Glenn Adamson

Roberto Lugo’s new commission for Madison Square Park, in two parts: a gigantic fire hydrant, and a towering vase with portraits of honored Puerto Ricans including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Sonia Sotomoyor. Both are functional objects - and vessels of a kind - transformed into grand monuments. 🏺 Lugo has given the hydrant a graffiti tag, SE VENDE SOFRITO, implicitly inviting others to follow his lead. There was already one graffiti tag yesterday and I imagine by December when the work is deinstalled it may have a thick overlay, an instant history. The color - typical of hydrants in Lugo’s hometown of Philly - makes me think of orange alerts, and the image itself of a world on fire, but still connected to a shared communal infrastructure. @robertolugowithoutwax @randcompanynyc @madsqparknyc

A visit yesterday to the home, studio — and bathroom! — of the great Joyce Kozloff. A leading protagonist of the Pattern and Decoration Movement in the 1970s, Kozloff has explored many contiguous themes in her work since: mapping, diagrams, power, and cultural memory. Her bathroom is a collage of tiles from various public art commissions including subway and train stations (New Yorkers can experience one of these at 86th St and Central Park West). @joycekozloff #joycekozloff

An ideal pairing of architecture and sculpture: the Guggenheim’s hugely pleasurable retrospective of Carol Bove. She works with steel as if it were clay or cloth, and has arranged the sculptures in a beautifully phrased sequence up Frank Lloyd Wright’s ramp. An amazing moment - seen in the last image here - is a diamond-shaped window revealing Joan Miró’s ceramic mural Alicia (1965–67), normally hidden behind a wall and not seen for 23 years. The interpretive texts are unusually good, too. Here’s one about Bove’s quasi industrial methods of shaping: “While the steel sculptures on this ramp appear to have been gesturally molded by hand, their creation requires immense mechanical force. In her studio, located in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, Bove uses an ambitious system of custom hoists, gantries, and hydraulic presses to encourage her exceptionally heavy and rigid material to behave in unexpected ways. Despite these feats of production, she aims for forms that register as light and improvised, even effortless. The resulting works often appear to have an almost bodily softness, with disarmingly ambiguous surfaces that recall pliable flesh, folds of drapery, or even digital renderings. This perceptual gap-between our assumptions about how steel should function and what we see-disrupts habitual ways of looking. For Bove, such an encounter with an artwork might open a more flexible and embodied way of engaging with the world. “What we know about the material is contradicted,” she explains. “So maybe our grip on reality should be a little lighter, too, enabling us to see what is in front of us rather than only what we think we see.” @bovecarole @guggenheim

Sighting of our “Keith Haring in 3D” book in the wild! Specifically at Sothebys, atop one of the works being sold from the collection of Kermit Oswald. It’s an important group of works, as Oswald was a childhood friend of Haring’s who collaborated on his router-carved wooden works, like the atomically themed wall mask shown here, and the totems I just wrote about in Artforum. Good to see them together before they are dispersed. “Keith Haring in 3D” - the exhibition - opens at @crystalbridgesmuseum in early June. 🔥 #keithharingin3d @keithharingfoundation

A few craft intensive picks from this year’s Whitney Biennial. 1) CFGNY (Daniel Chew, Ten Izu, Kirsten Kilponen, and Tin Nguyen), porcelain cast in the negative space between “Made in China” dollar-store objects, mirrors 🪞 @cfgny2 2, 3) Kelly Akashi @citizenbong 4,5) Teresa Baker, astroturf with appliqué @tttttbaker 6, 7) Malcolm Peacock, handbraided tree 8) Sarah M. Rodriguez, sand cast aluminum 9) Raven Halfmoon @ravenhalfmoon @whitneymuseum #whitneybiennial2026

Please join me for an in-person conversation with Sally Silberberg, as we discuss her extraordinary and never before seen porcelain sculptures of the late 1980s. We’ll be speaking at 3pm this Saturday May 16th at Berry Campbell Gallery on W26th in Chelsea. @berrycampbell @sally_silberberg Image: Grid Study, 1988. 10 x 13 x 16”.

IN CONVERSATION Sally Silberberg and Glenn Adamson on Shifting Ground @berrycampbell Saturday, May 16, 2026, 3 pm RSVP at [email protected] Please join us Saturday, May 16, at 3 pm for a conversation between Sally Silberberg and Glenn Adamson on the occasion of Silberberg’s focus exhibition, “Shifting Ground.” Berry Campbell is pleased to present a focused exhibition of porcelain sculptures by Sally Silberberg, an extraordinary and largely unseen body of work that marks a pivotal moment in the artist’s practice. The exhibition is curated by Glenn Adamson, an independent curator, writer, and historian, and previously Director of the Museum of Arts and Design and Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Created during the 1980s, a concentrated period of experimentation for Silberberg, these sculptures are a decisive shift away from functional ceramics and toward a radical new sculptural language.  After years of working on the potter’s wheel, Silberberg developed a new method built from solid blocks of porcelain.  Layered with pigment, cut, torn, and carved, each work introduces both risk and unpredictability and pushes porcelain to its structural and perceptual limits. Works from this series are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian.  Silberberg’s porcelain sculptures constitute a distinct and powerful body of work that expands the possibilitie of porcelain and marks a pivotal moment in sculptural achievement. @sally_silberberg @glenn_adamson #sallysilberberg #glennadamson #berrycampell

“I don’t think humans are ever going to care about the creativity of AI. To me, it’s a little like sports: nobody thinks that Usain Bolt is slow just because he can’t outrun a bicycle.” From my interview with Jing Daily, now online. Link in profile. Image: Rio Kobayashi, “A Tree” Ginza Six, Tokyo. Image: Daisuke Shima. @jingdaily @riokobayashi_d @ginzasix_official

Terumi Saito, “Dusk,” 2026. In the artist’s current solo show at @volume_gallery in Chicago. ⭕️ Saito draws deep to create these works, combining ideas and techniques from ancient Japanese and Peruvian weaving and ceramics. Very much in the spirit of the great postwar fiber artists, but with a contained, cross-disciplinary energy and subtlety of palette all her own. Materials list is worth a look too: Hand-dyed silk, natural dyes (kihada, cochineal, madder root, onion skin), stoneware, hemp, jute, wood, and metal wire. ⭕️ @terumi_saito_ #terumisaito Thanks to @meaghanroddy for the image and info!

Featured in issue 22: SEEKING THE MEANING, FRANCES PALMER ( @francespalmer ) might just have it all figured out. Palmer lives and works at a historic home and barn, where, among other things, she tends a flotilla of raised beds within the fenced-off precincts of a disused tennis court. Beehives straddle a service line, the bees give her fresh honey and serve as pollinators. Visit at the right time of year, and you’ll be treated to a veritable fireworks display, as the dahlias, hollyhocks, and roses come into bloom. Go deeper in issue 22, link in bio. Words Glenn Adamson @glenn_adamson Photo Martin Crook @martincrook

Featured in issue 22: ESCAPE TO REINVENTION. When DEBORAH NEEDLEMAN @deborahneedleman stepped down from her position as editor of T: the New York Times Style Magazine, eight years ago, she did it in style. The launch party for her final edition was held at the Carlyle Hotel, with Lady Gaga, Kerry James Marshall, Zadie Smith, and photographer William Eggleston in attendance. All had been profiled in the issue, which had the theme of “The Greats.” Smith, who had recently published her novel Swing Time, even sang a few numbers with the band. Then Needleman went home… to learn how to make baskets. GO deeper in issue 22, link in bio. Words @glenn_adamson Photo @chrismottalini

Now out in @artforum , my essay “Walking With Giants” looks at the often mentioned, little comprehended idea of the totemic. I look at the origins of the term in indigenous culture and its widespread presence in contemporary art. I got into this topic via Keith Haring’s monumental wooden sculptures of the mid-1980s, which he made with his childhood friend Kermit Oswald. These will be included in our exhibition “Keith Haring in 3D,” opening at Crystal Bridges in June. Also on view at the museum is Nicholas Galanin’s work “I think it goes like this (memory and interference),” cast from fragments of ersatz totem poles, a powerful representation of cultural identity withstanding currents of appropriation, distortion and violence. To read the full article see link in profile. @crystalbridgesmuseum @keithharingfoundation @nicholasgalanin First image credit: “Keith Haring: Into 84,” 1983–84, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York. Photo: Tseng Kwong Chi. © Muna Tseng Dance Projects.