For the exhibition “Homespun Tales: A Tale of Domestic Occupation,” Kiki Smith occupied a Venetian palazzo, decorating its third floor as an American Colonial home that paralleled the former residence of the noble Querini Stampalia family below. Among the opulent eighteenth-century furnishings and Renaissance paintings of the historical second floor the artist placed thirteen porcelain figurines—delicate white apparitions peering from behind the glass of dark wood cabinets or perched on top of fireplace mantels. These mythical creatures—some of which resembled Smith—included an

Austrian artist Leopold Kessler, born in Munich in 1976, understands art as a kind of social service, a public act accessible to all, even though the public probably won’t even notice his scarcely perceptible interventions. The results are often unpredictable happenings in the contested territory where the real world and the artistic realm meet. Disguised as a manual laborer in a blue coat and an orange vest, Kessler goes stalking through the urban streetscape, installing speakers and microphones or rolling some three-quarters of a mile of electrical cable through the streets of the city, as he