Hyperallergic

As the 61st Venice Biennale opens its doors to the public today, May 9, 54 artists in the international exhibition and 16 national pavilion teams have issued their withdrawal from awards consideration in solidarity with the jury's resignation. A complete list of artists, duos, and collectives that withdrew is included at the end of this article. The Biennale jury announced its resignation on April 30, about a week after stating it would not be considering “countries whose leaders are

After a lively art-world week humming with protests and resistance, from the Venice Biennale to the Met Gala to New York's American Folk Art Museum, we've made it to Saturday. Tomorrow, we celebrate the mothers in our lives, and to mark the occasion, Staff Writer Isa Farfan asked 15 artists to share the best advice they got from their moms or maternal figures. “My mother sagely advised that I would be appreciated in college, and she was right,” said Pat Oleszko, who &#x20

VENICE — Artists and cultural workers made history at the Venice Biennale today as they launched a major strike that disrupted the pre-opening of the international exhibition. It is the first cultural strike in the biennale's 131-year history. At least 27 of the exhibition’s 100 national pavilions were partially or fully shut down this morning, May 8, while artists draped or altered their works in the main exhibition In Minor Keys as part of a 24-hour strike for Palestine an

It feels appropriate that Mierle Laderman Ukeles operated mostly beneath the notice of the general public for decades. As a “maintenance artist,” she focused on marginal labor, such as the upkeep of public spaces or the unpaid maternal and feminine labor that for a long time wasn’t thought of as proper work, and sometimes still isn’t. In 2017, 40 years after she became artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, Ukeles received her first career

Mary Frank charted a far different path from her male counterparts in the second half of the 20th century, who rejected the handmade in favor of fabrication. Frank, who is in her early 90s, and has been making work rooted in mythology and her study of dance with Martha Graham for decades, has long deserved to have her multi-genre work celebrated by a New York museum. The fact that this has not happened is not simply a matter of neglect or oversight — it is one of the many instances where,

VENICE — A seagull nesting among the national pavilions of the Venice Biennale has become one of the exhibition’s most unexpected attractions. The bird has laid eggs outside Poland’s pavilion in the Giardini, prompting bemusement among visitors as photographs circulated online and in the art press.According to the Biennale press office, organizers believe this is the first known instance of a seagull nesting in such a prominent area of the exhibition grounds. Officials said

Each year, on Mother’s Day, I reflect on the endless reel of catchy maternal slogans that involuntarily cycles through my mind. A repeat offender in my own playlist of advice is an axiom from my grandmother, Barbara Sapienza, an abstract oil painter, for how to “unfuck” one’s life. (For the first 20 years of your life, you get fucked up by your parents. You spend the following 20 years "un-fucking" yourself. And then, if you’re lucky, you spend t

PASADENA — Printed Matter’s Los Angeles Art Book Fair returned to the Art Center College of Design last night with over 250 exhibitors — slightly scaled back from over 300 last year — roughly a fifth of whom were at the fair for the first time. Among the lavish monographs and eye-popping, risograph-printed zines, the archive was a common thread. Publications excavated and remixed appropriated media, collapsing time and giving historical ephemera contemporary rele

Welcome to the 336th installment of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. This week, Brenda Zlamany returns to her ancestral village near the Pollino National Park in Italy, where she paints in an old sausage factory and grows her own olives. (Fun fact: I walked by her 2016 "Portrait of Yale's First Seven Women PhDs" on many late nights as a student in the Sterling Memorial Library.)Want to take part? Check out our submission guidelines&

At the United States pavilion for the 2024 Venice Biennale, Jeffrey Gibson’s work was a joyful celebration of Indigenous life; in 2022, Simone Leigh’s was a hymn to Black sovereignty. How, then, did we get Alma Allen’s art from the “land of the bland” at this year’s edition? That’s precisely what Editor-in-Chief Hakim Bishara wanted to know. Read his full review for a snapshot of the sad state of affairs at this year’s US pavilion. Also in

VENICE — The 61st Venice Biennale may be marked by various protests as artists hum through the exhibitions, hundreds gather in front of the temporary Israeli pavilion in the Arsenale, and Pussy Riot makes their presence known in front of the Russian pavilion in the Giardini. More actions are planned for tomorrow, May 8, but the heart of the biennial art olympics — the international exhibition — beats on. Led by artistic director Koyo Kouoh, who died last May at age 57,

VENICE — Alma Allen’s United States pavilion at the Venice Biennale says nothing, does nothing, means nothing, and goes nowhere. Curated by Jeffrey Uslip, who resigned from a job in 2016 after accusations of “racial insensitivity,” the show is titled Call Me the Breeze. That's also the title of a 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd song. A breeze is something refreshing, nourishing, mood-altering. However, I left Allen’s pavilion feeling the same as I did before. Not

VENICE — In the middle of the second day of the Venice Biennale’s opening preview, Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons took the first step of a poetry caravan across seven locations in the Giardini in honor of Koyo Kouoh, the late curator of this year’s main exhibition, In Minor Keys.“Today and forever, Koyo Kouoh, you are here with us… We are coming. Almost there, mother of the water. Almost there, mother of the ocean,” Campos-Pons announced t

Forty years ago, New York was almost the opposite of what it is today. Though the city had mostly pulled back from the brink of breakdown brought on by White Flight, bankruptcy, etc., by the early 1980s, whole neighborhoods still seemed to have collapsed. Little did I know at the time that, as bad as it was, the city had become a kind of canvas. Graffiti — the art movement of the day — filled the empty spaces. Walls, subway cars, you name it: Everything was covered with magic marke

Left to right: New Museum Artists-in-Residence Yun Choi (photo Verena Blok), Alison Kuo (photo Da Ping Luo), and Korakrit Arunanondchai (photo Brad Trone) (all courtesy New Museum)Art Movements, published every Thursday afternoon, is a roundup of must-know news, appointments, awards, and other happenings in today’s chaotic art world.New Museum, New Artist ResidentsYun Choi, Alison Kuo, and Korakrit Arunanondchai will take up residence in the New Museum's Artist Studio, a dedicat

Journalist Omar El Akkad’s viral aphorism, “one day, everyone will have always been against this,” hangs solemnly over the art-world Olympics. At this week’s Venice Biennale previews, so far, the protests are louder than the art — as is the silence of those who choose not to speak up.Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hakim Bishara reports from a roaring rally outside the Israeli pavilion, where South African artist Nolan Oswald Dennis tells him that protesting is &

Artist, writer, editor, and cultural organizer Steven Durland died on March 11 at the age of 75 after a brief illness. His longtime collaborator and life partner, Linda Frye Burnham, confirmed his death in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, his home base of three decades. Durland was born in 1951 in Long Beach, California, and raised in South Dakota. Over the course of his early life, he lived in Massachusetts and New York before returning to the West Coast in the early 1980s. In 1993, together wit

New revelations that Israeli pavilion artist Belu-Simion Fainaru issued legal threats against the Venice Biennale may shed light on the awards jury’s sudden decision to step down from this year’s event. According to the Italian news agency Adnkronos and as independently confirmed by Hyperallergic, Fainaru filed legal warnings outlining allegations of antisemitism and nationality-based discrimination shortly after the jury initially stated that it would not consider countries accuse

As robust May flowers bloom in all directions, we embrace the vibrant energy of Primavera. Amid increasing global chaos, art endures as the ultimate stronghold of free expression against tyranny. This month, the Hessel Museum of Art presents the annual showcase of dynamic exhibitions by recent graduates of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. September Gallery features dreamy explorations in camera-less photography by Daniele Frazier and empowered mixed-media works by Lukaza Branfm

In Memoriam is published every Wednesday afternoon and honors those we recently lost in the art world.Doris F. Fisher (1931–2026)Arts patronThe co-founder of clothing retail company The Gap, she, and her husband, Don, amassed one of the country's largest modern and contemporary art collections. The couple pledged more than 1,000 works to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2009. A portion of that collection consiting of nearly 250 works by 35 artists is currently on view a