Time Sensitive

The Swiss-born, London-based curator, art historian, and Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist moves through his life and work with a deep internal sense of urgency. Among the most prolific and...

When the artist Jennie C. Jones listens closely to a piece of music, she’s particularly attuned to its pauses, in-between moments, and breaks. Widely celebrated for her abstract works in painting, sculpture, and sound...

As the CEO of Art Basel, Noah Horowitz has made it his mission to ensure that the international art platform is seen, valued, and experienced—far beyond its art-fair roots—as a cultural catalyst and “opportunity...

Over the past two decades, the artist Theaster Gates has poured himself into his multifaceted practice that spans pottery, painting, sculpture, urban development, performance, archival research, and arts administration...

The British designer Jay Osgerby believes in designing rigorously simple objects that are deeply felt and, hopefully, appreciated for generations to come. As the co-founder of the London-based industrial studio Barber...

For the James Beard Award–winning writer and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty, kitchens provide a multitude of significant purposes that stretch far into the past and carry through to the present. Beyond being...

For the Paris-born, New York–based artist Camille Henrot, time practically never stands still. Across her work in film, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation—and soon, live performance—Henrot has developed ways of...

The cook and food writer Alison Roman frequently emanates and celebrates a certain spilled-milk imperfectionism. Her on-camera candor and laid-back cooking style have both contributed to growing her devoted audience of...

For the British writer and cultural critic Olivia Laing, restoring and tending to their backyard garden has prompted complex questions of power, community, and mystery, concepts that they beautifully excavate in their...

The British author and journalist Oliver Burkeman has spent decades pondering what it means to live a meaningful life, both in his former Guardian column “This Column WIll Change Your Life” and across several books—most...

As the physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker—the author of the mind-expanding book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence —sees it, every single thing on Earth can be traced to life’s...

In 2003, when the author James Frey published his first book, A Million Little Pieces— a gut-punch account of his experience with addiction and rehab—nobody could have expected what would come next. Thanks to an Oprah...

Through her sharp and biting political commentary—whether as host of the podcast Fast Politics, as a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, or as a political analyst on MSNBC—Molly Jong-Fast has, over the past decade...

Few artists aim to make sense of the subjectivity and complexity of time and space quite like the Polish-born, Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade. In each of her works, ranging from sculptures and large-scale public...

With one small, clever—and now-trademark—idea in 1990, the chef Thomas Keller turned not only the notion of the ice-cream cone on its head, but the fine-dining world, too. Now, 35 years later, his hospitality group...

The drummer and percussionist Billy Martin, whose name many Time Sensitive listeners may recognize—he created the Time Sensitive theme song—defies any boxed-in or limiting definitions of his work. Best known as a member...

For the British architect John Pawson, minimalism isn’t just a design philosophy, but a life philosophy—with his 1996 book, Minimum, serving as a defining jumping-off point. Over the course of more than four decades...

Through her “archaeology of the future” design approach, the Lebanese-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh has firmly established herself as a humanist who brings a profound awareness of past, present, and presence...

For as long as he can remember, Leonard Koren has been searching for beauty and pleasure. Throughout his career, the author and artist—he prefers the term “creator”—has spent considerable time putting to paper...

Since publishing his debut essay collection— Video Night in Kathmandu, featuring far-flung reportage from 10 Asian countries—in 1988, the prolific travel writer Pico Iyer has gone on to write more than a dozen books...

Faye Toogood is perhaps best known for her Roly-Poly chair, among the more famous pieces of furniture to come out of the 2010s and take over the zeitgeist, but the London-based designer’s artistry and craft runs much...

Malcolm Gladwell may be one of the most widely read—and, with his Revisionist History podcast, listened to—journalists of our time. A New Yorker magazine staff writer and the author of seven New York Times bestsellers...

Richard Christiansen believes that the true definition of luxury is having one’s senses on full blast—seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing, and touching the world around by engaging in its beauty and bounty to the...

To the majority of humankind, rocks may appear to be static, timeless objects, but not to the geologist Marcia Bjornerud. In her mind, rocks are rich pieces of text that have evolved (and continue to evolve) across...

With great privilege, believes the humanitarian and entrepreneur Nachson Mimran, comes great responsibility. Brought up in a family that operates one of the largest agri-industrial businesses in West Africa, Mimran...