Britain’s dame of fashion Vivienne Westwood gave models a voice on her catwalk. The 77-year-old, known for her environmental activism, allowed her models, which included actress and anti-harassment campaigner Rose McGowan and other campaigners, to address various issues as she presented an eclectic mix of creations. “We need more heroes,” McGowan declared on the runway.

TRANSPARENCY is a challenging theme—it can suggest a translucence or clarity of light shining through a subject to make it more visible.  But it can also provide the artist a rare opportunity of exploring the social or psychological implications as well, such as that which is free of pretense.  Whether handled in a realistic or more abstract style, the 56 artists on display provide a wealth of interpretations.

The interactive piece is community-based, and as such, is continually transformed by its participants, who are invited to write their own story of migration and post their family photos onto the gallery walls. A collage-like bilingual sound piece, streaming into the space, weaves together Muriel Hasbun's own reflections on migration as gathered from oral testimonies and other aural impressions  recorded in El Salvador.

Several years before the world was welcoming the gigantic proponents of modernism, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazmir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian into the mainstream, af Klint was quietly creating her dazzlingly bold and colorful swirls, her biomorphic shapes and rectilinear constructions.  The pull of the outside world had little interest for her.  So little, in fact, that she stipulated that no one would see her creations until 20 years after her passing.  

According to Calder, “In this series of paintings, I use the icon of the blackboard to reexamine some of what we know about a group of our most familiar historical figures, myths, and cultural phenomena. Our understanding of this should not stop at what we were told in elementary school. The impetus for this series is my confusion when confronted with the discord between what we are taught and what seems to be the case."

'Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment' opens at Forest Lawn Museum at Forest Lawn—Glendale, California, on December 11, 2018. Highlighting the influential photography of 11 award-winning female photojournalists, the traveling exhibition is on view in Glendale until April 7, 2019. The exhibit features nearly 100 photographs, including moving depictions of far-flung cultures; compelling illustrations of conceptual topics, such as memory and teenage brain chemistry; and arresting images of social issues.

In a country that frowns on public dissent, Otero Alcantara has led a rare campaign against the measure, known as Decree 349, by dozens of artists working outside state institutions. Together they have flooded social media with slogans like “Law that converts art into a crime,” hosted musical and other artistic performances in protest at the decree and sent letters to authorities.

The works in this exhibition speak for the Caribbean’s indigenous peoples whose homes were fractured and divided by colonialism. These are spaces that were mercilessly exploited for labor and goods by distant European monarchies. This area also marks the site of one of the West’s first rebellions (the Haitian slave revolt which led to the independence of the island in 1804) and the Cuban War of Independence in 1898, a byproduct of the Spanish-American War.

A not-to-be-missed portion of the exhibit are 17 plates (never before seen in their entirety) for an 1828 publication of Faust by Goethe.   It was an early undertaking that elicited this response from the great author himself: “Monsieur Delacroix has surpassed the mental images that I made for myself from the scenes that I wrote.”  There are plenty of opportunities in his drawings to study his aptitude for classical form and his lifelong love for the Greco-Roman aesthetic (inspired in no small part by the 400-year-old Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule that ultimately led to the demise of his Greek sympathizer friend Byron).