Sound Wars, Body Politics, and Museum Crackdowns

Museums are getting louder—and not always in a good way. In a commentary for The Art Newspaper, author and art historian John-Paul Stonard reflects on how audio and video can derail looking. He recalls co-curating Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation at Tate Britain in 2014, where wartime recordings—Myra Hess, Elena Gerhardt, Kathleen Ferrier, and Benjamin Britten—were meant to evoke endurance and hope, but drew complaints about “that scratchy music.” He then points to the exhibition James McNeill Whistler, where a staged argument between Whistler and patron Frederick Leyland plays every five minutes, and a projected actor as Whistler dominates later rooms. Stonard argues these intrusions reflect a mistrust of artworks and a drift toward “visitor attraction” thinking.

At MoMA, a new photography show takes everyday body language seriously—politically. The exhibition Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives starts with Marianne Wex’s Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures, built from street photographs she made in Hamburg between 1972 and 1977, plus images from books, newspapers, ads, and film and TV stills. Acquired by MoMA in 2018, Wex’s work anchors a dialogue with seven contemporary artists. Acting chief curator of photography Roxana Marcoci says the show asks what Wex’s project makes possible today, extending it through intersectional perspectives attentive to race, colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, sexuality, and self-representation. It runs at MoMA from 20 September to 2 May 2027.

A major new commission is now climbing the facade of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Liu Wei has installed a series of mixed-media sculptures titled Speculation, with works described as hybrid, fragmented forms—hands, spheres, towers, and jagged surfaces—made from materials including rawhide, resin, fiberglass composite, bronze, aluminum alloy, and steel. The pieces range from nearly nine feet tall to more than sixteen feet, and together read like a set of imposing anti-monuments. Liu has described wanting them to feel like objects “born out of a wasteland,” and he developed the project through layered digital collages mapped onto a photo of the Met’s facade, then translated into small 3D maquettes. For the commission, he worked with a team of 13 assistants and specialists.

Across the Atlantic, the UK government has placed an export bar on a rare Renaissance sculpture valued at £4.6m. The 20-centimetre-high Seated Nymph, dating from around 1503, is a bronze by Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi—known as Antico—with mercury gilding on the hair and drapery and silver-inlaid eyes, according to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The bar initially expires on 17 December, then gives the owners 15 business days to consider an offer at the recommended price, followed by a second deferral period of five months. Arts and museums minister Ruth Mackenzie said she hopes it can stay in the country. The sculpture was sold at Sotheby’s London in 2009 for £1.4m with fees.

At London’s Barbican Centre, Turner Prize-winner Lawrence Abu Hamdan is preparing Repercussions, described as the first cross-arts takeover of its kind there, spanning visual art, film, music, and performance. Hamdan—born in Amman and based in London—also founded Earshot in 2023, a non-profit using audio forensic analysis techniques within human rights research, with outputs that can include reports or even video games. The Barbican programme includes a screening of Rififi (1955), a two-day audio analysis workshop, and Zifzafa, an exhibition including a video game about sonic disruption and resistance in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Hamdan says political struggles “create this debris of sounds”—from sonic weapons to gunshots to hydraulic door breachers—colliding through investigation.

In Istanbul, Contemporary Istanbul is leaning into its role as an international meeting point. The 21st edition runs 23–27 September at Tersane Istanbul, the restored Ottoman shipyard complex overlooking the Golden Horn, and will bring together more than 70 galleries from 24 countries. Organisers say nearly one quarter of exhibitors are participating for the first time, including 17 newcomers such as Whitestone Gallery and Pearl Lam Projects from Hong Kong, Michel Rein and Galerie Vallois from Paris, Galerie Tanit from Beirut, and Galeria Francisco Fino from Lisbon. Founder and chair Ali Güreli points to Turkey’s interconnected region and a “resilient” cultural ecosystem, and says the fair has introduced cost-lowering measures like a bond agreement and a partnership with Turkish Airlines to help offset transport expenses.

In Washington, DC, a protest at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts drew a big crowd and a very specific image: a human chain. On Friday, 18 September, around one thousand five hundred members and supporters of Hands Off the Arts surrounded the building, holding hands, singing, and calling for justice for the institution. Local drag queen Tara Hoot hosted, introducing co-founders Mallory Miller and Chris Raleigh—part of a group made up of former Kennedy Center staff, artists, union organisers, and allies. They’ve been fighting layoffs and organising against President Donald Trump’s efforts to put his name on the center, and most recently, to close it for either a two hundred fifty seven dollarsm renovation or a total demolition. Actor Lynda Carter told the crowd, “Music and the arts is how we actually survive.”

In China, a 400-year anniversary show for Bada Shanren is pulling in young audiences in unexpectedly large numbers. So Lofty the Spirit, So Eternal the Ink opened 10 July and runs until 10 October across two venues in Nanchang—Jiangxi Provincial Museum and the Bada Shanren Memorial Hall. A spokesperson said the exhibition had attracted around four hundred thousand visitors across both venues as of 15 September. It’s described as the largest exhibition ever devoted to the artist, bringing together 129 paintings and calligraphic works from 22 institutions, many of which rarely lend. The museum’s posts generated more than one million views, and weekend livestream tours on Douyin drew around one hundred forty thousand viewers. Plush toys inspired by his eye-rolling birds generated around RMB four hundred thousand in sales in the first 20 days.

At the Louvre in Paris, two visitors were arrested after installing their own artworks near the Mona Lisa. Agence France-Presse reported, citing police sources, that the pair stuck two paintings—each about 11.8 by 15.7 inches—onto the walls of the Salle des États using sticky tape. One painting showed one suspect in a suit of armor; the other depicted the two with a woman. Police said the Mona Lisa was not damaged, but the suspects were arrested for damaging the museum’s walls and told police they did it for fun. The report also notes the Louvre’s broader security pressures: a leaked government audit said the system was “outdated and inadequate,” and the museum is planning a new perimeter video surveillance system to be installed in January as it faces urgent building issues and major renovation plans.

Hyperallergic’s latest roundup, titled “Taryn Simon’s Evidence as Spectacle,” strings together criticism, news, and a few art-world pressure points. It highlights Hrag Vartanian’s review of The Wreck of the Unbelievable, a play by Sleth at the Brick Theater that imagines Damien Hirst’s “secret gay lover,” a younger artist named Shape, being pressed by a curator for details after Hirst’s death. The roundup also points to Aruna D’Souza’s review of Taryn Simon’s ambitious exhibition at the Guggenheim, which follows the real life of an unnamed federal agent and leaves D’Souza with “a sense of helplessness,” and it notes that Congress voted to hold MoMA board member Leon Black in contempt in its Epstein investigation.

That’s today’s download. Links to every story are in the show notes—come back tomorrow for more.

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