Romanian historian, Lucian Boia, put it well when he described history as not one but two things: what happened and how we talk about what happened. These days it seems like everyone is talking about how we talk about what happened. Take the current show at the Henry Art Gallery. New York based artist Matthew Buckingham, whose exhibition “Play the Story” can be seen through September 21st, uses film, photography and projected texts to reflect on the relationship between history and narrative. [More]

The Last Scattering Surface is an apt, visual metaphor for modernity’s duality, for its promise of liberation and prosperity and for its sinister shadows--the Holocaust, the atom bomb and the violent excesses of the Cold War. Suspended from a long rod that leaves only a foot above the gallery’s wood floors, The Last Scattering Surface, on view at the Henry Art Gallery through August 17th, looks like a fiery starburst captured at the moment before it completes its final descent and disintegration. [More]

The curators of the current SAM exhibit, “Roman Art from the Louvre,” have their work cut out for them. They have less than an hour—my unscientific estimate of how long the average visitor spends at the exhibit—to overturn centuries-old perceptions of Roman art. From ... [More]