Dr. Sam Ben- Meir

We live in an age that prides itself on vigilance. We are told—often correctly—that history never ends, that reaction never sleeps, that injustice returns in new guises the moment we look away. The lesson appears sober, even responsible: there will always be another battle. And so we prepare ourselves for endurance rather than transformation. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025) stages this lesson with admirable seriousness. It offers no triumphalism, no illusion of final victory. Fascism, authoritarianism, reaction—call it what you will—returns again and again.

Every February, on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, Americans rehearse a familiar liturgy. Lincoln is praised as the Great Emancipator, the savior of the Union, the embodiment of moral clarity and constitutional restraint. He stands as the reassuring proof that democracy can survive its gravest crises without stepping outside its own principles.

The Metropolitan Museum’s Allegory and Abstraction offers a compelling rotation from the Department of Drawings and Prints, bringing forward how artists across centuries embed narrative, emotion, and idea through both symbolic imagery and experiments in form.

If there is one thing modern societies have learned from pandemic years and chronic inequality, it is that health is not a private matter. The spread of illness—biological, social, and moral—exposes how deeply our lives are intertwined. Yet we still talk about healthcare as if it were an optional service, a product to be purchased, rationed, or withheld, rather than what it truly is: the precondition of freedom itself.

The Käthe Kollwitz exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art is a reminder of why art exists, and, at its best, what makes it of timeless, universal value. Kollwitz’s work fulfills the condition of truth, which as Theodor Adorno observed, is to let suffering speak. Or in her own words: “I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high.” Her work also compels us to reflect on the nature of feminism, especially as it relates to art.

Sam Ben-Meir - January 3, 2024

Sam Ben-Meir - January 3, 2024

Side by side at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, this exhibition is a forceful reminder of why Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas were of such revolutionary significance. Manet was the father of modern art according to Clement Greenberg – the Immanuel Kant of painting – because he probes the conditions of painting itself. In fact, this is true of both painters here. Both are steeped in the history of Western painting, both have made thorough studies of Rubens (“Rubens is God,” Manet would exclaim). Their studies of Velasquez, and Delacroix are on display here.

American Ceramics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sam Ben-Meir - October 18, 2021

Gifts from the Fire: American Ceramics from the Collection of Martin Eidelberg, is worth a visit, at a minimum to appreciate the five pieces (four vases and a pitcher) from the hands of George E. Ohr (1857-1918), the self-proclaimed "Mad Potter of Biloxi.” While there are other pieces that capture the eye – the extraordinary glazes, and incandescent surfaces of Adelaide Also Robineau’s Three Vases (1905) come to mind – Ohr’s work is the jewel of the show.

The Authoritarian Personality and Rise of Right-Wing Extremism Sam Ben-Meir - September 6, 2021 If nothing else, the Republican Party has steadily removed any doubt that it has embraced an extremism that threatens the future of American Democracy. We can clearly perceive the imminent danger that the Party poses in several crucial ways, perhaps the most salient being the refusal of candidates to concede when they lose an election.