Why are animal mummies the most numerous artefacts from Ancient Egypt? The Brooklyn Museum explores this question through its outstanding collection in the show Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt (until 21 January 2018), which displays 30 mummified animals including cats, dogs, birds and snakes, plus around 65 ritual objects. Animals were mummified in multiple contexts: as pets, as food for the afterlife and as votive offerings, since they were thought to have souls that could carry messages to the gods. But buyer beware—CT scans have revealed instances of “misleading packaging”, according to museum, such as empty mummies sold by unscrupulous priests. The show is “really about business corruption in Ancient Egypt”, Anne Pasternak, the museum’s director, said at a recent press event.
Gary Simmons: Ghost Reels at the Drawing Center (until 4 February 2018) is the second part of an on-going project of site-specific commissions for the museum's stairwell. The text work (2016) continues the US artist’s exploration of race and class, showing the names of African American actors from early cinema, such as Evelyn Preer and Rex Ingram, in large white lettering on a black background, mimicking film credits. The names, while still legible, are smeared, giving them a ghostly appearance. The work conjures “the memories of actors that have been blurred in the history of Hollywood film… a kind of silence in both voice and visibility”, according to the artist. But the issue has not been laid to rest, as shown by the outcry following the 2016 Academy Awards, which included no actors of colour in the four main categories acting categories.
Sense the spirits of two departed New York women in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Galleries, where the small installation Sara Berman’s Closet (2015), by the artists Maira and Alex Kalman is on view (until 26 November) near the splendid Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room, which was commissioned by the art collector and philanthropist Arabella Worsham in 1881-82. There is something eerily static and touching about the re-creation of Berman’s closet from the end of her life, when she lived alone in a Greenwich Village apartment (1982-2004) with a tidy arrangement of clothes, shoes and accessories in mostly white and off-white shades (with a tiny jolt of yellow—a bottle of Chanel No. 19 Perfume). A patterned dress with a long train flowing out of a closet awaits Worsham in her dressing room, making it seem like she might waltz in at any moment.