Happy New Year! May this one bring you light. If you missed any of our year-end roundups, you can find them all in one place below, together with a selection of the week’s news and reviews. The online media landscape shifted again in 2024, posing new financial challenges for a small, independent publication like ours. The war on Gaza and the news fatigue of an election year didn’t help, either. That’s why the support of our members has been so crucial to our success and sustainability. It’s especially gratifying to see how the content we publish inspires readers, connects them with other members of the art community, and helps initiate conversations about important topics — which often take place in the comments section of our articles (commenting is a membership perk). For example, Mary Lee Corlett, a co-curator of the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition on Elizabeth Catlett, shared this thoughtful comment under our interview with art scholar Sarah Lewis, author of Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images (2024): “As a print scholar and one of the curators for the Elizabeth Catlett exhibition currently on view in Brooklyn and soon to travel to DC and Chicago, this statement by Dr. Lewis was particularly impactful for me and rings so true for Catlett as well: ‘I realized that the critical reception of [Carrie Mae Weems’s] work in terms of the nuance and volume of scholarship had not matched her massive impact on the culture. This had nothing to do with her work itself . . . But you have to run back the tape. There was such focus on her race for so long that there were few deep dives into the nuance of her aesthetic practice. It prevented her from having the kind of scholarship that her work merited, and it has impacted the very
shape of the field itself, as the phenomenon has occurred for so many artists.’ My hope for the Catlett show was precisely that it could provide that overdue dive into the nuances of her aesthetic practice, particularly as relates to Catlett’s printmaking, and I appreciate the way in which Dr. Lewis has so beautifully and succinctly made this point with regard to Weems.” And in response to our list of the 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World in 2024, members Margot Knight and Ron Dickman suggested championing the following: Knight: “No. 21–Thousands of years of knowledge. As massive numbers of baby boomer museum directors and arts managers retire, their knowledge, and yea, even wisdom, matters not a whit to the ever evolving ‘what’s next’ demands of the art world. Twas ever thus.”
Dickman: “No. 22 – Artists without gallery representation? Maybe they’re not even in the art world?” If you’re not a member yet, please consider joining now. Thanks for reading!
— Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor
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Hyperallergic editors round up the trends and habits we hope will be left behind in 2024 — and those we want to embrace more fully in the new year. | Valentina Di Liscia, Hakim Bishara, Hrag Vartanian, and Lisa Yin Zhang
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IN THE NEWS
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- A wealth of art and literature, from the work of Frida Kahlo and Henri Matisse to Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, has entered the public domain.
- Luigi Mangione-inspired street and protest art has made it off digital screens and into streets around the world.
- Descendants of Hilma af Klint opposed a potential deal with David Zwirner Gallery, citing the risk of “commercialization” of her work.
- Archaeologists have unearthed a trove of artifacts near Alexandria, Egypt, where some researchers believe the tomb of Cleopatra VII is located.
- Ingenious conceptual artist and author Pippa Garner died on Monday, December 30, at 82.
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FROM OUR CRITICS
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Gary Simmons’s art suggests that rather than make progress our culture more often makes elaborate circles over and over again on the ice until the music stops. | Seph Rodney
His toy-brick masterpieces are tributes to anyone terrorized and brutalized by the world’s great powers and their proxies. | Hakim Bishara
When Clouds Roll Away is an immersive viewing experience dedicated to the Johnson Publishing Company that prioritizes imaginative reuse over context. | Lori Waxman
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Why does radical feminist art pose such a danger to political power, and what can these artistic strategies achieve in increasingly unpredictable times? | Andrea Scrima
An exhibition hints that Jean-Léon Gérôme and his contemporaries deserve a second look for the virtuosity of their photorealism. I don’t take the bait. | Nageen Shaikh
More context could have resulted in greater connections between viewers and the tantalizing glimpses of profound and difficult human experiences in Peters’s art. | Brian Carl
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MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC
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When sales are robust, it confirms that producing and selling art is actually a viable activity. When sales falter, our world begins to feel untenable.
Ash Eliza Williams’s fantastical paintings, Jonathan Becker’s glamorous photographs, and group shows on reproductive health, light, and new worlds. | Taliesin Thomas
Pippa Garner’s last show, a Photorealism family tree, Iván Argote’s overgrown monuments, Elizabeth Tremante lampoons patriarchal art history, and more. | Matt Stromberg
Netherlandish art is remarkably coy about the whole colonial endeavor. A new book seeks to uncover those connections. | Natasha Seaman
This week: letterpress printing in the digital age, the origin of the snow globe, remembering Jimmy Carter, why Hollywood ditched color, and much more. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin
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OPPORTUNITIES & GRAD PROGRAMS
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Residencies, fellowships, grants, open calls, and jobs from NXTHVN, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and more in our monthly list of opportunities for artists, writers, and art workers.
Organized by geographic region, a list of arts-related graduate programs to explore and apply to before deadlines close.
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BEST OF 2024
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From significant archaeological discoveries to standout exhibitions, films, and books, take a look back through this last year with our #Bestof2024.
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