connect with anyone who is feeling demoralized amid the authoritarian ambitions of the Trump administration. “No matter how daunting this fight is, hope has not been lost,” he said. “If the most marginalized community in the country is remaining in the fight, everyone else should be as well.”Ultimately, Corlette sees Freedom to Be as continuing a legacy of transformative community action taken by the queer community in support of itself. For him, spreading stories and joy while giving the community ways to be together is what’s most important. “This monument is a direct descendant of the Aids memorial quilt,” he said. “We wanted to really be in the legacy of those who came before us, to use art and advocacy to not only memorialize but to create pockets of joy for communities to tell their stories and come together to celebrate their existence.” More

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      With Guarantees Galore, Christie’s Has a Rocky Start to Auction Week

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      There was little excited bidding on the art collection of the Riggio family, who built their fortune on the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain — a caution flag for the art market. Chandelier bidding. Quiet phone banks. Executives wiping their brows.One of the most anticipated auctions of the season proved to be anticlimactic on Monday evening at Christie’s in New York, where many objects were presold to guaranteed bids and there was little evidence of the enthusiastic buyers who defined the market’s peak in 2022. Experts said the sale was marred by the economic uncertainty surrounding President Trump’s tariffs and how they might hurt the global art market.Louise Riggio consigned nearly 40 works from the collection she built with her husband, the Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio, who died last year. A second auction on Monday night, called the 20th Century Evening Sale, fared better, with more artworks selling above their estimates and livelier bidding on the phones and in the room.Christie’s had guaranteed the consignors an undisclosed minimum amount for the collection and then worked feverishly in recent days to offload the auction house’s risk, object by object, by finding outside buyers to leave their own pre-sale bids on works by modern masters like Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti.At first glance, the Riggio collection appeared to have done fine with a $272 million total, including buyer’s fees. But stripped of the fees, the sale fell short of the auction house’s pre-sale expectations that included a low estimate of $252 million.“Coming in? It should be now, ideally,” said the auctioneer, Adrien Meyer, at one point, struggling to find bidders on one of the lower-priced items in the sale, a terra-cotta vase by Picasso that ultimately sold within its estimate for $567,000, including fees.The top lot of the Riggio sale was a 1922 gridded painting by Mondrian that had once greeted visitors in the grand entryway of the bookstore tycoon’s Park Avenue apartment. It sold for $47.6 million, including fees. The canvas, “Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue,” fell short of the previous record for a Mondrian, $51 million, set just three years earlier at Sotheby’s.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

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      Arts groups for people of color steel themselves after Trump’s NEA cuts: ‘They poked the bear’

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      Summertime at the Upijata Scissor-Tail Swallow Arts Company, an artistic program located on Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, is usually bustling. The arts community center, created to help combat high youth suicide rates on the reservation, would normally offer twice-a-week classes to enrolled students. Traditional artists – quilters or beadworkers – would be paid to teach interested participants. It was all a part of Upijata’s mission to emotionally and economically support the vulnerable community, the poorest reservation in the US.But this year Upijata will have to significantly reduce its programming. Classes will now only be held monthly. Instead of hosting 20 students for workshops, Upijata will only be able to accommodate six. The cuts at Upijata come after a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was rescinded last week. The funding, the first time Upijata has received an NEA award since being founded in 2019, made up about half of the company’s budget.Upijata is one of hundreds of groups facing severe budget deficits after the Trump administration swiftly cut millions of dollars in NEA grants. Now, arts organizations nationwide, such as Portland Center Stage and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, are scrambling to cover the shortfall. Groups specifically catering to marginalized communities are also caught in the fallout.“We’re [building] a community where we’re creating a sense of belonging to combat the suicide rates,” said Upijata’s executive director, Shannon Beshears. “If we cannot be that sense of belonging, because we don’t have the consistency, the ability to impact our participants’ lives in a positive way decreases dramatically.”An email sent out to grant recipients on 2 May said that the NEA would “focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President”, several outlets reported. Recipients of rescinded grants were given only seven days to appeal the decision. Several top officials at the NEA have since resigned from the agency following the grant terminations. The NEA did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.Projects being prioritized by the Trump administration instead include initiatives that “elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, [and] empower houses of worship to serve communities”, among others.Grant terminations have affected artistic programming in every corner of the US, and organization administrators have taken to social media to share their shock and outrage. Many of the funded projects are already underway. In the interim, institutions have launched emergency funding campaigns, urging community members to donate. Others say they are appealing to other streams of donation, including private philanthropists. Many have filed appeals with the NEA to have their grants restored. Several of the funded programs are also the signature projects for impacted organizations, such as the annual Uptown Shakespeare in the Park initiative for the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) in New York City.CTH, known for its contemporary takes on Shakespeare classics and Greek tragedies, was only a month out from rehearsals for their production of Memon, a new play about an Ethiopian king who fought with the city of Troy, when they received news that their $60,000 grant had been cancelled. “They sort of signaled that they were going to do something like this a couple of months ago,” said CTH’s producing artistic director, Ty Jones. “Did I think they would follow through? No, I didn’t.”The production is a part of the theatre’s annual Uptown Shakespeare in the Park festival, which sees about 2,000 attendees a performance. The event generates foot traffic for local businesses. Representatives from New York City’s department of health and mental hygiene also provide community members with onsite services, including blood pressure checks and social service references.In Philadelphia, the advocacy group Asian Americans United (AAU) lost a $25,000 grant meant to support their annual mid-Autumn festival ahead of the event’s 30-year anniversary in October. The event was first founded by local youth who couldn’t be with their families for the mid-Autumn celebration, said AAU’s executive director, Vivian Chang. The festival has since grown substantially, exposing upwards of 8,000 attendees annually to more than 100 local performers.“For a lot of people, it’s a very accessible way to reach a new audience. These aren’t groups that will be on a super mainstream stage, or maybe they’re performing an art form that’s undervalued,” said Chang. “Where do they get to celebrate this? Where do they get to display? The festival is one of the few places for that.”For many organizations catering to disenfranchised groups, the alleged reprioritization is especially frustrating and contradictory. Upijata, for example, works with tribal groups and theoretically should be considered eligible under the NEA’s newly outlined goals, which include projects that “support Tribal communities”. “They said supporting tribal communities [in their new priorities], but in their effort to prioritize supporting tribal communities, they are directly taking funding from them,” said Beshears. “It feels like there is so much back and forth, so much dishonesty.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMany affected organizations were not surprised to see the Trump administration’s attack on funding. Prior to last week’s cuts, the NEA was ordered to require grant applicants not to promote “gender ideology”, as a part of a broader executive order.The National Queer Theater (NQT), a non-profit theater based in Brooklyn, New York, had a $20,000 grant rescinded for its Criminal Queerness Festival, a showcase featuring work by queer artists from countries where queerness is criminalized or censored. The group joined a lawsuit in March with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to sue the NEA over its anti-LGBTQ+ policy. As for the latest NEA cuts, NQT’s artistic director, Adam Odsess-Rubin, said he and staff members are “upset by the NEA cuts, but I can’t say we’re surprised”.“These cuts are part of the larger story of how Elon Musk and Doge have tried to gut the federal government and really focused on eliminating any programs they see as potentially counter to this administration’s priorities,” said Odsess-Rubin. “That includes any programming related to LGBTQ+ issues, any programming focused on Black and brown communities, as well as programming around climate change or healthcare”.Many groups are hopeful that they’ll be able to close the gaps in funding, especially given outcry from the community. But questions of how to handle attacks on the arts in a long-term capacity remain.CTH ultimately decided not to request an appeal, instead opting to focus on future actions against NEA attacks. The theatre hopes to work with the other organizations who have also seen their funds stopped, possibly through legal means.In the meantime, CTH is moving ahead with their Memon production and is confident their community will help them raise $60,000 by June. “I’m one of these crazy people that believes that the power of people is stronger than the people in power,” said Jones. “I don’t fear these people. If anything, they poked the bear. It’s a spark that’s put a flame in motion.” More

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      Koyo Kouoh, Prominent Art World Figure, Is Dead at 57

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      She had recently been named to oversee next year’s Venice Biennale. She died just days before she was scheduled to announce its theme and title.Koyo Kouoh in 2023. As the curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, one of Africa’s largest contemporary art museums, she had built a global reputation as a torchbearer for artists of color.Tsele Nthane for The New York TimesKoyo Kouoh, one of the global art world’s most prominent figures, who had been slated to become the first African woman to curate the Venice Biennale, died on Saturday in Switzerland. She was 57.Her death was confirmed by the biennale’s organizers. The announcement did not cite a cause or say where in Switzerland she had died.The biennale said that Ms. Kouoh’s “sudden and untimely” death came just days before she was scheduled to announce the title and theme of next year’s event. The statement added that her death “leaves an immense void in the world of contemporary art.”The Venice Biennale is arguably the art world’s most important event. Staged every two years since 1895, it always includes a large-scale group show, organized by the curator, alongside dozens of national pavilions, organized independently.A spokeswoman for the biennale did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what Ms. Kouoh’s death would mean for next year’s exhibition, which is scheduled to run from May 9 through Nov. 22.As the curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, one of Africa’s largest contemporary art museums, Ms. Kouoh built a global reputation as a torchbearer for artists of color from Africa and elsewhere, although her interests were global in reach. “I’m an international curator,” she said last December in an interview with the The New York Times.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

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      ‘It’s all very sad’: Trump’s attack on arts funding has a devastating effect

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      On the afternoon of 3 May, arts organizations around the US began receiving cryptic emails from a previously unknown government email account. The missives declared that these organizations’ missions were no longer in line with new governmental arts priorities, which included helping to “foster AI competency”, “empower houses of worship” and “make America healthy again”.Chad Post, a publisher at Open Letter Books, a program of the University of Rochester that specializes in publishing translated literature, got his email just before entering a screening of Thunderbolts*. He put a quick post on Instagram, and when he came out of the movie his phone was full of responses. “I seemed to be the first one to receive this,” he recounted. “But then, all of a sudden, everyone was getting these letters.”Post told me that he had been in touch with 45 publishers who had had their NEA grants terminated, and he suspected that all 51 publishers receiving grants for 2025 supporting the publication of books and magazines had now received the letter. Although Open Letter expects to still receive funding for 2025, Post is convinced that no further money will be forthcoming from the National Endowment for the Arts.“According to rules of the email, we should get the money, although if you come back in two months and they never sent it, I wouldn’t be shocked,” he said. “The chilling part of that email is that they’re eliminating the NEA entirely. It lists all these insane things that are the new priority, and says our venture is not in line with the new priority, so we can’t ever apply again.”The grant termination won’t deal a lethal blow to Open Letter Books, but it will alter the kinds of literature that they are able to publish. Post said that he would have to give preference to books from nations that can offer funding – which tends to favor books from European languages and from wealthier countries.This sentiment was echoed by other arts organizations, who see the loss of NEA money as a significant blow, but not a deadly one. Kristi Maiselman, the executive director and curator of CulturalDC, which platforms artists that often are not programed at larger institutions, shared that NEA grants account for $65,000 of a roughly $1.1m budget. Thanks to proactive work between her team and the NEA, Maiselman received her grant this year, but does not expect any further such money. “It’s a pretty significant chunk of the budget for us,” she told me. “What has been hard for us this year is that we really do provide a platform for artists to respond to what’s going on in the world.” Continuing to promulgate those kinds of artists would be more difficult in future.View image in fullscreenAllegra Madsen, the executive director of the LGBTQ+-focused Frameline film festival, said that her grant funding had been in limbo ever since the inauguration of Donald Trump, and was ultimately terminated last week. “I think we could all kind of sense that it was going to go away,” she told me. “I think these blows that came this week are going to be felt very intensely by a lot of different organizations.”Frameline is housed in the same building as a number of other arts organizations dedicated to film, including the Jewish Film Institute, the Center for Asian American Media and BAVC Media, and it also sits adjacent to SF Film and the Independent Television Service, all of which Madsen says were affected by the termination of NEA grants. “We’ve all been hit, and we’re all just sort of figuring out what our next steps are.”One fear that Madsen raised was that many private funders take cues from the Federal government, and now with NEA grants terminated – and possibly the NEA itself getting axed – she is unsure if other donors will get cold feet. “This year we have a cohort of sponsors that are very much sticking by us, and I am incredibly thankful for those organizations standing up. But it is a bigger ask now, it’s a bigger risk for them.”Despite the often seemingly indiscriminate cuts made to the federal government by the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, the organizations the Guardian spoke with all believed that they had been targeted in some way because of the programming that they offer. “Just because it’s being done in mass, I don’t think that takes away from the idea that this is pointed and intentional,” Madsen told me. “Governments like this try to attack the populations that seem to have the least power, and right now they are mistakenly thinking that’s going to be our trans and gender-nonconforming siblings.”Taking a similar perspective, Maiselman sees these cuts as perpetuating a broader cultural turn away from arts programs, in particular those that significantly represent people of color and the queer community. “Prior to losing the NEA, we had lost about $100,000 in sponsorships this year,” she said. “We’re hearing from our sponsors that there are a lot of eyes on them. They’re not exactly saying no, but they are saying saying, ‘not right now’.”View image in fullscreenPost sees private money as a possible way to make up some of the lost NEA funding but fears that there will be a stampede of indie presses all toward the same few donors. “Everyone is feeling a little more broke and a little more strapped right now,” he said. “Arts orgs writ large are going to be competing for funds from the same few individuals and that just scares me.”He also argued that, while a press like Open Letter will be able to continue functioning without NEA money, organizations that only publish literary magazines may fold without significant infusions of private cash. “Those literary magazines don’t have the opportunity to rely on a book breaking out,” he said. “They’re not suddenly going to have an issue of the magazine take off. This might be a massive blow to literary magazines.”Although some arts organizations appear poised to survive the loss of NEA money, they nonetheless feel existentially frightened by the general turn of the political culture away from diversity and toward authoritarianism. “It’s hard right now to see any light at the end of the tunnel,” said Maiselman. “With the rate at which things are changing, it’s going to take years to course correct – that is, if and when the administration changes.”Maiselman further argued that the cultural shift brought in by the aggressive moves of the Trump administration had the potential to profoundly transform the landscape of the arts world. “There’s going to be a reckoning,” she told me. “A lot of organizations won’t survive this.”For her own part, Madsen struck a defiant tone, placing the current repressive political atmosphere in the context of other such threats to the LGBTQ+ community. “We will survive, we have the privilege of being an almost 50-year-old org,” Madsen said. “The LGBTQ+ community has been down this road before. We got through McCarthyism, we got through the Aids crisis, we’ll survive this.”In hopes of surviving, arts organizations are again turning toward one another, finding a community sentiment that many of the people I spoke to called reminiscent of the Covid years. “There are a lot of conversations right now about how we can help one another,” Maiselman told me. Post echoed that, positioning this as a time of collective grieving. “It feels like the end of something,” he said. “It’s sad, it’s all very sad, but we have to keep going somehow. We are damaged but not defeated.” More

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      With a Pace Gallery Show, Robert Mangold Demonstrates His Consistency

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      At 87, the abstract artist Robert Mangold will exhibit 19 recent paintings and works, including one of his largest in decades.The abstract artist Robert Mangold has been so remarkably consistent and disciplined with his approach to painting and drawing that he makes pretty much everyone else look capricious and changeable.Mangold has been exploring geometry, form and color for more than 60 years, with a half-century of that time on a charming property here in the Hudson Valley with an old farmhouse and a barn.Now 87, Mangold has definitely slowed down. But he is still working, and he has a show of recent paintings and works on paper at Pace Gallery in Chelsea that opens on Friday.“Robert Mangold: Pentagons and Folded Space” is timed to coincide with the busy spring art season in New York and remains on view until Aug. 15.The exhibition has 19 works, and some have multiple components — including “Four Pentagons” (2022), a four-panel work that is one of his largest in decades — so it may seem even bigger, and it spreads over two floors. (“Four Pentagons” and a few other works are on loan from museums or private collections, in this case from the Art Institute of Chicago.)Mangold can spend years iterating on a shape. Circles and semicircles are forms that he has returned to again and again, sometimes embedded with or embedded in rectilinear forms, as in “Circle Painting #4” (1973), which sold for $365,000 at Christie’s in 2014.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