On Marina Abramović and the Art of Preservation
By Wim Langedijk for HURS
On Marina Abramovic and the Art of Preservation
HUR Reads is our definitive shortlist of the most prominent articles from around the web.
By HURS Team
1
The Dutch Masters Were Women, Too
History remembers the Dutch Golden Age as a man’s domain, yet women were there all along: painting, embroidering, engraving, and reshaping culture with a precision and vision that rivaled their celebrated peers. The National Museum of Women in the Arts’ new exhibition, Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750, counters their erasure. Judith Leyster, Rachel Ruysch, and anonymous lace makers together reveal a world where women were not exceptions to the story, but central to its making.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Maggie Nelson, author of Bluets and The Argonauts, has built a career blurring poetry, memoir, and theory into a style both rigorous and intimate. Her latest interview traces her trajectory from early poetry to groundbreaking works on violence, love, and embodiment, including her recent memoir Pathemata. Speaking from her Los Angeles home, Nelson reflects on process, influence, and the discipline beneath her fragmentary form; underscoring her commitment to precision, curiosity, and writing that resists easy categorization.
THE PARIS REVIEW
Next spring, Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia will host Marina Abramovic in a historic first: the museum’s solo show for a living woman. Transforming Energy, opening alongside the Biennale in May 2026, traces the arc of Abramovic’s legendary career, from boundary-pushing performances like Rhythm 0 and Imponderabilia to new crystal-embedded works that resonate with Venice’s own artistic traditions. Set in dialogue with Titian’s Pietà, the exhibition invites viewers to inhabit a space where endurance, history, and the body converge with remarkable grace.
ARTSY
In Bologna, summer brings Il Cinema Ritrovato, a festival where lost and damaged films are resurrected for new audiences. From Chaplin’s The Gold Rush to Méliès’s hand-tinted shorts—these films are restored with meticulous artistry, then screened in sun-dappled piazzas and shadowy theaters. At the Cineteca’s laboratory, fragile celluloid is mended, scanned, and color-corrected, bridging past and present. Here, cinema’s history is not only preserved but vividly, joyfully brought back to life.
THE NEW YORKER
In a city built on reinvention, some New York City artists’ studios resist change. After their owners die, spaces like Tom Wesselmann’s Cooper Square loft or Milton Avery’s Upper West Side apartment have been left almost untouched, with painted floors, scattered brushes, and half-finished canvases preserved as if the artist might return. Maintained by estates, families, or assistants, these rooms become intimate monuments to creative lives, offering a rare, tangible link to work and habit long gone.