A Hiroshima Survivor’s Message for Jerry Saltz

Howard Kakita survived the American atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. (all photos courtesy Howard Kakita) Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic descriptions of the effects of the atomic bomb. I was angered and dismayed by Jerry Saltz’s August 6...

6 Art Books to Read This August

Fall reading lists may be popping up already, but contrary to popular belief, summer’s not over yet. The last few months have brought several compelling books worth fitting into your summer reading, from an exquisite book on race and water in contemporary art to...

Kour Pour Reclaims the Geometry of Abstraction

Kour Pour, “Twice Removed” (2025), acrylic, block ink, and esphand on shaped canvases (all images courtesy Kour Pour Studio, unless otherwise noted) LOS ANGELES — For artist Kour Pour, challenging the Euro-American art historical canon has been a...

The Visual Language of the Nuclear Age

On August 6, 1945, the United States detonated an atomic bomb on the populous city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing a quarter of a million people. Eighty years — almost to the day — since the devastation wreaked by that first nuclear weapon, Fallout: Atoms for War &...

I Lost My Job at the Whitney, but the Art Community Lost Much More 

On June 2, the director of the Whitney Museum, Scott Rothkopf, sent an email announcing his “suspension” of the 50-year-old Independent Study Program (ISP) to a select number of its alumni. Citing “a gap in leadership,” he officially canceled admissions for the...

How Do You Remember a Home Reduced to Rubble?

Installation view of Patterns of Life by Mona Chalabi and SITU Research at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (© Smithsonian Institution, photo by Elliot Goldstein) As Israel’s assault on Gaza rages on and residences across the 140-square-mile strip continue to...

Homeland Security’s Genocidal Aesthetics

The Department of Homeland Security posted John Gast’s 1872 painting “American Progress” (screenshot Hyperallergic, via X) Prussian painter John Gast’s 1872 composition “American Progress,” now held by the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, isn’t very...

Man Dies in Whitney Museum Fall

A 34-year-old man died after a fall from the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan on Wednesday, July 30. Police responded to a 911 call at around 5:26pm, the New York Police Department (NYPD) told Hyperallergic. Upon arrival at 99 Gansevoort Street, they found...

The Berlin Biennale’s Complicit Silence

BERLIN — The Berlin Biennale had not even opened its doors to the public when criticism started rolling in. In May, curator Zasha Colah told an interviewer, “There is no censorship, I would say, in Germany.” In reality, there is ample documentation of the German...

Met Museum Trustee Among Victims of Midtown Manhattan Shooting

Wesley LePatner (image courtesy Blackstone) Wesley LePatner, an elective trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Blackstone executive, was among the four individuals killed after a gunman opened fire in a Midtown Manhattan office building yesterday evening, July...

A Paean to the Bygone “Borscht Belt”

LOS ANGELES — From the 1920s to ’60s, the Catskill Mountains, with its woody resorts and bungalows, were a playground for middle-class Jewish families traveling Upstate from New York City. Dads grilled while lounging mothers shielded beehive hairdos from their...