In this issue:
David Bundy’s book reviews, We the People, a History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lapore (W.W. Norton & Company, 2025) and The Making & Breaking of the American Constitution by Mark Peterson (Princeton University Press, 2026) “explore the development of the original United States Constitution at its drafting in Philadelphia in 1787, through its subsequent twenty-seven amendments and the many attempted but unsuccessful amendments along the way…. [also providing] colorful portrayals of the political actors.”
Jean Bundy’s book review, Michelangelo & Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius by William E. Wallace (Princeton University Press, 2026) discusses whether the duo, who only met twice, were rivals and/or may have influenced each other’s art projects through mutual friends, patrons or seeing each other’s works.
Bianca Bova’s essay, All Taste is Suspect: On de Koonings’s “Ruth Zowie” muses, “ The real collector does not care if the painting matches the sofa…. [And so] we look … to the various homes of Willem de Kooning’s Ruth’s Zowie (1957).”
Cláudio Rafael Almeida de Souza’s essay, VISUAL ARTS AND CURATORSHIP: THE BLACK OR AFRO-BRAZILIAN ARTS OF ABDIAS NASCIMENTO FROM THE EXHIBITION PANAMEFRICAN ARTIST, scrutinizes, “curatorial practices of Black or Afro-Brazilian art in Brazil and an examination of one of Abdias Nascimento's works belonging to the collection of the São Paulo Museum of Art.”
Laetizia Lindgren’s three London exhibition reviews consider, Why is visibility important in contemporary art? Jane Evelyn Atwood ‘s Too Much Time atPhotographers’Gallery (3/6-6/7/2026), Daphne Wright’s Expectations at Frith Gallery (2/19-4/18/2026), and David Ostrowski’s Test at The Perimeter (1/17-3/26/2026), “show that visibility in contemporary art is not only about making something seen, but how the viewer reacts emotionally and how well they understand what is shown.”
Natali Rajchinovska-Pavleska’s Venice Biennale review, The Taste, The Wet Dream and the Escaped Lion: 61 Venice Art Biennial interprets, “The events in and around this year's Venice Art Biennale have shown that this ‘vitalism of interpretation’ has certainly expanded from the domain of art into the domain of the unforeseen…horizon of the broader domain of the public.”