An epiphany came to Jennie C. Jones via a black and white photograph of John Coltrane taken in the Guggenheim Museum in 1960.  The iconic white ramps are vertiginous behind him, dotted with the nascent masterworks of white Americans.

Memory, like the memory of Kata Mejía’s brother, murdered by FARC paramilitary guerillas, restores nothing. Emotionally feral and disoriented, it re-imagines the past, which only serves to distort it further.

Stainless steel body panels, aluminum V6 engine, leather interior, and gull-wing doors that lift like an eagle taking flight, the ill-fated DeLorean DMC-12 achieves a mythological presence in Make it new John, Duncan Campbell’s recent film and corresponding installation at Artists Space.

Once avant-garde, the Whitney Biennial has become a perennial disappointment for audiences who look to it as a cultural barometer or beacon of innovation. The 75th edition, titled 2010, is no exception. Curator Francesco Bonami and co-curator Gary Carrion-Murayari set out to sample the country’s motley emotional pluralism.