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Prolific Poster

In early 1987, six New Yorkers wheat-pasted SILENCE = DEATH posters across Lower Manhattan, sparking a movement that would reshape AIDS activism forever.

Combining text fragments from literature and other sources, Renée Green employs stylistic typologies to conjure alternative narratives, while using color as a categorization device and words as the building blocks for systems.

After nearly two years of extensive restoration, the soaring Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, New York, has reopened to the public.

While photorealism feels like a historical period of contemporary art, mostly limited to the 1960s and ’70s, Tim Hawkinson has transformed it into something very different. He conjures an awareness of time passing, and of his sitters’ interior lives.

Flaming self-driving Waymo cars, “Death 2 ICE” spray-painted across the entrance of a boarded T-Mobile store, highway overpasses dotted with anti-ICE graffiti, swaths of police cars lined up. These are some scenes captured by photojournalists during the mass protests against immigration raids in LA.

Two years ago, the historic San Francisco Art Institute was filing for bankruptcy and even considering selling its iconic Diego Rivera mural. Now, the campus will reopen as the California Academy of Studio Arts, a free, experimental studio program devoted to emerging artists.

If the school system itself provides any example, repressive policies and structural oppression necessitate creative forms of resistance. “On Education,” unwittingly, seems to ask: What comes next?

Some of Jim Shaw’s iconography might seem random at first, but the more you connect the dots, the more the insidious and, ultimately, catastrophic work of the US government, law enforcement, and military come to the fore.

One could imagine a dystopia governed by a hologram of Trump that wouldn’t differ much from the present. Which is to say that actual art, which is made by real people in circumstances divorced from this burgeoning monoculture, is now all the more subversive and all the more crucial.

The warm critical reception of “Wild Thing,” Sue Prideaux’s new Gauguin biography, illustrates two things: the complex nature of the artist’s legacy and the fact that, in 2025, redemption arcs sell.

“I firmly believe, and I wrote about this in my book, that the elders didn’t trust the history books to tell our stories.” —Tamara Lanier, activist and author

The word “tapestry” conjures Medieval constructions in dark, simple palettes, conveying religious rites and hunting motifs — but modern practitioners like Sam Dienst have demonstrated that the form is due for a (second) Renaissance.

New Jersey’s new duplexes, Nathan Fielder’s “The Rehearsal,” cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s new graphic novel, and more in this week’s Required Reading.

San Francisco’s Letterform Archive houses a collection of over 60,000 graphic design items, from as early as 900 CE (labeled “Exodus Manuscript Fragment as Binding”) to as recent as 2019 (a monograph on designer Jennifer Morla published by Letterform Archive).

“That’s what traditional Navajo weaving is: an interpretation of your environment. A lot of my earlier pieces were designed with that in mind. They’re not necessarily just stripes; they represent rainbows. They’re not just step patterns; they’re mesas or clouds.” —Roy Kady, Diné artist

Elonald. Elump. Trelon. Trusk. Mump. Whatever combined moniker you gave Elon Musk and Donald Trump as they worked in tandem to diminish any vestige of a social safety net that remained in the United States, say goodbye to it, because it’s over.

This new Banksy mural is less of a low-hanging fruit in sociopolitical commentary, and it certainly invokes a more vulnerable and personal touch than usual, but it’s still another installment in what feels like a series of work stifled by both surveillance and media fatigue.

In this week’s A View From the Easel, artists find solace in morning rituals and relish both connection and solitude in their studios.

Daniel Lelong, co-founder of Galerie Lelong in Paris and New York, died this Wednesday. Remembered for his “positive spirit, sociable demeanor, and enthusiasm for life,” the late dealer was also known for his commitment to the gallery’s success.

Feathers fluttered and tassels swayed as a gust of wind swept over the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where hundreds of queer “pilgrims” and their allies gathered in monochrome Medieval outfits for a Pride celebration like no other.

How satisfying to behold Saint Michael impaling a dragon in a Medieval manuscript. At Bibliothèque nationale de France, rare illuminated texts reveal why artists have obsessed over good vs evil for centuries.

Rashid Johnson is not recontextualizing these forceful phrases — “Promise Land,” “Run,” and “Fly Away” — enough to evoke a particular, unique meaning, but rather relying on their historical potency to do the work for him.

A tourist reportedly damaged two ancient warrior sculptures in the Terracotta Army after falling into a display at the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Xi’an, China.

Ten Asian diasporic artists explore how we create our self-images through technology, media, and cultural representation in “my hands are monsters who believe in magic” at Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts.

This summer, Los Angeles art institutions offer both sorely needed aesthetic escapes and deep dives into contemporary issues, including Barbara T. Smith’s early Xerox work and new work  by Jeffrey Gibbson.

Alice Austen’s black-and-white photographs depicted what she described as the “larky life” of middle-class Victorian women — dressed in drag, sleeping in the same bed, and appearing as though they were about to kiss.

Weeks after the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that a woman can only be defined on the basis of biological sex, one artist has taken a stand against a transphobic billboard with the power of a really large Dachshund named Saveloy.

Tony Tasset is the master of making things that are so bad they’re good. Over the course of the artist’s long career, this has included a 30-foot-tall replica of his own eyeball, a cross assembled from Diet Coke cans, bronze magnolia trees forever in bloom, dirty snowmen that never melt, and more.

In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, artist Alan Michelson joins Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian to discuss the process and inspiration behind the pair of works, titled “The Knowledge Keepers” (2024), on view at the MFA Boston.

Residencies, fellowships, grants, and open calls from the Grand Canyon Conservancy, the Dedalus Foundation, and more in our monthly list of opportunities for artists, writers, and art workers.

“It was hard for Hitler to say goodbye to the Arc de Triomphe, so symbolic of his long-held dreams and now finally experienced in real life.” —Michelle Young on Hitler’s 1940 tour of Paris, excerpted from “The Art Spy” (2025)

The public is now finally able to see “Africa Rising,” New York City’s only slavery memorial and one of its vanishingly few public monuments created by a Black woman. It’s just that this public will be in Paris, not New York.

This sweet and sunny season, let us indulge in the abundance of art in upstate New York, including “Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time,” curated by Hyperallergic contributor Sháńdíín Brown at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers.

Because apparently a gold-framed mugshot, chorus of New York Post covers, and raised-fist propagandist painting weren’t enough, another portrait of President Donald Trump has entered the West Wing.

Chief Mathew Kuarchinj and Tobi Borungai, Kwoma artists from Papua New Guinea, saw the Ceremonial House Ceiling their elder family members created over 50 years ago for the first time at The Met’s newly renovated Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.

Let’s get inky! A 19th-century condom etched with an erotic print is now on view at the Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in a display of various historical objects surrounding sex work and sexual health.

Featuring a wide-ranging medley of 25 newly commissioned installations with pliable interpretations of both home and design, “Making Home” takes visitors on a meander through the minds of artists and designers from the United States, US territories, and Tribal Nations.

Come this fall, a new Frida Kahlo museum will reveal never-before-seen scenes from the Mexican artist’s exemplary life, including her first-ever oil painting, a selection of letters, childhood photographs, and more.

Kick off Pride month with clues on Marsha P. Johnson’s biographer, Greek amphora nymphs, Victorian lesbian photography, a painter who was also Frida Kahlo’s rumored lover, an iconic Eero Sarinen structure, and more.

Our art show recommendations in NYC this week include Rashid Johnson’s survey at the Guggenheim Museum, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at The Met, the Cooper Hewitt’s design triennial, and more.

“What’s being asked of Black queer artists during Pride Month — year after year, project after project — is to show up, offer our stories, submit our pain, perform our resilience, and trust that someone else will decide how to frame it all.” –Damien Davis

When markets or fashion houses lack stability, personal style is a form of expression that can stay nimble. “Superfine” is a triumph not only for its expansion of Black fashion history but also for its stirring and substantive approach that centers ordinary individuals and their dress practices.

That play with desire, beauty, and the unknown is perfectly encapsulated in the name of Joiri Minaya’s performance: “Venus Flytrap” suggests a danger that lurks in the shadow of its beauty.

What do images of men in love during a time when it was illegal tell us? What are we looking for in the faces of these people who dared to challenge the mores of their time to seek solace together?

For your June reading, we recommend art books that celebrate the generational resistance and freedoms queer and trans artists have always found in their work, from Nina Chanel Abney’s new catalog of butch portraiture to a biography of the late-19th-century lesbian photographer Alice Austen.

Tony Tasset is the master of making things that are so bad they’re good.

As the Democratic primary for New York City’s mayoral election approaches, the city’s Comptroller Brad Lander, one of 11 candidates in the running, unveiled his arts and culture platform in the East Village’s 4th Street cultural district.

Weeks after cancelling a performance on Palestinian mourning organized by the Independent Study Program’s current Curatorial cohort, the Whitney Museum of American Art has suspended the program for the 2025–26 year, per a museum statement to Hyperallergic today, June 2.

A rich collection pertaining to lesbian life, activism, and scholarship hides in plain sight in Park Slope, nestled between the residential brownstones about a stone’s throw away from Prospect Park.

“I’m the last of the Mohicans,” ruminates David Cassirer, the last surviving heir of the Nazi-looted Camille Pissarro painting “Rue Saint-Honoré, après midi, effet de Pluie” (1897).