by Andrew Stefan Weiner

The obvious reason that some critics have cast Szymczyk and his team as morally superior “social justice warriors” is that it is much easier to fling stereotypes than it is to work through the complex implications of the fundamental message that this documenta means to communicate. At the core of this sprawling, wildly ambitious, sometimes incoherent, but certainly worthwhile exhibition lies a deceptively simple proposition: that art can and should serve the cause of justice, but not always in the ways we might expect.
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by Andrew Stefan Weiner

It might be that some degree of controversy at the Whitney Biennial is inevitable, given its oft-stated ambition to somehow “take the temperature” of contemporary American art. Yet to agree to this objective is first of all to admit that such a thing is even possible and furthermore that it is desirable, when in fact neither of these points is exactly self-evident. Why shouldn’t some Biennials be more limited and thematic, rather than comprehensive?
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