The Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni accepted an invitation by Mao Zedong’s government to visit China in 1972, during the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976). His assignment was to make a film documenting the achievements of Communist era China. Throughout his visit which included a trip by train from Hong Kong to Beijing, […]

This is a permanent public work sited in the information room (or library) of the National Museum of Ethnology (Museum Volkenkunde) in Leiden, The Netherlands on the occasion of the museum’s sesquicentennial.  The work references Jules Virey, a French anthropologist highly popular at the time of the founding of the museum who argued that human […]

Lum created a new work for the Sign Show by merging existing pieces — “Bindy Sangeet: Employee of the Month” (1990) and “Alia Naffouj: Hooked on Tennis” (1998) — into a diptych. Within the context of message themes along the interstate, his billboard comments on labor, immigration, the American Dream, and comparative representations of aspirant […]

Located on a hilltop just outside of Vicenza, an Italian town designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, sits the Villa Rotonda designed by the sixteenth century architect Andrea Palladio. On a recent visit to the site I was struck by how the building and its location cater to a particular type of vision. The […]