Spot 1: Ports of Call
Gray Harbor
What such water goods reveal—only to persons close enough to smell the clinging dregs of seaweed or willing to caress the faux-leather handbag tucked into a cellophane sleeve—are the sentient negotiations of supple conquest.
Cast Iron
An artist almost drowns, then reflects on Black Buoyancy, Hemingway, and Mami Wata.
Spot 2: Reviews
M. Lamar: American Cuck
With Drawn Arms: Glenn Kaino & Tommie Smith
The Un-Heroic Act
Open Architecture
Spot 3: American Hangover
Grits
An artist’s research took her to all 13 Presidential Libraries in the United States; notes from her stopover at the Carter Center weave archival research into intimate historical fiction.
Captives
I went back to Charleston, SC, for a wedding recently, and of all the port cities I have visited, lived in, or loved, Charleston is the worst.
Tropical Hangover
Between reality and escapism, magic and engineering, there is Florida, where the swamp is an unlikely breeding ground for global cultural capital and investment.
Spot 4: Cultural Capitals
Viva Vienna
Young gallerists inject Austria’s primary city with cultural capital, fresh program strategies, and plenty of teamwork.
Huguette Caland: A Life Coming Into Focus
Once known only to few for her erotic topographies and obsessive line, an unsung heroine of Arab modernism enters the canon.
Decolonizing the Ethnographic Museum
Europe’s museums turn to institutional rebrands and infusions of contemporary art to update their imperial-era collections —but are these efforts enough?
Spot 5: Atlanta
WE RIDE THE MARTA BUS
If highways and thoroughfares are Atlanta’s arteries, its bus stops are its pulse sites— places at which human life most authentically inhabits a city on the move.
The Practice of Circuit-Making
To “know” a city, walk it.
Doris Adelaide Derby
“Not all aspects of our lives are about the injustice.” Atlanta photographer, activist, organizer, and educator on SNCC in 1960s Mississippi, Roy DeCarava, and the importance of multidimensional representation.