Kathy Foley The Calling: The Transformative Power of African American Doll and Puppet Making. Camila Bryce Laporte, curator, and Phyllis May-Machunda, curatorial consultant. City Lore Gallery. New York, NY. October 6, 2023 to March 3, 2024. This exhibit in a one-room space in New York’s East Village seems simple—dolls, soft sculpture figures, assemblage, quilts, and puppets by twenty-six contemporary Black artists juxtaposed in the gallery. Figures are arranged 1) to evoke the chronology of the African American diasporic experience and 2) to create dialogue about loss, trauma, and resilience. Doll making heals the spirit and builds community for these otherwise …

Performance and Court in Indonesia. Asian Art Galleries, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.  In Indonesia, wayang shadow puppets are presented to the audience in a dizzying swirl of sound and action. The dalang story-teller brings the artfully perforated puppets to life with deft manipulations of shadows that change shape to the shifting rhythms of a clanging gamelan orchestra. As the dalang sings, chants, jokes, and punctuates the dialogue with percussive clacks of a cempala, the characters interact with a rich array of human emotions. The puppets praise, seduce, flatter, betray, mock, and battle each other with gestures that …