Twenty Years of Life in Chinatown

Picture this: You are a set of clothes hangers strung out on a rooftop clothesline, placed there by a family trying to extend their supply of square footage and fresh air in their small apartment (“Drying Laundry,” 2004). You are part of the family order created...

The Poetic Optimism of Latina Lesbian Activism

MONTEREY PARK, California — “EN CADA BESO UNA REVOLUCIÓN” “LESBIANAS. UNIDAS. ¡FELICES!” Such battle cries embody the poetic optimism of Latina lesbian activism across borders at the Vincent Price Art Museum’s On the Side of Angels. Captured by posters for marches in...

Memory Becomes Form in the Art of Candida Alvarez

Candida Alvarez’s Circle, Point, Hoop at El Museo del Barrio gets its title from a 1996 collage-painting by the artist. The understated work — a dark blue circle adorned with white string threaded through nails — is a stark contrast to the vibrant mosaics of color...

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...

How Helen Chadwick Took the Piss Out of Art

Helen Chadwick, latex costume used in “Domestic Sanitation” (1976) (© Estate of Helen Chadwick) It is perhaps a testament to the enduring power of the titular British artist’s oeuvre that, even at a substantial 272 pages, Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures...

The Woman Scientist and Artist Who Revolutionized the Study of Mushrooms

ALBANY, New York — Tree roots have long served as a useful metaphor for articulating connections between people, places, and ideas. And yet, it’s a limited structure. In the 1980s, French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari famously offered the rhizome as...

Video Art That Chases the Rainbow

Most queer people aren’t privileged with having queer parents, so many of us look to those who came before as role models. In Homage: Queer Lineages on Video, artists draw upon the legacies of folks who opened the doors we now get to walk through. It’s...

Refik Anadol’s Soulless AI Tribute to Leo Messi

Refik Anadol set himself up for failure. For his latest work, the artist best known for his shapeshifting AI installation at the Museum of Modern Art set out to immortalize a moment of sports legend: Lionel Messi’s 2009 towering header goal for FC Barcelona, which...

The Friendship That Transformed Frida Kahlo 

Frida Kahlo, “Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (Autorretrato con pelo cortado)” (1940), oil on canvas (Digital Image © 2025 MoMA, N.Y.; © 2025 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)...

Chicago Nonprofit Celebrates a Decade of Serving Unhoused Artists

CHICAGO — Do people need art? I know I always have, as something to enjoy, discuss, learn from, be puzzled by, and sometimes create. Obviously, I need food, shelter, and clothing first, but beyond that, art has given me a myriad of ways through which to engage with...

The Queens Phone Repair Shop Meets the Museum 

The For You page, as the popular TikTok comment goes, is getting too local. I, for one, am grateful. Umber Majeed’s exhibition J😊Y TECH draws from the visual vernacular of phone repair stores in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens — their densely packed...

The Communal Roots of Ben Shahn’s Social Realism

Ben Shahn, “Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco,” detail, from The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti series detail (1931–32), gouache on paper on board (all photos Isabella Segalovich/Hyperallergic) What makes a prophet? Whether or not we believe that Isaiah,...