The Arch of Trump’s Triumph and Downfall 

Oct 20, 2025

At a White House meeting with donors for his ballroom expansion project last Wednesday, President Trump unveiled models for a triumphal arch to be erected in Washington, DC. The proposed arch would stand across from the Lincoln Memorial and welcome visitors leaving...

How to Protect Your Right to Culture

Oct 15, 2025

In modern democracies and republics across the world, governments organize group relations, compose and enforce laws, manage ties with other states, and collect taxes. Parallel to politics but no less essential for freedom and flourishing, they also often fund and...

This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Let’s Support Native Art

Oct 13, 2025

This summer, I took Diné Bizaad (Navajo language) and Diné history classes at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. My time there reminded me of Indigenous tenacity — the quiet, daily work of Native language and history professors, art teachers,...

What Does It Mean to Exhibit the Gun That Killed Emmett Till? 

Sep 30, 2025

A few weeks ago, when I heard that the gun used to kill Emmett Till was being acquired by the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, I found myself wrestling with heavy thoughts and emotions.  Seventy years have passed since J.W....

Remembering the Pigment Shop That Taught Me How to See

Sep 25, 2025

Upon entering Kremer Pigments on 29th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, visitors were greeted by bags and bottles of color: lapis lazuli, vermillion, malachite, a wide variety of ochres and iron oxides, oils from walnut, sunflower. There was even a corner in the...

Burning Man’s Black Vanguard

Sep 23, 2025

You never know what a simple “yes” can transform into. As the dust clouded around the soles of my Timberland boots for the first time in 2017, I had no clue that my life — and my impact on the world — was about to completely change. I entered the gates of Burning...

When Artists Are Too Old to Be “Emerging” 

Sep 18, 2025

About a decade ago, I was at a fundraising event when the director of a Brooklyn residency encouraged me to apply for a Van Lier studio fellowship. I had just recommitted to my practice and was hungry for momentum. I went home, pulled together the application, and hit...

The Twisted Logic of Documenta’s “Artistic Freedom”

Sep 11, 2025

S-21 is the name of a former high school in Phnom Penh that Pol Pot turned into a secret torture center and extermination camp. Between 1975 and 1979, 14,200 people were executed there. For the sake of the regime’s bureaucracy, every man, woman, and child was...

The Fetishistic Fiction of Museum “Tibetan” Shrines

Sep 2, 2025

If American museums were the only source of information about Tibetan Buddhist shrines, one would come away with the impression that shrines are elaborate, pristine environments layered with thangka paintings and silken finery amidst rows of statuary and ritual...

We Are All Picasso’s Fishermen

Aug 26, 2025

Pablo Picasso’s “Night Fishing at Antibes” (1939) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (all photos Hakim Bishara/Hyperallergic) A quick perusal of the headlines these days is enough for one to conclude that dictators don’t die but multiply, and that history doesn’t...

We Are All Picasso’s Fishermen

Aug 26, 2025

Pablo Picasso’s “Night Fishing at Antibes” (1939) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (all photos Hakim Bishara/Hyperallergic) A quick perusal of the headlines these days is enough for one to conclude that dictators don’t die but multiply, and that history doesn’t...

First They Came for Black History

Aug 21, 2025

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026, we find ourselves at a pivotal crossroads in the national conversation about identity, memory, and who gets to tell our story. This momentous semiquincentennial coincides with the centennial of Negro...