In Black in Blues, Imani Perry reaches to the height of the sky and the depth of the ocean, casting the history of blue as one of both triumph and tragedy, possibility and limitation.

What purpose does this creative enrichment serve when the buildings that host it are harmful?

In her Museum of Modern Art retrospective, Piper makes visible the ways in which we are held in place by other people and their perceptions, and how their perceptions lead to the politics and philosophies that make up our world.

Three writers consider the controversy surrounding Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till and the Whitney Museum’s public response to it.

As an artist, I want to invoke something you can imagine — or even better, have experienced — and then ask you to start applying that lived knowledge outwards.

ST. LOUIS — Several months ago, I made the commitment to be away from New York City, my home and native land, for the duration of this summer.

First let me tell you what it’s like to be here.

PHILADELPHIA — What’s the best way to engage a person in caring for someone different from him/herself?

Greetings from the final studio days of a mostly extra-studio project.

GREENSBORO, NC — Since I last wrote, I’ve spent most of my time with the subjects of my soon-to-be fabricated plaques: local residents of Greensboro who have lived, worked, or in one case walked, along South Elm Street for the past 15 to 55 years.

GREENSBORO, NC — As a working artist, I spend a great deal of my time elsewhere from home.

CLEVELAND — Artist Michael Rakowitz is working with the city of Cleveland on an unattainable goal: the removal of the color orange from the city.

Selma is a film in which every moment has weight.

In the midst of the recent amazing outpouring of street presence supporting black lives, on Monday night I had an opportunity to witness something a little quieter. Willing Participant, a performance group led by artists Todd Shalom, Ben Weber, and Niegel Smith of Elastic City, held a simple public action that they called “disarm.”

That social practice is difficult to define is not a new problem. However, what I experienced was not so much a confusion of terms but a confusion of time: a series of talks that demonstrated the divide produced by the slowness of theory pitted against an active practice.

Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane Dance Company’s Story/Time is a kind of spoken dance piece inspired by John Cage: 70 one-minute stories “interrupted by a chance musical score.”

In performance, as in history, there’s a lot that gets lost: layers of meaning and nuance too complex to carry in a single story. Investigating Simone Leigh's and Xenobia Bailey’s projects for funkgodjazz&medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn, produced by Creative Time and the Weeksville Heritage Center, I was struck by this loss as an informative process.

I’m home in Brooklyn now — I’ve been back for about three weeks. As the Department of Local Affairs starts up in Bed-Stuy, where I’m the artist in residence for the Laundromat Project, I’ve been thinking about different ways to frame and understand my summer.

OMAHA — I walked from Nebraska to Iowa this morning, over the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge.

OMAHA — Both teaching and social practice ask a leader (artist, teacher, organizer) to codify and articulate a set of steps that are then acted out by a group. There’s a place for uncertainty, but it should be strategically applied: by choice, not default.

OMAHA — Fourth of July, 2014. I am in America’s heartland and trying not to get romantic about it.

The Probable Trust Registry, a new work by Adrian Piper, is not an exhibit so much as an agreement.

2014 is the “Year of James Baldwin” for New York City. Several major cultural organizations, including New York Live Arts, Columbia University, the New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and Harlem Stage, are partnering to present a series of talks, events, performances and interventions inspired by, in response to, or continuing the writer’s legacy.

Let’s look past the globules, barnacles, and goo. At its heart, Matthew Barney’s River of Fundament is a film about white, male America’s failure to comprehend urbanism.

To experience “Frolic Architecture” is to enter into a world that feels both familiar and bizarre. The piece, a collaboration between composer David Grubbs and poet Susan Howe is a delicate sound collage, rich with layers, solemn, and mildly, comfortably disjointed.

PORTLAND, Oregon — On a trip to Portland last month, I encountered a number of artists who use writing’s structures and processes to order performance behaviors. But for Lisa Radon, it’s reading, not writing, that serves as the moment of performance.

PORTLAND, Oregon —Portland’s literary prowess is well known. Home to the truly amazing Powell’s bookstore, a number of high caliber small presses, and host to many readings, the city is a great place for people who love words. I traveled there early this month to check out another kink in this phenomenon: the intersection of text and performance.