White Is the Color of My Crypto Dreams
Gimmickry at the Miami fairs, controversial color of the year pick, curatorial silence, and the story of a 500-year-old foot sketch.
Market, market, market. That's all we've been hearing about lately. First it was the November evening sales in New York, and this week it was the Miami fairs. Here at Hyperallergic, we cover these events critically and keep in mind that there are other, more important things happening in the art community.
It so happens that our Senior Editor Valentina Di Liscia is a Miami native who knows the city beyond this once-a-year escapade for art worlders. She was there this week to cut through the BS and see through gimmicks ranging from a revolving library on the beach to Beeple's robodogs of famous men. I recommend reading her stinging commentary:
Wake Up, Beeple!
Crypto-backed artworks at Art Basel Miami Beach advance the wealth mechanisms they claim to subvert and make you, the viewer, a participant in the ploy.
Stop Putting Art on Miami Beach
The mere spectacle of Es Devlin’s revolving library on the sand betrays its aim of engaging us in the act of reading.
University of Arkansas School of Art’s Graduate Programs Are Tuition-Free
Students in art education, art history, graphic design, and studio art have access to further financial support through assistantships, fellowships, and grants.
And while you're at it, read a report on this year's edition of NADA Miami from Alexandra Martinez, who's based in the city.
Hyperrealism Meets Queer Futurism at NADA Miami
The strongest booths at the fair suggested that the future is seeping into the present and that mundane objects can carry the weight of worlds.
News
It was a kooky week in the news, besides all that Miami stuff. Pope Francis’s camera selling for $7.5 million and new photos of a creepy mask room at one of Jeffrey Epstein's mansions were just the beginning. Also:
- A recently discovered sketch of a foot by Michelangelo is heading to auction.
- Putin's government threatens to label the feminist art group Pussy Riot an “extremist” group.
- Amid scrutiny over its security failings, Paris's Louvre museum hikes its admission fee, but only to non-Europeans.
Opinion
In the same week that the American president calls all Somali immigrants "garbage," Pantone chooses a white shade as its color of the year, for the first time in history. Our staff writer Rhea Nayyar has some strong thoughts about that.
Pantone’s Color of the Year Sounds About White
After the year we’ve had, going with Cloud Dancer can easily be interpreted as a piercing dog whistle. | Rhea Nayyar
In other must-reads, curator and immigration advocate Erika Hirugami decries the silence of most American curators about Trump's attacks on democracy, while Leilani Lewis writes about the disheartening fact that Black American art is more welcome in Europe than at home these days.
The Cruelty of American Curatorial Silence
Many of my fellow curators, especially at institutions, have failed to speak out against fascism. What is it about being a curator that offers a free pass for political silence? | Erika Hirugami
As the US Slides Into Tyranny, Europe Champions Black American Artists
It’s a striking contradiction: Four Black American artists get major shows in Europe while the American institutional capacity and constitutional protections collapse in tandem. | Leilani Lewis
Fall 2025 Art Books From Yale University Press
Exceptional exhibition catalogues for Man Ray and Hew Locke, a landmark Louise Bourgeois biography, Robert Rauschenberg’s writings, and more titles to delight and edify.
From Our Critics
It took me a few weeks, but I was finally able to articulate the simple but extremely personal truth about my experience at Katherine Bradford's latest exhibtion in New York.
Hakim Bishara
Katherine Bradford: Communal Table at Canada Gallery
"A full moon glows bright. I get the sense it’s a moment of tranquility, of acceptance."
John Yau
Theaster Gates: Oh, You've Got to Come Back to the City at Gray Gallery and Unto Thee at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago
"By preserving and displaying things that could be sold on eBay or otherwise discarded, Gates invites viewers to consider the different forms that art can take. Yet with only the spines of the records visible and the dozens of African artifacts nearly identical, the whole display feels flattened."
Aruna D’Souza
Jennifer Packer: Dead Letter at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins
"Even as Packer mines an iconographical language of grief, what of its painterly vocabulary? In the artist’s hands, it is the delicate, febrile lines that scarcely define tender parts of a loved one’s body, like the feet that she renders with such stuttering care, as if she needs time to recall them."
Cat Dawson
Hortensia Mi Kafchin: Paintings Made for Aliens Above at PPOW
"As Kafchin’s painted figures — all arguably her avatars — elongate, slither, swim, or even transcend the human, she represents transness as both a capacious range of embodiment and a tight metaphor for the transhuman."
Read the full review here.
Community
A new kid on the blue-chip block in Art Movements, NYC’s latest eyesore in Required Reading, studios from Philadelphia and Yorkshire, England, in A View From the Easel, and remembering the community members we lost this week.
Crossword: Art Heist Edition
Which famous painting involving a gaping mouth was stolen several times? Test your art history knowledge in this month's Art Crossword.
Finally, please consider joining as a paid member to help sustain our work. It's tough out there. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful weekend.
—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief
