Category: Op-Ed

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  Residents of Rikers Island, In Portraits

  November 26, 2013 - 

  Who are the 10,000-plus people in New York City’s jails? Illustrator Ricardo Cortés, who runs art workshops at the Rikers Island detention complex, describes “cages” filled with those who can’t afford to post bail—who are disproportionately poor, black and brown, and often mentally ill.  More

  By Ricardo Cortés

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  Dadaab: The Clock Is Ticking

  November 4, 2013 - 

  For those familiar with the extreme poverty and crime Somalis face—in their own country and in Kenya’s rapidly growing Dadaab camp—Al-Shabaab’s deadly attack on an upscale Nairobi mall was not a matter of if but of when.  More

  By Thymaya Payne

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  The Veteran Artist: Caught Between Creativity and Therapy

  November 4, 2013 - 

  BR McDonald, founder of the Veteran Artist Program, asserts that veterans can and often do work through trauma with art, but they also innovate and communicate their unique experiences without therapeutic purposes in mind.  More

  By BR McDonald

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  Banksy Takes the Art World’s Money, But He Won’t Buy Its Line

  October 15, 2013 - 

  What happens when Banksy subverts the very brand he’s become? Molly Crabapple argues that the British street artist is a godsend to people who “love art but to whom the art world sounds like it’s babbling in an invented language.”  More

  By Molly Crabapple

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  Afghanistan: Parable of the Garden

  October 7, 2013 - 

  As Afghanistan prepares for the 2014 withdrawal of most American troops, and potential economic collapse, Mariam Ghani reveals the layers of history that the divided nation’s citizens will need to sift through in the coming moment of self-determination.  More

  By Mariam Ghani