“Structure and Flow,”
The New Yorker, January 11, 2021:
When I saw El Anatsui’s exhibition “Triumphant Scale” in Bern, Switzerland, on March 12, 2020, the World Health Organization had just declared COVID-19 a pandemic. I’d been looking for a flight back to New York since three o’clock in the morning, after learning that the United States was closing its borders with Europe. The streets were nearly empty in the quiet medieval capital, a city once home to Paul Klee and Albert Einstein. Every other building seemed to be made of the same gray-green sandstone. Kiosk displays alternately flashed ads for the exhibition and public-health advisories, which had grown more alarming in the four days I’d waited for Anatsui. Walking into the Kunstmuseum Bern, a stately neo-Renaissance structure overlooking the Aare, I realized that I would likely never meet the artist.
