The Vatican has tapped Italian provocateur Maurizio Cattelan for its Venice Pavilion.

The Vatican revealed on March 11 that Cattelan will create an outdoor installation that incorporates works by eight artists; it will be located at the Giudecca Women’s Prison. Inmates at the prison will help create several of the artworks.

Cattelan is best known for sculptures and installations that invite controversy, making him a somewhat surprising representation for the seat of the Catholic Church. His headline-grabbing works include a kneeling Hitler and the sculpture The Ninth Hour (La Nona Ora), a life-size wax sculpture of Pope John Paul II on his side, seconds after being struck by a meteorite. The Ninth Hour was exhibited at multiple institutions, including the 2001 Venice Biennale. 

His art became a viral sensation in 2019, when, at Art Basel Miami Beach, Perrotin gallery premiered Comedian, a banana duct-taped to a wall. It sold for $120,000, and was ultimately eaten by artist David Datuna. The second iteration of Comedian, on display at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art in 2023, was similarly ingested, this time by a South Korean student.

Cattelan’s Venice commission will consist of a 12-minute video installation directed by actor Zoe Saldaña and her husband, Italian director and producer Marco Perego. Inmates will play characters in the film, and some have also contributed photographs of themselves as children for a piece by the French artist Claire Tabouret. The Lebanese American artist Simone Fattal was also invited to create an installation that used poems written by the inmates.

A prominent election denier who wore multiple hats while aiding GOP efforts to overturn the 2020 election will serve as a top lawyer at the Republican National Committee. Christina Bobb, a former reporter for the fringe pro-Trump broadcaster One America News, will oversee the party’s “election integrity” operations. In Trumpworld, what puts a person in line for such a role is having worked tirelessly to subvert an election—and “election integrity” simply means anything needed to help Trump win.

Bobb has the necessary qualifications in spades. As the New York Times reported in 2022, Bobb embraced “conspiracy theories with a fervor that has at times seemed over the top even to her colleagues.” Indeed, she promoted the Big Lie with such zeal that she was sued for defamation. And not only does she appear to be a true believer, she’s been willing to sacrifice herself for the Trump cause, such as when she signed an affidavit to the Justice Department related to his stolen documents case that protected Trump and that she knew might be false. Such loyalty seems to have landed her this new job.

Last week, the RNC elected Trump’s picks to run the party ahead of the 2024 elections, including installing his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair, ally Michael Whatley as chair, and campaign adviser Chris LaCivita as chief of staff. The new leadership is moving swiftly to remove a significant number of staff, including those in top leadership roles, and hire new people more aligned with Trump. Enter Bobb. 

As a correspondent for OAN, Bobb promoted the Big Lie—enough that she was a named a defendant in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against the network. But Bobb was not just a purveyor of the Big Lie—she was also part of the operation. Weeks after the 2020 election, Trump brought in a new team of lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, to help him subvert the results and remain in office. Though Bobb has not been charged with any crimes, she worked with that team to help coordinate the scheme to certify fake slates of electors in states Biden won, a plot that is part of both the criminal indictment against Trump in Georgia and the federal charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

After Biden was certified the winner on January 6, Bobb remained a pro-Trump activist, raising money for bogus election audits while also touting the Big Lie in her on-air role at OAN. In Arizona, Bobb played a significant part in  the GOP-controlled state senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s votes, all while covering it as a reporter. As the Arizona Republic‘s Laurie Roberts recently recounted, Bobb helped orchestrate the audit, raised money for it, and then surreptitiously advised the auditor, Cyber Ninjas, throughout the process. Ultimately, the audit confirmed that Biden had won Arizona. It’s the upside down version of journalistic ethics.

Amid a surge of support for organized labor and the general realization that work sucks, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is leading a renewed push to make the 32-hour workweek, without a loss in wages or benefits, an American reality.

The Vermont senator on Thursday unveiled a bill that seeks to establish a four-day workweek over the next four years, a proposal Sanders’ office described as critical to reducing workers’ toil, as well as timely considering the advancements workplaces will see thanks to artificial intelligence and automation.

“It is time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life,” a statement read. “It is time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay.”

The four-day workweek enjoys overwhelming public support. Studies have shown that it can vastly improve job satisfaction and often does not lead to a loss in productivity (but actual implementation plans are vital). The United Auto Workers called for a 32-hour work week during their historic 2023 strike. Though it was ultimately cut at the bargaining table, UAW President Shawn Fein made a fresh call to enact the measure at Thursday’s hearing.

Bernie Sanders is holding a Senate hearing today on making a 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay the standard in America.

Inside the Palais d’Iéna, it was dark-colored carpets and dark-colored walls. Chocolaty and rust-colored and warm. There was music that was playing and it was ambient, it was a shudder of synthesizers, it sounded like a womb. A loop of a video made by the Belgian American artist Cécile B. Evans was projected on screens set up on all sides of the room. I was not sure what to do during this time before the show started. I decided that a good thing to do while waiting for the fashion show to start was to orient myself in the space. I watched girls take selfies. I walked past the pit where photographers organized themselves, setting up their cameras. I was pacing, you might say; I was walking fast and with very little purpose.  

Photographers swarmed actresses and actors walking in to the venue wearing full Miu Miu looks—things like teeny-tiny plaid shorts and a navy blue blouse with a puritan collar, or a red two-piece with a miniskirt that is kind of like an evil badminton uniform. Miu Miu girls and theys, I observed, are chic in a way that is like, I’m a pixie, I know my angles, I’m very charming about it. I have never felt like that in my life. Speaking of knowing your angles, I kept getting in the photographers’ shots. Sorry miss, do you mind moving, you’re in the shot, they said to me. I was happy to oblige. Sydney Sweeney walked in with her handlers, glamorously wearing sunglasses inside. Raf Simons, the legendary Belgian designer and co–creative director of Prada, got caught up in the photoshoot of a famous K-pop star, and a friend I was talking with swore she heard him say, Jesus Christ. I wrote a note in my phone that said: have u ever watched a really famous person being interviewed b4? its rlly weird lol. They enter a room and they are swarmed by a whole swath of people. How do they come up for air? I was having trouble with that at that moment, coming up for air. 

I also felt, among other things, that I had a new appreciation for the music of Drake, the chanteuse. How does the song “Club Paradise” go again? No wonder why I feel awkward at this Fashion Week shit! No wonder why I keep fucking up the double-cheek kiss! Ha ha ha.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last June, the Review published Jamie Quatro’s “Little House”—what appears at first glance to be a quiet, traditional story about childhood and family life. Gentle in tone and careful in construction, it leaves the reader discomfited to realize that the narrator has left the thing that drove her to tell it—the real story—almost entirely unsaid. The story is part of a triptych by Quatro, the second part of which, “Yogurt Days,” was published in The New Yorker; in that story, the same narrator remembers her evangelical mother taking her along as she attempted to save the spirit of a man suffering from a mysterious (to the narrator) illness. The third story, “Two Men, Mary,” published in our most recent Winter issue, completes the triptych, and is itself structured in three parts. Anna recalls herself first at sixteen, working in a frozen yogurt shop, and her first sexual encounters with older men; then, decades later, as a published writer on a plane to a literary conference, who has a rendezvous with the man sitting next to her; and finally, in the present, where she turns to a very different kind of surrender. We exchanged emails about the uses of autobiography in fiction, how these stories came about, and what we are to make of their singular narrator, Anna.

Which of the stories in this series came first? Were they published in the order you wrote them?

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