It’s the last full week of the year — congratulations! We’ve made it, no easy feat. If you need some help making sense of it all, why not turn toward AX Mina’s Art Tarotscope? We’re headed toward a “Hermit Year,” apparently, which brings with it a sense of “searching, of yearning, and of being comfortable with the uncertainty that today and tomorrow bring.” No end-of-year newsletter would be complete without some round-ups, and we’ve got two this week: first, our 20 most-read pieces, which doubles as both summary — the Olympics happened this summer, remember? Carl Andre died? Trump got shot? — and evergreen deep dives, such as an interview with South African artist William Kentridge and one between poet Kaveh Akbar and novelist Orhan Pamuk. The inestimable Sarah Bond, our very own Ancient Rome historian — who else would refer to frescoes as “sexy”? — rounds out the top 10 archaeology stories of the year: the oldest church in Armenia, millennia-old bread, psychedelic cocktails, and more. But don’t let these lists distract you from the fact that we’re still putting out timely pieces on the daily. In this week in art, we’ve got Senior Editor Hakim Bishara on Ai Weiwei’s toy-brick indictment of empire, Rhea Nayyar on a little-known Botticelli nativity scene, and Maya Pontone on nonagenarian Abstract Expressionist Rita Blitt. And in News, we’ve got a report on Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” (1970) being added to the Register of Historic Places. In Films, Joel Christensen, a Classics scholar, reviews The Return, a redux of Homer’s Odyssey. (It’s a lot smarter than the online discourse happening around the latter right now, trust me.) And we report on Rashid Masharawi’s From Ground Zero, which weaves together the work of 22 Gazan filmmakers surviving through Israel’s continued attacks, being shortlisted for the Oscars. And, of course, we can’t forget the final installments of Required Reading and A View From the Easel of the year. Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian steps in for the former with recommendations about Chinese gods and Yale’s counterterrorist tactics, among much else. And peep into light-soaked studios in Bloomington, Indiana, and Miami, Florida. Where else are you going to find all of that in a single week? We’d love your help in continuing to write, edit, and produce such eclectic, thoughtful, and hard-hitting writing. It costs as little as $8/month (or 80/year) to become a member, and you can always make a one-time payment. But whether you’ve got it in your budget to become a member or not, we appreciate you — thank you for reading, and see you next year. — Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor
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