Hyperallergic’s 20 Most Read Stories of 2025

As this year comes to a close and we gear up for an exciting 2026, let’s take a moment to reflect on Hyperallergic’s most read stories of 2025. From our coverage of the Louvre heist to the rising authoritarianism in the White House, this year has generated plenty of fodder for art discourse, memes, and more. We’re proud of our coverage of the art world this year and the fact that we’ve published so many stories that have resonated with you.

This list is only a sample of the work Hyperallergic publishes daily. Over the past year alone, we published almost 2,000 stories by hundreds of authors, and reached millions of readers in our email newsletters and on the web.

None of this would have been possible without the Hyperallergic members who support our work. This year has once again been challenging, but our membership program makes this work possible give us the confidence to keep pushing forward into 2026.

Hyperallergic’s 20 Most Read Stories of 2025

(in descending order by total views)

1. What I Wish I Had Known About Germany Earlier by Ai Weiwei
   A German newspaper commissioned an article from me but then refused to publish it.
2. When Artists Are Too Old to Be “Emerging” by Damien Davis
   If the art world is serious about equity, it has to stop equating emergence with youth and start building structures that reflect the multiplicity of artistic timelines.
3. Monuments Were Never Meant to Last Forever by Nanase Shirokawa
   Art historian Cat Dawson’s new book invites us to contemplate a world populated by subversive monuments — or one that does away with them altogether.
4. Reclaiming a Whitewashed History of the Great Depression by Monica Uszerowicz
   A new exhibition focuses on Black Southerners documented by photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Ben Shahn.
5. The True Story of a Rare Eva Hesse Painting Found at a Goodwill Auction by Laurie Gwen Shapiro
   "Landscape Forms," a 1959 artwork whose whereabouts were unknown for decades, is headed to Christie’s after it was spotted online by a sharp-eyed appraiser.
6. The Museum Donors Accused of Sucking California Dry by Dan Schindel
   Pistachio Wars argues that billionaires Lynda and Stewart Resnick are harming California’s environment as they artwash their damage.
7. Can Steve Martin Help Bring Visitors to the Frick Collection? by Isa Farfan
   The art collector and Pink Panther actor prances around the museum’s freshly renovated Gilded Age mansion in a new video.
8. People Really Hate the Philadelphia Art Museum Rebrand by Maya Pontone
   The PMA is now PhAM, with a new logo that critics say evokes a football club, athleisure, or “some kind of Cold War monstrosity.”
9. The Louvre Was Robbed, But the Memes Stole the Show by Isa Farfan
   Digital commentators wasted no time making Pink Panther jokes and digs at President Macron as the brazen robbery gets absorbed into the online discourse.
10. The Painter Who Captured the Dark Side of Flowers by Natasha Seaman
    Rachel Ruysch's floral abundance is sharpened by an acute awareness of death, decay, and the violence of nature.
11. The Best Signs and Art of This Year’s Massive May Day Protests by Maya Pontone
    From criticism of mass deportations to hilarious roasts of the president, May 1 was a nationwide show of art-filled resistance against the Trump administration.
12. Donald Trump Brings Back “Degenerate Art” by Ed Simon
    The president’s obsession with cultural control is evidence of a continued fascist creep, and not just another joke exercise in narcissism.
13. Everything Is Not Fine in the Art World by Damien Davis
    Auction headlines offer a picture of health that hides a body in crisis.
14. 100 Assignments From Nayland Blake by Nayland Blake
    While ­these assignments ­will not turn someone ­else into me, they ­will provide the practitioner with a path to the deviations within themselves.
15. The Revisionist History of the Nazi Salute by Sarah Bond
    Elon Musk’s defenders were quick to claim that his hand motion was actually an ancient “Roman salute” — but that gesture never existed.
16. The Brilliance and Privilege of Jane Austen and Julia Margaret Cameron by Alexandra M. Thomas
    It is crucial to grapple with the colonial structures that helped sustain the lives and work of the two 19th-century contemporaries, both celebrated as feminist heroines.
17. Two Artists Withdraw From Smithsonian Symposium by Isa Farfan
    Nicholas Galanin and Margarita Cabrera said the decision to make the event private is a form of silencing participants amid Trump’s attacks on the institution.
18. The Trump Administration Looks Even Worse Up Close by Lisa Yin Zhang
    Photographs by Chris Anderson for Vanity Fair reveal the cost of remaking yourself in Trump’s image.
19. Celebrating the Science of Quilts by Julie Schneider
    The eclectic threads of An Ecology of Quilts merge to tell a story that starts outdoors, with seeds sprouting, blooming, and reaching toward the sun.
20. Monuments Collapses American History on Itself by Claudia Ross
    An exhibition in Los Angeles pairing decommissioned public Confederate statues with contemporary art captures America’s shifting political terrain.

• Best of 2025