More on: Visual Art

NEAR THE REPUTED SITE of the Garden of Eden, an international team of environmental engineers, sewage treatment experts, and others are restoring historic marshlands in what has become a desert wasteland. They are creating a new Eden-not simply a public works project that will filter wastewater for the Ahwar region in southern Iraq, but also…

I was confronted with the reality that a perfect church could not exist, that the leaders that I had grown up revering were flawed and very human.

The following year I reentered the studio to die. After fifteen days—unable to eat or sleep, my mind desperately trying to give solace to my broken life—I finally collapsed and gave up my life in radical surrender.

I don’t pretend that I am capturing the truth about my subjects. I’m interested in creating something that feels timeless, that could have been made at any moment.

In Sicily, they bake Mini di Virginia, little pink cakes with cherries for nipples, to honor her saint’s day.

As a curator, I have a nearly mystical sense of the power of objects to open a portal between history and today, lives long ended and lives currently unfolding.

It’s interesting to me how quick we are to trust a museum’s account of history simply because it’s presented in a way that feels organized and professional. We gloss over whatever seems unappealing or doesn’t fit into the story we are trying to tell. In many ways, I think fiction can tell a more honest story than what we consider to be the truth.

It was always Vermeer’s instinct to return us to our truest selves, but to do so he had to learn how to make his figures vulnerable.

She seeks out materials rife with metaphor—Jewish ritual objects, found objects, repurposed garments—then transforms them with paint, cement, fire, and text, with the goal of sparking dialogue, increasing empathy, and engaging in difficult conversations.

My art practice also ebbs and flows like the liturgical seasons.