Hyperallergic

Since 2001, Bitforms gallerist Steven Sacks has been exhibiting and selling digital art (though he hates that term) and building an audience and support network for artists working with new media. After Sara Ludy, one of the artists Bitforms regularly exhibits, told Hyperallergic about her plans to negotiate new more equitable contracts for any NFT she sells , I decided to speak to Sacks to hear a...

Lindsay Howard is the head of community at the Foundation , one of the new platforms that have been part of the current wave of NFT art. She joined me in our Brooklyn studio to discuss the audience for crypto art and the collectors eager to fork over money for it. We also delve into what it could mean for an art scene facing the fact that the post-pandemic world may be very different for creators,...

Contemporary artist Addie Wagenknecht is a veteran of the blockchain space — as much of a seasoned pro as one can be in a field that’s only a decade old. She’s been observing the gold rush over NFTs in the last few weeks and agreed to join me on this episode to educate newbies about blockchains, NFTs, and all the issues they bring up. Are NFTs good for artists and the art community? The short answ...

Photographer Scout Tufankjian was glued to her screens like Armenians around the world following news of developments in Artsakh. After the ceasefire was announced, she decided to rush to the region, which she's visited numerous times before, to document the handover of territories to Azerbaijani forces. It was an emotional trip but one she knew she wanted to make. Best known for her photo book Ye...

This week’s headlines were dominated by news that the Museum of Modern Art will not remove billionaire Leon Black from their board. Hyperallergic’s Jasmine Weber and Valentina Di Liscia join me to talk about it along with PEN America’s new handbook for persecuted artists , Mexico’s request that Christie’s auction house halt its sale of pre-Hispanic objects , the return of looted artifacts by the M...

It’s been a non-stop news cycle since last November’s election, and Hyperallergic’s news team has been on it. Join us and listen to the team’s thoughts on the stories we've been reporting on. For this episode, we gather to discuss the stories that we covered this week, including the Bernie memes ; the Capitol insurrection ; the charred Melania Trump sculpture in Slovenia; the rumors that Trump sta...

Born Leonard McGure, Futura made his reputation spray painting subway trains in New York City in the 1970s as “Futura 2000” — the number was dropped in 1999. He would go on to be part of the booming graffiti and street art movement in the 1980s, but was forced to depend on European venues and collectors after attention in the United States quickly dried up in the late 1980s, though he did go on to...

Since she first emerged into the spotlight in the 1990s, artist Shahzia Sikander has forged her own path with artworks that meld traditional manuscript illumination and calligraphy techniques with visual innovations that seem to transform into an alchemical universe of awe, wonder, and intimacy.  Her current exhibition at Sean Kelly gallery, her first in a decade, includes three animation works an...

On Tuesday, June 23, 2015, Hyperallergic hosted our first-ever live reading event , which took place at Housing Works Bookstore and Cafe in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Hyperallergic Weekend Editors John Yau and Albert Mobilio read their poetry, writers Marisa Crawford (“ Crying for Ana Mendieta at the Carl Andre Retrospective ”) and Ryan Wong (“ I Am Joe Scanlan ”) read pieces that were among o...

We can’t believe it’s been four years since the 2016 US Election, and here we are again. I’m joined this episode by the Hyperallergic news team — news editor Jasmine Weber, and reporters Valentina Di Liscia and Hakim Bishara — to discuss the stories we reported on over the last six months. These include a look at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s records on the arts ; various mural and poster projects...

For months, media specialists, pundits, and analysts were warning us to brace for an onslaught of memes and other forms of propaganda that would flood our feeds this US election season. While there certainly have been a comparable amount of memes and videos as in 2016, the use of deepfakes — a form of artificial intelligence to make images of fake events — never quite materialized. Why? In this wi...

A few weeks ago, artist Sam Durant released a long essay about his work, "Scaffold, " which reflects on the project that dominated art world headlines. Originally commissioned for documenta (13) — the influential quinquennial exhibition in Kassel, Germany — in 2012, it wasn't until "Scaffold" was installed in the Walker Art Center's sculpture park in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, that it was me...

Last week, the New York Times reported that the National Gallery of Art's Philip Guston retrospective, expected to travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tate Modern in London, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, would be delayed by four years. The reasons are many, including the limited demographics of those who worked on an exhibition that is very much about race, as well as the current cultur...

I’ve been wanting to do a major interview with Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon for years. As the duo behind MTL+ Collective and organizers with Decolonize This Place , FTP, Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF), and other groups through the years, they’ve played an active role in pressuring New York’s art community and institutions to deal with the issues that have long been overlooked. Though well kno...

I’ve been wanting to do a major interview with Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon for years. As the duo behind MTL+ Collective and organizers with Decolonize This Place , FTP, Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF), and other groups through the years, they’ve played an active role in pressuring New York’s art community and institutions to deal with the issues that have long been overlooked. Though well kno...

The Taino civilization was decimated by Christopher Columbus and other European explorers during first contact, but the legacy of these people, who inhabited what is today called the Caribbean, continues to this day. In a small exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, titled Arte del mar: Artistic Exchange in the Caribbean , Assistant Curator James Doyle showcases some of the rare wooden obje...

Reporters Valentina Di Liscia and Hakim Bishara join me to discuss the Whitney Museum’s decision to cancel the exhibition Collective Actions: Artist Interventions In a Time of Change , which was scheduled to open on September 17.  They both reported on the story this Tuesday, and now offer their own insights into the larger questions raised by this controversy, including how museums should collect...

The recent news that the White House may ban the social media platform TikTok has people wondering, why? While Silicon Valley social giants, like Twitter and Facebook, have avoided similar threats, the question remains why TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company but has headquarters in the UK and the US, is causing so much condemnation. I invite author, artist, and technologist An Xiao Mina to...

Recently, Hyperallergic reported that the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania will be removing a cranial collection from display in a basement classroom. The group of crania, which was donated by a 19th-century Philadelphia-born and UPenn-educated physician named Samuel George Morton, includes many skulls of enslaved Black people. The collection is a product of racist, pseudoscientific "...

Hyperallergic news editor Jasmine Weber and reporter Valentina Di Liscia joined me to parse the latest PPP loan news and discuss the list of beneficiaries. Previously, we reported on galleries, museums, and nonprofits in New York and Los Angeles that received loans, and noted that the world’s most exclusive art galleries received millions of dollars of taxpayer money. In this conversation we offer...

In his current position as art critic at the Los Angeles Times , Christopher Knight has been speaking truth to power for almost four decades. He charted the contemporary art waters in a city that has since become one of the world’s art hubs before most people ever noticed. He doesn’t shy away from controversy, as his recent columns about the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s renovations suggest....

This week, I talk to Hyperallergic news editor Jasmine Weber, and reporters Hakim Bishara and Valentina di Liscia, to discuss some of the major stories they’ve been reporting on. Art’s role in upholding the status quo has been long diminished, but we’ve seen major developments to challenge this, including the removal of Confederate statues across the United States; the toppling of a Columbus statu...

In this episode for Sunday Edition, we welcome Kyle Chayka to examine Silicon Valley’s taste for minimalist design. Is this just the latest development for a style that has a long history but only emerged into pop culture during the 1960s and ‘70s when a contemporary art movement emerged to propel the taste for less into a global phenomenon? Chayka's book, The Longing for Less: Living with Minimal...

The best news team in art gathers for another conversation about the biggest stories facing the arts community. News editor Jasmine Weber, and reporters Hakim Bishara and Valentina di Liscia, join me to reflect on acts of solidarity across the art world , the growing #CancelRent movement , the bizarre IRS complaint filed by an attorney against the Whitney Museum, museum layoffs , a coalition of ar...

Few critics are like John Yau , who, for decades, has continued to engage with contemporary art with a voracious appetite, often focusing on figures ignored by the art market and mainstream institutions that chase after the next shiny thing. He has been part of the Hyperallergic Weekend editorial collective since it debuted in 2012. John's writing about contemporary art cuts through hierarchies an...