Fields of Love: 100 Years of Rainbow Cinema
LGBTQI+ Filmfest
The importance of representation was brought home to me many years ago when a friend told me he had cried on seeing a mediocre 1982 film called Making Love because it was the first film with gay protagonists he had … Read More
Alberto Giacometti: Narrating the Body
Variations on a Theme
Alberto Giacometti may seem like a known quantity, but clever curators can still find ways to surprise us. That will be a constant challenge for the Fondation Giacometti, which opened a new space last year in a gorgeous Art Deco … Read More
Marquet: La Méditerranée, d’une Rive à l’Autre
Port-Hopping on the Med
What better place to see an exhibition of Albert Marquet’s paintings of Mediterranean ports than Sète, the fishing port he fell in love with while traveling with a group of friends in 1924. He liked it so much that he … Read More
Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings
Mystery and Meaning
Much to her regret, Sally Mann first became famous, or should I say infamous, with the photos she took of her young children in the 1980s and ‘90s as they ran around the family’s country property in the summer, often … Read More
Henry Wessel, Fil Noir, Marguerite Bornhauser
Dark Stories
American photographer Henry Wessel (1942-2018), the subject of the exhibition “Henry Wessel: A Dark Thread” at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), had the unusual habit of not looking at the contact sheets of his photos until a year had … Read More
Dora Maar
The Price of A-musing Picasso
Photographer and painter Dora Maar (1907-97), who was Picasso’s lover for eight years, beginning in 1936 (“I wasn’t his mistress,” she once said, “he was my master”), is probably best known today as “The Weeping Woman” in Picasso’s portraits of … Read More
Chambord, 1519-2019: Building Utopia
The 500th Birthday of Heaven on Earth
The Château de Chambord is probably the most extraordinary of the Loire Valley châteaux, its massive structure and dozens of mismatched rooftop turrets and chimneys rising dramatically from its flat setting. There has never been much to see inside, however, … Read More
Romantic Paris
Romance in Turbulent Times
After the fall of Napoleon and his empire in 1815, 19th-century France lived through a series of monarchical restorations and new revolutions, with Paris always at the center of events. The major exhibition “Romantic Paris” at the Petit Palais looks at what … Read More
Versailles: Visible/Invisible
Humbling Versailles
If you want to avoid the crowds next time you go to Versailles, skip the château itself and go to the Domaine du Grand Trianon to see the exhibition “Versailles: Visible/Invisible,” a continuation of the now-annual incursion of contemporary art … Read More
Prehistory: A Modern Enigma
The Weight of the Past
I was as fascinated by the exhibition “Prehistory: A Modern Enigma” at the Centre Pompidou as the artists featured in it were fascinated by prehistoric art. The premise of the show is that the many new scientific discoveries made during … Read More