Art and Resistance on the Nation’s 250th
Hyperallergic senior editor Valentina Di Liscia frames a holiday-weekend editorial around mixed feelings about the United States’ 250th birthday, citing heat waves and political tensions alongside what she calls “rays of hope,” including a Supreme Court decision that week to uphold birthright citizenship. She highlights recent Hyperallergic coverage, including John Yau’s review of “Life With P. - Philip Guston: Paintings and Drawings 1964–1978” at Hauser & Wirth, which discusses Guston’s 1968 move to Woodstock, New York, his shift from abstraction to a cartoon-like imagery, and his collaborations with poets such as Clark Coolidge, as well as the influence of Guston’s wife, artist and poet Musa McKim. The piece also points to Aruna D’Souza’s feature on artists who have subverted the meaning of Lady Liberty, including Abigail DeVille’s 2020 work “Light of Freedom,” made during Black Lives Matter demonstrations and reimagining the torch as a symbol of protest. In a news roundup, it reports that Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council will give the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs its highest-ever yearly appropriation in the city’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget, and it mentions other items including a Texas tattoo artist sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for moving a box of political pamphlets and zines.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Vandalized Modernism, Creatures With a Warning