THE KRIEGER LIST: I ON THE ARTS' TOP 2021

Hello readers! 

2021, am I right?

(Looking back at my 2020 post, I realize I literally made this exact same joke. Seems appropriate this year as well.) As always, you can check out previous years here: 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017 / 2016 / 2015 best/worst.

Some life updates:

• I graduated from my Master's Degree program at Brown and got a job at the Museum of Work & Culture, where I work on the museum's temporary exhibitions and accompanying programs. I also curated two exhibitions in the spring of 2021 and another one in fall 2021, with more on the horizon! So while I didn't do a lot of writing for publications, I did a lot of writing for exhibitions. 
• So... I'm going to be based in Rhode Island for a while! I'm always looking for cool new art galleries and spaces to write about, so if you have any tips...

Back to the preamble to the list...

In 2021, sometimes I went to the movies. Often I didn't. I mostly watched television on various streaming services and read a lot of articles online. If it's on these lists, it means I enjoyed it and consumed it for the first time in the year 2021, even if said book/movie/show wasn't actually from 2021. It may have comforted me amidst terrifying news cycles, or wowed me with some deep profundities. Essentially, this media was how I occupied my mind and soothed my soul for much of 2021 (with the exception of re-watching New Girl on Netflix for the 8,000th time). The entries in each category, unless otherwise indicated, will be presented in alphabetical order (as opposed to ranking).

Movies:

• Dune (directed by Denis Villeneuve, 2021)
• The French Dispatch (directed by Wes Anderson, 2021)
• Los Angeles Plays Itself (directed by Thom Andersen, 2004)
• No Sudden Move (directed by Stephen Soderbergh, 2021)
• The Personal History of David Copperfield (directed by Armando Iannucci, 2019)
• West Side Story (directed by Stephen Spielberg, 2021)

Television:

• Hacks (HBO Max, 2021)
• Neon Genesis Evangelion (Netflix dub, 2018; originally produced 1995)
• The O.C., season 1 (Fox, 2003)
• Odd Taxi (Crunchyroll, 2021)
• School of Chocolate (Netflix, 2021)
• Sex Education, season 3 (Netflix, 2021)
• Succession, season 3 (HBO, 2021)
• Watchmen (HBO, 2019)
• You, season 3 (Netflix, 2021)

Books:

• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein, 2017
• Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir, 2020
• The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World, Vincent Bevins, 2020
• The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Mediation on Power, Gary Wills, 1982
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander, 2010
• White Trash: The 400-Year Old Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, 2016

Art/Museum Experiences:

• Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
• "Critical Cartography: Larissa Fassler in Manchester," Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire

Music:

• Aly & AJ, "On the Ride," 2005
• Bruce Springsteen: "Frankie," "Janey Don't You Lose Heart" (released on disc 3 of Tracks, 1998)
• Halsey, If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, 2021
• No-No Boy, "The Best God Damn Band in Wyoming," 2021
• Olivia Rodrigo: "brutal," "good 4 u" (both 2021)
• Taylor Swift: "The Other Side of the Door (Taylor's Version) (From the Vault)," "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)," "The Way I Loved You (Taylor's Version)," "State of Grace (Taylor's Version)," "Treacherous (Taylor's Version)," "Holy Ground (Taylor's Version)," "The Lucky One (Taylor's Version)" (all released 2021)
• Twin Shadow, "Saturdays (featuring HAIM)," 2018
• T-Pain: "Church," 2007

Performances:

• Casey Mongillo, Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Dev Patel, The Personal History of David Copperfield
• Evan Peters, Mare of Easttown (HBO)
• Florence Pugh, Black Widow (2021)
• Jean Smart, Hacks
• Jeffrey Wright, The French Dispatch
• Matthew MacFadyen, Succession
• Mike Faist, West Side Story
• Nahéma Ricci, Antigone (2019) (technically viewed in 2020, but written about in 2021)
• River Phoenix, Stand By Me (1986) (yes, I watched it for the first time this year.)
• Tony Leung, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Longform Articles, in chronological order:

• "Advanced Placement," Janet Malcolm, The New Yorker, March 3, 2008
• "The Knowledge, London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test, Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS," Jody Rosen, The New York Times, November 10, 2014
• "What Happened to ‘The Most Liberated Woman in America’?" Alex Mar, Atlas Obscura, June 7, 2016
• "Philip Johnson: The Man Who Made Architecture Immoral," Nikil Saval, The New Yorker, December 12, 2018
• "Abolition is Not a Suburb," Tamara K. Nopper, The New Inquiry, July 16, 2020
• "What I Learned From the Worst Novelist in the English Language," Barrett Swanson, The New Republic, August 6, 2020
• "A Suburban Mindset Has Taken Over Life in America," Jason Diamond, Lithub, August 26, 2020
• "Race Consciousness: Fascism and Frank Herbert’s “Dune”," Jordan S. Carroll, Los Angeles Review of Books, November 19, 2020.
• "The Bizarre Rise of the Manhattan Prep School Gangster Turned Enigmatic West Bank Rabbi," Abraham Riesman, The Daily Beast, December 24, 2020
• "The Century-Old Neon Sign Tearing Up LA Conservationists," Nate Rogers, Vice, January 26, 2021
• "He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?" Rachel Poser, The New York Times, February 2, 2021
• "Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny," RS Benedict, Blood Knife, February 14, 2021
• "Britney Spears Was Never in Control," Tavi Gevinson, The Cut, February 23, 2021
• "The Last of the Nice Negro Girls," Anna Deavere Smith, Atlantic, March 2021 issue
• "Dirt: TikTok and Suburban Gothic," Daisy Alioto, Dirt, March 12, 2021
• "The Mysterious Case of the F*cking Good Pizza," Emilie Friedlander, March 30, 2021
• "Invisible Kid," Maddy Crowell, Atavist Magazine, April 2021
• "America Ruined My Name For Me," Beth Nguyen, The New Yorker, April 1, 2021
• "The End of Kimye’s Wild Ride," Allison P. Davis, Vulture, April 26, 2021
• "The Snitch," Jordan Michael Smith, Atavist Magazine, May 2021 issue
• "In a Small Town, a Battle for Racial Justice Confronts a Bloody Past and an Uncertain Future," Carli Brosseau, The News & Observer (published by ProPublica), May 19, 2021
• "From Here to Utopia," David Albertson & Jason Blakely, Commonweal Magazine, May 24, 2021
• "The People, It Depends," Erik Baker, N+1, Summer 2021 issue
• "Magic Actions," Tobi Haslett, N+1, Summer 2021 issue
• "The Oracle’s Daughter," Harrison Hill, The Cut, June 8, 2021
• "“Don’t Fuck With the Jews” and Other Moments of Muscular Judaism on Film," Mark Asch, Hyperallergic, June 21, 2021
• "The 1619 Project Revisited," John Ganz, Unpopular Front, June 27, 2021
• "The Scream Gap," Celia Mattison, The Audacity, June 30, 2021
• "‘Black Widow,’ Britney Spears, and When Families Fail to Protect Their Most Vulnerable," Kristen Lopez, Indiewire, July 10, 2021
• "The Quileute Dune: Frank Herbert, Indigeneity, and Empire," Daniel Immerwahr, Journal of American Studies, July 22, 1-26. (No longer available to read for free.)
• "The ballad of the Chowchilla bus kidnapping," Kaleb Horton, Vox, July 23, 2021
• "The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis," Yohann Koshy, The Guardian, August 5, 2021
• "Finding a Way Back From Suicide," Donald Antrim, The New Yorker, August 9, 2021
• "Britain's Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History," Sam Knight, The New Yorker, August 16, 2021
• "By Design," Meg Conley, Homeculture, Fall 2021
• "Against Artsploitation," Dana Kopel, The Baffler, September 2021 issue
• "Searching for Mr. X," Laura Todd Carns, Atavist Magazine, September 2021 issue
• "When Doug and Ashley Benefield Started a Ballet Company, It Wasn’t Supposed to End in Death," Alice Robb, Vanity Fair, September 2, 2021
• "Mr. Weber's Confession," Nancy Jo Sales, Vanity Fair, September 13, 2021
• "How To Remember Minoru Yamasaki’s Twin Towers," Alexandra Lange, Bloomberg CityLab, September 8, 2021
• "Neo Rauch's Antagonistic Art," Thomas Meaney, The New Yorker, September 27, 2021
• "Stuffing Ourselves​: Amazon, the Postal Service, and the Tyranny of Logistics," Jake Bittle, The Drift, September 27, 2021
• "Truth and Consequences​: Documentaries and the Art of Manipulation," Blair McClendon, The Drift, September 27, 2021
• "Who is the Bad Art Friend?" Robert Kolker, The New York Times, October 5, 2021
• "The Abortion I Didn’t Have," Merritt Tierce, The New York Times, December 2, 2021
• "Gender, Sex, and Other Nonsense," Daniel Walden, Commonweal Magazine, December 28, 2021
• "Child Bride," Daniel Wallace, Bitter Southerner, undated

I On the Arts' Published Writing of 2021, in chronological order:

• "[Review:] Antigone." Moviejawn, January 6, 2021.
• "On Line: An In-Depth Essay." Commissioned essay for artist Paula Cahill, April 2021.
• "'To Build a Home': Providence's Wedding Cake House and its Foremothers." Urban Journal Volume 7 (May 2021): pp. 24-31.
• "Larissa Fassler’s cartography at the Currier Museum describes socioeconomic disparities in Manchester." Artblog, June 10, 2021.
• "Jenny Slate's Film "The Sunlit Night" Is An Earnest And Honest Attempt At Translating Creative Thinking Onto The Screen: Review." BUST, June 25, 2021.
• "Netflix series ‘This is a Robbery’ about Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist is sluggish, overlong, and fails to deliver a great story." Artblog, September 10, 2021.
• "Halsey Gets Vulnerable, Explores Motherhood And Childbirth On Provocative 4th Album, If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power: BUST Review." BUST, September 16, 2021.
• "The visceral impact of scenes of intimacy in “Any distance between us” at the RISD Museum." Artblog, November 11, 2021.