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By Jim Van Buskirk
Three decades after its 1995 exhibition Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist, the Musée d’Orsay has co-organized another Gustave Caillebotte retrospective, in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Chicago Art Institute. 

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By Francis Buseko
While Dakan made waves as the first openly West African queer love story, its significance extends far beyond its historic debut.

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Here's My Story View all

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By Nastya Dzutstsati
The tragedy of a state-imposed closet is that the performance never ends—unless you find a way to escape, or the government finds you first.

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By Elizabeth Costello
My heart, my gut, my cunt assumed positions of power. If that moment was a tarot card it was absolutely The Tower — the first time I spoke to her I felt hit by lightning. The rules of my gravity changed.

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Book Reviews

Visual Rhythms

KNOWN for her large-scale collage portraits of Black women, the critically acclaimed artist Mickalene Thomas was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1971. Introduced to art as a child by her mother, fashion model Sandra Bush, she earned her BFA from New York’s Pratt Institute and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. She has accepted various artist residences and received numerous prizes. She now lives and works in Brooklyn with her partner and frequent model Racquel Chevremont.

Designing Men

WITH A WINK to Oscar Wilde, R. Tripp Evans’ The Importance of Being Furnished celebrates four influential Americans—Charles Leonard Pendleton (1846–1904), Ogden Codman Jr. (1863–1951), Charles Hammond Gibson Jr. (1874–1954), and Henry Davis Sleeper (1878–1934)—whose imaginative houses, now public museums, marked a pivotal shift toward personal expression in home design.

Will’s World

Written for lay readers, Straight Acting discusses complex issues in a readable style and includes an extensive bibliographical essay and footnotes. Each chapter begins with a fictional scene from a particular period in Shakespeare’s life.

Deconstructing Pee-wee

McKinney does an admirable job of reframing much of the scandal and paying homage to the genius of Pee-wee Herman. The book celebrates that such a singular, queer, and transgressive character ever existed, and the author’s sadness at Reubens’ passing is palpable. It’s a fitting tribute, one that Reubens richly deserves.

Transitory Artifacts

TRANS HIRSTORY in 99 Objects has been my most popular coffee table book this summer. It has beautiful typography and color plates. It has the heft of art books by Taschen, but it’s published by another German art publisher, Hirmer Verlag, in conjunction with the Museum of Trans Hirtory and Art (motha). And it’s the catalog for an exhibition that has yet to happen!

Briefs

Short reviews of BLOOD LOSS: A Love Story of AIDS, Activism, and Art by Keiko Lane and LONG LIVE QUEER NIGHTLIFE: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution by Amin Ghazian.

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