February 1, 2022 • View in browser

Good morning. 🌤️ Today, RISD students design outfits for astronauts, the graphic novel Maus is a bestseller again after a Tennessee school board voted to ban it, and check out our guides to the best art shows in NYC and LA this month.

And join us tonight (Tuesday, February 1, at 7 pm EST) for our conversation with La Tanya S. Autry, the second recipient of the Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators. We will be discussing why curation is not neutral, what we should consider when we think about curating images of marginalized communities, and much more. RSVP is free and required.

Also, I wanted to share that last month we had the highest traffic ever at Hyperallergic with over two million readers. Thank you to you, our readers and members, for your continued support of the publication and our mission to bring you independent reporting, opinions, and reviews that keep you informed about art today. The best is yet to come.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief 

Smithsonian Offers Jeff Bezos Unusual Naming Rights with $200M

A written agreement between the two sides lacks a “Morals Clause,” barring the museum from removing the billionaire’s name if scandal hits. | Jasmine Liu

IN OTHER NEWS

• RISD students design microgravity socks, footwear, and other utilitarian apparel for NASA astronauts.

• Sales of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus on Amazon have soared since news emerged about its banning in Tennessee last week.

• Nearly 200 workers at the American Museum of Natural History move to unionize, citing COVID-19 safety and compensation among their top concerns.

HAPPENING TONIGHT

Beholding Black Lives & Curating With Care: A Conversation With La Tanya S. Autry, Cultural Organizer and Curator

Join us tonight at 7 pm (EST) for a special event with La Tanya S. Autry as she discusses her curatorial project Beholding, Black World Making and her Hyperallergic email exhibition, which will feature behind-the-scenes reflections on the project’s development alongside work by artist Sheila Pree Bright.

The conversation will explore Black people’s modes of defying ongoing precarity while loving one another, focusing in particular on artist images and information, activism and organizing, and scholarship rooted in Black liberation and anti-colonial pedagogies.

RSVP to attend.

FEBURARY ART GUIDES

In New York, lend an ear to a sonic fusion of orchestral music and noise from a concrete plant, watch furniture spring to life in protest or pleasure, and dance in a glittery reimagining of San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar.

A number of talented Los Angeles artists are having important solo shows this month, including contemporary artists EJ Hill and Ulysses Jenkins, key figures of the Chicano art movement, Carlos Almaraz and Richard Duardo, and more.

ART & MORE

Mauricio Lasansky’s “Nazi Drawings” Confront the Unthinkable Evil

Lasansky’s series drew massive crowds when it toured major museums between 1967 and 1970. | Lauren Moya Ford

The Desperation and Quiet Resolve of #DayintheLife TikToks

The genre originated in the first lockdown, when we learned to entertain ourselves with — and fix our gazes on — the minutiae of daily life. | Marek Makowski

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