Confronted with a new national consciousness around racial inequity, two New York City art exhibitions focus on mourning with varying degrees of success.
Author Archives: Seph Rodney
Seph Rodney, PhD, is the opinions editor and managing editor of the Sunday Edition for Hyperallergic and has written for the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and other publications. He is featured on the podcast The American Age. His book The Personalization of the Museum Visit was published by Routledge in 2019. In 2020 he won the Rabkin Arts Journalism Prize. Find him at sephrodney.com.
Posted inArt
Michael Rakowitz Makes a Life Out of Fragments
Rakowitz has installed at the Wellin a partial reconstruction of “Room H” within the Northwest Palace of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud.
Posted inArt
With David Hammons, Meaning and Process Hold Hands
In Hammons’s body prints, the veteran artist melds method, intention, and significance.
Posted inArt
An Ode to the Year That Will Live on in Infamy
The Twenty Twenty exhibition at the Aldrich uses using hand drawing to record and describe the cascade of catastrophes that made 2020 feel like an entire decade.
Posted inFilm
A Premature Celebration of the Ascension of Black Artists
Black Art, HBO’s documentary on Black visual artists, unwittingly demonstrates what a community gives up when it strives toward the mainstream.
Posted inOpinion
Representation Alone Will Not Save Us
We love representation, the power of signifying, and the incisiveness of well-argued critique, but by themselves, these tools won’t effect structural change.
Posted inArt
Special Edition:
Special Edition: 
This year-end issue of the Hyperallergic Special Edition consists of reflections, that acknowledge the struggles that the Hyperallergic team — staff writers and editors — experienced right along with our readers, while also keeping in sight the exhibitions, events, protests, and initiatives that buoyed us.
Posted inArt
Derek Fordjour Conjures a Heavenly World
In “Self Must Die,” Fordjour’s penchant for lush colors and surfaces dovetails with the theme of churchified rituals of remembrance.
Posted inArt
Black Artists Claim Their Birthright of Abstraction
The artists at False Flag Gallery demonstrate the through line between art of the African continent and modern abstraction.
Posted inArt
Welcome to the Empty Gallery That Speaks Volumes
Mike Zahn gives us an image of Shrine’s empty gallery projected in the empty space, offering a commentary both meta and melancholic.
Posted inOpinion
Have an Informed Opinion About Art? We Want to Hear It
We are seeking opinions that encourage and cultivate thoughtful debate and make it possible to see aspects of an exhibition, policy, or initiative that we had not considered before.
Posted inOpinion
How Woke Are the Fall Shows at New York’s Blue-chip Art Galleries?
Looking at the upcoming shows from Pace, David Zwirner, Gagosian, and Hauser & Wirth one hardly gets the sense that we are in a moment of acute crisis.