After miles of legwork, dozens of espressos, too much pasta, and an astronomical amount of art at the Venice Biennale, I'm back at my desk in New York City. It was historical. It was political. It was thrilling and moving. Did the Biennale "implode" because of boycotts, resignations, and international disputes, as some critics have lamented? Quite the opposite — it was more alive than ever. An international exhibition at this scale would fall flat if it didn't reflect both the woes and joys of the world outside. The late Koyo Kouoh's main exhibition In Minor Keys did just that. My review forthcoming. The best part of my trip was meeting many of our readers around the world. I was particularly...

This is one of those rare performances that makes you believe that everything Verdi was greater Way Back When.

Audi brings the Auto Union Lucca back to Italy
 
Audi has recreated the Auto Union Lucca, the streamlined record car that reached 326.975 km/h (203 mph) on a road near the Italian city in 1935.
 
The one-off reconstruction, completed in spring 2026 by Audi Tradition, returns a missing piece of early Grand Prix engineering to the marque’s historic vehicle collection. Known in period language as a Rennlimousine, or racing sedan, the car joins the Silver Arrow family after more than three years of work by British restoration specialists Crosthwaite & Gardiner.
images courtesy Audi
 
 
A body shaped by speed
 
The original Auto Union Lucca came out of a sharp engineering push during the winter of 1934 and...

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This season, photography exhibitions across Europe and the US are using image-making, installation and archival practice to confront some of the defining questions of our time: who controls representation, how technology reshapes tradition, and what it means to preserve identity under political and social pressure. From Amsterdam to Phoenix, artists are examining the tensions between truth and fiction, resistance and erasure. Presented at Huis Marseille, Fondazione Prada, Kunsthalle Bremen, Fotografiska Stockholm and Phoenix Art Museum, these exhibitions approach urgent contemporary issues with intimacy and ambition. Yumna Al-Arashi: Body as Resistance  Huis Marseille, Amsterdam | Until 21 June ...

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All’interno del programma di 480 Site Specific, nello spazio di EDICOLA480 con la direzione artistica di Massimiliano Bastardo, il dipinto I secondi soldati di Gabriele La Torre – pittore palermitano, nato nel 2003 – si impone come un’immagine in apparenza semplice che, a uno sguardo più attento, rivela una costruzione percettiva instabile e stratificata. L’olio su tela lavora su un immaginario immediatamente riconoscibile, quello dei soldatini di plastica, ma ne sovverte la funzione narrativa, trasformandolo in un campo di tensione sospeso tra memoria, ripetizione e dislocazione.
Gabriele La Torre, “I secondi soldati”, olio su tela, 100×85 cm, 2026, ph: Danilo Donzelli Photography, courtesy...

Salte Library Bukchon by Niiiz Design Lab
 
Located in Bukchon, Seoul, Salte Library Bukchon by Niiiz Design Lab explores how fragrance, literature, and interior architecture can be combined into a single spatial experience. Developed for the Korean fragrance brand Solte Library, the project translates scent and written narrative into a retail environment organized around atmosphere, sequence, and sensory interaction.
 
The project emerges within the broader expansion of South Korea’s cultural industries, where fragrance brands increasingly position storytelling and identity as central components of product design. Rather than presenting perfume as an isolated commodity, Solte Library connects each...

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museum-held specimens reflect histories of ecological loss
 
Artist Fiona Pardington presents Taharaki Skyside, a body of large-scale photographic portraits for the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion at Venice Art Biennale 2026. Developed in collaboration with filmmaker and photographer Neil Pardington and curated by Felicity Milburn and Chloe Cull, the exhibition turns toward taxidermied birds held in museum collections across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. Through carefully staged images of endangered and extinct species, Pardington examines the intertwined histories of ecological loss, colonial collecting, and cultural memory.
 
The photographs isolate each bird against dark backgrounds, drawing attention...

If Frieze New York feels like an assembly-line salad this year, then the Independent art fair feels like the assembly line. Entering the fair, which continues through this Sunday, May 17, entails batting your way through a grid of flailing sheets of thick yellow plastic dangling from the ceiling, like going through a car wash. Pier 36, where it is being held for the first time, is warehouse-like and vast, with neat little booths ticking all the way down to the end of the sightline.On Independent's by-invitation-only opening night yesterday, May 14, hundreds of people — a notable number wearing blazers draped over shoulders and long, silk skirts — milled around the 76 booths. Visitors at Independent...

Activist, educator and artist Mary Lovelace O’Neal, whose monumental, richly hued lampblack paintings expanded abstraction’s possibilities, died on May 10 in Mérida, Mexico. She was eighty-four. Despite a fruitful career spanning six decades, Lovelace O’Neal was known primarily as an “artist’s artist” until recent years, when she began to achieve international acclaim. Informed by flatness, […]

How do the wealthy choose their art these days?Do they adorn their walls with the masterworks of long-dead modernists and Pop Art icons that will only increase in value as the years unfurl? Or do they fill their townhouses with glossy hardwood tables, chic lighting fixtures, and dense statement sculptures that wow guests and can be used as a blunt instrument in an emergency?The answer is, perhaps, all of the above. There was plenty to dazzle the patrons of the Nouveau Gilded Age at The European Fine Art Foundation’s (TEFAF) 12th annual fair, held at the historic Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan from May 15 to 19.Any concerns about inflation, hantavirus, or general political malaise were gently left at the...

So much of my experience of visual art is rooted in interpersonal connection. It’s not that an artist needs to be standing directly in front of their work for me to appreciate it, I just always find myself latching onto their presence — whether it’s physical in the gallery or imbued within their creation. Future Fair, held this year at Chelsea Industrial from May 13 through 16, seems to capture this very spirit. The stereotypical press photograph of a major art fair usually shows an aerial perspective, revealing the cold, industrial bowels formed by gallery booths and their miniature-looking visitors. Unlike this image, which might make one feel like a prey animal observed from above, the six-year-old...

The fair's 20th edition was almost derailed by the US-Israel war in Iran—but organisers rallied the local community for a special show

At the Photographers’ Gallery in London on May 14, Rene Matić was announced as the winner of the £30,000 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize. They were recognized for the exhibition “AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH,” the artist’s first solo show in Germany, held at CCA Berlin from November 8, 2024 – February 15, 2025. Matić is […]

KWK Promes embeds its Yaw House into a mountain slope
 
In southern Poland’s Beskid Mountains, KWK Promes completes Yaw House, a grass-roofed residence shaped directly by the incline of its site. Instead of leveling the terrain or placing a fixed object against the hillside, the architects embed the building within the land itself. The project takes its name from the aviation term ‘yaw,’ describing rotation around a vertical axis, and that single movement defines the home’s entire layout.
 
The house begins with a familiar gabled silhouette positioned parallel to neighboring structures, maintaining continuity with the local architectural language. From there, the volume rotates toward southern light...

Earlier this week, a 5.5-carat diamond ring sold for over $17 million dollars during Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction in Zurich. The triangular-cut stone, known as Ocean Dream, thanks to its blue-green color, had an estimate of about $9-12 million. It is set into an 18-karat white gold band and surrounded by pink and white diamonds. Fortune magazine reported that the buyer was an unnamed private client and that the ring took 20 minute to sell. Max Fawcett, Global Head of Christie’s Jewellery, noted in a statement that this is the second time Ocean Dream has been offered at auction. (t sold for nearly $10 million in 2014, also at Christie’s Geneva.) According to the Smithsonian, it is “one of the...

The Catalan government in Spain sent a formal demand to the Aragonese government asking for €791,000 (around $920,000) to recoup costs related to the value and upkeep of artworks from the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Sigena it was ordered to return in 2017, according to a report in El País. Of the 56 works, 12 had been kept at the National Art Museum of Catalonia and 44 at the Diocesan Museum of Lleida. The works were removed from the monastery in 1936 to protect them from ruin during the Spanish Civil War. In a ruling in 2021, the Supreme Court in Spain stated that “the items formed part of the artistic treasure of the Monastery of Sijena at the time it was declared a National Monument [in 1923],...

More than 100 Seattle Art Museum employees announced plans this week to unionize, joining the nationwide labor movement that’s swept through art institutions in the last six years.  The union, called the Seattle Art Museum Workers United, will represent workers in over 20 front- and back-end departments. The union told SAM director and CEO Scott Stulen of its formation in a letter, writing: “Our solidarity is a movement to improve working conditions in alignment with SAM’s mission, vision, and core values.”  The letter continues, “The challenges we face as unsustainable wages, subpar health benefits, and siloed, top-down decision-making, are undeniable, systemic, and have persisted across...

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Fusing elements of Persian architecture with Christian altarpieces, Arghavan Khosravi grapples with the structures and ideological strictures that shape our lives. The Iranian artist has long reckoned with women’s fight for equality, particularly amid censorship and religious dogma in her native country. Through vibrant gradients that radiate across her sculptural paintings, Khosravi entices the viewer into urgent, ongoing conversations about resistance and control. Opening today at Uffner & Liu, What Remains presents a dynamic new body of work that captures moments of tension and strife. Figures, in Khosravi’s works, are often restricted and tethered to domestic objects and space, and critically,...

Aerial view of enclosure burials, Atbai Desert, Sudan ATBAI DESERT, SUDAN—A new survey of Eastern Sudan’s Atbai Desert mapped hundreds of previously unidentified archaeological features that are providing new clues about what life was like in the region prior to the rise of pharaonic Egypt, Europe Says reports. Researchers used satellite aerial imagery to record at least 260 monumental enclosure burials between the Nile River and the Red Sea. These enigmatic tombs, which can reach 260 feet in diameter, were built by local nomadic herding communities during the fourth and third millennium b.c., making the funerary tradition older than the pyramids of Egypt. Previously excavated examples of these structures,...

Wax tablet notebook PADERBORN, GERMANY—La Brújula Verde reports that a German archaeological team under the supervision of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) recovered an exceptionally well-preserved notebook from a medieval toilet in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The discovery was made during construction of a new administrative headquarters in the city of Paderborn. The four- by three-inch book contains 10 wooden tablet pages coated in wax, onto which the object’s owner etched writing using a metal or bone stylus. The volume was also carefully protected by a leather cover that was stamped with motifs of lilies. Although experts have not yet translated any of the passages, the...

Radical performance artist, filmmaker, and sculptor VALIE EXPORT, arguably the most significant feminist artist of the postwar era, died in Vienna on May 14, just three days shy of her birthday. She was eighty-five. Her death was confirmed by the gallery Thaddaeus Ropac, which represents her. Deploying the body in novel and provocative ways, EXPORT […]

Tunnel, Jerusalem, Israel JERUSALEM, ISRAEL—According to a statement released by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), archaeologists unearthed a mysterious tunnel beneath the streets of Jerusalem. During construction work near Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, workers unexpectedly discovered the entrance to an ancient cavity, measuring 16 feet high and 10 feet wide, that was once accessed via a rock-cut staircase. At first researchers believed the passageway may have been part of an ancient water installation built to access underground springs, but this was subsequently ruled out, since the walls of the tunnel were not covered in plaster as they typically would have been. Geologists also found no evidence of any...

The Wellcome Collection in London announced Friday its plans to return 2,000 manuscripts to the Jain community. In an unusual move, however, they will not be returned to Pakistan, where many of the manuscripts were purchased a century ago, or to India, where the majority of Jains live today. Instead, they will head to the University of Birmingham’s Dharmanath Network in Jain Studies, which was established in 2023 and is wholly financed by Jain communities living in the UK, the US, and India. In a release, the collection said it “believes this to be the most appropriate place to maximise community access, deepen research opportunities and safeguard the future of this significant collection.” The transfer...

An Egyptian archeological mission has made several new discoveries this season while excavating at the Abu El-Naga necropolis near Luxor. The announcement was made by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. Among the most important finds of the season was a cache of ten well preserved, painted wooden coffins that had been hidden in the shaft of the courtyard of the tomb of Baki. The coffins, featuring brightly painted scenes and hieroglyphic inscriptions, were likely moved from their original burial sites during a period of instability, leading to some damage to the mummies inside..   Four of these coffins date to Egypt’s 18th Dynasty (c. 1550–1292 BC), including one coffin bearing the name of Merit,...

Although uneven at times, ‘Forge’ questions whether collectors really have more appreciation for art than artists who create forgeries

“It beats working” 

In Everything Now All At Once at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the title says it all. Dozens of works from the likes of Nick Cave, Ai Weiwei, Nina Chanel Abney, Wangechi Mutu, and many more represent a slice of the contemporary art world in which globalism and diversity are at the fore, and the lessons of the past inform how artists imagine the future. Interestingly, the pieces are also decidedly analog, especially noteworthy as these works—alongside a few other multimedia and photographic additions—have been made throughout the era of light-speed technological advances. Painting and sculpture, in particular, have long been treated as the nexus of “high art” in the Western canon. The...

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Divertissements and demonstrations at the art world’s theme park

Angular forms outline Florida Southern College’s masterplan
 
Located in Lakeland, Florida, Frank Lloyd Wright’s campus plan for Florida Southern College remains the largest single-site collection of the architect’s work in the world. Developed between 1938 and 1958, the project brought together academic buildings, chapels, seminar spaces, esplanades, and water features into a unified architectural vision described by Wright as a ‘truly American campus.’
 
The 80-acre masterplan organizes the campus through a network of covered walkways radiating outward from a central core. Wright envisioned a total of eighteen structures for the institution, twelve of which were ultimately realized over two...

Typically gravitating toward dreamy palettes of soft blues, grays, and oranges, Scottish artist Andrew McIntosh opts for a sanguine red in a new body of work. The crimson paintings continue McIntosh’s otherworldly landscapes that cast familiar forms like mountains and valleys in a strange, uncanny light. Glowing orbs float among the craggy terrain and veil the scenes in mystery. “These works sit somewhere between memory and invention—familiar landscapes interrupted by something I don’t fully understand,” the artist says. “Whitney” (2026), oil on linen, 170 x 130 centimeters On view at School Gallery, these bold pieces comprise the artist’s solo exhibition, I Hope This Transmission Finds You...

An exciting cast digs their claws into a heady production of La Calisto at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées.

Candace Caston  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Candace Caston’s Website
Candace Caston on Instagram

In this week's episode, Ben Sutton and Kabir Jhala discuss this year's Frieze New York, other fairs across the city this week and the upcoming New York auctions. Ben Luke speaks to Martin Bailey about a Cranach painting discovered to have once hung in Hitler's home, and hears from Charlotte Keenan of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool on a photography series by Ajamu X.

James McNeill Whistler’s celebrated maternal portrait reminded Vincent of his own mother

Last night's season opening sale of post-war and contemporary art, which started with 11 lots from the late art dealer, set new records for young artists Ding Shilun and Yu Nishimura

Nothing prepared me for the Soviero experience

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, established in 1996, celebrates exhibitions and publications that have made “a significant contribution to photography in the past 12 months.” It’s a major moment in the cultural calendar, and, over the years, has spotlighted seminal names such as Arthur Jafa, Deana Lawson, Lorna Simpson, Richard Mosse and Susan Meiselas. This year’s winning artist is Rene Matić, for the exhibition AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH, at CCA Berlin, Germany, which ran from November 2024 to February 2025. The show, as Shoair Mavlian, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery and Chair of the Jury, describes, comprised “raw and honest photographs” that “bring a story of...

Presso Fondazione Sabe per l’arte a Ravenna, la mostra Molteplice senza disordine curata Enrico Camprini espone tre artisti di generazioni diverse che si confrontano e si pongono in relazione con lo spazio espositivo creando una sintesi che ragiona sul dialogo tra il luogo espositivo e l’atmosfera creata dalle opere.
AA.VV., “Molteplice senza disordine”, veduta della mostra, Fondazione Sabe, Ravenna, 2026. Foto di Daniele Casadio, courtesy Fondazione Sabe per l’arte
Le opere degli artisti coinvolti si confrontano in sguardi che si ibridano e si influenzano a vicenda. Alice Cattaneo invade lo spazio espositivo con l’opera site specific Se questo margine è di tempo, che si allarga sulla...

Milan-based Filipina designer Mirei Monticelli creates biomorphic lighting fixtures that toe the line between sculpture and utility. Undulating outward and glowing from within, the artist’s works feel as if they are alive, quietly dancing wherever they stand or hang. These gestural, biodegradable structures are crafted with hand-woven Banaca fabric made from Abacá, a fiber that grows abundantly in Monticelli’s native Philippines. The artist’s studio works directly with a community of weavers in the Bicol province at the southeastern end of Luzon, sharing with Colossal, “We’ve developed the material together over time, so it’s not just sourcing, but a relationship.” The laborious act of...

KUJAWY, POLAND—Science in Poland reports that high nitrogen levels detected in the isotopic analysis of human and animal bone collagen recovered from more than 30 archaeological sites in northern Poland indicate that Neolithic farmers fertilized their fields. The study also showed that these early farmers ate little fish and other freshwater foods. Then, between around 2800 and 2200 B.C., populations such as the people of the Corded Ware culture from an area near the Danube River arrived in what is now northern Poland, said Łukasz Pospieszny of the University of Gdańsk. The newcomers adapted to local conditions, he explained, but they maintained their own dietary patterns based on meat and dairy...

Pottery and possible piece of an altar in a Scythian tomb, Gura Bacului, Moldova DNIESTER, MOLDOVA—According to a Moldpres report, a Scythian tomb dated to the third century B.C. has been discovered by archaeologists from Moldova’s National Archaeological Agency. The tomb, made up of an access shaft, a corridor, and a burial chamber, was found during rescue excavations in the necropolis at Gura Bacului in east Moldova. The burial contained ceramic vessels, arrowheads, beads, a sheathed knife, a censer, and worked stone that may have been used as an altar. Vlad Vornic of the National Archaeological Agency said that the ceramic censer is of a rare type and helped the researchers to date the tomb. For more,...

Joy Machine is pleased to present Feel Free, a group exhibition featuring new works by Rachel Hayden, Paulina Ho, Hanna Lee Joshi, and Jeremy Miranda. The opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on May 15, 2026. Attempting to create order and find clarity amid chaos is human instinct. Since time immemorial, we’ve endeavored to make sense of a world in which reason and certainty are never assured. Change, as the saying goes, is the only constant, which means notions of autonomy or control are a subjective fantasy rather than a concrete reality. In Feel Free, we witness four artists grappling with this enduring paradox. Each surrenders to the inevitability of change and focuses on the small instances...

By Lacey Argus It's easy to miss the bite-sized rainbows orbiting around the travertine surfaces of The Getty Center's Main Entrance. Some people breeze by them, eager to visit the various galleries that lie just beyond them. Others dash through them as they rush into a crowded bathroom line. Some briefly glance upward at the towering glass light prisms suspended from the atrium enclosing the space. But not children. If you spend an afternoon amongst these rainbows, you're sure to notice...

Christopher Corwin surveys the three Traviata casts — led by Lisette Oropesa, Rosa Feola, and Ermonela Jaho — at the Met this spring.

The Bronx Opera's Ariadnes auf Naxos is well worth the subway ride. Plus, two strong premieres at the Brooklyn Art Song Society.

La Hyde Gallery presenta Sensual Abstract, una mostra collettiva che esplora il linguaggio dell’astrazione attraverso la percezione, la materialità e l’esperienza interiore, a cura di Lyudmila Hyde. La mostra è stata inaugurata di recente e sarà visitabile fino al 26 maggio 2026. La mostra propone un nuovo modo di vedere il mondo in una città frenetica come Londra, un modo di osservare più attento, dove forma, texture e movimento si dispiegano attraverso le sensazioni. Infatti, la galleria supporta artisti che espandono i confini della percezione e si confrontano con la pittura come medium vivente ed evolutivo. Inoltre, Sensual Abstract continua questa visione con una riflessione sulla...

Sarà anche in declino, per cause ambientali, per troppo turismo, per spopolamento dei residenti, per un sindaco inadeguato e così via, ma non certo per la cronaca in genere e tanto meno per quella artistica, dove invece si impone specie in questi mesi come capitale del mondo.  Sì, la Venezia della 61esima Biennale si può ben dire trionfi a pieno titolo come sede di meraviglie artistiche in questo lugubre pianeta ancora una volta preda dell’orrore di genocidi, pulizie etniche e di un tanto poco spiegabile quanto più irrefrenabile desiderio di guerra proliferante a ogni latitudine. Persino nella già oramai da quasi ottant’anni pacificata Europa, memore – invano pare – del duplice cataclisma a suo...

W hen we connect over Zoom, Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, aka Shoplifter, is in Bentonville, Arkansas preparing to unveil Xanadu, a large-scale, outdoor installation at Format Festival. “It’s going to be like an alien forest that people at the festival roam around in and space out,” says Arnardóttir of the installation, consisting of ten poles ranging in […]
The post The Immersive Hairy Worlds of Shoplifter first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

What do you get when you combine an obsessive urge to create, sleep deprivation, climate change anxiety, and penchant for enchanted nature realms? Amy Casey shows us firsthand, through her infinitely detailed paintings of manmade structures, either clashing or peacefully coexisting with natural environments. In these pieces we might find repetitions of fungi, leaves, and […]
The post Amy Casey: All The World Is Green first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Aunia Kahn  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Aunia Kahn’s Website
Aunia Kahn on Instagram

Dal 12 al 14 maggio 2026, l’Ipogeo Necci di Roma ospita il terzo appuntamento di Sottoforma, progetto a cura di Donatella Giordano e Agathe Jaubourg, che mette in dialogo le ricerche di José Angelino ed Elena Bellantoni. La rassegna si è aperta con gli interventi di Eva Marisaldi, Enrico Serotti e Luca Vitone, mentre il secondo atto ha visto protagonisti Iginio De Luca e Liliana Moro.
José Angelino, Elena Bellantoni, “Sottoforma”, 2026, installation view, ph. Valentina Bellomo, courtesy Donatella Giordano
Sottoforma lavora sulla naturale tendenza dell’uomo a inabissarsi, a discendere verso il nucleo, ed è questo forse il luogo dove si depositano le memorie. Il progetto, suddiviso in tre atti,...

As we enter the summer months, there’s a universal desire to get outside. The trees are green, flowers are in full bloom and the sun is shining well into the evening. These five exhibitions are bringing contemporary art into nature, placing sculptures in dialogue with the environment. Each one offers visitors the opportunity to witness art outside of the confined of white walls and gallery spaces, getting up close to creativity on a monumental scale. Major names like Yayoi Kusama, Lynn Chadwick and Henry Moore take up new space, whilst Nic Nicosia and Nicola Turner transform familiar museums into new experiences. Lynn Chadwick Houghton Hall, Norfolk | Until 4 October Houghton Hall presents a new exhibition...

The history of photography has long been shaped by what is seen and, crucially, by what is omitted. New Woman, New Vision. Women Photographers of the Bauhaus enters this contested terrain with force, assembling an expansive body of work that feels at once familiar and newly charged. Bringing together approximately 300 photographs, the exhibition reframes the Bauhaus not as a closed chapter of modernism, but as an evolving site of authorship, experimentation and erasure. It is less a recovery project than a recalibration, asking viewers to look again at images they may think they know. In doing so, it exposes the fragility of the canon itself. What emerges is a complex picture of photographic modernity. From...

The 61st edition of the Venice Biennale, In Minor Keys, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh (1967-2025), is now open. It will run until 22 November at the Giardini, the Arsenale and in various locations around the city. Here is Aesthetica‘s run-down of 10 standout national pavilions to discover this year – paying attention to timely themes such as communication, connection, ecology, identity and legacy. Swiss Pavilion | The Unfinished Business of Living Together In April 1978, an episode of the Swiss public programme Telearena aired. The live broadcast debated the “problem of homosexuality”, and, whilst controversial, marked one of the first occasions when individuals from the LGBTQ+ community gained a...