Second only to the Mona Lisa as Leonardo da Vinci’s most stupendous achievement, The Last Supper (1495–98) is almost as famous for its degraded state as it is for its enduring power. With details barely readable today, it’s a ghost of its original self, suspended in a limbo of decay that has existed for almost as long as the painting has. Arguably, it is a victim of Leonardo’s genius, an artistic triumph subverted by a refusal to accept limitations.
Even at a time when the separation between disciplines like art and science was narrower than it is now, Leonardo (1452–1519) stood out as the quintessential Renaissance man. He famously filled dozens of notebooks with thousands of drawings and notes on anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, and paleontology, not to mention futuristic designs for flying machines and modern weapons of war (tanks, submarines, repeating firearms) that far exceeded 15th-century technology.
These efforts bolstered Leonardo’s aesthetic endeavors, but their quantity suggests that he was more interested in science than in art, a suspicion heightened by the numerous commissions he left unfinished. The Last Supper, however, was undone by Leonardo’s resort to unconventional techniques.
Located in the dining room of the former Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, The Last Supper was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, in 1495. Its theme, the Passover seder Christ celebrated with his disciples shortly before his arrest and crucifixion, captures his revelation that one of his follows will betray him while he offers bread and wine as symbols of his body and blood, originating the rite of the Eucharist.
Usually frescoes are rendered with water-based pigments on newly applied plaster that sets quickly, obliging artists to work on one small section at a time. This method didn’t comport with Leonardo’s methodical blending of tonal gradations to produce his signature sfumato effect. So he instead applied tempera paint al secco, i.e., to a dry ground comprising gesso, pitch, mastic (a kind of resin), and white lead paint.
This proved ill-suited to The Last Supper, which was situated on a thin exterior wall subject to fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Steam and smoke from the refectory kitchen damaged the painting, as did smoke from candles lighting the interior. In 1517 author Antonio de Beatis noted The Last Supper’s poor condition; in 1568 the noted biographer Giorgio Vasari pronounced it a total ruin.
Over the centuries, repeated stabs at restoration were made, which sometimes made matters worse. The earliest attempt was undertaken in 1726; the latest, a 20-year effort completed in 1998, stabilized the fresco by reversing previous renovations.
The Last Supper endured other indignities as well. In 1652 a doorway was cut into it. Occupying Milan in 1796, Napoleon’s army turned the space into a stable. In 1800 the refectory was inundated with two feet of water, leaving a bloom of green algae over the entire painting. And on August 16, 1943, the British Royal Air Force destroyed the building’s roof, nearly leveling the monastery; only sandbags and mattresses piled against the mural saved it from complete destruction.
Leonardo’s perfectionism had been a hallmark of his career from the start. Born the illegitimate son of a notary in the Tuscan town of Vinci, he entered the Florentine workshop of the painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio as a garzone, or errand boy, at age 14, attaining full apprenticeship three years later. His handiwork first appeared in an angel occupying the lower left of Verrocchio’s TheBaptism of Christ (1472–1475), an addition so superior to the rest of the scene that Verrocchio supposedly hung up his brushes for good when he saw it. Though this tale is apocryphal, it highlights Leonardo’s precocious skills; by age 20 he’d been admitted to a painter’s guild named for St. Luke, the patron saint of artists.
Leonardo’s restless ambition conflicted with his art from the beginning. Two early commissions, including The Adoration of the Magi (1478–1482), were abandoned when Leonardo moved to Milan to work for Sforza. In his letter to the duke seeking the job, Leonardo advertised his services as an engineer and arms designer before mentioning that he could paint.
Other unfinished projects include Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (c. 1480–1490) and a gargantuan equestrian monument of a horse commissioned in 1482 by Sforza. Measuring 28 feet in height, it progressed only as far as a full-scale clay model after the bronze promised for its casting went to producing canons instead.
Another mural, The Battle of Anghiari (1505), commissioned for the Hall of the Five Hundred in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, suffered an even worse fate than The Last Supper’s. This time, Leonardo laid oils over a thick, waxy base, causing the pigment to run. To speed drying, he placed lit braziers in front of the painting, which saved its bottom half but left the top portion a mess of mingled colors. The piece was eventually destroyed during an expansion of the hall under Giorgio Vasari, who painted his own frescoes on top of it.
The Last Supper decisively broke with other treatments of the theme, which usually placed subjects on both sides of the dinner table. Leonardo put them all behind the table, facing outwards. Christ is seen standing, occupying the center without the traditional halo signaling his divinity, a gesture conforming to the Renaissance’s revival of humanism by emphasizing Jesus’s mortality.
His head marks the vantage point of a forced perspective leading to a trio of windows in the background that look out on a distant landscape. Leonardo flanked Jesus with his followers set six on either side, respectively divided into clumps of three. Most are seen reacting to the news of treachery in their ranks by gesturing as if to say, “Is it me?” The actual villain, Judas, is isolated on the far left clutching his payment for selling Jesus out.
Christ, however, remains calm, as does his youngest disciple, John, seen sleeping on the shoulder of Peter to Jesus’s left. Jesus and John are separated by a V-shaped opening that some claim is a vaginal sign for Mary Magdalene.
Leonardo presented Christ as the pyramidal inverse of the V, a fulcrum for a symmetrical, platonic composition where certain elements—the windows, the spacing of the apostles, and Jesus’s triangular form—are triads alluding to the Holy Trinity.
Today The Last Supper is a gossamer veil of shapes that nearly disappear into the wall. Yet its power to awe remains undiminished, a testament to an unbounded talent.
WHINING AND DINING. Greece’s culture minister, Lina Mendoni, blasted the British Museum for allowing 800 or so guests to get merry around the Elgin Marbles during Saturday’s £2,000-a-ticket Pink Ball, dubbed London’s answer to the Met Gala, the Timesreports. The event was co-hosted by museum director Nicholas Cullinan and Isha Ambani , daughter of Asia’s richest man. Mendoni said the museum showed “provocative indifference” to the collection of ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures from the Acropolis of Athensby wining and dining the likes of Mick Jagger, Naomi Campbell, and Janet Jackson next to them. Mendoni condemned the use of the marbles as mere “decorative elements,” saying such events disrespect the cultural significance of the sculptures and risk their preservation. A fashion show held in the same gallery last year drew similar criticism. The culture minister emphasized that Greece “repeatedly and consistently” opposes events that treat cultural treasures as backdrops for entertainment. British Museum officials maintain that preservation is their top priority, with all event requests reviewed for potential risks.
CUTE, FURRY, ADULTERATED. DisgracedMiamiart dealer Les Roberts, who was previously charged with peddling forged Andy Warhols, appears to have found a new venture, selling Labubu collectibles. In April, Roberts’s Miami Fine Art Gallery was raided by the FBI, leading to charges of wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. Despite restrictions from selling art or working in the art industry as part of his bond conditions, Roberts is now operating a shop called Labubu Headquarters in Coconut Grove, according to the Miami New Times. The quirky, furry monster figurines are now selling at rates ranging from $35 to over $1,000 at Roberts’s store. Miami New Times reporters tried to verify if a Labubu purchased from Roberts was genuine or a counterfeit “Lafufu,” but findings were inconclusive. A spokesperson for Pop Mart, the official distributor, confirmed that Roberts’s shop is not affiliated with the brand, advising fans to buy only from authorized sellers. Roberts’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
The Digest
Richard Diebenkorn’s estate has joined Gagosian, which mounted the painter’s last solo show during his lifetime, more than 30 years ago. [ARTnews]
The J. Paul Getty Trust and the World Economic Forum are joining forces during Art Basel Paristo host a “cultural table” in room at Le Meuricehotel, where Pablo Picasso and Olga Khokhlova held their 1918 wedding reception. [The Art Newspaper]
Interpol has officially added eight items of jewelry stolen during this past weekend’s heist at the Louvre to its Stolen Works of Art database. [Press Release]
The Photographers’ Gallery in London has revealed the four artists shortlisted for the 2026 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize: Jane Evelyn Atwood, Weronika Gęsicka, Amak Mahmoodian, and Rene Matić. [Artsy]
Artnet News asks: “How are Asia’s art markets fairing amid the global art market’s ongoing downturn?” [Artnet News]
The Kicker
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER. Private Thomas James, a Black soldier who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, is finally receiving recognition after centuries of obscurity, the Guardianreports. One of just nine known Black recipients of the Waterloo Medal , the first British military medal awarded regardless of rank, James is now believed to be the subject of a rare 1821 portrait, newly attributed to renowned artist Thomas Phillips. The painting, acquired by the National Army Museum in London for £30,000, will go on permanent display in the museum’s “Army at Home” gallery. It shows James in a striking white cavalry uniform, holding cymbals (he was a percussionist in the 18th Light Dragoons). Born enslaved in Montserratin 1789, James had made his way to Sussex by 1809 and enlisted in the British Army, which offered rare opportunities for Black men to earn equal pay and pensions. He was awarded the Waterloo Medal after defending his officers’ belongings from looting Prussian deserters, sustaining severe wounds in the process. Curator Anna Lavelle believes James’s officers likely commissioned the portrait to honor his bravery. Only two other known portraits of Black British soldiers remain from the era.
As director of artist programs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Solana Chehtman oversees the foundation’s programs related to artists’ legacies. As Mitchell stipulated before her death in 1992, the foundation has devoted attention to the needs of other artists via grants, fellowships, and convenings focused on creating opportunities and teaching artists how to think about their future, both during their lives and after. Prior to working at the Mitchell Foundation, Chehtman was the director of creative practice and social impact for The Shed in New York.
Chris Sharp opened his eponymous gallery in Los Angeles in 2021 and co-represents—with Jacky Strenz in Frankfurt, Germany—the estate of Lin May Saeed, a sculptor who died in 2023 at the age of 50. He has shown Saeed’s work since 2017 and continues to, as he endeavors to keep her legacy alive in an international art world with differing degrees of familiarity with her work. Sharp has also started working with the estate of Deborah Hanson Murphy, a painter who died in her 80s in 2018. Prior to his LA venture, Sharp operated the Mexico City gallery Lulu from 2013 to 2023.
ARTnews spoke with Chehtman and Sharp this summer about the challenges and opportunities related to artists’ estates, how living artists can start thinking about their legacy, and other issues related to the prospects of finite life and infinite futures.
Artist Marcos Dimas (right) working with legacy specialist Alexandra Unthank as part of the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s CALL program in 2018.
Photo Megan Pasko
ARTnews: Solana, the Joan Mitchell Foundation does a lot of work pertaining to more than just Joan Mitchell. How do you characterize the range of work the foundation undertakes, and why is that important in the context of Joan Mitchell?
Solana Chehtman: Joan Mitchell was very specific in her will, she defined working with other artists as a mission. We’re very privileged in that sense, because a lot of artists did not get to do that before foundations got created in their names. We have two arms: One has to do with preserving her legacy, and the other is a programs team. We gave grants—$25,000 to 25 artists a year—for many years. Then, in 2001, we shifted to a five-year fellowship for artists, for which we provide unrestricted funding, community-building, and intentional support. Some people call it professional development, but we think about it as more like personal advancement. We always say that we’re a foundation from one artist to the many. Artists are represented on our board, in our staff, in our selection processes. One artist board member once said, “We’re doing all this work around Mitchell’s legacy, but what’s going to happen to our work? How do we ensure that our work doesn’t end up in the dumpster?” That’s how our program Creating a Living Legacy (CALL) started in 2007.
ARTnews: Chris, you started working on the estate of Lin May Saeed when she passed away at the age of 50. How much or little planning had you done with Saeed prior to her passing? Were you able to have conversations about the future of her work and her legacy?
Chris Sharp: I co-represent the estate of Lin May Saeed with Jacky Strenz in Frankfurt. I ran a space in Mexico City called Lulu, and we did a show in 2017—that’s when we developed a relationship. When I opened my gallery in Los Angeles in 2021, I asked her to join the program, and really soon after that she was diagnosed with brain cancer. She passed away in 2023. Jacky had been with Lin for a long time, and they managed to do a lot of estate planning in the two years from when she was diagnosed until she died. It was both a blessing and a curse that she didn’t go suddenly. They were able to think about a lot of different things, like making editions and Lin signing off on them. That wasn’t about creating income: Lin worked slowly, and there wasn’t much work, so it was about making the work accessible and creating the potential for visibility.
View of Lin May Saeed’s exhibition “The Snow Falls Slowly in Paradise. A Dialogue with Renée Sintenis,” 2023, at
the Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin.
Photo Enrich Duch
ARTnews: How does the co-representation of Saeed’s estate work?
Sharp: My role is primarily representation in the United States. I did Lin’s last show while she was alive. She was too sick to travel for that. I recently did a solo presentation with her at Post-Fair in Los Angeles, and we secured a solo show on the back of that at Anton Kern Gallery in New York. Lin has a lot more visibility in Europe. She’s in great collections in Italy and France, and she’s starting to enter important collections in Germany. She’s got this incredible support A Call to Action Artist Marcos Dimas (right) working with legacy specialist Alexandra Unthank as part of the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s CALL program in 2018. network, but here in the US, she’s still pretty unknown. I’m doing my best to change that.
ARTnews: Did you have any prior experience thinking about estate planning yourself, or was it a new subject for you?
Sharp: It was new for all of us, and it started with really basic stuff. I still feel like a newcomer in this situation. When Lin passed, I reached out to a close friend of mine: Wendy Olsoff from P·P·O·W gallery in New York. She has a handful of important estates, including Martin Wong’s, so I reached out and asked what we should do. She brought up some really good points—like make an Instagram account. That seems like a no-brainer, but it all starts with little things like that. Another project that Jacky and I have discussed is making a website with a complete archive of all the work. These basic things have been really new to me, in terms of communication and promulgation and trying to ensure the continued visibility of artists after their death. I’m really learning on the job, as it were.
ARTnews: Solana, as you mentioned, Creating a Living Legacy was established in 2007. What kinds of issues does that program deal with?
Chehtman: A lot of what Chris shared is what we have been seeing when artists pass away, and the family or gallery or peers don’t know where to start. Because we support artists directly, we always want to give them the opportunity to have agency and a voice for how that narrative is going to be crafted. What do they want the story to be? What works do they want to preserve? It was very much about giving artists the tools to do that. Originally, while giving grants, we gave artists money and convened them so they could learn from each other. But we realized they didn’t even know where to start. We started hiring and training what we call legacy specialists, who are younger artists with better technological capacities, and pairing them with older artists to talk about how to inventory and document their work. We had a couple of cases at the beginning, from Jaune Quick-to-See Smith to Mel Chin. Jaune reflected afterward that her career survey at the Whitney Museum had a lot to do with this work. She realized just how generative the process of looking back could be.
After some years of doing that, we wanted to share more broadly what we’d learned from working hand-in-hand with artists. We moved to publishing workbooks that are free and accessible on our website. It’s great that artists have access to this material, but there’s also the question: How are they using it? There’s access to a lot of information, but that’s not always useful enough. Our position lately—and this has been an iterative process of learning from artists—is that we want artists to have agency, yes, but they cannot bear the responsibility alone. As a foundation that has the possibility to be a bridge, how can we ensure that there is more institutional awareness of the importance of this, specifically in this moment of cultural erasure and also the expansion of the art world? There’s a lot of processes happening in parallel, so our intention lately has been more about how we can move this work forward, and what does that need to look like in terms of being sustainable and scalable? We won’t ever be able to work with everyone. There is an ocean of need for this type of support. But can we convince other foundations or other granters to support this work? Can we work with collecting and non-collecting institutions, residencies, and universities that can be our partners in providing artists this information? As people get older, in particular those who are not commercially successful, how can they learn how to do all this? That’s what CALL exists for.
Chris Sharp in his eponymous Los Angeles gallery.
Photo Moë Wakai
ARTnews: Chris, you mentioned awareness of Lin May Saeed’s being more prevalent in Europe than in the US. Are there different questions that arise in different places related to cultivating her legacy?
Sharp: I feel as if, in America, we’re having a very specific conversation around art, and identity always seems to be its starting point. Lin was an animal activist—that’s a part of her identity, but that’s not what the work is about entirely. In a sense it’s made it harder, even though I think the issues she’s discussing in her work are universal, like animal rights, the dignity of other species, and considering a more equalrights- minded grounding.
My investment and commitment to the work is based on the belief that Lin was one of the most important sculptors of her generation, and my desire to create more visibility and discussion around that in the US. One thing I can say is that, despite the internet, social media, and so on, conversations tend to be regional. The conversation that’s happening in LA is different from the conversation in New York, and the conversation in Mexico City is totally different from that. When you work with an artist like Lin, you realize that. I lived in Europe for 10 years, so I have a familiarity with that. But you can try to bring a sense of context somewhere else and people could say, “This isn’t important to us here—we’re thinking about other issues.” There’s something frustrating but also affirmative about that.
ARTnews: Jacky Strenz brought some of Lin’s work to Art Basel this year. How was the response to that
Sharp: It went really well. I’m happy to report that sales were strong. I was in Basel doing the Liste fair with a different artist, so I was on the ground, and a lot of people came up to me saying that Jacky’s was the best booth in the main fair. It was really gratifying to hear that. Lin had a good career before she died. She had really strong supporters, like Chus Martínez, an incredible Spanish curator who helped get her work in great collections like Castello di Rivoli in Turin. Lin had a fair amount going on. We were all anxious when we found out she was dying, and there was a lot of anxiety around [the possibility of] her disappearing. But the level of interest since she died has been incredible. In many ways, she’s much more well-known now than she was before. At times it’s hard not to be cynical about that, I have to say. But in the case of Lin, I don’t really have a right to be cynical because she’s still very much an institutional artist. There’s no speculation or secondarymarket dealing. But sales are happening, probably more so than when Lin was alive. In some ways it’s frustrating that it took this to launch her into a different stratosphere of visibility, but it’s also really gratifying.
ARTnews: Given the death of the artist and the scarcity of the work available, how do you handle pricing responsibly and think about that in terms of sustaining her market over time?
Sharp: Lin was primarily known for working in Styrofoam, and collectors do not love Styrofoam as a material. But she was committed to it for formal and ideological reasons, which are very critical. Toward the end of her life, she started working in bronze. She had eschewed traditional noble sculptural materials like bronze, wood, and marble, but she was invited to do some commissions and started working with bronze so she could have work outdoors. Basically, all the Styrofoam works are earmarked for institutions, and the prices reflect that. They aren’t inexpensive. That’s something that reflects the scarcity, and is meant to ensure that everything keeps going. The bronze works are in editions, and those can be sold privately. That’s one distinction we’ve made.
ARTnews: Solana, from your perspective how much do estate-planning questions change depending on location, in terms of countries or other designations?
Chehtman: It’s interesting because, even within the US, there are legal issues that are different state by state. Artists who have studios and work in different states can have complications. And estate laws can be very different between the US and other places. In Argentina, where I’m from, the questions are different. What is reflected in this is that the main problem with [estate-planning] is that it’s so case by case. Every single person has a different circumstance or situation, and they need something different, which makes it hard to support and to guide—and it makes it expensive. You always need a lawyer, an appraiser, and so on. These things make it hard to systematize.
Deborah Hanson Murphy: Variation 253, 1984–86.
Courtesy the Estate of Deborah Hanson-Murphy
ARTnews: Chris, you recently started working on the estate of Deborah Hanson Murphy, a painter who died in 2018 in her 80s, and are planning a show for her at your gallery next spring. She wasn’t well-known in her time, and her work is from a different era. How does working with her legacy differ from that of a more contemporary artist, like Saeed?
Sharp: It’s hugely different. I didn’t even know that Deborah Hanson Murphy’s art existed. She rarely exhibited in her lifetime, but she was totally serious about her work. She had systems for how she created her work. What’s exciting about her is that she was from Stockton, so it makes sense to exhibit her in California and reintroduce—or introduce, actually—her to the region where she’s from. But it’s two totally different things, and I think I’m going to have to consult the Joan Mitchell Foundation website and download all the materials, because for this I’m really starting from scratch.
ARTnews: Solana, given the wealth of materials available and all the complicated issues, what are the most basic, elemental things to think about at the start?
Chehtman: In our documentation guide there’s a great first chapter on planning. But for some low-hanging fruit: Definitely always do an oral history with the artist if possible. There’s something about recording their voice and the way they want to be remembered that is very key. The second most-important step has to do with documenting and inventorying work, and creating a map for work to be found. Then also ensuring, in this moment of climate change, that the work is properly stored and safeguarded, in the case of catastrophe. Then, if possible, working on a will to define who is going to take care of the work.
Something we talk a lot about with artists is that there are practical matters but also a feelings part to this as well. Artists find this all very hard to do in general, but who can you trust? How do you want your work to be carried on? And who wants to accept that task? It’s not easy. If the artist has children, not all children want to do it.
Another piece that is key for artists is thinking about what work they want to save. The same thing goes for their archives and their papers. We’re in a moment of lack of capacity and wondering about the sustainability of both digital and physical archives. If you cannot save everything, think about pieces that were milestones— that marked a new series, or a new exploration—and make sure that you keep those. Also, do you want to donate archival materials? Do you want to sell them? Can you sell them? Not everyone can, and not everyone has a gallery willing to go in partnership to do that. Also, even donations are not easy. If you want to donate archives to your alma mater, they might not be able to take them because they need funding to ensure care of them into the future.
ARTnews: Chris, as a gallerist how much do you think about archives?
Sharp: We have a small archive at the gallery, and that’s something I’ve been thinking about. A colleague recently made me aware of the importance of having a paper archive, even if there is a digital counterpart, because things change. But I have a question for Solana about the idea of emphasizing the importance of oral history. I’m thinking we should start considering this, but it’s tricky as a dealer. How do I go to an older artist and say, “We should maybe start discussing some of these issues …”?
Chehtman: You don’t need to be old to do an oral history. Actually, it’s amazing to have oral histories of artists throughout their lives. One of our partners is the Institute of American Indian Arts. They do oral histories with their residents who are emerging artists. For another example, one of our fellows, Rupy C. Tut, says that for her work there’s a lot of cultural specificity, and she wants to develop the language with which she wants institutions to represent her work. For her, doing an oral history is key, because she wants to create that language for others. It’s not just about artists feeling old—it’s more like, “Let’s do an oral history now, and maybe we do another one in 10 years.”
Sharp: That’s good and useful. It’s weird: I’ve never had this kind of discussion before.
Chehtman: We’ve been talking with every generation, and usually when an artist gets to 50, they get to that moment where mentors and parents start passing away. Sometimes artists realize themselves that this is something they need to think about. But it depends on each individual person. There are artists who are very against thinking about this, who say, “I want to think about the future—what’s coming next.” Some others are in survival mode: “I can’t do it—I need to work on the next show or my next residency. I don’t have the stability to even think about that or engage in a process like this.” But I think it’s good for all of us, from whatever perspective, to be thinking about this. You can pass away at any age. Sam Gordon from Gordon Robichaux gallery works with the estate of Jenni Crain, who was 30 when she passed away during the pandemic.
ARTnews: Solana, you mentioned that making a market isn’t as easy for all artists. What are other modes of funding that artists or people handling estates can look to?
Chehtman: We try to encourage younger artists, as they put away a little money for their retirement, to put something away for their legacy. Some of our fellows are buying property to make sure they will have a place to store their work. A lot of opportunities have to do with collaborating with organizations. It’s very hard to selffund for this, particularly for those who are not commercially successful. The one key problem with this is funding—because there is very little available.
The Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Creating Future Memory conference, which featured a
conversation between artist Amalia Mesa-Bains and Josh T. Franco.
Photo Heather Cromartie
ARTnews: How are you thinking of support differently given the changing nature of arts funding? It feels a lot different now from even just a couple years ago.
Chehtman: When I started at the foundation in 2022, my first inclination was that I was sure there were other people doing this. Then, I realized there weren’t. There are archives, initiatives, and curators finding ways to hack the system. But it’s very much individuals within institutions who are pushing, and the institutions are not necessarily buying in. With the foundation’s executive director, Christa Blatchford, I put together an advisory council that organized a convening called “Creating Future Memory” this past May. There were 150 people in attendance, with more than 60 percent not from New York. That was intentional because, as Chris was saying, a lot of these conversations are regional. This is a lot about place-making and thinking about local artists in different places. Why are we looking at the same 10 artists nationally, and not looking at local artists?
ARTnews: What were some of the main takeaways from the conference?
Chehtman: The idea came from Teresita Fernández’s US Latinx Arts Futures Symposium in 2016. She partnered with the Ford Foundation [around the idea that] Latinx art is not considered part of “American art” or “Latin American art”—it’s in this position where no one is giving it visibility or support. It focused on conversations with institutional representatives and artists in the same room having to come to terms with it as an issue. Out of that came grants for artists and for curators and new positions, like Marcela Guerrero’s [curatorial] position at the Whitney Museum. I always say that conference and PST: LA/LA were like a before and after for the Latinx art community in terms of visibility.
In putting together “Creating Future Memory,” we invited gallerists, institutional representatives, archivists, and people in between. We wanted to map and give visibility to different models. One of the main takeaways was that this work has been done in different ways by different communities. That was a very big point that was made, especially by Indigenous artists. Dyani White Hawk, for example, talked about how there are practices and a spectrum of different ways in which you can do this, beyond those purely Euro-centric technical ways. We had a panel on alternative approaches, from spiritual guardianship and work that artists are doing with communities in Hawaii and New Zealand.
Another big piece was a lot of people felt that they were very alone doing this work, that they were the only ones, and it was amazing for them to find others. There’s now a group of children of artists who are starting to talk and collaborate. I always talk about the responsibility of the ecosystem, because I feel like, as an ecosystem, we need to grapple with the realization that there are generations and generations of artists’ stories that we are losing. Artists in their 80s, especially artists of color, were often not only artists but activists and organizers, and all of that is going to be lost if we don’t do something about it now, before they pass away. It’s urgent. The narrative is key to preserve.
In 2016, Josh Kline debuted “Unemployment,” a series that explored mass joblessness brought on by technology and automation, and the potential end of the middle class. Nearly a decade later, those works are on view in Berlin at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Kline’s focus on how unemployment could fuel fascism appears more prescient than ever.
The exhibition, “Global Fascisms,” brings together the work of more than 50 artists to argue that fascism is not a relic of the past but an active, contemporary force in global culture and politics.
“Around the world, there is a glaring turn toward a dark form of politics,” curator Cosmin Costinas writes in an opening essay. “Fascism is here and it is everywhere.”
Fascism, Costinas continues, “has always manipulated aesthetics.” The exhibition examines the ways fascism has been made to appear attractive in public discourse, from its glorification of the past to its use of technology. Artificial intelligence, in this reading, becomes “the ultimate tool of nostalgia,” as it draws “entirely” on the past to perpetuate itself
The growing threat of AI gives new resonance to Kline’s Unemployed Journalist (Dave), the first work one sees in the show: a fetal-positioned figure, encased in a recycling bag, representing job loss and disposability. The 3D-printed sculpture depicts an American journalist who lost his job when his publication’s staff attempted to form a union, prompting Kline to question the transformation of human beings into human capital.
“I often think about this phrase ‘human capital’ and what that means when you turn people into resources,” he told ARTnews. “If people become resources, then that capital can be spent, used up, and discarded like other forms of waste.”
The context around the work has changed in the intervening years. Now, Kline said, he thinks of the “creatives losing their jobs” in Hollywood and elsehwere to AI video and image generators like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and others.
The context around the work has shifted in the intervening years. Now, Kline said, he thinks of the “creatives losing their jobs” in Hollywood and elsewhere to AI video and image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. That idea of disposability runs through Desperation Dilation, where a shopping cart overflows with silicone and plastic sculptures in trash bags, echoing scenes Kline has witnessed in New York and Hong Kong, where “desperate people in poverty are collecting cans and other things for recycling to make very small amounts of money.”
“I was thinking about what it means for society to reduce people to scavengers in this way. I found it deeply troubling,” he said. “What kind of society forces its elderly to collect recycling goods for pennies?”
Gülsün Karamustafa, Window, 1980.
Courtesy of the artist and BüroSarıgedik, Salt Research, Gülsün Karamustafa Archive
Throughout “Global Fascisms,” artists respond to the rise of fascist ideologies through a variety of media: painting, film, performance, publications, and digital formats. Historical artworks draw connections between past and present understandings of fascism.
The work of Gülsün Karamustafa, a 78-year-old Turkish artist, anchors the exhibition as a living testimony of surviving fascism. In the photograph Stage, Karamustafa and her husband stand in court awaiting a prison sentence after being arrested during Turkey’s 1971 military coup. Their crime, she told ARTnews, was hiding a person the police were looking for. She spent six months in prison; her husband spent two and a half years. In the work, a rotating projection overlays the photo with the words “stage, control, regime, ideology,” calling to mind a searchlight over a prison yard.
“This really sums up the ideology of the time,” she said. The work was first shown at HKW in 1998. Nearly thirty years later, it is just as relevant.
Karamustafa’s earlier works, like Soldier and Window, extend her reflection on turbulent times in Turkey in the 1970s and ’80s into domestic and social spheres, depicting familial tension and separation. Her newest work, Reminder (2025), commissioned by HKW, is a 25-panel mural commemorating the first 25 years of the 21st century through protest imagery, calling for history not to repeat itself.
The omnipresence of technology and surveillance links works across the exhibition, from Karamustafa’s historical pieces to Kline’s future-minded ones. The work of Julia Scher also picks up this theme with her installation, Danger Dirty Data, Tell Your Story (2025). This installation uses repurposed surveillance cameras to engage visitors at the entrance to the Global Fascisms exhibition, while a CCTV set up invites the viewer to interact by creating their own data-narrative on a keyboard. Kline said he feels a sense of connection and kinship between his work and theirs.
The site of the exhibition also carries resonance, given Germany’s history. Kline said the Weimar period figured heavily into the creation of the Unemployment works, as mass unemployment during the interwar period is considered by historians to have been a major factor in sending “the destabilized working and middle classes into the arms of Hitler,” in Kline’s words. This is the first time the works will have been seen in Germany.
“I was also making these works during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump was running for the first time,” he said. “There were already these very disturbing images of Trump rallies, very reminiscent of fascist rallies during the Second World War. And what led to the rise of Trump in the U.S., too, was the destabilization of the blue-collar middle class.”
With tech executives regularly projecting mass white-collar job loss due to AI, Kline said it raises the question of what might happen in the U.S., Germany, or elsewhere “if there’s an even greater population cast into precariousness and poverty.”
That urgency runs through much of “Global Fascisms,” including the work of Sana Shahmuradova Tanska. Her paintings, all made after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, draw upon different strands of Ukraine’s history, literature, and folklore. For Shahmuradova Tanska, the language of fascism is becoming “less and less sophisticated.”
Josh Kline, Desperation Dilation, 2016.
Photo: Joerg Lohse, courtesy of the artist
“It is getting rather literal to the point of absurdity,” she told ARTnews, adding that she examines the absurdity and repetition of fascist methods across different generations.
In one work, Negotiations, figures sit at a table. No one has a head and one has already been killed, though they are still seated at a chair. According to Shahmuradova Tanska, the work shows the “staged and fake presumed presence of the party, the agency of which is not taken into account whatsoever by other members of the table.”
It represents “the uselessness and absurdity of negotiations with aggressors,” she added..
While not every work in the show names fascism directly in titles or wall text, the ideology suffuses the exhibition, which Kline said is rare today.
“In the U.S., I can’t think of a single exhibition that is dealing with fascism directly in a 21st-century context,” he said.
Karamustafa echoed the point. “We are all talking about a reality which is here and existing now,” she said. “Every one of us is trying to talk in our own languages.”
Global Fascisms is on view at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin through 7 December, 2025.