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My world is unsettled knowing that Jay Levenson, the man who seemed to know not only everyone but also everything, is no longer with us. He ran the International Program at MoMA since 1996 and was thus my boss for 6 years, where we worked closely on the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives Program (C-MAP), the International Curatorial Institute, and the Primary Documents book series. I cannot describe how much I learned from Jay, but I can only aspire to his kindness and unyielding generosity. Jay’s personal investment was never meted out in relation to a yield in returns. Although Jay knew everyone, not everyone knows that Jay was a brilliant scholar and curator in his own right. He could give an impromptu tour of any premodern museum collection, on any continent. In recent years, he dreamt of doing a large international exhibition decentering (my words, not his) the European renaissance perspective. It was to include loans of key works from all over the world, from the 15th century to the present (if memory serves). It would show how there’s nothing innate about linear perspective and one sightline making some things big, others small. Human experience is as much about seeing many things at once as in other pictorial traditions.  I am sorry that we did not get to see this exhibition. But I am totally confident that he achieved its ambitions and so much more. Unbound by the framework of an exhibition, Jay succeeded in extending connections and insights, created and sustained over so many decades, way beyond his and the institution’s reach, across the globe. He made MoMA so much bigger than its frame and expanded the horizons of so many. Koyo Kouoh was among many who loved Jay, crediting him with providing the museum’s first in-depth engagement with the African continent, the African Museum Professionals Workshop in 2002, where she also participated. I hope they have found each other now, somewhere in the beyond. Sending condolences to his family and a hug to everyone who, like me, miss Jay today. Here some snaps from our many travels, talks, tastes in Beirut, Shanghai, Colombo, NYC and Berlin. Thanks for adds @rattanamol @sarabod99 .

As structures of support are dismantled and those who have least are targeted most, solidarity and reaching beyond our own—and more so if we have never experienced being in harm’s way—seems all the more necessary. It was thus heartening to look back to the 80s, a decade otherwise identified with individualism and greed, to be surprised by examples of artworld solidarity in How to Be a Guerrilla Girl @gettymuseum . And for a museum like the Getty, which I’ve associated with conservatism, to house this cutting and deep archival show right now—and to open up the institution to the Guerrilla Girls’ counting method, no doubt kudos to curatorial nudgery of brilliant @zannazgilbert + team. It was a breath of oxygen in times dominated by an unprecedented insistence on apolitical neutrality for institutions in which the numbers really don’t lie, coinciding with the fascist plummet of a country I used to call home.

24 years of shitty selfies with this love interest

This is to my mind what is incredible about Norwegian public art programs, unmatched anywhere else. A leap of faith with a Palestinian, Norway-educated artist at the very crux of national power, the new government quarter previously maimed by an ultra-right nationalist. Jumana Manna imagines a new public space based on the broken leftovers of past civic spaces around the country through a vast collection effort, avoiding new material extractions by repurposing what has already been destroyed. Like good art does, it forces no conclusion but opens lots of questions - about the past and possible futures, creation and destruction, the local surface and other contexts. It makes me think about how not just places but also people, near and far, might be in relations of enduring and interlocking responsibility to one another. Already there and cemented, in one way, but also asking for a future democratic follow-through to be paved. Thank you @jumanamanna for giving us this dream to walk on and @snydr and @koro.no for availing the building blocks. #jumanamanna #publicart #koro

Hot off the press. Meta does not enable my acknowledgment of all the brilliant people who make this happen @kunstnerneshus . 2026 here we go! 💫 #husetvårt #ourhouse.

!Valie Export (alongside Action Pants: Genetal Panic, 1969)! recalling, among other things, childhood’s creative spaces, afforded and claimed: 1. The blank front and back pages of books during wartime. 2. Piano - is boring - but the tonal range can be a battle between angels and evil. 3. Mother’s bedside drawer where a snake was kept (“don’t worry mamma, it has already been there for three weeks”) 🐍 Art is about the universe, she said. Thank you @phileas.art for this and other special Vienna moments.

Happy birthday to my beautiful brother who would have been forty but has been gone for fifteen. Absent of wrinkles, surrounded by stars.

How rare to meet someone operating with fierce independence across the top of the field, with an acute radar for BS and an ability to disregard those in positions of power to call on art and people who wield none but merit being seen and heard. Rest in absolute power Koyo Kouoh. How your inimitable mix of joy, curiosity, wisdom, passion, style, grace and generosity is achingly missed. #koyokouoh

Belatedly, landscapes and exploitation imagined at the Rijksmuseum: Smerenburg on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen was a Dutch whaler settlement. Cornelis de Man painted this in 1639 but never visited, instead combining images and stories of the human and giant mammal interactions, and their surrounding landscape. Imagined is probably Jan Mayen Island fantastically rendered. Strips of whale blubber boiling and whaler settlements seem contrastingly concrete. Nearby at the museum was a woolen whalers hat. (The Whale-oil Refinery near the Village of Smerenburg, Cornelis de Man (1621-1706), oil on canvas, 1639)

Things done for cash: Piet Mondriaan, Isar Harlemia, 1902. Isar, the Saint Bernard, was a famous breeding dog mother. Mondriaan hoped to gain a prize for the painting but only got third place, despite being only one of two contestants in the competition. The painting of Isar’s pups—Tristan and Isolde, also by Mondriaan—has gone missing (thrifters, 👀).

Back to back, neck on foot, head under pelvis. Mothers & Daughters—with Safia Abdi Haase and Sulekha Ali Omar; Chris Nypan and Drude Haga—by Eszter Salamon. Developed from a choreography that Eszter made with her own mother, Mothers & Daughters is a transfer to other mother-daughters, both untrained and trained in dance. Each couple no doubt brought a heap of baggage and developed a movement together. At Kunstnernes Hus, this process manifested as one couple in each skylit space—with the audience moving from one to the other at the threshold when day becomes night—unfolding a relation onto a carpet that leaves marks. Is there a relationship thats is more encoded, stereotyped and pathologized? Probably not. Conversely, the piece is relevant to anyone who has or has had a mother, which means all of us. A movement from universal to particular, the performance’s one hour and fifteen minutes of continuous touch provided a moment to reflect on how a relation can be not only examined but also unlearned; how new means of support, breath, touch, counterbalance can be tested into existence. In other words: how to build different shapes of prior patterns. Lastly, so proud that @kunstnerneshus pulled this off, becoming a performing arts institution for two sold-out eves, with 400 people bearing witness to these relations. Both times, there were tears both on and off the carpet.

And the Installation is complete at Kunstnernes Hus ! And «BLINK» is on view from 14th of March, 11am , with the official opening and party on 21st of March, 1900… Standing here is Claude (left) and Monet (right), haha, Sarah and me wearing our Monet Sweatshirts… it’s been the best couple of days in Oslo, the team at KH is AMAZING 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩! Made the whole process seem like a piece of cake with super positive vibes.. 🌼🌼🌼 And this time uploading pictures from the installation in reverse, “BLINK” from now and “BLINK” when it came from Trondheim a few days ago (Thanks to Nora )and towards the end, the conception of “BLINK” at the Kunst Akademiet i Trondheim in 2020.. We have come a long way… but what a journey it’s been. Be ready for a revenge fantasy 👹👹👹👹👹👹 Trigger warning ‼️ BLINK is an installation containing a large scale charcoal drawing with audio/video projection on top… it’s on view from 14th March to 18th May 2025 ! Produced with generous project support from @kulturdir @norskebilledkunstnere . Blink is a part of KH exhibition series called Undergrowth (Underskogen), which is supported by the Bergesen Foundation and Talent Norway @bergesenstiftelsen @talentnorge