This week: Artists and small nonprofits in Los Angeles speak out against ICE’s brutality and stand in solidarity with maligned immigrants and undocumented people, while large museums like MOCA stay tight-lipped and close their doors.
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June 14, 2025

This week: Artists and art organizations in Los Angeles speak out against ICE’s brutality and stand in solidarity with maligned immigrants and undocumented people. Our Matt Stromberg reports from the ground.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues its “cultural revolution,” as Ed Simon writes in a compelling opinion piece, with loud echoes of Otto von Bismarck’s Prussia, Mao Zedong’s China, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran.

In our Pride Month series, we look back at the history of the influential ACT UP group and the origin story of New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the world’s first LGBTQ+ art museum. Also, read below to learn how you can support organizations serving at-risk trans people by buying affordable prints by unsurpassable American artist Nan Goldin.

There’s much more to read, as usual, including Olivia McEwan on Edvard Munch at London’s National Portrait Gallery, our Reviews Editor Natalie Haddad and John Yau on respective shows by Jim Shaw and Tim Hawkinson in New York, Carl Little on John Wilson in Boston, and lots more. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful weekend!

— Hakim Bishara, Managing Editor

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Donald Trump’s Cultural Revolution

The difference between this revolution and those in Germany, China, or Iran, is not of kind, but of degree, and only so far. | Ed Simon

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What Galleries Need to Know Now: Four Key Insights from Artlogic’s New Report

Explore the insights, data, and recommendations shaping the future of galleries in 2025.

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LOS ANGELES PROTESTS

LA Artists and Orgs Stand in Solidarity With Anti-ICE Protesters 

While small groups issue condemnations of state violence and share helpful resources for communities under attack, the big museums largely remain silent. | Matt Stromberg


Defining Photos From LA’s Historic Anti-ICE Protests

After sending the National Guard to quell demonstrations, the president’s next move could be dispatching Marines to the country’s second-largest city. | Isa Farfan 


MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary Shutters Amid LA Protests 

The museum has become the backdrop of ongoing protests against ICE raids in the city. The Broad has also closed its doors. | Maya Pontone

PRIDE PAST & PRESENT

The Pink Triangle That Mobilized a Movement

The iconic protest visual used by SILENCE=DEATH and ACT UP became a key symbol of AIDS activism and LGBTQ+ advocacy. | Maya Pontone


From a Soho Loft to the World’s First LGBTQ+ Art Museum

In the face of discrimination, harassment, and the AIDS crisis, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art became a beacon for queer creativity. | Rhea Nayyar


Nan Goldin Sells Prints to Support At-Risk Trans People

All proceeds from the two-week sale will go to Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and the Trans Income Project. | Maya Pontone

SPONSORED

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity

The first US retrospective of Shahn’s work in nearly 50 years, highlighting the social realist artist and activist’s enduring relevance, is on view at the Jewish Museum through October 12.

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LATEST REVIEWS

Edvard Munch Was a Magician of Light

A show at London’s National Portrait Gallery reveals the artist’s astonishing technical skills, but the wall texts are laugh-out-loud amusing at best and art historically dangerous at worst. | Olivia McEwan 


Tim Hawkinson Makes the Ordinary Otherworldly 

His recent paintings of everyday life transcend the literal without becoming overtly symbolic; this is the tight rope he walks. | John Yau 


Jim Shaw Peels Back American Pop Culture’s Facade

The more you connect the dots in his work, the more the insidious and catastrophic work of the US government, law enforcement, and military come to the fore. | Natalie Haddad

John Wilson Spent a Lifetime Making Blackness Visible

His social realism style was well suited to the difficult subjects, including racism and other forms of oppression, he took on in his art. | Carl Little


The Dark Side of Education 

An exhibition at Amant reflects on the violence and complexities of the system by which we teach and are taught, primarily through the lens of those who’ve suffered under it. | Monica Uszerowicz


How Huguette Caland and Hai-Wen Lin Listen to the Body 

Playful and witty, full of bright color and unexpected shapes, two of the most delightful solo shows up in Chicago right now concern human bodies. | Lori Waxman

ANNOUNCEMENTS

MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC

Nadya Tolokonnikova Builds a Prison of Her Own 

The Pussy Riot co-founder undergoes a 10-day durational performance in a recreation of a cell in Police State. | Matt Stromberg


Free Clinic Teaches Angelenos How to Repair Damaged Art

Community members brought not just paintings and sculptures, but silverware, family photos, children’s books, jewelry, and even beloved scarves and jackets. | Rosa Lowinger


Indian Craft Shop Closure Leaves Complicated Legacy

As the US Department of the Interior looks to preserve the longstanding market’s operation, many see a need to move beyond history. | Vida Foubister


A View From the Easel

“I have come to welcome spontaneity.” | Lakshmi Rivera Amin 


Required Reading

This week: art adorns the steps of the Brooklyn museum, animals as sculptors, Sly Stone’s musical revolution, lessons from Kurdish women journalists, flying zebras, and much more. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin

MEMBER COMMENT

Brandi C on “To See New York’s Slavery Memorial, You’ll Have to Fly to Paris

Wow. I never knew NYC was so involved with slavery-related business. I learned through this Art article!

Always admired Chase Riboud’s art and now I want it back in the US!!

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