What Are White People So Afraid Of? Claudia Rankine’s Help

By Alexis Clements

MARCH 2022 | Theater

Alexis Clements reflects on a trio of works by Claudia Rankine—an essay, a book, and a new play starting March 15 at The Shed—dissecting how they circle a question that has caught Rankine’s, and the zeitgeist’s, attention: why is it so hard for white people to confront their whiteness?

Alice Neel: People Come First

By Ann C. Collins

MAY 2021 | ArtSeen

Curators Randall Griffey and Kelly Baum gather more than 100 of the artist’s paintings, watercolors and drawings in Alice Neel: People Come First, a retrospective of the 60 years Neel spent transposing New York and its citizens into work that bears witness to the struggles of everyday life in the city as much as it dignifies the individual.

Faith Ringgold: American People

By Ann C. Collins

MARCH 2022 | ArtSeen

Organized by The New Museum’s artistic director Massimiliano Gioni with curator Gary Carrion-Murayari and curatorial assistant Madeline Weisburg, American People is jam-packed with more than forty years of Faith Ringgold’s most prominent work.

Hiromi Kawakami’s People From My Neighborhood and Sequoia Nagamatsu's How High We Go in the Dark

By Yvonne C. Garrett

DEC 21-JAN 22 | Books

Each of these books presents a master class in craft while also providing a perfectly honed narrative that draws the reader in and won’t let go.