A 2019 study found that “in the collections of eighteen major US art museums, 87 percent of artworks were by men, and 85 percent by white artists.” There’s a lot to be mad about, but London-based art historian Hessel nimbly pivots that energy into a constructive, revelatory project. Prominent 19th-century art critic John Ruskin once proclaimed, “the woman’s intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision,” and traces of this misguided and malignant sentiment can still be found over a century later in art institutions around the world.
In Ohio, writes the author, “struggle is a sort of birthright, and it has inspired energy and innovation in the generation that has followed the industrial decline.”Īn affectionate, realistic survey of a state coming back from the brink.Īn indispensable primer on the history of art, with an exclusive focus on women. But Giffels also writes gracefully at every stop and actively seeks pockets of sunlight amid the gloom: a boom in craft brewing, hard-nosed progressive activism, and a stubbornness exemplified by Robert Pollard, the Dayton-based frontman of the boozy but indefatigable band Guided by Voices. The author’s efforts to cover multiple bases can feel breezy at times, and there’s little drama in his deep dive into the short-lived presidential candidacy of Tim Ryan. To that point, he finds a few lessons in the late Jim Traficant, the corrupt, pugnacious congressperson who still earned respect for a seemingly genuine compassion for the common man. Throughout the book, Giffels tries to square these challenges with the fact that the state turned so eagerly to Trump in 2016. In Elyria, a community pins its hopes on Amazon building a warehouse on the site of a dead mall in Dayton, the opioid epidemic persists in Cincinnati, relations between police and black residents remain tense. Giffels visited farmers struggling amid tariffs and punishing storms. In Lordstown, he found a factory town betrayed first by GM and then by Trump’s empty promises of revival. It is, he writes, “an all-American buffet, an uncannily complete everyplace.” But he also senses that the loose tethers connecting the state are further unraveling, so he hit the road to understand the fraying. Giffels, a longtime Akron-based journalist, has no grand unified theory of Ohio to offer, no common denominator for a place that encompasses Deep South, urban, Midwestern, and Appalachian cultures and split political sensibilities. An Ohio native chronicles his road trip through his complicated home state, which has gotten only more complicated in the Trump era.
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