effi cient production. And now I am
trying to do more good nothing.
I always think about the fact that
everything really, really amazing in
life is both ineffi cient and essentially
beyond the reach of technology. Love
is ineffi cient, true friendship can be
ineffi cient, true experience can’t be
captured—I think about trying to
safeguard those things.
tc:I want to know about this process
of doing more “good nothing.”
jt: It was, as Jenny puts it, an ethic
of living that actively valued main-
tenance and caregiving over produc-
tion, which is something that I have
always I think tried to do. Every year
my secret New Year’s resolution is tobe a better friend and community
member, but the incentives to value
production over everything were
doubled by certain things over my
past year. So I started thinking that if
I didn’t [retrain my attention] I would
have a scorched-earth landfi ll in my
brain instead of a backyard. And I
bought a bunch of plants and con-
sidered in what ways I could behave
in a way that was more ineffi cient and
conscientious (and fun).
jo: I just had someone email me
about how she adopted a kitten while
she was reading my book (!) and she
had similar feelings.
jt: Having a dog has always helped
me with doing good nothing. Plantshave helped—I have so many; I went
from 0 to 17. Trying to reorient my
life toward purposeless spontaneous
experience has helped.
jo: Jia, do you ever feel pleasantly
creeped out by the fact that some-
thing is growing in your apartment.
jt: Yes! I wish I could look at my
plants move. Basically I’ve been
trying to think more like I’m on
acid all the time, and it’s helped...
Like when you’re on acid you simply
cannot look at your phone, too. You
are dazzled by the miracle of being
alive. How I’m tryna be.
ashley feinberg: Oh man with
notifi cations turned off , I completely
forgot we were doing this. QSTRETCHING THE CANVAS
The white-on-white canon of modern art gets reimagined.in june,New York’s Museum
of Modern Art closed its doors
for four months to renovate its
permanent collection. This was an
expansion in every sense, not just
of the collection but of the modern
art canon it embodies. MoMA
was carving out more space in its
galleries—once dubbed “Modern
White Guys” by a critic—for
female artists and artists of color.
“Today we’re saying: Of course
there are many histories; the col-
lection represents those many his-
tories,” Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief
curator of paintings and sculpture,
told the New York Times about
the renovation. “Don’t repeat the
dogmatism of the past.” In the
same spirit, we asked curators
from around the country to tell us
which pieces, in their view, belong
in the new, reimagined canon.
—Nina Liss-Schultzuntitled #20 (dutch wives
circled and squared) by
howardena pindell
“Pindell infuses the circle—the
basic geometric form—with a per-
sonal narrative about resilience
in the face of oppression, be it
racial or gendered. By taking the
painting off the stretcher in the
1970s—cutting the canvas and
recomposing it by piecing and
stitching it together—she alludes
to domesticity and feminist ideol-
ogy. The work continues to make
us think while we breathe in the
beauty.” —Valerie Cassel Oliver,
Virginia Museum of Fine Artsfrom anthology
by performance artist
clifford owens
“For a performance of a score
written by Maren Hassinger,
Owens asked the audience to
work together to position his
limp, nude body as described by
the instructions. Owens had to
trust that the audience members
would handle him with care as
they placed him in various seated
poses. His examination of the
black male body and its attendant
strengths, vulnerabilities, and
traumas has been prescient in this
time of Black Lives Matter.”
—Christopher Y. Lew, Whitney
Museum of American Artthree paintings
by freddy rodríguez (left)
“Danza Africana, Amor Africano,
and Danza de Carnaval, all from
1974 and in the collection of
the Smithsonian American Art
Museum, recall the curves of a
dancer moving to the beat of Carib-
bean music. The colors syncopate
and bounce through the surface of
the painting in ways that remind
me not only of the Caribbean
region but also of the sounds
of New York City in the 1970s.”
—Marcela Guerrero, Whitney
Museum of American Artxenobia bailey’s
cosmic-funk
fiber art (above)
“For years, Bailey has been
working with fi ber and craft
techniques to create bold and
colorful structures, wall works,
and installation. She’s a trail-
blazer with a singular vision who
is still producing dynamic work.”
—Eugenie Tsai, Brooklyn MuseumJEN
NA
BA
SC
OM
/^ M
US
EU
M^
OF
A
RT
S^ A
ND
D
ES
IG
N;^
SM
IT
HS
ON
IAN
AM
ER
ICA
N^ A
RT
M
US
EU
M
MIXED MEDIA