The Journal of Comparative Media Arts has just published its first issue, with a special feature article by Whitaker. Dedicated to the theme of Failure, the issue includes Whitaker's images and writing on mankind's major failure, the inability to stop making war. The Journal is published by graduate students at Simon Fraser University School for Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The British Sculptor Barbara Hepworth is finally being honored with a retrospective at Tate Britain. Once denigrated as "provincial" and "second rate", she is now being recognized as one of the primary contemporary sculptors in the U.K. Hepworth died of smoke inhalation during a fire in 1972. Although she was named a Dame of the British Empire, her contributions have not been adequately acknowledged. After an interview with her in 1966, Robert Hughes wrote: "How could this diminutive woman, 62 years old, with skin and flesh laid over bones as delicate as a seagull's, have modelled and carved a body of work five times the size of Michelangelo's, in equally resistant materials and on as big a scale?". You can see more of Hepworth's pieces at a website set up for her online.

If you are curious about the Internet of Things, (IoT) then you may want to find out about how the smart home of the future is shaping up. Some of it is already here, some only envisioned, but it will change how all of us live in an intelligent future.

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is having his first solo show in his home country. Among other objects,the artist has used 10,000 antique spouts from centuries of dynasties to bring ancient traditions into modern environments. As he has previously, Ai Weiwei combines intimate personal spaces with social areas, raising the issue of individual versus political needs. The exhibition covers not only a gallery but an art center next door, even spanning the wall that divides the two.

Photographer Todd Anthony set out to discover what makes some people exceptional. Traveling around the world, in places as diverse as New Orleans and Iceland, he produced a portfolio titled "In Search of Less Ordinary", with comments and observations as well as photos. I am reminded of the photographic work of Jim Goldberg, which I first encountered when he documented residents of nursing homes, with poignant notations added.

The Walker Art Center shows us the sculpture of Lynda Benglis as she uses chicken wire and polyethylene to create evocative and flowing works.

As you may well imagine, public performances of protest art works are rare in Cuba, as the light of freedom has only recently begun to shine there. Artist Tania Bruguera is one such figure. She has been arrested several times in attempts to perform Tatlin's Whisper #6 (Havana version) in a public square. The piece was first performed in 2009 and marked a historic occasion: for the first time the public was invited to share their opinions. Earlier in her career, Bruguera published "Memory of the Postwar" (1993), an independent newspaper that was shut down by authorites. Part of Bruguera's performance art has been the uninterrupted reading of Hannah Arendt's 1951 book, "The Origins of Totalitarianism". The Tatlin piece mentioned above was stopped and the artist's computer and passport were confiscated as she awaits trial. She comments that the police participated in the performance by their actions and are therefore co-conspiritors.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers You Tube views of two installations: "Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700:Opulence and Fantasy", and "China Through the Looking Glass". Both are well worth your time exploring.

First year MFA students at the University of Southern California's Roski School of Art and Design staged a public protest by withdrawing en mass from the program. The students objected to changes instituted by a new Dean and accused the school of "serious wrongdoing". The charges were backed up by over 70 alumnae, who collectively wrote specifying the alterations in the school's policies that provoked the protest.

This piece of sculpture by the French artist Pierre Huyghe is creating quite a stir in the art world. Titled "Untilled", it will be installed by MOMA in New York, after being shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The concrete body of a female is topped by a live bee colony for the head.

Angela de la Cruz is creating disruptive works that challenge the borders between painting and sculpture. She crosses borders, twits labels, and plays with definitions in an irreverent view of the boxes we artists allow ourselves to be squeezed into.

Emily Young grew up in a family of artists, writers and poets, traveling frequently and absorbing multiple cultures. Her evocative sculptures breathe life into stone and embed the human into the monumental. She is at her best when she allows her materials to breathe emphatically into the figures.

c. Corinne Whitaker 2015