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Arthur Jafa’s Elegy to America

Stephanie Wambugu on “I Am Tony” at the New Museum; plus, catch up on last week’s NYC fairs.

Hyperallergic

September 28, 2026 — 5 min read

Installation view, I Am Tony at the New Museum (photo Hakim Bishara/Hyperallergic)

Arthur Jafa's recently opened survey at the New Museum is the largest exhibition of his work to date. Two levels of the Manhattan institution are filled with his iconic video art, conceptual sculpture, and photography across four decades of his poetic inquiries into Black culture, religion, virality, and racial violence in America. Writing on the show today, Stephanie Wambugu, author of Lonely Crowds (2025), wonders if the oblique register of some of Jafa’s work sacrifices its comprehension, favoring “the esoteric, cryptic, and obscure at the expense of something grander.”

For those of you who had to work the art fairs in NYC last week, I hope you’re taking some time to recover. Those who aren’t so jaded can catch up on our fair coverage: Jasmine Weber’s feature on a tribute to Black Soho at Independent 20th Century; Associate Editor Lakshmi Rivera Amin on the ever-political New York Art Book Fair; Staff Writer Rhea Nayyar on the Spring Break Art Show; and reporter Aaron Short on what sold at the Armory Show. (Or what galleries say they sold. Ahem.)

If there’s one thing I love about the Hyperallergic membership, it’s the chance to mingle with our members at our in-person events. And yes, maybe have a little wine. Those of you in NYC, join us this Wednesday, September 30, for a special event with artists at the International Studio & Curatorial Program.

— Valentina Di Liscia, senior editor

Arthur Jafa, King of Pop

Arthur Jafa’s survey I Am Tony at the New Museum in New York is full of the artist’s characteristic gallows humor that ironizes even the most morbid images and brings to the surface the solemnity of low culture.

Occupying two levels of the Lower Manhattan institution, the exhibition is densely packed with work that ventures beyond the video art that has made Jafa one of America’s most important living artists. The largest exhibition of his work to date, its ambitions — which it achieves with mixed results — seem to be to engage in the same themes Jafa has continually mined, this time in even more idiosyncratic and brash ways. These include the history of Black music, religion and secularity, American cinema, political violence, popular culture, and the Internet. | Stephanie Wambugu

Lisa Bradley Moves Beyond Luminosity at the Delaware Art Museum

The Delaware Art Museum presents the artist’s newest body of work in a solo exhibition spanning recent large-scale paintings and early works on paper.

Learn more

Art Fairs

A Tribute to Black Soho Inside a New York Art Fair

Historic archives are displayed alongside works by Emma Amos, David Hammons, Vivian Browne, and more in a presentation at Independent 20th Century. | Jasmine Weber

Spring Break Art Show Tackles Life’s Crushing Burdens

Fair participants touch on politics and current events through their own lens and invite others to do the same. | Rhea Nayyar

Here’s What (Dealers Said) Sold at the Armory Show

If collectors had any concerns about the wars or inflation, they did not seem to share them at the New York fair, where the mood was almost too serene. | Aaron Short

No One Is Reading, Except at the New York Art Book Fair

The overlooked, subversive, and playful currents of politics and queer culture flow freely at the fair’s 20th anniversary edition, held at MoMA PS1. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin

“Doyle Lane: Master of Clay” Now on View at The Huntington

Discover the first major museum retrospective devoted to the influential Los Angeles ceramic artist.

Learn more

Community

A View From the Easel

Welcome to the 356th installment of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. This week, Lara Saget hauls rocks into her studio and brings glass to life.

“I also have a mini trampoline that I’ve always had in my studio, it’s a reminder to stay playful.”

Dena Soukieh of Ceramram creates mind-boggling, hyperrealistic ceramics of pop corn, nuts, and more — just don’t try to eat them!
Hyperallergic contributor Emma Cieslik interviews artist Judy Lichtman, whose aluminum signs blatantly call out authoritarianism, for White Hot Magazine.
Mayor Mamdani and Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten visited the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center in the West Village and engaged in some lively dialogue about the nature of art with the youth, Hell Gate reports.

Member Comment

Well, this is provocative. I agree with the "over-romanticization of archives as infinite sources of liberatory politics" and smiled a Salma Mousa's statement that “we must resist the urge to historicize our struggle before it’s over."

But as a professional archivist of art history, I am amused that the writer's wrath goes further: "Archives are sexy, after all, and those who can spew its tenets and extricate its profundities are seen as practitioners of an invisible prophetic labor, or heralded as prophets of the limits and depths of our cultural horizons." I had no idea that the mind-numbing tasks of curating, documenting, researching, and cataloging made me a rock star. I just do it because it's a crucial and thankless commitment to preserving marginalized yet important voices. My greatest pleasure is seeing the fruit of these archives become source material for new art and interpretation.

— Lincoln Cushing on “Archival Art Will Not Save Us”