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Browse our essays and reviews on visual art, photography, and architecture.
Artist-activist Shellyne Rodriguez speaks with Billie Anania about museum labor practices and how Strike MoMA imagines a future of art for the people.
Amidst a boys’ club of ’70s-era comics, Shary Flenniken’s Trots and Bonnie was unique for its feminist depiction of the political and sexual awakening of young women.
The artist exploded the idea of what a book can be. For him, it was not a thing, but an instrument—something to do something with.
A draft executive order condemns the modernism of an aesthetic elite in favor of popular neoclassicism.
Two new books about machine creativity mostly reveal how little appreciation we still have for the full range of human creativity.
Slavery and the Civil War were central to the development of photography as both a technology and an art.
Yugoslavia produced a thrilling variety of buildings—frequently departing from the prefabricated monotony of the Eastern Bloc.
The modes of perception and living that we attribute to Instagram are rooted in a much older aesthetic of the picturesque.
From scrapbooks to family albums, the people of Kashmir have recorded their history in photographs. A new book presents their visual testimonies.
Let's all move to the moon.
Larry Sultan’s elegiac photography captures the suburban American home.
Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups is lost in its own symbolism.
Comic books can document the horrors of war better than photos.
Boston’s concrete modernist architecture is unsurpassed and widely despised.
In Paolo Sorrentino's Youth, the crossroads of despair and integrity.
The Wonders subverts the typical female coming-of-age story.
University art museums are cheap. They teach. They take risks.
Shigeru Ban's humanitarianism is unquestioned, but are his designs too humble to warrant architecture's most coveted prize?
OneTouch travels the African continent, showcasing its natural beauty.
If there is a moral limit to artistic license, director Alice Winocour has gone beyond it in Augustine.
Fitzgerald's novel is overrated, but the new film version deserves more credit than it has received.
Remembering Ficre Ghebreyesus
(and a slideshow of his paintings)
What problems arise when governments use art as a substitute for political engagement?
The story behind the municipal bankruptcy of Stockton, CA, illustrated.
John Madden, the distinguished British director of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, tells us that his film has the structure of a Shakespearean comedy.
An Interview with Anne Makepeace.
If Greenaway correctly diagnosed the aesthetic crisis of modern film, The Tree of Life is the remedy.
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That’s what sociologist Alondra Nelson says of Boston Review. Independent and nonprofit, we believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world.
That’s why there are no paywalls on our website, but we can’t do it without the support of our readers. Please make a tax-deductible donation to help us create a more inclusive and egalitarian public sphere—open to everyone, regardless of ability to pay.