The Battle of New York
Artists reflect on 25 years since 9/11, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch calls it quits, and our list of art books to read this fall.
September 7, noon: It’s Labor Day but some labor has to be done. I see a young man at a cafe wearing a hat embroidered with the words “Contemporary Art Market.” If only he knew, I mutter, and bury my head back into my laptop.
September 8, morning: I meet Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar in Chelsea. We talk about the rise of authoritarianism, the decline of democracy, and other depressing things. In the evening, this gloominess turns cathartic as he delivers a moving lecture at the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan. They serve a buffet but I don’t touch any of it. On my way out, I stop in front of an exhibit in the hallway to educate myself about the Battle of New York in 1776. Outside, the Empire State Building is lit in red, blue, and gold. Turns out it’s to mark the 60th anniversary of Star Trek. Zohran T-shirts are still going strong in tourist souvenir shops. On Park Avenue, I pass by the ugliest public art I’ve ever seen. But I’ve never loved a city as much as I love New York.
September 9, evening: We throw a pizza-and-wine party for Hyperallergic contributors at our Brooklyn office. I meet the loveliest people. Some days, everyone just seems beautiful to me.
September 10, afternoon: We publish our first Pocket Review. These are fast, opinionated reviews of up to 300 words to read on the go. In the evening, I hop between several openings in Chelsea, including Johanna Unzueta’s sublime drawings at Casey Kaplan and a posthumous show of Yvonne Jacquette’s stunning aerial paintings at Karma. At the latter, I meet painter Katherine Bradford, who is looking for her lost purse.
September 11, morning: A single-shot espresso at 7am. A double at 8:30am, and a large drip to sip on for the rest of the day. Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr plays in my headphones. Between two trees, One World Trade Center appears on the horizon.
—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief
Artists Reflect on 9/11 and the Wounds of the “War on Terror”
Every year on September 11, New Yorkers pay tribute to the victims of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center — and to the wounds of the weeks and years after. That period was defined by grief, rebuilding efforts, and, almost immediately, a vicious campaign of Islamophobia and surveillance whose effects reshaped the world as they knew it. Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal recalls, “I sensed at once that the comfort and security Americans had long taken for granted were gone.”
Bilal is one of several artists from Muslim, South Asian, and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) communities whose lives were indelibly altered by the United States’s weaponization of the 9/11 attacks to pass the PATRIOT Act and justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Twenty-five years into “never forget,” Hyperallergic asked artists, curators, and culture workers to share personal and artistic reflections on how that day shaped their lives. These are their stories. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin
Read More
Columbia University School of the Arts MFA + MA
Applications open October 1 for MFA programs in Visual Arts + Sound Art, Film, Theatre, and Writing and for the MA in Film and Media Studies. Start your application today and join us for an info session on November 15.
Create what comes next with Columbia’s world-renowned faculty in NYC.
News
- David Rubenstein, the former board chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, purchases Joel Shapiro’s “Blue” (2019) just days after the National Park Service deinstalled the iconic sculpture from the center’s grounds.
- Excavation efforts are set to begin within the next two weeks for President Donald Trump’s controversial “Great Triumphal Arch.”
- Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch will step down from his post by the end of the year, amid ongoing attacks on the institution by President Donald Trump and his administration.
- A pair of thieves steal two paintings worth millions from the Renoir Museum in southern France during an early-morning break-in on September 8.
- Workers carry out a massive strike at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, citing “Amazon-style” labor conditions at its V&A East Storehouse.
- A new study finds that trust in museums is rising across partisan lines.
- In acknowledgment of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Brooklyn Museum installs “Free F’All” (1997) by Caribbean-American artist Michael Richard in the lobby for public display.
- Hyperallergic contributor Damien Davis receives the 2026 Rabkin Prize, alongside seven other arts writers.
- Tschabalala Self’s “Lady in Blue” is unveiled as the latest sculpture for the Fourth Plinth on Trafalgar Square in London.
- Art Movements: Kathleen V. Jameson is the Speed Museum’s new director, the New Museum gets new board members, The Met acquires Alison Rossiter works, a David Hockney show breaks records, and more.
From Our Critics
For Sophie Lewis, Femininity Is Not the Enemy of Feminism
In Femmephilia, the author reclaims femininity, sexual pleasure, and adornment from patriarchal narratives in art and theorizes their liberatory powers. | Eileen G’Sell
Read MoreA Portrait of an Artist as a Dominatrix
“I Want Your Sex” is a caricature of the art world more than an actually incisive critique, but it’s funner that way. | Lisa Yin Zhang
Read MoreOpinion
Lonnie Bunch’s Resignation Is a Wake-Up Call
Trump was a necessary blunt instrument for the coordinated fascist assault on the United States, but a hammer no longer matters once a picture has been hung on the wall. | Ed Simon
Read MoreThe Pine Trees That Would Not Leave Me
While visiting the Lebanese mountain town Dhour El Choueir, I couldn’t shake off a painting and a poem I had translated two decades earlier. | Khatchig Mouradian
Read MoreFeatures
A Brief History of Testicle Art
Kacey Musgraves’s viral disco balls moment points to a lineage of artists whose use of the genital form is camp-as-critique. | Phillip Pyle
Read MoreLA’s Lucas Museum Displays “Narrative Art” for the Few, Not the People
Friction, dissonance, and multiplicity are overall avoided in favor of superficial unity and a flattening of difference at George Lucas and Mellody Hobson’s new institution. | Matt Stromberg
Read MoreIn Queens, Immigrant Women Sew a Truer Atlas
The largely undocumented Latin American women of New York’s costureros, or needlework circles, are creating a countermap to archive the stories of their lives. | Amalia Uribe Guardiola
Read MoreThe Artist Residency That Never Was
Abstract Mag invited dozens of artists to participate in a summer residency in Georgia. Then its social media pages went dark. | Rana Alsoufi
Read MorePreserving Ernie Barnes’s Legacy in Paint Tubes
The late artist and athlete who rendered joyous scenes of Black life, dance, and motion is the subject of renewed institutional attention as his daughter, Erin Barnes, works to conserve his studio practice. | Aaron Short
Read MoreGuides
15 Museum Exhibitions to See Across the US This Fall
Tony Cokes’s riffs on the video essay, a Grandma Moses retrospective, and Abbas Akhavan’s US museum debut are among the shows to look forward to this season.
Read More15 Art Books for Your Fall Reading List
Guadalupe Rosales’s memoir, Christine Sun Kim’s artist book, Fady Joudah’s ode to the people of Gaza, and Elizabeth Alexander’s essay collection are among our most anticipated titles.
Read MoreCommunity
Artist Lucien Smith, Fixture of NYC’s Downtown Scene, Dies at 37
Following early market success and what he called “the pitfalls of gaining notoriety so early,” Smith shifted his focus to community-centered projects.
Read MoreA View From the Easel: Rujuta Rao
“My studio is presently portable, modular, and itinerant.”
Read MoreRemembering Jean-François Leroy, Lucien Smith, and Jibby Beane
This week, we honor the founder of an influential photojournalism festival, a fixture of NYC’s downtown art scene, and a fashionista and gallerist.
Read MoreUpcoming Events
- Virtual Panel — Craft Archive Fellowship Program: Archives in Action
Online | Wednesday, September 23; 5 to 6:30 p.m.
The 2025 Craft Archive Fellows will present their research on underrepresented craft histories in an online event hosted by the Center for Craft and moderated by Hyperallergic associate editor Lakshmi Rivera Amin.
