Kara Walker: Prince McVeigh and the Turner Blasphemies & The Book of Hours

By Susan Harris

DEC 21-JAN 22 | ArtSeen

Installed in the first of the two back galleries of Sikkema Jenkins are several suites of modestly scaled drawings from the series “Book of Hours.” Referencing medieval Christian books of hours, the drawings on view reinforce the primacy of privacy. Viewers bear witness to the outpouring of stream-of-conscious thoughts, feelings, and reactions that Walker channels through line and liquid media onto paper.

John Ashbery’s ​​Something Close to Music: Late Art Writings, Poems, and Playlists

By Candice Chu

OCT 2022 | Art Books

This book allows one to read with as much freedom as one listens to a playlist, in sequence or on shuffle. Read it as a playlist, or as any artwork that is drawn from the stuff of life, discover the biography revealed at its edges and interpret it as a portrait, a diary, or a letter from John Ashbery.

from A Cat at the End of the World

By Robert Perišić and Vesna Maric

NOV 2022 | Fiction

It’s hard to find historical fiction that accurately captures the worldview and mindset of the people depicted—and exceedingly rare to encounter characters whose lives and thoughts feel expansive, rather than subtractive, in the remote past. Croatian writer Robert Perišić’s latest novel, A Cat at the End of the World, transports the reader to ancient Syracuse, and then to a colonial outpost in the Adriatic. The protagonist Kalia, servant to a wealthy family and object of torment by the scion Pigras, is accompanied by a cat named Miu and shown the first glimmer of care by a woman named Menda. In this excerpt, Perišić shows how a cat's ungovernability can undo a hierarchy.

To Gina With Love

By Sam Kahn

SEPT 2022 | Theater

Sam Kahn pens a love letter to playwright Gina Gionfriddo, charting her career, inner world of her plays, and the influence she had over his life and writing.