David D’Arcy

Film Review: This Year’s Tribeca Film Festival Documentaries — From Leonardo da Vinci to Rick James

July 4, 2021
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The Tribeca Film Festival wrapped last week — here’s a selection of the most promising documentaries on view.

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Visual Arts Interview: The Colonial Elephant in the Room — Talking with Barnaby Phillips, author of “Loot: Britain and The Benin Bronzes”

June 16, 2021
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Last week, just a month after the publication of Loot in the US, the Met in New York announced that it was returning two Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.

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Letter from New York: Visual Arts — Alice Neel and All the Rest

May 26, 2021
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In New York, museums and galleries are racing toward a new normal, whatever that might be. Most exhibitions that opened earlier in the year will stay open into the summer.

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Film Review: Berlin International Film Festival 2021 — a Promising Virtual Detour

March 26, 2021
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This was an improved edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, and a number of films seem poised to travel widely, despite being largely ignored by the US media.

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Visual Arts Review: Letter from New York – Goya, Grief, and Grievance

March 16, 2021
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Museums, now reopened in New York, are trying to coax visitors into their galleries. With two exhibitions, it’s working.

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Film Review: Virtual Sundance 2021 — Let Corporations Chase the Crowd Pleasers — Here’s the Real Stuff

February 11, 2021
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Sundance’s strengths for me this year (as in the past) were the festival’s documentaries.

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Film Review: Frederick Wiseman’s “City Hall” — A Kinder, Gentler Government?

October 30, 2020
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City Hall is a quiet, unsentimental celebration of civility in its many forms.

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Television Review: Art Lives on But Dealers Die in “Velvet Buzzsaw”

February 1, 2019
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Jake Gyllenhall and company will survive this broad satiric lark, as will the art world.

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Visual Arts Review: “Armenia!” — Art, Religion, and Trade at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

December 18, 2018
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Armenian cultural history has always been about survival: between Armenians preserving their art within the shifting boundaries of their homeland, and carrying their art beyond the country’s borders.

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Film Review: Stop and Smell (and Watch) the Corn — Fred Wiseman Slows Down in “Monrovia, Indiana”

October 25, 2018
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While nothing happens, there’s an understated splendor in all that’s uneventful here, so much so that I didn’t want to miss any of it.

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