Siddhartha Mitter, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

At the Met Roof Reopening, These Sculptures Must Be Heard

1 week ago | nytimes.com | Siddhartha Mitter

Along the Manhattan skyline, Jennie C. Jones turns Minimalist sculptures into sonic 'wind' instruments. It's the last Roof Garden commission until 2030. The artist Jennie C. Jones at the Roof Garden of the Metropolitan Museum. The sculptures in her installation include strings that can generate sound in the breeze. Credit... Amir Hamja for The New York Times On a brisk morning a few weeks ago on the roof terrace of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the artist Jennie C.
Alice Coltrane: Artist’s Muse and Sonic Healer

2 months ago | flipboard.com | Siddhartha Mitter

1 hour agoApple CEO Tim Cook, along with other Apple executives, visited New Orleans ahead of the highly anticipated Super Bowl match. In a viral video, Cook was seen at a local restaurant ordering food with NFL star Odell Beckham Jr. Despite his high-profile status, Cook's low-key demeanor and casual attire …
In Mohamed Bourouissa’s Paris Studio, Artistry and Fashion Collide

Dec 11, 2024 | wmagazine.com | Mohamed Bourouissa |Helena Tejedor |Siddhartha Mitter

In Mohamed Bourouissa’s studio, Lulu Tenney wears a Louis Vuitton top, skirt, belt, and boots. It was only in 2019 that Mohamed Bourouissa started shooting fashion—with a campaign for Louis Vuitton Men’s, which was then helmed by Virgil Abloh—but the elements of style have been a central concern for him since the start of his career.
The Greats THEASTER! FLORENCE! LORNA! JONATHAN!

Oct 28, 2024 | news.nestia.com | Siddhartha Mitter |Lauren Groff

The Greats THEASTER! FLORENCE! LORNA! JONATHAN! The Greats Theaster Gates Florence Welch Lorna Simpson Jonathan Anderson Hide menu T Magazine Florence! Lorna! Jonathan! Theaster! In our 2024 Greats issue, T celebrates four talents across music, art and fashion who, through patience and perseverance, have transformed the culture. Read more about the making of the issue The Greats By The New York Times Oct.
Revolutionary Artist, Radical Inspiration

Sep 18, 2024 | nytimes.com | Siddhartha Mitter

They didn't have Zoom back in 1970, so when Elizabeth Catlett was denied entry into the United States to address a conference of the Black Arts Movement - for which she was a leading inspiration, a kind of luminary in exile - she had to deliver her speech by telephone. The government had stripped Catlett of her citizenship eight years earlier, deeming her an undesirable alien after she became a Mexican citizen in 1962 and following years of surveillance for her leftist politics in both countries.
An Artist Turns Detritus of Ghana's Past Into Future Possibility

Sep 18, 2024 | nytimes.com | Siddhartha Mitter

The artist Ibrahim Mahama keeps on the lookout for scrap - major scrap - that bears the marks and summons memories of the labor that built Ghana, his country. When the discards are smallish - for instance square mesh grids used for smoking fish, or wood boxes in which shoeshine men carry their brushes - Mahama will buy them by the dozens or hundreds and stash them until the right artistic application appears.
An Artist Faces Climate Disaster With Hard Data and Ancient Wisdom

Aug 13, 2024 | nytimes.com | Siddhartha Mitter

Every Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the members of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang emerge onto the streets of the Tremé neighborhood in a dawn ritual that dates back more than 200 years. Clad in black-and-white skeleton suits and ornamented papier-mâché masks, they wake the city to the sound of drums and bells summoning the ancestors. Their ritual carries deep significance, even lessons for the whole planet, said the artist and activist Imani Jacqueline Brown, who filmed the procession this year.
Steve McQueen, on a Different Wavelength

May 10, 2024 | nytimes.com | Siddhartha Mitter

When the Dia Art Foundation invited Steve McQueen to create a work for its museum in Beacon, N.Y., the curators assumed that he'd propose a film or video project.
LaToya Ruby Frazier Is Paying It Forward

May 7, 2024 | nytimes.com | Siddhartha Mitter

A continuous high-pitched din - a bit whirring, a bit crunching - echoed over the Bottom, the residential sliver of Braddock, Pa., nearest to the industrial plants and the Monongahela River. It rose, indistinguishably, from the steel mill - the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, opened by Andrew Carnegie in 1875 and still operating - and the adjacent air separation plant, where gasses are piped into the mill or liquefied for shipment. Also borne on the breeze was an unmissable acrid smell.
In the Nigeria Pavilion, Criticism Meets Optimism

Apr 12, 2024 | nytimes.com | Siddhartha Mitter

The group show "Nigeria Imaginary" will be one of the most ambitious African presentations ever at the Venice Biennale. People in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, are hardly shy. The stereotype runs toward boisterousness, worn as a point of pride. But when the artist and poet Precious Okoyomon recorded interviews with some 60 city residents in January for an art project, the unusual questions - like "Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?" - proved disarming.

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