Times are fraught as American democracy hangs in the balance, but at least we have the arts, right?
 ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

March 29, 2025

Times are fraught as American democracy hangs in the balance, but at least we have the arts, right? We can't be so sure anymore. After taking over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Trump and his enablers dig their claws into the Smithsonian Institution. The president issued mandates prohibiting funding of exhibitions or programs that “degrade shared American values,” “divide Americans based on race,” or “recognize men as women,” among other regressive edicts. In their report below, News Editor Valentina Di Liscia and Staff Writer Maya Pontone explain how this new executive order also echoes racist, pseudoscientific beliefs from history’s darkest episodes.

Meanwhile, life goes on with the Frick Collection in New York and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, reopening soon after years-long renovations and expansions. Aaron Short visited both to bring us a peek. Also, don’t miss the latest episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, in which Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian speaks with Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher and Seph Rodney about their exhibition Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

We also bring you impressions from two print art fairs in New York this weekend, plus a guide on what to look for when buying a print, according to artists and curators. There’s much more, as usual, including new books on Celia Paul and Mary Cassatt, scorching memes about Washington’s “Signalgate,” and the team behind a feminist audio guide at The Met. Please support us by becoming a Hyperallergic Member, and stay safe out there.

— Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor

You’re currently a free subscriber to Hyperallergic. To support our independent arts journalism, please consider joining us as a member.

Become a Member

Talking a Big Game: The Art of Sports and the Sport of Art 

Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian sits down with curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher and critic Seph Rodney to discuss the unexpected intersections of art and athletics.

SPONSORED

Mondays at Pratt Institute: Weekly Openings of Work by Graduating Artists

Free and open to the public, Pratt Shows celebrate the school’s graduating students. MFA and BFA work is on view this spring in Brooklyn, New York.

Learn more

IN THE NEWS

AT THE MUSEUM

What The Frick Changed?

The Manhattan museum’s Gilded Age mansion reopens next month, bringing its world-famous collection of works by the likes of Vermeer and Rembrandt back on public view. | Aaron Short


The Making of a Feminist Audio Guide at The Met

Curator Iris Moon knew she wanted to bring the voices of Asian-American women into Monstrous Beauty, and an audio guide provided the perfect platform. | Sarah Bochicchio


Yale Center for British Art Reopens With a Lesson About Empires

As the nation’s institutions are attacked from within, the Louis Kahn-designed museum marks its return with works by JMW Turner, Tracey Emin, and more. | Aaron Short


A Glimpse of Eternity at the Carnegie Museum’s Hall of Architecture

The assembling of these plaster casts of masterpieces more than a century ago must be understood as a work of art in its own right, a bizarre and beautiful triumph. | Ed Simon


SPONSORED

Call for Applications: 2025 Craft Archive Fellowship

The Center for Craft will award up to six $5,000 fellowships to support research on underrepresented craft histories, culminating in an article on Hyperallergic.

Learn more

NEW YORK CITY PRINT WEEK

The World’s Biggest Print Fair Returns With Surprises

At once overwhelming and exhilarating, the IFPDA show in New York City is a trip through the gallerina looking-glass of prints from around the globe. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin


Brooklyn’s First Print Fair Puts Community Over Commercialism

At Powerhouse Arts in Gowanus, independent shops, galleries, and high-profile publishers come together in shared passion for the craft and the connection it elicits. | Rhea Nayyar


What to Look for When Selecting a Print

We asked the experts what first-time collectors should keep in mind when shopping for lithographs, screenprints, and more. | Maya Pontone


15 NYC Print Shops for Your Most Press-ing Art Needs 

From DIY risograph zines to masterfully crafted fine art prints, this non-exhaustive list is bound to meet the needs of almost any project. | Rhea Nayyar

FROM OUR CRITICS

Catherine Murphy Makes the Ordinary Inexplicable

The artist found a way to expand the parameters of observational painting, causing us to look inward and reflect upon what we see. | John Yau 


An Artist Captures Life’s Relentless Too-Muchness

David Kennedy Cutler captures a time in which image has fully metastasized into reality — a mediated world where everything is always on and calling for you. | Lisa Yin Zhang


Woven Being Interweaves the Complexities of Native Art and Life 

Native and Non-Native curators come together for this ambitious non-hierarchical exhibition tackling land and waterways, extra-human connection, and nonlinear time. | Lori Waxman


A Brazilian Artist’s Intergalactic Wool Paintings

In A Head Full of Planets, Madalena Santos Reinbolt’s art celebrates her own identity and homeland, despite her marginalized status as a Black woman from rural Brazil. | Debra Brehmer

ANNOUNCEMENTS

MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC

Celia Paul Paints Her Place in the World

A new monograph brings the artist’s life into focus as she returns to the same subjects again and again: the women in her family, the British Museum, and the sea. | Eliza Goodpasture


Mary Cassatt Was Forever an American in Paris

In a new book, scholar Ruth E. Iskin emphasizes Cassatt as a distinctly transatlantic artist whose identification with the US and France were deeply entwined. | Sophia Stewart


The “Signalgate” Memes Have Entered the Chat

Users are lampooning government officials’ flippant discussions of a deadly assault with no apparent knowledge of the journalist in the room. | Isa Farfan


Required Reading

This week: The forgotten Bloomsbury artist, Margo Jefferson’s incisive criticism, Elon Musk’s daughter speaks out, the benefits of thinking about aliens, mental health coffees, and more. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin

You’re currently a free subscriber to Hyperallergic. To support our independent arts journalism, please consider joining us as a member.

Become a Member

View in browser  |  Forward to a friend

This email was sent to newsletter@newslettercollector.com

Update your email preferences


Hyperallergic, 181 N 11th St Suite 302, Brooklyn, NY 11211, United States
Click here to stop receiving all Hyperallergic emails.