Among the most rewarding things about running an art gallery is the chance to meet extraordinary artists. In the past two months, for instance, I encountered for the first time the work of two important American photographers who share a great deal, Matt Herron and Jim Marshall.
Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored pumpkin room turns reflection, repetition and glowing color into an endless Cincinnati encounter
Ayana Ross presents seven figural paintings at the Taft Museum as the 2026 Duncanson Artist-in-Residence.
Elizabeth Hawes closes August 2 in Cincinnati, showing 50 garments and original sketches by a radical American designer.
Rites of Passage spotlights nine emerging artists at Manifest, opening July 10 with student work from eight U.S. states.
Manifest Gallery opens VELVET, an international exhibition exploring black through painting, sculpture, and mixed media.
Although I am an avowed admirer of her solo work and have known her for nearly twenty-five years, I do not remember ever having spoken in person with Liudmila Velasco. About her work, about the weather, about how unbearable this or that artist can become. When I left the island, Liudmila was already practically an institution within Cuban women’s photography...
When we first came across Tim Harrier’s Shaman Spirit Guides, we dismissed them without mercy as the product of artificial intelligence. The mud-covered faces, the animals emerging from the background, and an unbroken frontal force produced, almost at once, a malignant suspicion. Suspicion ran far ahead of the work. And we are right to suspect almost everything in life. This series, no...
It might seem flip to start a review of “Treeline,” Kent Krugh’s (American, 1955- ) rather magnificent exhibition of 22 black-and-white photographs* of the Angel Tree, the largest tree east of the Mississippi, with the old chestnut that “you can’t the see the forest for the trees.” But in this case, the Quercus virginiana, an evergreen oak tree AKA southern live...
In Cincinnati painting circles two names, from a recent past, keep their magic. The late Paul Chidlaw and the late Jack Meanwell, both of whom painted with a flashing style raised from the canvas in waves of impasto excitement. Both artists’ works are available at Mary Ran Gallery, but it’s Jack Meanwell who’s currently in the gallery spotlight. Thousands of pieces of Meanwell’s arework on hand...
Emerging Artists Exposed presents Dustin Pike reflecting on art as a means of personal growth, social awareness, and positive change. In this video interview, Pike discusses how creative practice can move beyond the gallery wall and become a way of shaping one’s environment, relationships, and sense of purpose.
There is a book. Before the exhibition, before the charcoal drawings spread across the galleries of the Contemporary Arts Center, before the viewer crosses the blue thresholds into the dreamworld of Freeman Little...
A few months ago I wondered in these pages what Macron was getting out of lending the Bayeux Tapestry to the English. Forty thousand French citizens signed a petition to block it, citing textile fragility and, I suspect, a touch of cross-Channel rancour as well. The other question remained: what would the British Museum get out of it.
Now and again, chance weaves a concurrence of circumstances that places us before a window opening onto the past. The opportunity to converse, undistracted, with the Austrian artist Stylianos Schicho was a privilege, since what most interests me in art are the sinews that bind it to whoever produces it.
Meta's Oversight Board said leading AI models are less likely to produce political criticism of governments that restrict speech, Reuters reported on July 16th. The board tested requests across 10 jurisdictions and 10 models, including systems from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Google, and DeepSeek. Models refused 34 percent of requests for politically critical content about restrictive jurisdictions such as China and Saudi Arabia, compared with 14 percent for more permissive places. The board also found cases where models claimed to be following explicit rules that the researchers could not identify or see applied consistently.
The obedient model makes censorship look procedural. A user asks for criticism, and the answer returns as safety language, legal caution, or a boundary presented as if it came from a rulebook. That form is convenient because it hides political pressure inside product behavior. The refusal can appear neutral, automated, and responsible while it reproduces the asymmetry of the world outside the chat window. The model does not need to praise a regime to serve it. It only has to become quieter around the places where speech is already punished. The user receives less language at the exact point where public language has already been made more expensive.
Apple Intelligence has been registered with China's cyberspace regulator for use on iPhones in the country, Reuters reported on July 15th. China requires large language models and generative AI services to register before public release. The approval clears a path for Apple's long-delayed rollout, but the assistant will arrive through local machinery. A source told Reuters that Apple Intelligence will incorporate models developed by Baidu and Alibaba, while Alibaba said its Qwen model will be integrated across Apple's operating systems in China. Baidu also said it is working with Apple on features for Chinese iPhone users.
The registered assistant changes the image of personal AI. Apple usually sells intelligence as something intimate, placed inside the phone, close to photos, messages, notes, and daily errands. In China, that intimacy first passes through a state filing, local model partnerships, platform rules, and a launch date still withheld by the regulator. The same feature that appears elsewhere as convenience becomes, at the border, a negotiated service. A user's request may still begin with an ordinary gesture on glass, but the answer depends on which model is permitted to speak, which company supplies it, and which authority allowed the assistant to enter the device. The private interface arrives with a public registration mark behind it.
Twenty-six former Meta employees filed a lawsuit accusing the company of using AI-powered software that disproportionately selected workers with disabilities or medical leave histories for mass layoffs, Reuters reported on July 14th. The complaint says the system analyzed personnel data and helped identify people for termination in ways that punished health conditions protected by employment law. Meta has denied wrongdoing and said its layoff process complied with the law. The case remains an allegation, but its object is precise enough to be disturbing: a workplace decision system reading bodies through absences, accommodations, diagnoses, and leave records.
The medical layoff turns the employee file into a second body. A person may appear in the office through performance reviews, logins, project notes, benefits records, manager comments, and medical exceptions. When those fragments enter a selection tool, illness can become a pattern before it becomes a legal category. The worker may never see the model, the weights, the proxy variables, or the spreadsheet where vulnerability was translated into risk. Corporate restructuring already hides violence behind percentages and business units. AI adds another layer of distance. The badge stops working, and the explanation arrives later as policy, efficiency, or an allegedly neutral score that learned too much from the private cost of staying employed.
