April 13, 2026 Issue

Three pieces in this week’s issue caught my attention:

1. Rachel Syme’s “Spring in the Trenches,” a meditation on springtime and trenchcoats: 

We aren’t watching chicks hatch or witnessing the miracle of foaling or plucking clumps of wild ramps from the earth. Instead, we continue traipsing through concrete, burdened with utter confusion about what, exactly, to wear: spring is a time of meteorological fakeouts; one day it will be balmy, the next frigid. Or, mornings are crisp and call for bundling up, but dress in too many layers and you’ll overheat by noon. Rain, April’s rude house guest, visits erratically and unannounced.

2. Zachary Fine’s “Back to the Future,” a review of the New Museum’s exhibition “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” in which the museum’s new atrium steals the show:

The centerpiece of the expansion, which was led by the architects Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, in collaboration with the firm Cooper Robertson, is an atrium that snaps right onto the side of the flagship building. I can’t say it was worth the renovation’s eighty-two-million-dollar price tag, but the space is brilliantly subtle. It works like a snorkel for the museum, giving it a new column of air for the vertical flow of traffic to the galleries, which have basically doubled in size. Climbing the atrium’s stairs, you can look out the glass façade, onto the Bowery, or squint at the mesh panels that flank you, shimmering with green light and exposing the building’s internal supports. Architecture like this, which reveals its structure while producing its effects, can make a museum feel slightly more humane.

3. Justin Chang’s “Art of the Steal,” a review of Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers,” a movie about dueling painters. Chang praises it, calling it “a work of criticism that deftly distinguishes different approaches to criticism.” I want to see it.