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      A Heartland Godmother of Installation Art, No Longer in the Shadows

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      She is a trailblazer of the architectural sculpture movement, and her diaries rival Frida Kahlo’s. Are we ready for the unsettling clarity of Donna Dennis?One of Donna Dennis’s architectural installations — a false tunnel entrance installed on the Mad River — so confounded local Ohioans that one morning in August 1981, someone pipe-bombed it. New York’s bomb squad confiscated part of another structure, a cabin occupying City Hall Park, in 1986. The works by Dennis are so faithful to existing vocabularies of infrastructure that they defy classification as art objects.In 1970s New York, as painting and sculpture gave way to a gold rush of conceptualism, environments, performance and politics, the Ohio-born Dennis, fresh from art school in Minnesota and Paris, tuned into consciousness-raising women’s groups and devoted her craft to unsettlingly frank resemblances of buildings.First came hotel and subway facades, then houses in the round — each a combination of construction and artist materials, and slightly too small to pretend functionality. (For lights she uses appliance bulbs, and her doors terminate at her eye level.) Since the ’80s she has gone industrial: room-size lift bridges, stairways, rail platforms, pump houses and roller coaster girdings that have increased in complexity as they lessen in number.Dennis in 1981 with half of “Mad River Tunnel: Entrance and Exit,” in Dayton, Ohio.Donna DennisThis month, the gates crack on this scarce and challenging oeuvre. The bellwether art gallery O’Flaherty’s has darkened its space on Avenue A to a dramatic degree, and filled it with five Dennis works from the 1970s and ’90s, for a show called “Houses and Hotels.” Whatever else they do, these shrines to vernacular architecture, humane, seductive and commanding, make clear that a godmother of installation art has been unwisely overlooked.“Two Stories with Porch (for Robert Cobuzio)” (1977-79) is a 10-foot-tall rowhouse in the style of suburban New Jersey. From a darkened first-story window, a VACANCY sign glows greenly. (A tribute to the late friend of the title.) A wallpapered room lit by ceiling bulb is just visible upstairs. As your eyes adjust in the dark, unlit details fade in: a coat of aluminum paint on the cornice, a staircase through the curtain, a tracing of mortar among stones in the foundation.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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      The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Rage and Grief

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      Käthe Kollwitz’s fierce belief in social justice and her indelible images made her one of Germany’s best printmakers. A dazzling MoMA show reminds us why.An artist friend texted me recently, asking how to contend with the anger and sadness she was feeling about the state of the world. I can think of no better balm than the Museum of Modern Art’s Käthe Kollwitz retrospective, the first ever at a New York museum that encompasses this German artist’s groundbreaking prints and drawings and her sculpture, posters and magazine illustrations.Once you’re there, go straight over to her series “Peasants’ War,” which she started in 1902, to find her own outlet for her burning desire for radical change. She was about 10 years into her already successful career when she made it, a remarkable feat given that she was a woman in a country that still didn’t allow women into art schools. In 1898, she had been nominated for a gold medal at the Greater Berlin Art Exhibition for her first major print cycle, “A Weavers’ Revolt” (1893-97), but did not receive it: The Prussian minister of culture thought her subject matter — a fictional uprising based on a contemporary play about an 1844 revolt, a watershed moment for many German socialists — too politically subversive, while Kaiser Wilhelm II himself objected to the idea of a woman garnering top prize.Born in 1867, Kollwitz was an avowed socialist whose career stretched from the 1890s to the 1940s, a period of tremendous social upheaval and two world wars. Though she was a member of the progressive Berlin Secession art movement, she kept a distance from the elite art world, living in a working-class Berlin neighborhood with her husband, a doctor who tended to the poor.Display of posters by Käthe Kollwitz at MoMA, left to right: “Vienna is dying! Save its Children,” 1920; “The Survivors,” 1923; “Help Russia,” 1921; “Never Again War!” from 1924; poster to legalize abortion, from 1923; “Release our Prisoners,” 1919. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWith “Peasants’ War,” Kollwitz again turned to the past to share her outrage at the injustices around her “which are never ending and as large as a mountain.” The seven-part series deals with the historical revolt that swept German-speaking countries of Central Europe in the 16th century, not as a transcription of historical events but as an imagined narrative showing the exploitation of farm workers (men treated no better than animals yoked to a plow, a woman in the aftermath of a rape by a landowner), their explosive response, and the chilling repression that followed. It is a story worthy of Charles Dickens or Émile Zola, told from a woman’s point of view.The largest print, “Charge,” focuses on the figure of “Black Anna,” reputed to be a catalyst of the violence, urging a mob of peasants to action. She is no “Liberty Leading the People.” Unlike Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 image of a beautiful and bare-breasted personification of French freedom, Kollwitz’s crone is shown from the back, her sinewy arms raised and hands clenched urgently, practically launching herself into the crowd.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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      When Richard Serra’s Steel Curves Became a Memorial

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      The sculptor had a breakthrough in the late 1990s with his torqued metal rings. Then the attack on the World Trade Center, which Serra witnessed, gave them a sudden new significance.After the yelling, the hearings, the lawsuit, the dismantlement, Richard Serra entered the last decade of the last century with his mind cast toward the classics.He was happy to see the end of the ’80s. The American sculptor, who died Tuesday at 85, got caught up in the Reagan-era culture wars with “Tilted Arc,” a 120-foot plate of curved Cor-Ten steel that sliced across Manhattan’s Federal Plaza. It drew outrage almost as soon as it was installed in 1981. His fellow New Yorkers shouted at him on the street. People called his loft on Duane Street with death threats. (This newspaper, too, was not always kind.) The work was finally removed — in Serra’s estimation, destroyed — in March 1989. You could see the appeal of a trip to Italy.In Rome, he visited San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane: a chapel designed by Francesco Borromini that’s one of the prizes of Baroque architecture, topped by an oval dome. “The central space is simply a regular ellipse, and the walls that surround it are vertical,” he would later recall. “I walked in and thought: what if I turn this form on itself?”Serra’s “Tilted Arc” (1981), in Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. After a yearslong battle it was dismantled in 1989.Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesBack in New York, after consulting with engineers and trying out new computer-aided design software, he created a sculptural form that had not existed before: free-standing plates of weatherproof steel whose top and bottom edges form two identical, misaligned ellipses. The rolled steel weighed some 20 tons, but had a finesse that belied their mass. They had the can-you-top-this confidence of an artist who saw Borromini as his peer, but they were more inviting than Serra’s previous steel works, beckoning you to explore their warmly patinated expanses.The torqued ellipses, quite literally, shifted the axis of Serra’s career: from solid to space, from process to perception, from the artist’s actions to the viewer’s bodily experience. Their enclosing volumes provided this once controversial, always gruff artist an unexpectedly congenial third act; the ellipses at the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, N.Y., have become a reliable venue for second dates, an ideal backdrop for cultured flirtation. Whereas for me the ellipses have remained these past decades something more like empty tombs, wedded in my mind to another site of deformed steel, and to the life of an artist who experienced Sept. 11, 2001, with horrible immediacy.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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      Jeffrey Gibson Will Bring Sculptures of Ancestral Spirits to Met Facade

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      The Met named its 2025 art commissions, which include Gibson’s facade sculptures and a roof garden installation by the soundsmith Jennie C. Jones.Last summer, Jeffrey Gibson received an honor that most artists wait for their entire lives. Would he represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, the art world’s version of the Olympics? Only a few weeks after accepting, there was another auspicious ring on the telephone.It was the curator David Breslin, wondering if Gibson would become the sixth artist to alter the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s facade with newly commissioned sculptures.“He called me from the beach,” recalled Gibson, a Choctaw-Cherokee artist known for infusing abstract works with queer and native themes.For the commission, Gibson will return to the ancestral spirit figures he started assembling in 2015. The challenge will be translating these delicate structures of beadwork, textiles and paint into four weatherproof sculptures that will gaze upon museum visitors from their plinths above Fifth Avenue. They will be on view from September 2025 through May 2026.Breslin, who leads the Met’s modern and contemporary art department, described Gibson as “one of the most incredible artists of his generation.”Gibson’s 2015 sculpture, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” an ancestral spirit figure made from glazed ceramic and repurposed tipi pole, artificial sinew and copper jingles. Gibson will explore his Indigenous heritage, abstraction and popular cultures on the Met facade.Jeffrey GibsonWe 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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      In Reversal, Guinness Gives a Frenchman’s Matchstick Eiffel Tower the Record

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      Weeks after disqualifying a 24-foot tower made of matchsticks, Guinness World Records apologized and said it had been too “heavy handed.”Richard Plaud toiled over eight years to construct a nearly 24-foot model of the Eiffel Tower. Each of the 706,900 matchsticks he glued together brought the Frenchman one step closer toward his dream: Achieving a world record for building the tallest matchstick sculpture.But in late January, weeks after he finished the replica, Guinness World Record officials delivered devastating news: His Eiffel Tower was disqualified for being built with the wrong type of matchsticks.“It hurt me,” he told TFI Info, a French television network, in an interview aired this week. He also expressed his discontent on Facebook. “GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT,” he wrote in a post last week. “Tell me that the 706,900 sticks glued together one by one are not matches!!??”By Thursday, however, after days of headlines about Mr. Plaud’s disappointment over his disqualification, Guinness reversed its decision, saying that it had made a mistake. Mr. Plaud had earned the title, Guinness clarified in a statement, even though he had used matchsticks without ignitable ends.Mr. Plaud with his model. Richard Plaud/Via ReutersMark McKinley, the director of records at Guinness, said on Friday that the organization regretted any distress it had caused Mr. Plaud during what should have been a time of celebration.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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      What to Know About the Vote Tally Fiasco

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Thursday. Weather: Cooler and partly sunny, with a high in the mid-80s, but afternoon thunderstorms could bring gusty wind and heavy rain. Alternate-side parking: In effect until Sunday (Independence Day). Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe goal was to offer additional insight into the mayor’s race. The result was a mess.After New York City’s Board of Elections retracted a tally of ranked-choice votes because of a significant error, a new tabulation was released yesterday. The unofficial count suggested a tight race was in store among the Democratic candidates Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley.The corrected results, however, did not end lingering questions over the initial mistake — the latest debacle in a history of blunders at the Board of Elections — and whether it would affect voters’ faith in the elections process.[Read more about the results and the initial issues with the tabulation.]Here’s what to know:The updated resultsThe corrected ranked-choice exercise showed Mr. Adams edging out Ms. Garcia by about two percentage points, or 14,755 votes, in the final round. Ms. Wiley finished in third place, but was less than 350 votes behind Ms. Garcia before being eliminated.The sample playoff process suggests that the race may end in a tight heat. But both the numbers and standings of the top three could all be shaken up as roughly 125,000 Democratic absentee ballots are counted.An official result is not expected for weeks.The chaosAfter the initial tally on Tuesday, some people quickly noticed the total count of votes was significantly higher than the overall number during early voting and Primary Day.About seven hours later, the Board of Elections said it had mistakenly included about 135,000 test ballots in the tabulation.The falloutThe updated outcome did not differ significantly despite the error. But details that emerged on Wednesday shed new light on the mistake.The supplier of the open-source software that the city used to tabulate votes repeatedly offered its assistance, according to Christopher W. Hughes, the policy director at the provider, the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center. But he told my colleague Dana Rubinstein that he did not hear back.The slip-up reignited demands for meaningful reform at the elections board, long criticized for ineptitude and a lack of accountability. It was far from the first botched process. Last year, for example, about 100,000 New Yorkers received defective absentee ballots.The State Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, said that legislators would hold hearings on the situation and that they should move to quickly pass voting reforms.From The TimesNew York Adopts Record $99 Billion Budget to Aid Pandemic RecoveryActress Who Recruited Women for Nxivm Sentenced to 3 Years in PrisonTrump Organization and Top Executive Are Indicted in Tax InvestigationThe Reincarnation of N.Y.C. RestaurantsWith ‘Summer of Soul,’ Questlove Wants to Fill a Cultural VoidThe Oldest Museum in New York Is ExpandingWant more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingGov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that a monument honoring essential workers would be created in Battery Park City, and some residents have pushed back. [Gothamist]Several New York natives are missing after the collapse of a condominium building in Surfside, Fla. Here is one of their stories. [Daily News]The city will reimburse taxi or other car expenses for homeless children and students with disabilities coming home from summer school programs. [Chalkbeat New York]And finally: Hunting for sculptures in augmented reality Arthur Lubow writes:On a torrid afternoon in June, Emma Enderby, chief curator of the Shed, and Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art, walked side by side between their respective bailiwicks on the West Side of Manhattan, plotting the configuration of their first collaborative exhibition.They were exultant.“No night install,” Alemani said. “No cranes. That’s the best.”Nothing would be decided until right before the opening. “We didn’t have to think about engineering or weight loads,” Enderby said. “You can just spend a leisurely day placing them.”The exhibition, “The Looking Glass,” which runs from Saturday through Aug. 29, is a show in which all of “them” — the sculptures on view — are virtual, existing only in augmented reality, or A.R.Using an app developed by Acute Art, a London-based digital-art organization, a spectator can point a phone at a QR code displayed at one of the sites — the giveaway of where a virtual artwork is “hidden.”The code activates a specific sculpture to appear on the viewer’s camera screen, superimposed on the surroundings. (Unlike virtual reality, or V.R., in which a viewer wears a device, such as goggles, A.R. does not require total immersion.)Most of the virtual art will be placed on the plaza surrounding the Shed, on West 30th Street at 11th Avenue, supplemented by three locations on the nearby High Line.Acute Art is supervised by the third curator of the exhibition, Daniel Birnbaum, who, because of the pandemic, could only be present remotely. “The Looking Glass” is an updated and expanded reprise of another Acute Art show, “Unreal City,” which opened on the South Bank of London last year and then, in the face of new lockdown precautions, resurfaced in a monthlong at-home version.A teaser, with three of “The Looking Glass” artists, was presented last month at Frieze New York at the Shed.“There is something charming about it being secret or not completely visible,” Birnbaum said in a phone interview. “It is a totally invisible show until you start talking about it.”It’s Thursday — look around.Metropolitan Diary: Stranded in the ’70s Dear Diary:It was a beautiful spring Saturday in the 1970s. I had driven into the city from New Jersey for the day and was on the Upper West Side when my car started to sputter.I stopped at a gas station, and the guy there said they could look at it, but not until Monday. So now I had to get back to New Jersey, but I had spent almost all the money I’d brought with me for the day. I only had 75 cents left — not even enough for a bus home.I decided to call a friend who could, hopefully, come and get me. I saw a green phone booth outside a bar at the corner of 78th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.Picking up the receiver, I noticed that it was unusually big and heavy. This is one really old phone, I thought to myself.I dropped my last three quarters into the phone, but I didn’t get a dial tone. The phone was dead and now I had no money left.I went into the bar, where the bartender chuckled and said the phone outside was a prop. It was for a scene in “The Goodbye Girl,” which was being filmed on the block.He gave me a few quarters. I dropped them into the bar’s pay phone and called my friend. Then I settled in to wait, and watched Marsha Mason do about a dozen takes on the street outside.— Doug JoswickNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com. More