The 60th exhibition of the Venice Biennale opens on April 20th. This show’s theme Foreigners Everywhere, takes the term “foreigner,” to refer broadly to all manner of marginalizations from mainstream society. With 331 artists represented in the main exhibition (including 3 Yale alumni artists) and many more in simultaneous national exhibitions around Venice (including 3 more Yale alumni artists), the …

Mickalene Thomas MFA ’02 created the backdrop stage design for Dior’s 2023 Paris Fashion Week show. ArtNews’ Angelica Villa writes, “Mounted on the walls surrounding the museum’s runway floor were collaged black and white images of 13 Black female performers, Josephine Baker, Diahann Carroll, Marpessa Dawn, Lena Horne, and Nina Simone being among them. Their images, which were overlaid with …

Recently, Blind Magazine‘s Max Hirschfield wrote a feature on Melinda Blauvelt MFA ’73 and the 2023 Brantville, which includes photos Blauvelt took in Brantville, New Brunswick in the summer of 1972. Blauvelt, the first woman graduate of Yale’s MFA photography program, trained under the renowned rural chronicler Walker Evans, the legacy of which you can see in the photos included …

Art Basel’s Chloë Ashby recently featured the work of Ana Benaroya MFA ’19 in a piece titled, “Transcending gender with muscles and manicures.” In it, Ashby highlights Benaroya’s aesthetic trajectory from Renaissance art to depicting women that embodied both hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine traits. You can find the full feature here. Photo Credit: Ana Benaroya. The Devil May Care, 2023. Courtesy …

Awol Erizku MFA ’14 was recently featured in Blind Magazine celebrating what Miss Rosen calls a “groundbreaking…monograph” whose “sparkling phantasmagoria…brings to mind the riddle of a Sphinx.” You can find the work, Mystic Parallax, here. You can read the full news feature here. Photo Credit: Awol Erizku. Girl with a Bamboo Earring, 2009. from Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax (Aperture, 2023). …

Tschabalala Self MFA ’15 recently painted an image of Nicki Minaj for the December 2023 digital cover of Vogue. On the collaboration, Vogue writes, “when we asked Tschabalala to do a portrait of Nicki for Vogue’s December digital cover—using photographer Norman Jean Roy’s cover shoot [of the print edition] as a starting point—she was surprised and electrified by the idea, and maybe just …

Jordan Casteel MFA ’14 was featured on Time‘s top 100 people list of 2022. Read what Time writes about Casteel: “Jordan Casteel’s portraits invite us to meet their gaze. The artist is best known for detailed oil paintings that find subjects in her New York City community—usually African Americans, always people of color—staring out at the viewer, their expressions confident but …

First-generation American Antonio Alcalá ’83 ’85 MFA spoke to the Yale community on June 17 about his journey from San Diego to New Haven to Washington, D.C., where he has art directed or designed more than 60 postage stamps for the United States Postal Service. From commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation to the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, …

Recently, Former President Barack Obama announced that the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Water Garden will be anchored around a commissioned art installation from Maya Lin BA ’81, M.Arch ’86. According to the Pace Gallery, “Lin’s work, titled Seeing Through the Universe, will feature an upright “oculus” piece that mists and a flat “pebble” piece that fills with water and then …

In 2020, Martin Puryear B.F.A. ’71, M.F.A. ’71, D.F.A. (Hon.)’94, was among 3 artists honored with the Getty Medal, recognizing Puryear’s contributions to the arts and humanities. The Getty Trust writes of Puryear’s work, “Mr. Puryear’s sculpture has been recognized for more than 50 years for its abstract organic forms. ‘Martin Puryear’s powerful hand-crafted sculpture delves deeply into African American …