109 avsnitt • Längd: 45 min • Månadsvis
News, developments, and stirrings in the art world with host Hrag Vartanian, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic.
The podcast Hyperallergic is created by Hyperallergic. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
In 1973, gallerist Tibor de Nagy gave Joyce Kozloff a call. His voice quivered as he told her that Clement Greenberg had just left the back room after giving a searing review of her latest work. Greenberg had scoffed at the artist’s “Three Facades” (1973), a painting based on the rich tapestry of interlocking bricks and tiles on Churrigueresque church facades in Mexico, and said that it “looked like ladies’ embroidery” — as if that was a bad thing. Kozloff told us that “Tibor freaked out” and asked her “to take it away.”
Greenberg had unwittingly dismissed the first of the artist's paintings in a major art movement of which she was a key founding member: Pattern and Decoration, also known as “P&D,” which grew out of the flowering folk revival and feminist protest era of the 1970s. Fed up with hard-edge abstraction and minimalism favored by the White men who dominated the art world, P&D leaned into lush decorative surfaces, cultural adornment, and unapologetically crafty aesthetics.
Of course, it was critics like Greenberg whom P&D was revolting against. He’s cited twice in a 1978 article Kozloff co-wrote with Valerie Jaudon, “Art Hysterical Notions of Progress and Culture.” Published in the feminist art journal Heresies (of which Kozloff was also a founding member), they wrote that in “rereading the basic texts of Modern Art … we discovered a disturbing belief system based on the moral superiority of the art of Western civilization.” They “came to realize that the prejudice against the decorative has a long history and is based on hierarchies: fine art above decorative art, Western art above non-Western art, men’s art above women’s art.”
Luckily, Kozloff’s career wasn’t up to Clement Greenberg. Kozloff went on to have dozens of shows, beautify over a dozen buildings and transit systems with public artworks over the decades, and inspire new generations of artists to unabashedly lean into ornament. Once an active member of the peace protests of the 1960s, she has also continued her political activism, which in the 21st century has become more explicit in her work. Her all-over pattern paintings have morphed into detailed maps, from Civil War battle plans exploding with viruses to aeronautical charts dotted with points that the United States has bombed.
In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, you’ll hear the interview our Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian recorded with Kozloff just after the opening of With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985 at Bard College’s Hessel Museum of Art, which the institution called “first full-scale scholarly North American survey” of the P&D movement. They talk about everything from her mother’s embroidery to her travels in Turkey and Iran that inspired her art. You’ll also hear from Hyperallergic Staff Writer Maya Pontone, who reported this past year about Kozloff’s iconic public artwork in Cambridge’s Harvard Square train station that’s currently at risk of disappearing. And if you’ve been listening closely this season, you’ll recognize some recurring characters: Columbia professor Stephen Greene; the Heresies collective; Joyce’s partner, writer Max Kozoff, and; of course, Clement Greenberg.
Works from three of Kozloff’s latest series, Uncivil Wars, Boys’ Art, and Social Studies, are on view in the Map Room at Argosy Book Store (116 East 59th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through January 25, 2025.
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In the late 1950s, a Manhattan-born college student was running from an art history course at Barnard to a George Balanchine ballet practice at the storied School of American Ballet on 82nd Street and Broadway. Soon, she began to make connections between the old-school Russian ballet instructors who taught her “ferocious point class” and were constantly “aspiring to an abstract ideal,” if a ruthless one, and the extending lines of Anthony Caro’s sculptures striving toward an arabesque. These rigorous studies in dance informed the work of the leading critic and curator of 20th-century Modernism, Karen Wilkin.
Of course, Balanchine’s presence was just one instance in which Wilkin has brushed shoulders with masters of the arts throughout her lifetime. In this episode, she discusses the influence of her parents’ close friendships with New York’s prominent literary figures, from S.J. Perelman to Ruth McKenney, and artists like Adolph Gottlieb. She tells us about touring the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) with Kenneth Noland, advising at the Triangle residency alongside Helen Frankenthaler, and attending the Spoleto Festival as composer Samuel Barber’s “beard.” Wilkin also reflects on the valuable lessons she learned from years working with the legendary critic Clement Greenberg, though she doesn’t shy away from illuminating his noxious mistreatment of women like herself.
The author of monographs on a litany of these artists from Stuart Davis and David Smith to Georges Braque and Giorgio Morandi, she discusses her journey in art writing with Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian who once was her student at the University of Toronto and credits her with his introduction to the world of art criticism. Tune in to hear them discuss everything from the decline of MoMA to masters of Canadian abstraction to Wilkin’s beloved herd of Maine Coon cats.
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This August, journalist Moustafa Bayoumi broke the story that the first photo of a detainee in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) black site had been declassified. It shows an emaciated Ammar al-Baluchi, standing shackled and naked in a starkly white room. Subjected to years of torture, according to CIA protocol, the photo of the Pakistani detainee was meant “to document his physical condition at the time of transfer.” In a recent Hyperallergic opinion piece, Bayoumi reflected on the dark history of various regimes’ use of similar “atrocity photography” — a genre of memories they create for themselves that chronicle violence, but obscure it from public view.
While this photograph epitomizes dehumanization, another image shows a different perspective. Through a vortex of colored lines and dots, al-Baluchi illustrated what he saw during a spell of vertigo, which was brought on by a traumatic brain injury caused by this torture.
No longer in the media spotlight, it’s all too easy for many to forget that dozens of people are still imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. The detention camp has incarcerated hundreds of detainees from around the world since it opened in the early 2000s in the wake of 9/11, and al-Baluchi is in the vast minority of those who have been charged with crimes connected to those events. While over half of the men still held there today were cleared for release years ago, they have not been freed, and it’s possible they never will.
Over a decade ago, a group of these men began to create art. At first, they used what little material they could find, such as soap scratched on walls or plastic forks scraped on styrofoam cups, even drawing with powdered tea on toilet paper. If these covert artists were discovered, they were punished. But starting in 2010, after Obama-era reforms, detainees were finally allowed to attend art classes. What happened was a brief flowering of the arts in one of the least likely places, and under inhumane conditions.
In this episode, we speak with Erin L. Thompson, a Hyperallergic contributor, a professor of art crime at John Jay College. She curated Ode to the Sea, a groundbreaking exhibition of artwork by detainees that debuted in 2018, and recently returned from a week-long trip to the Caribbean military prison in order to view the 9/11 trials that ended up being delayed. Thompson spoke with Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian about witnessing the strict policing of not only embattled art, but also how authorities maintain a tight control on photography taken by the media.
Writer and artist Molly Crabapple, on the other hand, found a workaround. She joined us to discuss her 2013 trip to the detention center, when she was granted access to draw this surreal prison and its inhabitants, both the incarcerated men and medics, guards, and other actors that keep the machine running. Her work shows us how the craft of drawing can illuminate truths that censored photographs cannot.
And finally, we spoke with writer Mansoor Adayfi, who was confined to Guantánamo Bay for almost 15 years. Like the vast majority of those imprisoned there, he was never charged with a crime. Adayfi gave us a first-hand account of hunger strikes, changes in torture tactics and confinement that came with each presidential administration, bonds formed between the men in the prison, and the flourishing of art through painting, singing, dancing, and writing among the detainees. He explains how such art became a lifeline for their survival. The author of Letters from Guantánamo and Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo, he works as an activist with CAGE toward the goal of permanently closing Guantánamo Bay.
In 2022, eight current and former detainees wrote a letter urging President Biden to end a Trump-era policy that barred their work from leaving Guantánamo. Multiple men, cleared for release just that year, said that they would rather their art be freed than themselves. Adayfi told us that if given that choice, he’d say the same thing.
“The art is not just art. It becomes a piece of you. You put your blood, your sweat, your memories, your time there. That art helped you to find yourself. To maintain your sanity, your humanity,” he explained.
“Art from Guantánamo, we consider it one of us, like a living being. It went through the same process: the mistreatment, the abuses, the torture, the death, even. Like us, like us prisoners. It’s the same process. It went through everything we have been through.”
While the Biden administration lifted the ban on art leaving Guantánamo Bay, they have not fulfilled the promise to close the prison before Donald Trump returns to office in January. His administration could usher in an expansion of similar detention camps, along with a new era of censorship and oppression in many forms. But as long as such injustices continue under any regime, stories like Adayfi’s are critical to hold on to and learn from.
Even if a detainee manages to be released from Guantánamo Bay, they still encounter significant challenges. You can donate here to the Guantánamo Survivors Fund, which seeks to provide medical care, housing, and education to those released.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you listen to podcasts. Watch the complete video of the conversations with images of the artworks on YouTube.
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When Lucy Lippard left New York City for the tiny village of Galisteo, New Mexico, some were shocked: How could this giant of 20th-century art criticism, this leader in the fight for feminism and equitable representation in museums, leave the so-called “center of the art world” for such a rural area?
Lippard is renowned not only for her strident activism but also for changing the game of art criticism itself. The author of a whopping 26 books, Lippard was a co-founder of both the standby press for artist books, Printed Matter, and the legendary feminist Heresies Collective. She broke down barriers between art writers and artists, letting her writing flow free in a type of “proto-blog” that inspired publications like ours.
When we asked her what brought her to the dusty hills of Galisteo, she simply said, “Feminists.” Other legendary feminist art figures, from Harmony Hammond to Agnes Martin, had also made it their home. She refuses, however, the idea that ex-urbanites are the only source of brilliance in the town. She now writes the newsletter for what she found to be a fascinating and flourishing historic community, as well as the Indigenous genius found in the Chaco Canyon, sacred to Hopi and Pueblo peoples.
While scores of artists and critics alike keep Lippard’s volumes stacked high on their shelves, she is fairly enigmatic as a figure. In this episode, she sat down with Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian to give a rare recorded interview about her life in art. To better understand her work, we also talked with the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Senior Curator of Feminist Art Catherine Morris, who put together a show on Lippard’s work from 2012 to 2013 entitled Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art.
We also interviewed editor, book artist, and painter Susan Bee, a member of Brooklyn’s A.I.R. Gallery, which was the first space in the city dedicated to women artists. She had a front-row seat to Lippard’s influence in the emerging 1960s and ’70s feminist art scene of which were both a part. She also spoke to a little-known part of Lippard’s legacy: her fiction. In fact, Lippard told us that she wanted to be a fiction writer first, but chose to pursue nonfiction instead, believing she “was really bad at writing the kind of fiction anybody would want to publish.” That’s no longer the case: Much of her short fiction is being published by New Documents for the first time this December in a volume titled Headwaters (and Other Short Fictions).
From our vantage point in the 2020s, it’s easy to take women’s representation in museums for granted. But, as Bee reminds us, “None of this stuff happened. It was really a fight.” Now, as women’s rights begin to slip away once again, we can learn from these stories to better prepare for the fight ahead.
A special thanks to Loghaven Artist Residency, where much of the research for this podcast was conducted with the help of the collection of the library at the University of Tennessee.
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In 1915, Marcel Duchamp bought a snow shovel at a hardware store in New York City. He inscribed his signature and the date on its wooden handle. On the evening this episode is released, the fourth version of this classic “ready-made,” which he titled “In Advance of the Broken Arm,” will be auctioned off at Christie’s during their 20th Century Evening Sale. It’s estimated to sell for $2 million to $3 million.
How could a simple snow shovel be valued at such a steep price? Was Duchamp an unmatched genius, or a product of some of the biggest museums’ dirtiest little secrets: the results of pure, unadulterated capitalism?
Northeastern University professor, essayist, poet, and editor Eunsong Kim has illuminated the underlying influences of industrial capitalism and racism behind some of the most prized museum collections in her new book, The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property. She traces how Duchamp was brought to prominence through the patronage of collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg, heirs of a fortune wrought by the steel industry. Their family operated steel mills in the same setting as titans such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, whose wealth also underlies their own valuable art collections.
And as it turns out, the “death of the author,” celebrated in conceptual art like that of Duchamp, is a convenient idea for the ultrawealthy. Devaluing labor pairs well with violent crackdowns on striking workers to deny them adequate pay. Or even Frederick Winslow Taylor's development of “scientific management,” a system that is still cited today but is based on the idealization of the slave plantation.
How much of the Modernist archive was canonized by union-busting bosses? How much of conceptual art in the 20th and 21st centuries has been buoyed by the reverence of scientific management? In this episode, Editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian sits down to talk with Kim about her new volume, which challenges generations of unquestioned received knowledge and advocates for a new vision of art beyond cultural institutions. In the process, they discuss the craft of writing, how a White artist was counted as a Black artist at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and how Marcel Duchamp got away with selling bags of air.
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The sports world may be on the edge of their seats as we draw close to the 2024 Olympics in Paris. But the “Olympics of the art world” is already well underway in Italy: Hundreds of thousands of art lovers are flocking to the Venice Biennale, which runs through November 24. This massive exhibition has been held every two years with very few exceptions since 1895, when it was inaugurated as the world’s first art biennial. Visitors who devote a whole week of their time will still only be able to take in a sliver of the art on display, whether it’s at the central exhibition, the collateral events, or the dozens of storied national pavilions in the Giardini and around the city.
But that’s not all the exhibition has in store. The politics of the art world are also on full display, whether in the form of protests or the curators’ decisions about how their countries — with all their past and present controversies — will be represented. This year's included Russia offering its pavilion up to Indigenous artists from Bolivia, Brazil renaming its pavilion “Hãhãwpuá” after the Indigenous Patxohã term for the land, Poland welcoming an art collective from Ukraine, the United States featuring Jeffrey Gibson as the first Native American artist to have a solo exhibition at the pavilion, and Israel canceling its exhibition … which perhaps wasn't really canceled after all.
Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian and longtime contributor AX Mina sat down to reflect on the aesthetic successes, political failures, and long-awaited representation they saw displayed at the world’s biggest contemporary art show.
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Shelley Niro (Kanien’kehaka) grew up watching her father craft faux tomahawks to sell to tourists who flocked to her birthplace, Niagara Falls. In this episode of the Hyperallergic podcast, she reflects on how witnessing him create these objects planted the seeds for her brilliant multidisciplinary art practice spanning film, sculpture, beading, and photography.
She joined us in our Brooklyn studio for an interview, where she reflected on growing up in the Six Nations of the Grand River, the Native artists she discovered on her dentist’s wall but rarely encountered in a museum before the mid-’90s, and her latest obsession with 500 million-year-old fossils.
An expansive review of her work is currently featured in a traveling retrospective, Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch, which was organized by Canada’s Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH), with support from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). The exhibition was co-curated by Melissa Bennett, senior curator of Contemporary Art at AGH; Greg Hill, an independent curator who is a former senior curator of Indigenous Art at the NGC; and David Penney, associate director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the NMAI).
When this interview was recorded, the show was on view at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. It was on display from February 10 to May 26 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and will be exhibited next from June 21 to August 25 at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario.
The music and sound effects in this episode are from the films “Honey Moccasin” and “Tree” by Shelley Niro, courtesy of the artist.
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Anyone who remembers New York City’s “golden age” of graffiti in the late ’70s and early ’80s knows about the lion spray-painted on the handball court at Corlears Junior High School, roaring next to metallic blue letters spelling the word “Lee.” In this episode of the Hyperallergic podcast, we speak with its creator, Lee Quiñones, whose paintings of dragons, lions, and Howard the Duck on over 120 MTA train cars were part of the movement that brought light and color to the otherwise dingy, dark, and drastically underfunded subway system.
Quiñones’s paintings caught the attention of art collectors and gallerists. By the time he was 19, he was showing his work at Galleria La Medusa in Rome, alongside fellow graffiti writer Fred Brathwaite, also known as “Fab 5 Freddy.” Among other writers, the following years would bring his graffiti art to more shows, both at home in New York City and in the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and even Documenta 7 in 1982 in Kassel, Germany.
Quiñones is the rare graffiti writer from this era who maintained a successful career in the gallery space. Today, he continues to experiment through paintings, drawings, and collages in an ever-changing range of styles. His art is in the collections of several major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In this episode, Quiñones reflects on the monster movies that inspired him as a kid, running the tracks as a graffiti-writing teen, making art alongside Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Jenny Holzer in the 1980s East Village scene, and much more. He also discusses the new book documenting his life and work, Lee Quiñones: Fifty Years of New York Graffiti Art and Beyond, which was published by Damiani on April 30. A solo show of his recent work, titled Quinquagenary, will be on display at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles until May 25, 2024.
The music in this episode is courtesy of Soundstripe.
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Since 2009, Hyperallergic has published tens of thousands of articles about art. But who are the writers behind these posts? And what drives them to write about art of all things?
Many of the authors who have passed through our virtual hallways have gone on to do incredible things, including publishing books on topics that they first wrote about or more fully developed through articles in Hyperallergic. In 2022, we held an event called “From Blog to Book” at Brooklyn’s pinkFrog cafe, where our Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian asked three of our writers to tell us about the journeys that took them from 140-character tweets to 1,200-word posts to full manuscripts.
Erin L. Thompson, who holds the title of America’s only art crime professor, is the author of dozens of articles that brought looted artifacts from around the world to light. Her adventures have brought her from the Confederate monument etched into the side of Stone Mountain, Georgia, which she wrote about in Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments (2022), to a rededication ceremony of a repatriated object in Nepal.
AX Mina, who wrote Memes to Movements: How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power (2019), describes how they first explored the topic of memes in Hyperallergic — which they termed “the street art of the social web” before “meme” became the mainstream — and their function as a tool to circumvent internet censorship in China.
And Michelle Young, author of Secret Brooklyn: An Unusual Guide (2023), tells us about her trajectory from working in fashion to playing in the band Kittens Ablaze to discovering so many hidden gems while aimlessly wandering the city she calls home that she founded the brilliant website Untapped New York. It was only in her time off reading World War 2 nonfiction that she found a new trail, which led her to uncover the stories of stolen Nazi loot.
They’ll reflect on finding focus by retreating to a mountaintop in China, unearthing the legacy of forgotten World War II heroes, and even seamlessly forging Picassos — which, as you’ll hear in the show, is not nearly as hard as you’d think.
The music in this episode is by Famous Cats and Cast Of Characters, courtesy of Soundstripe.
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We are thrilled to be back with a new episode of the Hyperallergic podcast.
For our one hundredth episode, we spoke with legendary collage and mixed media artist Tommy Lannigan-Schmidt. His works, made from crinkly saran wrap and tin foil, emulate the gleam of precious metals and jewels in Catholic iconography. They reference his upbringing as a working class kid and altar boy in a Catholic community in Linden, New Jersey, where tin foil was an expensive luxury they could rarely afford. But they also hold memories of where he found himself as a teenager: the LBGTQ+ street life and art community of New York City, which led to his participation in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising.
Lanigan-Schmidt is as much a visual artist as he is a storyteller. We climbed up to his fourth floor walk-up in Hell's Kitchen, where, surrounded by teetering piles of books and artwork, he regaled us with tales about artists like Jack Smith and Andy Warhol, his decision to leave his hometown as a penniless teenager, his steadfast identity as a working class artist, his conversion to Russian Orthodox Christianity, what changed for gay artists in New York between the 1960s and today, and of course, his recollection of that historic night at the Stonewall.
We know you’ll enjoy this artist’s sparkling humor and singular vision as he shares reflections on his life and this critical moment in history.
We also talked with Ann Bausum, author of Stonewall, Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights, about the significance of the uprising. She also shared some of her own first-hand recollections of segregation in 1960s America.
The music in this episode was written by Garen Gueyikian, with the exception of one track by Dr. Delight, courtesy of Soundstripe.
A selection of Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt’s work will be on display at a show titled Open Hands: Crafting the Spiritual at Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art until May 19, 2024.
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If you’ve been online, and especially on Twitter, then you probably know the name Eli Valley and his brushy drawings that use the grotesque and absurd to make larger points about life, culture, and politics. But it wasn’t until the Trump administration that the New York City-based cartoonist was propelled into the public spotlight. Valley was attacked by a wide range of politicians, particularly Republicans, including Meghan McCain, who called the comic he drew of her “one of the most anti-Semitic things I have even seen.” McCain is not Jewish, and Valley is, not to mention that his father is a rabbi.
In this conversation, I asked Valley to tell us about how he got his start in comics, how he builds on the long history of satire and graphic humor in the Jewish American tradition, and how he copes with the public spotlight while he struggles to survive as a full-time artist.
This podcast is accompanied by scholar Josh Lambert’s article, which explores the art historical roots of Valley’s art. Lambert writes, “Valley comes naturally by his most pressing and recurrent theme: lies told and violence committed in the name of Jewish safety and security. His cartoon jeremiads can easily enough be fit into a long history of Jewish protest, from the Biblical prophets who excoriated the sinners of Israel to modern novelists who, like the criminally under-appreciated late-19th-century San Francisco writer Emma Wolf, wrote about Jews, as she put it, ‘in the spirit of love — the love that has the courage to point out a fault in its object.’”
The music for this episode is “A Mineral Love” by Bibio, courtesy Warp Records.
Artists Tali Hinkis and Daniel Temkin have been at the leading edge of digitally informed contemporary art that explores the boundaries of programming, digital aesthetics, and the handmade. Their work is certainly unique, but they also share some commonalities around media-based art, glitch, and how their work in the gallery and online is circulated and experienced. I invited them to join me for a conversation to hear the thoughts of two intelligent artists who are fully engaged with the new wave of thinking around digital practices in the arts. Hinkis and Temkin are both participating in various “Digital Combine” exhibitions curated by artist Claudia Hart, who coined the term based on artist Robert Rauschenberg’s earlier “Combines” concept that intersects sculpture and painting. In this new incarnation, the digital and analogue are in dialogue.
I also invited both artists, who are of Jewish descent, to reflect on their cultural heritage and how it manifests and informs their larger bodies of work. This conversation is part of a continuing series we’ve been doing over the last year with the help of CANVAS, a foundation interested in fostering new Jewish creativity in the 21st century.
Hinkis and Temkin are both exhibiting together in Digital Combines at Bitforms gallery in San Francisco until January 11, 2023.
The music for this episode is “Ultra (Yung Sherman Mix)” by Evian Christ, courtesy Warp Records.
Last year, we published a dossier of statements by leading scholars supporting the fight of Tamara Lanier to reclaim the daguerreotypes of her ancestors from the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Lanier, who lives in Norwich, Connecticut, had long heard stories through her family about an ancestor named Papa Renty, a learned man from Africa who was enslaved and brought to the United States under inhumane conditions. Those stories about Renty were important to her family and to the memory of their heritage that they kept alive.
Then one day, Lanier discovered that there were photographs of her relative, and they were deposited at Harvard University because of a 19th-century racist academic named Louis Agassiz. Agassiz had commissioned them to "prove" his White Supremacist ideas about race and they lay in a trunk at the Peabody Museum until a researcher resurfaced them in the 1970s.
In this podcast, I speak to Lanier about the continuing fight to reclaim her family heritage by asking Harvard to accept her right to the ownership of the images. She discusses a fascinating visit to the home of descendants of the Taylor family, enslavers who claimed Lanier's ancestors as property, and some surprising discoveries she made along the way.
This is a must-hear episode, and I would highly recommend reading Valentina Di Liscia's excellent article, which was part of our special dossier, that summarizes the history of the court case and the larger fight to "Free Renty."
Lanier has also allowed us reproduce some of the photographs she took at the Taylor family home, which includes various items of furniture created by her ancestors when they were enslaved.
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Something incredible happened a few months ago. After Oklahoma lawyer Brett Chapman (Pawnee) started tweeting about the tomahawk of Ponca Chief Standing Bear, which is currently in Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the revered object may actually be going home.
His short messages asked why the tomahawk was in the care of that institution and not with one of the two federally recognized Ponca tribes. The questions raised eyebrows, and as Cassie Packard reported for Hyperallergic, the museum later posted a statement on its website explaining that the museum and the Ponca tribe are “in active discussion about the homecoming of Chief Standing Bear’s pipe tomahawk belonging to the Ponca people.”
Chapman, who has Ponca heritage, joins me for this podcast to explain the history of the tomahawk and why the return of the heirloom is important.
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A painter who may be best known for her contribution to the Photorealism movement, Audrey Flack has been a working artist for roughly 70 years. Now at age 90, Flack reflects on the art world, from her days as part of the New York School of artists in the 1950s and 60s; her rise to fame as the only prominent female Photorealist; her embrace of sculpture and public art in the 1980s and 90s; and her return to painting only a few years ago.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Flack also shares her experiences in college with renowned modernist Joseph Albers; a strange and unnerving experience with renowned painter Jackson Pollock; how she coped raising children through all of this; and much more. We’re joined by artist Sharon Louden, who is a mutual friend of Flack and myself.
This is Flack's first-ever podcast, and I'm excited for you to hear the story of this incredible artist who continues to push us to see the world anew. I hope you enjoy this epic interview with the talented artist.
The music in this episode is Ultra (Yung Sherman Mix) by Evian Christ, courtesy of Warp Records.
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Tim Kang started his career as a software engineer for Deutsche Bank and invested a year of savings in Ethereum in early 2016, and let’s just say it’s paying off. The North Carolina native, who is known online as “illestrater,” is now a digital art collector and purchased works by Murat Pak and Beeple before all the recent auction sales and press coverage propelled them into the spotlight.
He’s founded other artist platforms, including CUE Music and Universe.XYZ, and his latest organization, Sevens Foundation, is offering “Sevens Genesis Grants” for emerging and underrepresented artists to mint their first NFT. Kang calls himself a “champion of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists” in the NFT space.
I spoke to him to learn more about his interest in NFTs and collecting digital assets and his thoughts on the future of the field.
This is a continuation of a series of podcasts we’re publishing on the evolving terrain of NFTs and their impact on artists and the arts community.
The music for this episode is “Autowave” by Kelly Moran from the album Ultraviolet, which is available from Warp Records.
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Diya Vij started her new job as Associate Curator of Creative Time just last fall, in the midst of the pandemic. She has since announced the first Creative Time Think Tank cohort, which includes La Tanya S. Autry, Caitlin Cherry, Sonia Guiñansaca, Namita Gupta Wiggers, and a number of other engaged voices of the art community. This new initiative invited people to submit proposals for an open call, drawing 200 individual or group applicants. The selected cohort will meet regularly for the next 10 months to reflect on the realities around us and imagine a way forward for the cultural sector.
Vij has built a reputation over the years for her work at the Queens Museum, High Line, and in the Commissioner’s Unit of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, where she created the Public Artists in Residence program. She joins me to discuss this unusual think tank and what the collective hopes to accomplish.
Music is Lorenzo Senni’s “Move in Silence (Only Speak When It’s Time to Say Checkmate)” from Warp Records.
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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 about his experience during this pandemic period when NFTs dominate many mainstream conversations about online and digital art. He talks to me about selling art, how things have evolved, and what he expects from this new wave of change. Galleries, Sacks suggests, will always be relevant.
This is the third podcast in a series of episodes and articles we will publish in the coming weeks on the topic of NFTs.
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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, sellers, collectors, journalists, scholars, and everyone else.
This is the second podcast in a series of episodes and articles we will publish in the coming weeks on the topic of NFTs.
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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 answer is maybe.
In addition to being an artist, Wagenknecht is Director of Technical Ecosystems at the Algorand Foundation, and she brings a much-needed pragmatism to the topic, as PR campaigns often make it seem like NFTs are going to change the world.
This is the first in a series of episodes we will publish in the coming weeks on the topic of NFTs.
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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 Yes We Can: Barack Obama's History Making Presidential Campaign, Tufankjian also created what was once the internet's most popular photo (it was of the Obamas). She stopped by our Brooklyn studio to share her insights and reflections from her experience in November and December. The podcast was recorded on January 19, 2021, the 14th anniversary of the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.
The music in this episode is by Mary Kouyoumdjian and is titled "This Should Feel Like Home" (2013), which was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Hotel Elefant.
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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 Museum of the Bible to Iraq and Egypt, and how some of the important quilters of Gee’s Bend now have Etsy shops.
The music for this episode is Darkstar’s “Jam” courtesy of Warp Records.
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Photo caption: Members of the 27N Movement had gathered to read a text by Martí, an important symbol of the nation's struggle for independence from Spain (photo by Reynier Leyva Novo, courtesy of 27N Movement)
Protesters outside of MoMA in February, 2017 (photo by Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic)
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 staffers were taking works home; the Ohio Arts Board member who was forced out after her social media posts were discovered; the damage to an ancient arch in Iraq; the closing of the disastrous Vessel in Manhattan; and the viral sink reviewer who hates the faucets at the Museum of Modern Art.
The music for this episode is Lorenzo Senni’s “Canone Infinito” courtesy of Warp Records.
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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 collaborate with various American fashion and music labels.
Now he’s back with his first solo New York exhibition in 32 years, which is taking place at Eric Firestone Gallery in Manhattan. In this conversation, he generously shares his insight into the mercurial art world, what motivates him to continue making work, and reflections on a scene that continues to change.
The music in this episode is Lara Sarkissian’s “A House is a Being,” from the album Grief Into Rage: A Compilation for Beirut, which is raising funds for victims of the Beirut blast last August. I’m sending love to those who continue to grapple with that horrific event.
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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 and continues to push ink, gouache, and mosaic to new heights in her art. There, she is also displaying her first bronze sculpture.
In this conversation, Sikander joins me in the Hyperallergic studio to talk about making art through the pandemic, what she wants her art to do, and her hopes for a new post-pandemic art world.
The music in this episode is “Animal” by Radiochaser.
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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 our favorites from that year, while two Hyperallergic veterans Allison Meier and Jillian Steinhauer (“Wading in Matthew Barney’s River of Shit”) read some of their own writing.
The event also included a wacky comments section, where Hyperallergic staff and contributors Tiernan Morgan, Jennifer Samet, and Elisa Wouk Almino read some of our zaniest comment threads that were percolating on the website at the time — my favorite involves Shakespeare truthers. There’s even a short Q&A at the end with Hyperallergic Weekend Editor Thomas Micchelli.
I know you’ll get a kick out of this time capsule from what feels like a bygone age, back when Obama was still president and “fake news” wasn’t the ubiquitous term it is today.
The music in this episode is titled “A Boy and a Makeshift Toy.” It’s performed by violist Michael Hall, pianist Stephanie Titus, and composed by Mary Kouyoumdjian. The piece is inspired by the war photography of Chris Hondros, particularly a photo of Albanian refugees from Kosovo waiting at a train station.
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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 that have engaged local communities; the decision of some museums not to serve as polling places; and other news of note.
It’s election day, so we hope all those who can will vote.
The music featured in this episode is “Wink Wink” by Teddi Gold.
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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 wide-ranging conversation, I talk to artist and technologist An Xiao Mina about the absence of deepfakes and what this might tell us about the media ecosystem now and going forward.
This conversation is part of our Sunday Edition on Propaganda.
The music featured this episode is a new track by Command Dos titled "Proof."
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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 met with protests by the local Dakota community.
That event was a lightning rod for a national conversation about appropriation, racism, and the role of artists, museums, curators, and others in those conversation. I invited Durant to join me on the podcast to discuss the reason he wrote this so many years after the fact and what he thinks the lessons are.
The music featured in this episode is the track “California Life” by Radiochaser.
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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 cultural climate. The decision has caused = reactions of indignation and anger in some art circles, causing others to be perplexed over what seems like an overreaction to the delay of an exhibition by a very well-known artist, who is frequently shown and exhibited in spaces the world over.
In this episode, the director of the National Gallery, Kaywin Feldman, shares her thoughts on the decision, why it was important, and what the National Gallery of Art will do now.
The music featured in this episode is the track “California Life" by Radiochaser.
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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 known for organizing with a focus on worker, indigenous, Black, Palestinian, and migrant rights, both Husain and Dhillon are also artists.
In this wide-ranging, two-part conversation, I speak to Husain and Dhillon, who came to our studio back in May, before the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, about their lives, ideas, and what they think of an art community that is still grappling with notions of justice, freedom, and equality.
Part one is a shorter 34-minute interview to introduce you to the pair and their lives, while part two (81 minutes) offers a closer look at their work and the various challenges they’ve faced with the Guggenheim Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, while offering some insights into what’s next.
Instead of music for this episode, I’ve incorporated the sounds of various protests where I’ve encountered the pair, including the 2017 Anti-Columbus Day Tour at the American Museum of Natural History.
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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 known for organizing with a focus on worker, indigenous, Black, Palestinian, and migrant rights, both Husain and Dhillon are also artists.
In this wide-ranging, two-part conversation, I speak to Husain and Dhillon, who came to our studio back in May, before the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, about their lives, ideas, and what they think of an art community that is still grappling with notions of justice, freedom, and equality.
Part one is a shorter 34-minute interview to introduce you to the pair and their lives, while part two (81 minutes) offers a closer look at their work and the various challenges they’ve faced with the Guggenheim Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, while offering some insights into what’s next.
Instead of music for this episode, I’ve incorporated the sounds of various protests where I’ve encountered the pair, including the 2017 Anti-Columbus Day Tour at the American Museum of Natural History.
Subscribe to the Hyperallergic Podcast on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
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 objects, along with the intricate gold pieces, fascinating stone stools, and other objects that have survived over the centuries. He explains what makes the artistic objects of the Taíno unique, why bats and other animals are common in the imagery, and what we know about a civilization that was drastically impacted by the devastation and genocide of European colonization.
Also, some good news: the run of the exhibition has been extended until June 27, 2021.
The music for this week’s episode is “The Shady Road” by artist B. Wurtz. His debut album, Some Songs, will be released on October 16 by Hen House Studios.
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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, what role should artists have in the acquisition process, and if museums are getting better or worse at dealing with issues of racial and economic equity in their collections.
This episode will get you up to speed about the fast-moving story and what it tells us about the Whitney and other contemporary museums today.
A special thanks to Tyler James Bellinger for providing his track “Champagne” for this week’s episode. You can visit Apple Music or YouTube, for more information.
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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 discuss her recent article "Break and TikTok for the Mass," and why the social platform continues to irk the powers that be. We also discuss the passing of poet Dinos Christianopoulos, whose line “They Tried to Bury Us, They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds” has become a staple of protests the world over.
Thanks to YutaY for providing the music to this week’s episode. His new track “Run” is available on Apple Music and Spotify, and you can follow him on Facebook.
Hyperallergic continues to be on top of the biggest stories in the art community during the pandemic. Subscribe to our daily newsletter to stay up to date.
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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 "race science" that Morton and his peers perpetuated. Members of the UPenn community actively denounced its display at the institution for many years prior to the museum’s recent decision.
Hyperallergic's news editor Jasmine Weber and reporter Hakim Bishara join me to discuss this story and what Police Free Penn, a group consisting of UPenn students and local activists, is demanding the museum abolish the collection.
The music this episode is an instrumental version of "Begin Again" by Kill the Alarm.
Hyperallergic continues to be on top of the biggest stories in the art community during the pandemic. Subscribe to our daily newsletter to stay up to date.
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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 some additional details and thoughts about the news.
We also discuss the evolving discussion around the blurring of faces in protest photographs, following a statement issued by ICP Center Blackness Now on the need for guidelines for protest photographers. Photographer Dawoud Bey offered his thoughts in the comments of the post we published, which has extended the conversation. We share our thoughts on the topic.
The music for this episode is “The One” by The Wayves.
Hyperallergic is continuing to cover the biggest stories in the art community during the pandemic. Subscribe to our daily newsletter to stay up to date.
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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 year he was awarded two special honors: the Rabkin Lifetime Achievement Award for Art Journalism and the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
In this episode, he shares stories about his years in LA, his work as a newspaper art critic, and even a very curious letter he received from actor Charleton Heston about artist Andrew Wyeth.
The music featured in this episode is the track “Zuma" by Austin David.
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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 statue in Minneapolis by members of the American Indian Movement; the decision by MCA Chicago to halt its contract with local police; celebrities advocating for justice for Breonna Taylor; and the vow by former Whitney Museum Vice Chair Warren Kanders to sell Safariland divisions that manufactures tear gas.
We also discuss our editorial decision to blur the faces of protesters, as well as two important essays we published on the origins of the word “loot” and the meaning of journalistic “objectivity.”
I also speak to scholar and photographer Artyom Tonoyan about what he saw during the May 29th protests in Minneapolis.
Hyperallergic continues to be on top of the biggest stories in the art community during the pandemic. Subscribe to our daily newsletter to stay up to date.
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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 Minimalism (Bloomsbury, 2020), is a highly readable book that examines the historical precedents of minimalist design, its incarnation as contemporary art, and how it was co-opted by architecture, design, and fashion companies to represent a new, generic sense of luxury.
The music for this episode is Darkstar’s “Timeaway,” which is taken from the new album News From Nowhere, courtesy of Warp Records (warp.net/artists/darkstar).
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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 artists calling to lift Gaza sanctions, how US cities are dealing with arts funding, Frieze New York going online, and much more.
Hyperallergic continues to be on top of the biggest stories in the art community during the pandemic and subscribe to our daily newsletter to stay up to date.
A special thanks to Jowan Safadi for allowing us to use his track, “Super White Man,” for this episode. You can follow Saladi on YouTube, Bandcamp, or Twitter.
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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 and academic jargon while revealing his love of art and innovative ideas. I asked him about his life, how he got into art writing, stories from his childhood, and other influences that help us understand a writer who continues to challenge both himself and readers to look at art with fresh and informed eyes. This special two-hour interview offers a window into the world of one of the country's most respected art critics and poets.
A special thanks to Vinson Valega for providing the music for this interview. You can learn more about his music at VinsonValega.com.
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News about new museum layoffs and other problems, art galleries closures, and the cancellation of the Indian Market in Santa Fe are all part of this week's episode with Hyperallergic’s news editor Jasmine Weber, LA Editor Elisa Wouk Almino, and Ellie Duke, our Southwest editor based in Santa Fe, NM.
We discuss the Museum of Contemporary Art's decision to furlough most of its staff and then lay off 97 part-time workers, the impact of canceling Santa Fe's Indian Market, and the launch of our series that looks at some of the Native American artists and artisans who won't be able to show at the August gathering. We also talk about images from the 1918 influenza pandemic, the complicated problems of museum endowments, and how museums the world over are slowly opening up, not to mention a few that have been forced to close again because of a new wave of infections. And on a lighter side, we discuss Alan Nakagawa's social distancing haiku project.
Then I reach out to writer Anthony Majalathni in Rome, who discusses his recent article about the history of disease, faith, and recovery in the Italian capital, and what life in Rome is like today. As a historian of Rome, Majalathni is a great source of information on the city's long history with disease.
And a very special thanks to Apollo Kings for letting us use their new song, "Trust Issues."
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This episode, in our ongoing series tracking the impact of COVID-19 on the art community, I talk to the Hyperallergic news team (Jasmine Weber, Valentina Di Liscia, and Hakim Bishara) about the latest Pandemic-related news, including why museums can't dip into their endowments as easily as we might like, the Guggenheim's decision to furlough 92 employees, why some union supporters are crying foul with the recent art world layoffs. We also discuss the impact of the cancellation of Indian Market in Santa Fe, an artist fundraiser for Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, how artists are helping to decorate hospitals, and even some memes.
A special thanks to Nathan Fox for letting us use his track “I Can’t Hang.” To learn more, check out his Facebook page.
And a thank you to Gina Volpe for allowing us to use a short clip of her catchy song "Don't Touch Your Face," and for answering my questions about her inspiration.
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This week, we give you a two-part conversation about the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the arts community. First, we start with our news team, editor Jasmine Weber, and reporters Valentina Di Liscia and Hakim Bishara, to get updates on the flurry of news this week. Then we talk to editors Seph Rodney, Jasmine Weber, and Dessane Lopez Cassell about the new boom in online offerings by museums, galleries, and art institutions, as we try to separate the wheat from the chaff.
During our news roundup we discuss various articles by the team, including the Museum of Modern Art's decision to terminate educator contracts, the Whitney Museum's decision to lay off 76 staff members, pandemic relief efforts by various foundations, the eerie visual parallels between today and the 1918 influence pandemic, and even a few lighter posts, including the Gerbil Museum that's captured the hearts of art lovers.
In the final segment, Seph Rodney elaborates on what he found as an art critic visiting the new wave of online galleries, while Jasmine Weber and Dessane Lopez Cassell discuss their thoughts on online spaces and which ones appear to be doing it better than others.
Sponsored by:
A special thanks to YutaY for providing the music to this week's episode. His new track "Run" is available on Apple Music and Spotify, and you can follow him on Facebook.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s Podcast on iTunes, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Cases of COVID-19 are on the rise across the US and much of the world, so Hyperallergic's news team gathered together for week 3 of our special podcast series to discuss what's happening at art museums, art schools, and other hubs of the art community during the coronavirus pandemic.
I'm joined by Hyperallergic's news editor Jasmine Weber in Los Angeles, and reporters Valentina di Liscia in Miami and Hakim Bishara in Brooklyn to reflect on the week that was and what we anticipate ahead.
Thanks to Kicholas Nage for allowing us to use his new song "Rona" this episode. You can check it out on YouTube.
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Another week of unprecedented COVID-19 news dominates the headlines as the United States, and New York specifically, has slowly become one of the epicenters of a global pandemic.
The Hyperallergic news team, including news editor Jasmine Weber, and reporters Valentina di Liscia and Hakim Bishara, join me for our first-ever remote podcast to discuss a wide range of topics including how museums and art galleries are advocating for support, how the pandemic is impacting life in Rome, how Whitney Museum art handlers are doing their part, and even a look at some of the viral songs that have emerged from the crisis.
We will be producing a podcast weekly until the crisis is over, to document what we've been seeing, reading, and hearing about a virus that has forced inhabitants of some of the largest cities of the world to stay home. During this anxious time, as much of the world shelters in place to mediate the impact on local healthcare facilities, we work at keeping you informed about the daily realities of COVID-19 and its effect on arts communities.
For this episode, we gathered the songs that have emerged during the pandemic, including tracks by Tennessee Builds, Kathy Mak, JoJo, students of the Chino Valley Unified School District, and others.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed life all around the world, whether it is in San Francisco, where inhabitants are forced to stay indoors by a shelter in place order, or the whole country of Canada, which has just closed its border to the US and will not allow non-essential visitors into the country. Here in New York, Hyperallergic reporters have been talking to those impacted by the virus and how it is wreaking havoc for businesses, nonprofits, and arts institutions of all types. In this podcast, I'm joined by two Hyperallergic reporters, Hakim Bishara and Valentina di Liscia, to discuss what we're seeing, hearing, and experiencing regarding COVID-19's impact on the art scene.
A special thanks to Eric Drass of Shardcore for the music to this week’s episode. Based on COVID-19 DNA sequence from the NIH, the complete two-hour track on Soundcloud and you can learn more about the artist at the Shardcore website.
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Ariella Azoulay's new book Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019) is an important read on the topic of museums, colonialism, and their clear relationship. In this conversation, Azoulay, who is Professor of Modern Culture & Media and Comparative Literature at Brown University, joins us at Hyperallergic HQ to explain what we need to unlearn, and how artists, collectors, critics, and other arts professionals play a role in the continuing dispossession of colonial subjects, most often people of color, around the world. This conversation is essential for anyone interested in the future of arts institutions and their role in social change.
A special thanks to Dried Spider for the music to this week’s episode. (driedspider.bandcamp.com)
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Taxes may be one of the most unpopular topics in art circles, but we all have to deal with them. So in this episode I speak to Hannah Cole from Sunlight Tax, who is an artist and tax professional, about the challenges of artist taxes — her specialty — and what people should watch out for if they don’t want to be audited. Lots of useful insight.
A special thanks to Mark Pritchard and Warp Records for providing the music for this episode.
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It’s the holidays and you can’t get away from them. Some classic films have come to represent the season in the popular imagination, and we all have our favorites. I invited film editor Dan Schindel to talk about this unique genre of cinema, while discussing our favorite films about Christmas and more. I also invited a number of Hyperallergic staff to share their favorites.
I have a feeling this episode will get you into the holiday mood.
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A special thanks to Patrick Thomas for providing the music to this episode and getting us into the holiday spirit. You can find Christmas with Patrick Thomas on iTunes, and follow him on Instagram and Twitter.
This and more in the current episode of Hyperallergic’s Art Movements podcast.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s Art Movements on iTunes, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Artist Zoë Buckman is a feminist, which permeates her work and life, and her art explores the world of contemporary art with a particular sensitivity toward issues of sexual violence, abuse, and gender identity, among other things.
In this episode, she sat down with Hyperallergic editor and critic Seph Rodney to discuss her last exhibition at Fort Gansevoort, which was reviewed by Weekend contributor Nicole Miller. Buckman also expanded on her perspective of art that struggles with difficult issues in a thoughtful way.
A special thanks to Twig Twig for the music to this week’s episode. You can listen to that and more at twigtwig.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
This and more in the current episode of our weekly Art Movements podcast.
Hyperallergic Reviews editor Dessane Lopez Cassell and Documentary associate editor Dan Schindel join me to discuss our favorite films from 2019.
We discuss Parasite, The Farewell, America, High Life, Midnight Traveler, the new frontiers of documentary, including Syrmor, The Giverny Document, and more. We also discuss the recent boom in superhero movies, how they dominate conversation about film, Martin Scorsese’s problems with the genre, and what it tells us about movies today. We also talk about Schindel's newly published essay, "What Is a Documentary These Days?"
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A special thanks to Kill the Alarm for providing the music for this episode. The track you’re hearing is “Chemicals” from the album Sleeping Giant.
This and more in the current episode of our weekly Art Movements podcast.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s Art Movements on iTunes, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) was founded by women over a century ago, and it continues to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. Its current president, Rosanne Somerson, who is also an accomplished furniture designer, stopped by to talk about the institution and how it has pivoted to stay on top of the field, while serving an increasingly diverse student body.
We also discuss the RISD Museum and its recent attempt to repatriate an item in its collection, the financial realities that face students, and how arts education can help us solve some of the challenges of today.
A special thanks to musician Sophie Hintze for allowing us to use her unreleased song “Coffee in the Rain.” You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram.
This and more in the current episode of our weekly Art Movements podcast.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s podcast on iTunes, or RSS, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Joan Kee is the rare combination of art historian and lawyer, and she's shared her skills in her new book, Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post-Sixties America, which examines the legal issues major contemporary artists (from Tehching Hsieh to Felix Gonzales-Torres) have confronted in the past 60 years.
Kee's research shows that since the 1960s, as artist projects have become more expansive and expensive, the world of lawyers and laws is becoming a bigger part of the equation. From discussions of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Running Fence" land art project (they actually had offers to place the project elsewhere, which would've been a lot easier) to Gordon Matta-Clark's Fake Estates micro-real estate project (there is no evidence the artist did or did not want to present this as an artwork), Kee's research demonstrates that the history of art has increasingly been intertwined with its legal realities.
A special thanks to Brooklyn-based musician SunSon for providing the music to this episode, and you can check out his website sunson.band. You can also follow him on Facebook or Instagram.
This and more in the current episode of our weekly Art Movements podcast.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s Art Movements on iTunes, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Born in 1923 in Pennsylvania to Lebanese parents, Helen Khal would go on to become an important presence in the modern art world of Lebanon as a prominent art critic and artist. A new exhibition at Beirut’s Sursock Museum tells the history of that period through her friendships and relationships with a coterie of artists and writers who would become some of the most important artist voices in the region.
Commissioned by Ashkal Alwan for the Sursock Museum's biennial Home Works gathering of lectures, performances, exhibitions and events — most of which, with the exception of the exhibitions, has been indefinitely postponed because of the recent nationwide protests in Lebanon. The exhibition is titled At the still point of the turning world, there is the dance and includes work by Chafic Abboud, Yvette Achkar, Etel Adnan, Huguette Caland, Simone Fattal, Farid Haddad, Helen Khal, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Aref Rayess, and Dorothy Salhab-Kazemi.
Curators Carla Chammas and Rachel Dedman spoke to me about this incredible art historical show that combines paintings, ceramics, furniture, letters, publications, videos, and other primary source materials from the "Golden Era" from before the infamous Lebanese Civil War. We’ve included an assortment of images in this post to give you a flavor of the exhibition, and we’ve included the items the curators selected as personal favorites, which they also discuss on the podcast.
For this episode we’ve used the sounds from the recent streets protests in downtown Beirut, which were sparked by decades of growing corruption and new taxes that were proposed and since rescinded.
This and more in the current episode of our weekly Art Movements podcast.
From nine weeks of protests to an exhibition that was more ethnically and racially diverse than previous years, this year’s Whitney Biennial has a lot to unpack.
I asked our associate news editor Jasmine Weber, editor and critic Seph Rodney, and reporter Hakim Bishara to join me to reflect on months of controversy and offer their opinions on the exhibition itself. We discuss favorite works, what may have been accomplished, and duds. You’ll want to hear this.
A special thanks to Wanderraven, who provided the music to this week’s episode. The song is called “Here Into The Dark”. Listen to more at wanderraven.com.
Last week, Hyperallergic published a five-part series, titled The Danger Epidemic in Art Handling, on the realities facing art handlers in the United States. The story generated a lot of debate and shocked many who were never forced to think about the conditions workers are forced to endure when assembling and transporting art of all types.
This conversation with Hyperallergic Senior Writer Zachary Small and Associate News Editor Jasmine Weber explores the contours of the topic, the difficulties of reporting on contentious art world issues, and how investigative reporting is crucial for change. We also discuss the Sotheby's lockout of art handlers, which we covered extensively in 2011 and 2012.
A special thanks to Peter Gabriel's Real World Records for allowing us to play a special live track by world music legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The label is celebrating its 30th anniversary of Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records and they marked the occasion by announcing the release of a previously unheard recording by the legendary qawwali singer. The recording includes Khan’s performance at WOMAD Festival in 1985, which was the first time the singer had performed in front of a mainly non-Asian audience. As a longtime fan of Khan's genius, I'm honored to include his music in this episode.
This and more in the current episode of Hyperallergic’s Art Movements podcast.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s Art Movements on iTunes, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
On the first floor of the Gardiner Museum, in the Art of the Americas gallery, there is a large Maya plate dating to the 6th to 7th centuries CE. It features a large deity in the center of the orange and black earthenware object with a band of glyphs around the edge of the dish. This object is well-known to Maya specialists, not only for the mastery of the design, but because of the inscription that not only mentions the name and location of the donor but also explains that it was a plate used to serve white venison tamales.
In this episode, we talk to four experts in the field, Gardiner Museum educator and curator Siobhan Boyd, Metropolitan Museum curator James Doyle, cultural historian Margaret Visser, and Popti storyteller Maria Monteja to peel back the layers of history in this wondrous artifact from ancient times to learn about Maya traditions and culture through the lens of today.
A special thanks to SunSon for providing the music to this special series, which is produced by Hyperallergic in conjunction with the Gardiner Museum.
Joseph Pierce wants you to question everything, but especially queerness.
The Cherokee citizen and Stony Brook University assistant professor believes the moment has come for queer academia to seriously question the roots of their discipline, and ask how the field can expand to include more voices outside the Euro-American canon of Judith Butlers and Jack Halberstams.
"When we think about queerness," Pierce explains, "it's seen as a universal theory that can be applied everywhere. But often what that does is maintain a framework based on coloniality and white supremacy. What we want to do is question how queerness circulates."
Accordingly, the young researcher has teamed up with scholars from across the Western hemisphere to produce a special edition of GLQ, an important journal of lesbian and gay studies published by Duke University Press. The forthcoming issue intends to address the limits of queerness outside normative white contexts, and how decolonization and the schema of radical liberation might provide new context to how LGBTQ culture operates in regions like Latin America and the Global South.
An erstwhile contributor to Hyperallergic, Pierce has also written a new book that will release this November, called Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890–1910. The result of extensive archival research, the book is a study into Argentina's turn-of-the-century crisis of modernity, and how political and economic changes in the country opened up new ways of conceptualizing family.
For a discussion about the relationship between queerness, decolonialiality, culture, and politics, we invited Pierce onto the Hyperallergic Art Movements podcast to share some insight into how he and other academics are trying to evolve queer studies into a more open field of inquiry.
The music for this episode is available under the Creative Commons 0 license.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic’s Art Movements on iTunes, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
There's a curious collection of 18th-century porcelain figurines displayed on the second floor of the Gardiner Museum. Set amidst an impressive display of European ceramic table wear and figurines, this small assortment of Harlequin sculptures don dark masks that stand out for contemporary audiences. One of the colorful sculptures is by Wenzel Neu and hails from the Kloster-Veilsdorf Porcelain Factory in Germany, c. 1764–65, and beside it is a sign that asks, "Is Harlequin in blackface?"
In this episode, we talk to Professor Cheryl Thompson, anti-racist educator Rania El Mugammar, and the Gardiner's Chief Curator Sequoia Miller about this figurine that portrays a character from the Commedia dell'Arte that was a precursor to the more violently racialized images of blackface in 19th and 20th-century minstrel shows. We explore the long history of blackface in Canada, and how one museum is adapting to tell the stories that its collection provokes with contemporary audiences.
A special thanks to musician SunSon for providing the music to this special series, which is produced by Hyperallergic in conjunction with the Gardiner Museum. Check out their website sunson.band for more information.
This and more in the current episode of Hyperallergic's Art Movements podcast.
Subscribe to Art Movements on iTunes, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Canadian artist Shary Boyle is known for her incredible ability to transform clay and ceramic into feats of delicate wonder, using the human body and the history of the material to delve into the undercurrents and meanings often overlooked by contemporary viewers.
In the second in a four-part podcast series produced by Hyperallergic in conjunction with the Gardiner Museum's Community Arts Space: What we long for initiative, she reminds us: "Let us not let the art world homogenize us when we all individually as young people might have chosen to become artists."
She continues, "I chose to become an artist to try to pursue a life of true questioning and subversion and an alternative position to what I saw as a common drive towards capitalist values of growth and progression and I want to just to continually have access to watching and observing and questioning that."
In this episode, I speak to the artist about her relationship to a material that has been having a renaissance in contemporary art, and she shares her insight into a material that appears in almost every culture in history.
A special thanks to Brooklyn-based musician SunSon for providing the music to this episode, and you can check out his website sunson.band. You can also follow him on Facebook or Instagram.
Most of our earliest experiences of art are forged at museums. In this episode artist Kent Monkman recounts his own youth visiting institutions that didn’t reflect the lived reality around him and his Cree community in Winnipeg.
Since those formative years, Monkman has become an important voice in contemporary art who challenges the histories told inside the hallowed halls of museums, pushing them to reflect the complexity of the world around them. He is an artist who teaches us to imagine the world we want to see, one that refuses to erase the stories of pain, but instead uses them to portray the power of resilience and future possibilities.
This is the first in a four-part series by Hyperallergic in conjunction with the Gardiner Museum and its Community Art Space, a platform for experimentation and socially-engaged art. The series explores the role of museums, ceramics, and the stories they tell.
A special thanks to Brooklyn-based musician SunSon for providing the music to this episode, and you can check out his website sunson.band. You can also follow him on Facebook or Instagram.
During this special Pride Month, I knew we'd all need the wisdom of artist Nayland Blake, who is a leader in the field of queer representation and art, but that is one of his many talents as an artist, activist, educator, and innovator.
This episode, I talk to Blake to learn about their experiences growing up biracial and queer in New York, going to school in Southern California, their formative years in San Francisco, and their return to New York. They also school me on kink.
A special thanks to Twig Twig for the music to this week’s episode. You can listen to that and more at twigtwig.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
This episode is sponsored by Swann Auction Galleries.
Swann’s first ever “Pride Sale,” a curated auction of material related to the LGBTQ+ experience and the gay rights movement, takes place on June 20, 2019. A corresponding exhibition of works on offer will run from June 15 through the sale.
Morehshin Allahyari has been capturing the imagination of art lovers the world over since her Material Speculation: ISIS series from 2015-16 propelled her into the spotlight. For that project, she recreated objects destroyed by the ISIS terrorist organization in Iraq. For that ambitious endeavor, she used the few images she could collect of the artifacts themselves and then 3D printed them in a beautiful translucent material that revealed a USB — filled with the related data — buried deep inside the new works.
Her latest project, which is performance-lecture that was commissioned and presented by New Museum affiliate Rhizome, is titled Physical Tactics for Digital Colonialism, and it builds on her concept of digital colonialism in relation to the technology of 3D printing.
The lecture was just released online by Rhizome, but I wanted to invite her into our Brooklyn studio to talk about the issues surrounding digital colonialism.
A special thanks to Prince Harvey, who provided the music for this episode. Titled “Stay Gold” you can find more about the artist on his website at www.princeharvey.com.
What is June, really? It's a time for the LGBTQ community to come together and reflect on the ongoing fight for equality, even as we honor the hard-won achievements by queer activists past and present. It's also an opportunity to reflect on the rich creativity and diversity of our friends and chosen families.
That's why Hyperallergic is putting a special spotlight on the queer arts community this month. Writers, philosophers, activists, illustrators, painters, sculptors, poets, filmmakers, performers, drag queens — everyone, all creative people are important beacons of hope and resilience in a time of political uncertainty. We've always been devoted to using our website as a platform for historically marginalized peoples, and Pride Month is also a time to celebrate and double-down on that work.
Inaugurating this effort, we invited artist and actor Cristina Pitter to share a selection of readings from her solo performance, Decolonizing the Color of Queerness on our Hyperallergic Art Movements podcast. It's something of a paean to self-discovery that weaves its way toward self-actualization through histories of hardship and episodes of revelation — something every queer person can relate to. The music in this episode is generously provided by the composer Serena Ebony Miller.
This episode is part of our "2019 Pride in Art" series, which is sponsored by Swann Auction Galleries who are running their "Pride Sale," a curated auction of material related to the LGBTQ experience and the gay rights movement on June 20, 2019 at their location at 104 East 25th Street in Manhattan.
This episode is sponsored by Swann Auction Galleries.
Swann’s first ever "Pride Sale," a curated auction of material related to the LGBTQ+ experience and the gay rights movement, takes place on June 20, 2019. A corresponding exhibition of works on offer will run from June 15 through the sale.
Paola Antonelli is the Museum of Modern Art’s Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture & Design, as well as the institution’s Director of R&D. She’s also — like me — a fan of the beloved arts organization Eyebeam.
This month, Eyebeam celebrates its 20th anniversary, and Antonelli will be the keynote speaker at the celebration. I sat down with this leading curator to discuss the world of design, tech, and what organizations like Eyebeam are doing to change the landscape.
A special thanks to Newborn Huskies for the music to this week’s episode. You can listen to that and more at newbornhuskies.bandcamp.com and on other streaming services.
Last year, editor Elisa Wouk Almino relocated from Hyperallergic’s New York-based office to Los Angeles to help expand coverage along the West Coast. In this podcast, she chats with Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian about her initial impressions of the city, where artists have been increasingly flocking to.
We then speak with Catherine G. Wagley, a veteran Los Angeles art critic and reporter who has contributed nuanced op-eds and reported stories to the site. She shares her thoughts on why Los Angeles is such an appealing city for artists and how it differentiates itself from other major centers like New York. She also talks about how students at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) have been battling for more transparent financial policies — a fight that is relevant for art schools across the country.
Finally, two of our frequent contributors, Matt Stromberg and Abe Ahn, share some of their favorite art spaces and experiences in Los Angeles. If you live in the city or are planning a summer trip, don’t miss out on their fun, off-beat, and insightful recommendations.
A special thanks to April + VISTA for the music to this week’s episode. If you’re in Los Angeles, the band will be performing at the Echo on June 13. You can listen to more of their music on Spotify and other streaming services.
When news that Michael Rakowitz withdrew from the 2019 Whitney Biennial was published by the New York Times on February 25, people wondered why the Iraqi-American artist decided to sit out the biannual art event.
Later, in April, when the Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything opened at the Jewish Museum, many people noticed that Rakowitz's work about the renowned Canadian crooner’s relationship with Zionism and Israel — which appeared in the original exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal — wasn’t there. Why?
Rakowitz talks to me about the controversies with both exhibitions and his thoughts on museums and power. He also reads his 2015 letter to Leonard Cohen, which he mailed to the singer a year before the legend died.
And, as a special treat, the music in this podcast is performed by Rakowitz himself.
The business of artists's estates is becoming a big business, but the realities facing artists today aren't always as glamorous as some might think. For every multi-millionaire dollar Robert Rauschenberg estate, there are thousands of lesser-known talents whose families have to confront the tough decisions about what to do with hundreds of artworks and archives.
To sort out the realities facing artists and their loved ones, I invited two experts in the field who deal extensively with artist estates. Saul Ostrow is a critic, curator, and a principal at Art Legacy Planning, and Jason Andrew is a curator and partner at Artist Estate Studio.
Both of them are on the front lines of helping artists and their families decide what to do with their art after they pass away. I invited them to share their expertise in an episode that is a must-listen for those who are faced (or may be one day) with helping the artists in their lives to plan for the inevitable.
A special thanks to Twig Twig for the music to this week’s episode. You can listen to that and more at twigtwig.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
A business and financial literacy conference, the Art World Conference is gathering together 50 speakers for panel discussions, conversations, and in-depth workshops addressing many of the challenges faced by visual artists and arts professionals who work closely with artists. The multi-day event is the brainchild of Dexter Wimberly and Heather Bhandari, two veterans of the art field who bring decades of expertise to the table.
I invited Dexter and Heather to the studio to talk about the changing currents of the art community and their own visions for a more empowered and exciting art world. We discuss the lingering myths that continue to plague art professionals, and new ways forward.
The music in this podcast was provided by Providence-based band Strawberry Generation. Check them out on Spotify, Apple Music, Facebook and Instagram. They are currently working on their first full-length album, to be released later in the year. They’re also getting ready to tour for the first time this summer, playing at the Indietracks festival in the UK.
What if artists were invited into institutions of higher learning to lead conversations about safety, community, and change?
Artist Shaun Leonardo was invited to be the visiting fellow at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and he's been organizing a series of events that are trying to break down the barriers between various aspects of the Pratt community.
I invited him, along with Jane South, who is the chair of the Fine Arts Department within the School of Art at Pratt Institute, to discuss the challenges and goals for such an initiative. And we discuss their big event on April 9 titled "Open Exchange: Belonging."
A special thanks to Jonathon Jircitano for allowing us to use his new single, "Falling Into Place," which is available on iTunes, Spotify, and other music services.
In Canada, an incredible new program allows doctors to prescribe museum visits to their patients. Hyperallergic's Zachary Small visited the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to talk with Stephen Legari, the first full-time art therapist on staff at a North American museum (he sees 1,200 patients a year), about his work in the city's encyclopedic museum and what role art can plan in healing.
It's a fascinating story that might also point to new possibilities for art museums eager to play important roles in their local communities by teaching people to learn from and engage with art.
A special thanks to Dried Spider for the music to this week’s episode. You can visit driedspider.bandcamp.com, for more information.
He launched into the screens of the internet savvy almost a decade ago, as a lively and unconventional Twitter commentator about the Arab Spring, but Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is now known as one of the most passionate champions of Middle Eastern art.
Founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation, Al Qassemi joins us to talk about the state of Middle Eastern art and discusses some of his favorite artists from a region that still isn't well represented in the world's modern art museums. One thing you can definitely say is any conversation with Al Qassemi is sure to be lively.
A special thanks to Twig Twig for the music to this week’s episode. You can listen to that and more at twigtwig.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
This and more in our current episode of our weekly Art Movements podcast.
In 2002, artist Lisa Ross found herself in China. She decided to venture to the far western regions of the country, which she heard were home to a predominantly Uyghur population. She would return numerous times after that to document many aspect of a community that was about to change forever.
Her photos are haunting, since they represent a world that is no longer there, as the Chinese authorities are imposing strict assimilationist policies on the local populations. It is believed that over a million Uyghurs and other Muslim populations have been forced into “re-education camps” that have been built in the last few years. A number of Ross’s contacts in the region have been disappeared and detained in such camps.
I invited Ross, and her collaborator Anthony Varalli, to our studio to tell us about her experience in this land that sees few foreigners and where international reporters rarely ever visit. Some of Ross’s work in the Uyghur homeland is currently on view in New York’s Miyako Yoshinaga gallery. Titled I Can’t Sleep: Homage to a Uyghur Homeland, the exhibition continues until March 16.
The music for this episode is “People are Glorious” by renowned musician Sanubar Tursun, who worked with Lisa Ross. Tursun was arrested by the Chinese authorities in December of last year. Her music is part of the album Music of Central Asia, Vol. 10: Borderlands, which you can find on iTunes and other music portholes.
It was a snowy week in Brooklyn, so some of us decided to gather in the podcast studio to talk about the world of art, giving you a small window into the conversations that happen in our office every day.
Hyperallergic editor and critic Seph Rodney and news editor Jasmine Weber join me to talk about what they’re excited about right now: Burger King’s Warhol commercial for the Superbowl, Venice’s new tourism tax, the new Museum of Modern Art expansion, the Museum of the Bible CEO’s ridiculous remarks about the rock that killed Goliath, and more.
The music featured on this episode is by Mark Pritchard, who is represented by Warp Records. You can hear more from his latest release “Under the Sun” at markprtchrd.com and find more great music from Warp Records at warp.net.
There are many illuminating moment’s in Hal Foster’s Conversations about Sculpture (Yale University Press, 2018) with Richard Serra, including the discussion of the infamous “Tilted Arc” sculpture, Serra's formative years as he battled with Minimalism and Conceptual Art, his idea’s around site-specific art, and the role of text and image in his oeuvre.
This podcast begins with Serra’s own voice from a SFMOMA clip that asks the question, “Why Make Art?” and continues with a little adventure to see the artist’s first land artwork, “Shift” (1970), in King City, Ontario. Finally, I sit down with Foster, who talks about his own relationship with an artist who has reinvented himself a few times in his career.
Memes are the street art of the social web, and they are becoming more central to the political and cultural conversations we have. In her new book, Memes to Movements: How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power, An Xiao Mina helps us understand how memes influenced the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, Black Lives Matter in the United States, and Women’s Marches around the world. She explores how memes can help people express public dissent in environments where that can be downright dangerous.
As one of Hyperallergic's original contributors, An Xiao Mina is no stranger to Hyperallergic readers. In her latest project, she continues to challenge us to think critically about the online world and the role of art in the formation of this brave new social terrain. She also discusses her time working at Ai Weiwei’s studio, her internet research in Uganda, and her current job working in the Bay Area’s robust tech scene developing tools for journalists and other online citizens.
The music for this episode is “Grass-Mud Horse Cartoon and Rap (Cao Ni Ma),” which was one of the many versions of the Grass-Mud Horse song that emerged anonymously in China approximately a decade ago to protest internet censorship. This version, An Xiao Mina’s favorite, is featured in this episode. Also, a special thanks to Jason Li for allowing us to use his illustration for Memes to Movements as this week’s cover art.
Last year, we invited artist, writer, and Queens College professor Chloë Bassto talk with curator, art historian, and museum veteran Lowery Stokes Sims to have a conversation of their choosing. It took me a year to publish this podcast, but I’m happy to say their words are more relevant today than ever, as the two art world figures discuss the imagined publics of contemporary art, public and private education, and the challenges of empathy and identity in art.
Bass is no stranger to Hyperallergic readers, and she's known for her deep engagement with art and writing coupled with a solid understanding of the way art functions in the world and the emotional sophistication needed to outline those parameters.
Then there’s Lowery Stokes Sims, who has been a trailblazer throughout her career. She was on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972 to 1999, during which time she specialized in modern and contemporary art. From 2000 to 2007, she was executive director and then president of The Studio Museum in Harlem, and served as Adjunct Curator for the Permanent Collection. Then from 2007 until 2015, she chief curator at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design.
I think you’ll agree that the following conversation offers useful insight into the worlds of two leading figures in New York’s art community.
A special thanks to Brooklyn-based musician SunSonfor providing the music to this episode. You can check out his website sunson.band and follow him on Facebookor Instagram.
It’s rare for an artist to have two concurrent solo shows in the same city, but Didier William accomplished that with his Curtains, Stages, and Shadows, Act 1 & Act 2. The two-part exhibition explores the formal and narrative possibilities of painting. In his review of Act 1, critic Seph Rodney focuses on the figures that can appear as elusive as they are powerful, writing:
These are all figures ready to enact real violence with the cutlasses, and they are also figures who are depicted as staging a rebellion. If one views the text in the back room, one can begin to understand why William believes it necessary to pictorially rehearse the action of insurrection.
I invited Rodney to continue the conversation with William in this episode of Art Movements, in which the two explore the visual language of revolution, specifically in the context of the Haitian revolution, which is one of the larger themes in the artist’s series.
A special thanks to Red Wedding for providing the music for this episode. You can check her out on Instagram.
Sir Sargent, as he’s known on social media, represents a new wave of art writers and critics focused on Black contemporary art and its evolving role in an international African diasporic consciousness. He was born in Chicago as Antwaun Sargent, and has called New York home since 2011.
When he first arrived in New York City, he was a kindergarten teacher, but he soon discovered his interest in telling the stories of Black artists and sharing his insights on into a contemporary art world often perceived as opaque and inaccessible. He’s since co-curated his first exhibition, spoken at countless events, and is now working on a book.
I invited our news editor, Jasmine Weber, to join me in this conversation to learn about Sargent’s thought on a scene that is getting more attention than ever.
A special thanks to Amani Fela for providing the music for this episode.
Tyler Green may be best known as the journalist and art writer behind the Modern Art Notes podcast, but for the last six years, he’s also been working on a major book about a photographer who helped establish the sublime visual record of the American West for viewers around the world.
In his new book, Carleton Watkins: Making the West American, Green writes a very readable story about a figure who blended art and science, helped establish photography as an art, and whose images helped galvanize a citizenry that would eventually establish a national park system around the country. Green managed all of this despite being faced with a researchers nightmare: Watkins’s archive was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
Then there's the twist, as Green discusses a very personal connection to Watkins that he discovered in the midst of his research. It’s a fascinating tale that shows us history is often more present than we know.
A special thanks to Mark Pritchard of Warp Records for providing the music for this episode.
Artist Dayanita Singh wasn’t happy taking photographs in the traditional way, preferring to create what she calls “book objects,” mini-exhibitions to showcase her work. Singh plays with the conventional language of art, and even calls herself an “off-set artist” to denote her preferred way to display her images.
She is currently exhibiting in the Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh, and she has a small retrospective of her book objects at Callicoon Fine Art on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I talked to her about her love of images, a formative (and funny) experience she shared with Robert Frank, and the future of the artist book.
A special thanks to Flash Trading (flashtrading.bandcamp.com) for providing the music for this episode.
The world of art has become more complicated as copyright, appropriation, and other issues force artists, dealers, collectors, and others to turn to lawyers for help. As foibles around the sale and maintenance of luxury art objects grab media headlines, you might be fooled into believing the future of art is in litigation.
I invited Sergio Sarmiento to join me to talk about the evolving world of art law and discuss why he went to law school as an art project, what he thinks about some recent sensational cases (Richard Prince/Instagram, Sam Durant at the Walker Art Center, and the recent Banksy auction stunt) and his thoughts on how appropriate has changed from the 1970s.
On October 29, 2017, the world lost its first feminist art historian. That title, of course, describes Linda Nochlin, a leading academic who changed the world of art after she published her important essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
In 2016, I had the honor of interviewing her for the Women of Abstract Expressionism podcast and only used a few minutes of our interview. In this episode of Art Movements, we release the whole interview (leaving out some in-between bits) where she discusses the role of women in the arts, how oppression impacts culture, and her personal friendship with Joan Mitchell and others.
I also briefly interview one of her former students, art writer Aruna D'Souza, to explain what Nochlin was like as a person.
And the music this episode is “Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G, Movement I (Allegro)” one of the most renowned compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, who was Nochlin's favorite composer.
After decades in the art world, Deborah Kass has a hit. A major one. The type of beloved public artwork that you see endlessly on your social feeds, and brings a smile to your face whenever you encounter it. I'm talking about "OY/YO" (2015), the eight-foot-tall yellow sculpture that just landed at the Brooklyn Museum for an exhibition titled Something to Say.
I took the opportunity to invite Kass into the studio to talk about her work, her thoughts on the art world (she's a pessimist), the role of art today, and more. I also got to ask her something I've always wanted to ask her, particularly since she's so well known for her Warhol-inspired Barbra Streisand series: Does she have a favorite song by Streisand?
And a special thanks to sound artist Bradford Reed, who performed this past weekend as part of the 24-hour Sonic Transmission Archive event at the Newburgh Open Studios in Newburgh, New York. I was able to attend the Sunday portion of the event, which is a Wave Farm Partner Transmit project organized by Ethan Primason and Caroline Partamian, and got to hear and record his performance myself. Thanks to the artist and organizers for allowing us to use the sound work.
September has become the #MeToo movement’s defining month. Bill Cosby recently received a sentence of 3 to 10 years in prison for the drugging and sexual assault of Andrea Constand. And as I write this, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her allegations of sexual misconduct and attempted rape against the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Under intense public scrutiny, survivors of sexual assault are often asked to revisit painful, traumatic memories with crystal clear recollection and foolproof evidence about a violent act that, by its very nature, is manipulative and deceitful.
As in Congress, so too in the arts: the scales of justice are weighed against survivors of sexual assault. That’s why American Theatre magazine’s thorough investigation of sexual assault allegations in the performing arts is so important. In a field where intense recreations of violence and intimacy are often part of the job description, victims of sexual misconduct are often disregarded or otherwise face effective banishment from the theater community’s predominantly male-run list of organizations. American Theatre’s entire September issue is devoted to investigating the #MeToo movement in the performing arts. Below is a recording of my conversation with the magazine’s senior editor, Diep Tran, wherein we discuss the major allegations facing major regional theaters in Houston, Minneapolis, New Haven, and beyond.
A special thanks to Miserable Chillers & Sun Kin for the music to this week’s episode, which features their latest album, Adoration Room. You can listen to that and more at miserablechillers.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
Faced with the ubiquity of white supremacy in US culture, some are seeking new, radical ways to shift the conversation to center Black consciousness as a way to combat the poison of White supremacy. Two artists and educators, Shanti Peters and Joseph Cullier, founded The Black School to confront such realities. Hyperallergic editor Jasmine Weber spoke to the pair about the role of radical Black education and the "Black art world," in a special interview that comes on the heels of their residency and exhibition at the New Museum in New York. One of the things they discuss are is the group's tarot cards, which can be purchased in the group's online shop.
Then Jasmine and I were joined by editor and critic Seph Rodney and contributor Shirine Saad to talk about the new Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power exhibition that opened at the Brooklyn Museum last weekend.
And finally, we have our last segment. Earlier this week, LA-based writer Matt Stromberg reported on the "pause" artist lauren woods pressed on her American Monument project at Cal State Long Beach's museum. The action comes after the museum director Kimberli Meyer was fired. American Monument — a multi-media installation addressing police brutality and the killing of African Americans by police officers — was a project Meyer helped realize, so woods decided that a pause was a necessary act of solidarity in light of the news. Stromberg recorded the roughly 28-minute speech, and we have the recording for those who want to hear it first hand.
A special thanks to Dried Spider for the music to this week’s episode. You can visit driedspider.bandcamp.com, for more information.
McMansions are the houses many of us love to hate. They're big, gaudy, and often they're accumulations of traditionally mismatched architectural elements. Whatever they are, they're everywhere in suburbia. We invited Kate Wagner, aka McMansion Hell, to talk oversized buildings of wealth and status, including the McMansion that is US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's house in Holland, Michigan.
As Hyperallergic editor and critic Seph Rodney returns from Brazil, I invited him to talk about the São Paulo Biennial (Sep 7–Dec 9_)_, which opened a few days after the Natural Museum of Brazil burned down in Rio de Janiero. He picks some favorites and discusses what he saw at the second-oldest art biennial in the world.
A special thanks to Althea SullyCole for the music to this week’s episode. You can visit her website, altheasullycole.com, for more information. She is also performing on September 21 at Postcrypt Coffeehouse in New York City, and September 22 at the Rhythmic Integration Center in New Milford, CT.
The stories of trailblazing women continue to inspire but many of these figures, who occur throughout history, have been written out of the history books or relegated to accounts of their time and ignored by historians. Now, curator Marcela Micucci talks to use about these figures who had a big impact on all aspects of city life, including the so-called "Witch of Wall Street," Hetty Green. It's an exhibition full of colorful stories.
And then I talk to critic Paddy Johnson and artist William Powhida, co-hosts of the Explain Me podcast, about the fall season, New York museums, and what they've been up to.
A special thanks to Twig Twig for the music to this week’s episode. You can listen to that and more at twigtwig.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
This week's we talk to Abou Farman, artist and anthropologist at the New School, and Raquel de Anda, director of public engagement at No Longer Empty, about their recent efforts to educate New York City cultural leaders about the needs of immigrant communities. Then I invite Hyperallergic staff writer Zachary Small to tell us about the latest news in the #MeToo movement, particularly in light of the case of NYU professor Avital Ronell, who was found responsible for sexual harassment and suspended her for the 2018–19 academic year. He interviews Emma Sulkowicz, who many people suggest helped kick off the movement with their widely publicized "Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)" (2014–2015) performance.
A special thanks to Newborn Huskies for the music to this week’s episode. You can listen to that and more at newbornhuskies.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
Last month, a dozen activists gathered at the Whitney Museum of Art to condemn the institution's lack of modern context about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in relation to Wojnarowicz's artwork. Their action was noticed by the art world and the museum, which is continuing to talk to the protesters after changing some of the labels to reflect on the fact that the AIDS crisis is not over.
In this episode we talk to Wojnarowicz biographer Cynthia Carr, author of Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz, who helps narrate the complicated story of an artist who has become one of the luminaries of New York's East Village scene in the 1980s. I also invited two artists, Jean Foos and Frank Holliday, who knew Wojnarowicz during his lifetime, to help paint a picture of a scene that burned bright, but was eventually snuffed out by a commercial art world obsessed with novelty, and the looming disaster that was AIDS.
A special thanks to Twig Twig for the music to this week's episode. You can listen to that and more at twigtwig.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
This past Monday, over a hundred members of UAW Local 2110, the largest of the Museum of Modern Art’s five unions, staged a walkout just days before negotiations were set to resume. The union members, who are employed in almost every department at MoMA, have been working over 80 days without a contract.
I invited two members of UAW Local 2110 to talk to Hyperallergic and tell us what the state of negotiations is with one of the world’s leading museums of modern and contemporary art. I asked them about the sticking points and challenges of the negotiations this time around.
And then I talk with Apsara DiQuinzio, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives (BAMPFA) in Berkeley, California, about the Bay Area’s evolving art scene, her current exhibition featuring two artists associated with the Mission School (Alicia McCarthy and Ruby Neri), and I ask her, how truly liberal is the art world?
A special thanks to Hellrazor for the music to this week’s episode, which features their latest album, Satan Smile. You can listen to that and more at lkhellrazor.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
We talk to Susan Unterberg, the person behind the mysterious Anonymous Was a Woman foundation that gives $25,000 — no strings attached — to female artists over 40. And then we talk about a boxing exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum that’s worth a look.
A special thanks to Miserable Chillers & Sun Kin for the music to this week’s episode, which features their latest album, Adoration Room. You can listen to that and more at https://miserablechillers.bandcamp.com and other streaming services.
Curator Monika Fabijanska talks about her The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women's Art in the US exhibition, and arts journalist Barbara Pollack chats about her new book on an emerging generation of Chinese contemporary artists.
In our inaugural episode, we discuss the top art news headlines from the week, including how New Yorkers can use their library cards to visit 33 of the city’s museums, an unlikely museum in Thailand, how a Stolen Arab Art exhibition is exactly as advertised, and I talk to emoji activist Jennifer 8 Lee and journalist Zachary Small.
Our guest this week is renowned journalist Jennifer 8 Lee. Not only is she a successful author (Fortune Cookie Chronicles) and film producer (The Search for General Tso), but Lee is a driving force behind Emojination, the people’s voice of the Emoji Consortium. We talk to her about how she helped bring the dumpling emoji 🥟 into the world.
Then we talk to Hyperallergic’s Zachary Small, who tells us about the four queer performance festivals happening in New York this month.
Hyperallergic's editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian talks to Ford Foundation President Darren Walker about the public's interest in scrutinizing institutional authority, Walker's own love of art, and the renovations at the Foundation's building, and also discussed Agnes Gund's new Art for Justice fund, the role of the arts for marginalized communities, and the importance of public education.
The music featured in this episode was “Give it Your Choir” by Mark Pritchard from Warp Records.
You can hear more from his latest release “Under the Sun” at http://markprtchrd.com and find more great music from Warp Records at http://warp.net.
Hyperallergic travels to Cairo to see one of the new wave of exhibitions that are reintroducing Egyptian modern art, particularly related to the Art and Liberty group (often referred to as Egyptian Surrealism), to a wider audience.
Artists Marilyn Minter and Xaviera Simmons both have solo shows up in New York this month. We invited them to chat with Hyperallergic's editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian about sex, art, gender inequality, Planned Parenthood, and the election.
Hyperallergic's Editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian speaks to mega-collector Don Rubell of the Rubell Family Collection about decades of collecting and establishing one of the biggest collections of contemporary art in the world.
In the Oceti Sakowin Camp at Stadning Rock, North Dakota, there is a prominent art tent area. Dozens of artists and volunteers are silkscreening and producing work among the thousands of waterprotectors and their allies, which have arrived to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from crossing the Missouri River. Among those artists is Standing Rock native Cannupa Hanska Luger and three of his friends, Jesse Hazelit, Raven Chacon, and Dylan McLaughlin. Hyperallergic spoke to the friends to discuss what is going on at Standing Rock and what role art plays.
Native American women grapple with the highest rates of sexual violence in the United States and two Native American artists, Rebecca Nagle and Graci Horne, have traveled to Standing Rock to create a Healing Tent and to work on their Monument Quilt project, which addresses sexual violence.
Hyperallergic traveled to Oceti Sekowin Camp at Standing Rock, where thousands of water protectors and their allies are trying to stop the multi-billionaire dollar Dakota Access Pipeline, which is being pushed by the government and major oil companies. We talk to artists about why they’re there and what they are doing to listen, learn, inspire, and heal.
Curator and art historian Kellie Jones is the guest for our latest episode. A 2016 McArthur Fellow, Jones is a lifelong New Yorker and an associate professor at Columbia University. She spoke to Hyperallergic about her work, life, and the evolving world of contemporary art. Photo: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The impeachment of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff and the current economic crisis will have a long-lasting impact on the country, including on one of the largest open-air contemporary art collections in the world.
Why were women excluded from the art movement that has come to represent some of the best of 20th century American art? The answer may be rather complicated and Hyperallergic’s editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian interviews “Women Of Abstract Expressionism” exhibition curator Gwen Chanzit, Abstract Expressionism artist Judith Godwin, feminist art historian Linda Nochlin, and critic/curator Karen Wilkin to understand the issue.
In the third episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, we talk to artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman about the For Freedoms Super PAC, which promises to shake things up during the 2016 US Presidential election by inviting artists to reflect on important topics during the run up to Election Day.
Our second podcast focuses on New York's borough of Queens, which is becoming a growing hub of artistic activity in the city. We talk to Tania Bruguera about her Immigrant Movement International project in Queens and her experience in Cuba, then we chat with artist Mariam Ghani about her commissioned mural at the Queen Museum, and finally we wander the Queens International biennial with director Laura Raicovich and guest co-curator Lindsey Berfond to discuss the exhibition's themes of accumulation and globality.
Our inaugural podcast sends our editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian to Morocco to visit the 6th Marrakech Biennial curated by Reem Fadda. There are interviews with the curator and artists Haig Aivazian (Lebanon) and Dineo Seshee Bopape (South Africa), as well as discussions of Superflex’s “Kwassa Kwassa” and Khaled Malas’ "Windmill in Eastern Ghouta (Syria).”
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.