Benjamin’s Arcades Project—the notes for which he left with Georges Bataille before killing himself on the Pyrenees in 1940 after leaving Nazi-occupied France—was made up of thirty-six folders on such subjects as “Fashion,” “Mirrors,” “Panorama,” “Dream City and Dream House,” and “Flâneur,” (a term Benjamin popularized). For THE ARCADES exhibition, curator Jens Hoffman (assisted by Shira Backer) has brought together works by Walead Beshty, Andrea Bowers, Chris Burden, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Andreas Gursky, Pierre Huyghe, Mike Kelley, Collier Schorr, Cindy Sherman, Taryn Simon, and James Welling.
THE ARCADES: CONTEMPORARY ART AND WALTER BENJAMIN, through August 6.
THE JEWISH MUSEUM, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, New York City.
thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-arcades-contemporary-art-and-walter-benjamin
*David Wallace, “Walter Benjamin’s Unfinished Opus, Revisted Through Contemporary Art,” The New Yorker, May 9, 2017:
newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/walter-benjamins-unfinished-magnum-opus-revisited-through-contemporary-art
