‘Here and Elsewhere,’ Contemporary Work From the Middle East

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Most of our New York museums give us gussied-up versions of what we already know. The New Museum was created almost 35 years ago to do the opposite, to give us art we barely knew existed. With “Here and Elsewhere,” it thrillingly fulfills that mandate.

Hidden behind that noncommittal title is a potentially volatile subject: what the museum advertises as contemporary art “from and about the Arab world.” I winced at the description. After decades of postcolonial consciousness raising, we’ve grown leery of shows that lump sundry unalike cultures together, as this one does with artists from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates, not to mention Europe and the United States....Continue Reading

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