Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith, New York Times, 2021

Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith, “Best Art Exhibitions of 2021.” The New York Times, Dec 7, 2021.

Ambitious museum shows in Tulsa, Richmond, and Louisville left an imprint. Jasper Johns, Maya Lin and Latino artists shone. And the high quality of gallery shows of women was dizzying and gratifying. (…)

On the contemporary front, “Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And” brought a long overdue career survey of a supersmart American conceptual artist and writer to the Brooklyn Museum. (A book of her essays, “Lorraine O’Grady: Writing in Space 1973-2019,” was a vital supplement to the show.) Company, a gallery on the Lower East Side, inaugurated a new space with “Barbara Hammer: Tell me there is a lesbian forever …” a museum-ready selection of

the late, great filmmaker’s early work on paper, organized by the artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden.

And in a strong solo called “Amerika. God Bless You If It’s Good to You” at the Bronx Museum of the Arts — celebrating its 50th anniversary — Wardell Milan showed masterly drawings of white supremacist nightmares and collaborated on a theater piece with the trans performer Zachary Tye Richardson and the sculptor Billy Ray Morgan.

(Read our reviews of Jasper Johns and Titian and our interview with Lorraine O’Grady.) (…)

Download full PDF