“When people wear Palestinian embroidery, it’s not just decorative. It’s beautiful, of course, but it is saying something.” –Joanna Barakat, author of Narrative Threads: Palestinian Embroidery in Contemporary Art

In a testimony to the power of their organizing work, 100% of union elections at private, nonprofit art museums in the US have been successful since the contemporary unionization wave began in 2019.

Over half of the respondents to a survey of art models reported being unable to save any money for retirement or emergencies. Others said they relied on public assistance programs, including food stamps and Medicaid.

Perhaps we shouldn’t expect “Dreamworld,” the Philadelphia Art Museum’s commemoration of Surrealism’s 100th anniversary, to divulge every detail of Salvador Dalí’s inhumanity. But it is disappointing that it doesn’t even attempt to scratch the surface.

Just a few miles from Washington, DC, where ICE and other federal agents patrol the streets, an exhibition stands in stark contrast to the bluster of dueling authoritarians.

In a new video game, players can join a heist crew — consisting of hackers, acrobats, a museum insider, and even a grandma — to infiltrate museums and take back looted African artifacts.

Colombian artist Beatriz González, a foundational figure in Latin American contemporary art, died earlier this month. Though her iconography is often associated with Pop Art, her practice was rooted in the specificities of Colombia’s visual culture.

For the first time in its 62-year history, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art will present a survey of artists living and working in Connecticut.

After a nearly two-year expansion and a delayed reopening, the New Museum in New York City will finally welcome the public again on March 21.

Online Crusader content illustrates a clear pipeline of escalating violence for young White men, from MAGA hats to metal armor, in the political imagery they use. “Crusadercore” provides them with a historically bastardized visual lexicon, giving new authority to modern bigotry.

In her latest fundraising effort for Palestinian children, Ms. Rachel is presenting an exhibition and sale of artworks by kids from Gaza in NYC this week. The show is open at Caelum Gallery for one day on Tuesday, January 13, and the art will remain on sale until the 30th.

“You make work for the audience that you respect. I don’t respect fascists and conservatives, or billionaires who want to live around suffering people. My art is not for them. I make art for artists, and for sensitive people.” –Michael Berryhill

If you’ve ever tried to puzzle out what’s happening in Henri Rousseau’s haunting “Sleeping Gypsy” (1897) at MoMA, then you’re already familiar with his extraordinary ability to tantalize viewers.

It’s revealing that the title of Sue Roe’s newest book, “Hidden Portraits: Six Women Who Shaped Picasso’s Life,” names not the women it is ostensibly about, but the one man whose life they supposedly shaped.

The feature film “100 Nights of Hero” faithfully translates the feminist commentary of Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, but disappointingly deemphasizes its more complex narrative techniques.

The Ancient Romans were predominantly dog people, but the recent discovery of graves for pet monkeys on the Egyptian coast suggest that some Romans, including soldiers, likely kept exotic pets in their households.

Last fall was a busy time for Guatemala: the country hosted the Central American Games, attempted to qualify for the FIFA World Cup, and opened the 24th Bienal de Arte Paiz — the second-oldest biennial in Latin America (and its most ambitious to date).

Democracy dies with the erasure of the public civic realm. The story behind the privatization of Dallas City Hall is a prime example of this.

The New York Transit Museum is paying homage to the end of the MetroCard’s 32-year reign through a special exhibition that delves into its technology, history, and a now-defunct mascot (“Cardvaark”).

Roxane Gay on the Guerrilla Girls, the uncertain future of the dictionary, Trump’s attacks on Venezuela and manufacturing consent, anti-ICE whistles, Snoopy turns 75, and more in this week’s Required Reading.

Online and on the streets, protesters are expressing their rage and grief at an ICE agent’s killing of Renee Nicole Macklin Good through art. “In a world full of Trumps and Noems, be Good,” read one protest sign.

“Long-term loans are not restitution. They do not acknowledge historical wrongdoing, nor do they restore agency to source communities. Instead, they reinforce a museum’s claim of ownership over objects it has no moral (and often legal) right to possess.” –Emiline Smith buff.ly/5rMvteu

In Memoriam honors those we recently lost in the art world. This week, we remember the pioneering Italian painter Lucia Di Luciano, beloved museum curator Kathleen Goncharov, the avant-garde filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, and other greats.

Venezuelan artists and art workers Javier Téllez, Jeffly Gabriela Molina, Vero Bello, Cassandra Mayela, and Silvia Benedetti — who witnessed the bombings firsthand in Caracas — respond candidly to the US attack on their country.

Art institutions in the United States continue to force elections and exclude workers from eligibility to join unions, running counter to their own purported values and goals.

Artist Joiri Minaya’s “Venus Flytrap” was a site-specific performance series and installation at the oldest surviving botanical garden in North America. A new film, exclusively streaming on Hyperallergic, documents the process of creating this work.

According to the White House, two international groups working on cultural heritage preservation and arts policy are “contrary to the interests of the United States” and “waste taxpayer dollars.”

South Africa has scrapped a performance mourning victims of Israel’s war on Gaza that was selected for the country’s 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion.

In this week’s edition of A View From the Easel, where artists share their workspaces, California artist XiaoXiao Wu yearns for higher ceilings while Brooklyn fiber artist Desmond Beach talks about the studio as a container for emotion.

Online and on the streets, protesters are expressing their rage and grief at an ICE agent’s killing of Renee Nicole Macklin Good through art. buff.ly/v5B65RN

What Diego Velázquez, Frans Hals, and John Singer Sargent have in common is an academic ability to capture life as accurately as possible. That innate, confident ability allowed them to economize their brushwork to the absolute bare minimum in their own paintings.

“Do you know the hardest things to do? Make that first mark on that white canvas. That’s the hardest mark, because that can dictate so many things about the painting.” –Sylvia Snowden, artist

If Hew Locke’s art is meant to convey his experience as a Guyanese expatriate who witnessed that nation coming into independence, why build a ship that carries a replica of a British colonial plantation house? And why make a house that dwells on water?

Christie’s auctions off a painting by Jimmy Carter, Trump sells a painting of Jesus, King Charles hands out honors, and more news from the art world in this week’s Art Movements.

A new study found that seeing authentic, original art can help drop cortisol levels and reduce inflammatory load, among other positive effects on the nervous system.

Ayoung Kim’s exhibition at MoMA PS1 synthesizes live-action footage, video game engines, and generative AI to create an interlocking series of speculative narratives.

What’s fascinating about Manet vs. Degas is the degree to which the work of each artist seemed to possess whatever the other lacked.

Art dealer Bertrand Scholler, owner of 55 Bellechasse gallery in Paris, has been found guilty of cyberbullying France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron, partaking in a conspiracy theory that she was assigned male at birth.

The arts are a public good on the same level as education, healthcare, housing, transportation, and public safety. Housing reform, cultural funding equity, and fair wages for artists and cultural workers must all be tackled intersectionally to enable New York City's arts sector to thrive.

Joyce Kozloff at the Everson Museum of Art, Nina Katchadourian at the Hyde Collection, and recent political paintings by Linda Mussmann at Time & Space Limited are just some of the shows we’re seeing in Upstate New York this month.

Without didacticism, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra makes visible the connection between the exploitation of the natural world and the subordination of women.

Artists and art workers in the Venezuelan diaspora shared a mix of emotions, from hope of a better future to anger over the unsanctioned intervention and fear of what’s to come.

The painter Bill Rice is a singular chronicler of urban solitude between dusk and dawn. His depictions of New York’s Lower East Side are paradoxes of bleakness and sensuality, gloom and intrepid spirits.

Is there any real rivalry in Tate Britain’s “Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals,” or is it a PR exercise to lure us through the door?

Olga de Amaral at Lisson Gallery, Marianne Vitale at Journal Gallery, and a group show celebrating seven Indigenous women artists at Angels Gate Cultural Center are just some of the exhibitions we’re seeing in LA this month.

Though it offers little in the way of John Singer Sargent’s artistic engagement with the city he called home for a decade, “Dazzling Paris” at the Musée d’Orsay is a reminder of his uncommonly skillful brushwork.

Kathleen Goncharov, a longtime curator who served as the US Commissioner for the 50th Venice Biennale, has died at the age of 73. “Kathy was an artist at heart, and this sensibility shaped everything she did,” wrote artist and friend Robert Ransick.

Can influencers call themselves artists? Digital content creators are reportedly adapting their metrics to apply for the O-1B visa for “extraordinary” abilities in the arts.

Looking to apply to grad school? We’ve organized a list of arts-related MFA, MA, and PhD programs to explore and apply to before their deadlines early next year!

Cecilia Giménez rose to fame in the 2010s for her delightful restoration of a Zaragoza church fresco. The face that launched a million memes, affectionately known as “Beast Jesus,” may not have inspired religious ecstasy, but it birthed a cultural icon.