What’s Happening: A gripping documentary sheds light on Jesse Krimes, a formerly incarcerated artist who’s working to empower creatives whom the prison system has swept under the rug.

The Download: In 2010, while Jesse Krimes was serving six years on drug-related charges at the Fairton Federal Correctional Institution in South New Jersey, he was making his magnum opus. The Pennsylvania native teamed up with prison mates and fellow artists Gilberto Rivera and Jared Owens to form a secret collective, sharing camaraderie and art supplies to help each other create through tough times. All Krimes needed to make art were prison bed sheets that he collaged with newspaper images using hair gel and a spoon to transfer the printed ink onto his canvases. He smuggled the sheets out piecemeal over three years until they culminated in his most ambitious work to date.

That work, a monumental 15-by-40-foot mural titled Apokaluptein: 16389067 after the Greek word for “apocalypse” coupled with his inmate number, would soon galvanize greater visibility for formerly incarcerated artists. Hailed as both a “carceral magnum opus” and a “Hieronymus Bosch–like allegory of heaven, earth, and hell,” it formed the centerpiece of a landmark MoMA PS1 exhibition organized by MacArthur award-winning historian Nicole Fleetwood about that cross-section of marginalized artists in 2020. It would also become a major focus of “Art & Krimes by Krimes,” a disarming new film by MTV Documentary Films currently streaming on Paramount+.

Directed by Alysa Nahmias, the film chronicles the making of Apokaluptein and Krimes’s first five years out of jail as he struggles to reacclimate to everyday life and forge a career in the art world. Viewers follow along as Krimes, faced with scant finances or job opportunities, realizes the towering difficulties faced by former prisoners. Though he makes some missteps, he finds strength from his moral compass—steered in large part by new fatherhood—and the community of artists he met while serving time.

His success really takes off when he meets Russell Craig, another formerly incarcerated artist, while working as assistants for Mural Arts Philadelphia’s restorative justice program. As Krimes’s art-world success grows with solo exhibitions and representation at Malin Gallery, he’s confronted with two harrowing realities: his white skin affords him more advantages than his Black and Brown peers, and some of the country’s great artists are being relegated to obscurity because of incarceration.

With a grant from Open Philanthropy, Krimes and Russell founded the Right of Return fellowship, the country’s first initiative providing financial support to formerly incarcerated artists. Each year, it grants six creatives $20,000 to support projects that reveal the humanity of prisoners and advocate for structural change. The duo received $1.1 million from the Mellon Foundation to expand into a nonprofit called the Art and Advocacy Society, which encompasses a residency and school whose program is being developed with former MoMA PS1 director Kate Fowle, who helped bring Apokaluptein to the museum.

In Their Own Words: “The thing that’s frustrating to me is that people who have been in prison, who are super exceptionally talented artists, are not getting projects, not getting platforms, in the top-tier contemporary art sphere,” Krimes says in the film. “One in three people has a criminal record, and so that’s a clear signal to me that there’s a whole pool of wasted talent—not just in the prison system but people who have since come home.”

Surface Says: Though much work remains in revealing the nuances and talents of this marginalized group, trailblazers like Krimes are making sure the industry will soon start paying closer attention.

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In 2021, the photographer Paul Ninson recounted to Humans of New York (HONY) his dreams of building the Dikan Center: Africa’s largest photography library, with an exhibition gallery and lecture hall, in his home country of Ghana. Ninson had been a student at New York’s Institute of Contemporary Photography and an apprentice with HONY photographer Brandon Stanton while in the U.S., and sought to create a space that meant aspiring African photographers wouldn’t be forced to leave the continent to learn photography, as he had.

Just over a year later, that dream has been realized. Architectural plans are still underway for a ground-up facility, but thanks to adaptive reuse, the Dikan Center has found its first home in Accra as Africa’s first nonprofit devoted to film and photography education. A gallery, studio, story lab, and classrooms are all open to the public with the goal of fostering the talent of African visual artists. The inaugural exhibition, “Ahennie,” features the documentary photography of the late Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Bobbie and Ninson himself.

Anne Boysen strives to transform complexity into simple and playful objects with an emotional resonance that invites a deeper understanding of what surrounds us. Perhaps best embodying this notion is Moonsetter, an interactive new luminaire that cleverly employs simple shapes—a square, circle, and cylinder—and was inspired by a ray of moonlight shining through the curtains. After its prototype came to light on “Denmark’s Next Classic” and won the entire show, Moonsetter is now enjoying a wide release through Louis Poulsen.

The New York painter, who often spends summers sketching midcoast Maine’s luminous sunsets, vividly recalls one night when the haze and smoke from California’s devastating wildfires drifted across the country and shrouded the sky in uncanny bright pink shades.

Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Nicole Wittenberg, 43, New York.

Title of work: Sunset 21 (2022).

Where to see it: Acquavella Palm Beach until Jan. 10.

Three words to describe it: Reflective, expansive, resplendent.

What was on your mind at the time: Making landscape paintings for me is pure pleasure as nature reflects all the beauty that is imaginable. This pond in Maine where I spend my summers has been a subject for me for the past decade, and every night at sunset I see something I’ve never seen before. It changes so quickly, second to second, and I love the race that starts 20 minutes before sunset. It’s 20 minutes to see if I can capture the feeling of that particular sunset knowing that if I miss it, I’ll never see it again.

Every winter, as days get shorter and some climates experience temperature drops, getting out of bed seems to be that much harder. Light therapy, clinical lingo for flooding a room with rays that mimic the sun, is touted by researchers, doctors, and normies as a solution for sluggish wakeups and a possible treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), also known as seasonal depression.

SAD is a medical condition that can only be treated by a doctor, but the term “SAD lamp” has emerged as shorthand for tabletop lighting designed to trick the body into thinking it’s getting more than a scant few hours of natural light each day. Searching for SAD lamps online turns up a slew of options that may be doctor-endorsed but, aesthetically speaking, are more depressing to look at than a 3:30 P.M. sunset. Thankfully, upstart gadget-tech company Loftie seems to be offering sleepy aesthetes an alternative to the characteristically unpleasant, if not effective, medical-grade SAD lamps designed to make shorter winter days less melancholy.

Ouive designs and curates high-quality, handmade Moroccan rugs and home goods. They offer both customizable made-to-order rugs as well as a curated selection of ready-to-ship rugs and home decor. Each rug is hand-knotted from high quality local wool and produced in partnership with Amazigh weavers to whom they ensure fair pay to support them in keeping the traditions of hand-making rugs alive as a viable way of life for future generations.

Surface Says: Offering a piece of Morocco’s celebrated rug weaving tradition and support to the Amazigh weavers who keep the tradition alive, Ouive appeals to the design-conscious who care about craftsmanship and provenance equally.

You can now book an Airbnb in a Kisho Kurokawa metabolist masterpiece.

Dior, having learned nothing from Chanel, is in an advent calendar debacle.

Jimmy Kimmel says Trump’s new batch of NFTs are “cards against humanity.”

It would take around 409 billion Legos to recreate the Empire State Building.