An Insight into Enduring Artworks Through History
Happy last Saturday of the year. We’ve spent the past few weeks rounding up the best of the best of 2025 — our favorite exhibitions and artworks, the books and films that moved us, memes that made us laugh and helped us process an increasingly dystopian reality. We also published our annual 20 Most Powerless list, a Hyperallergic tradition dating back to our founding days that parodies the market-driven media’s arbitrary “most powerful” rankings. Our first-ever Powerless list, published in 2009 (!), included “assistant curators living off $27,000 salaries,” and we’re afraid not much has changed … This year, we shout out undocumented immigrants, artists who’ve been censored, and other unsung heroes of the art world who are fighting for rights and recognition in spite of every effort to stop them.
This week, we also remembered the artistic legends who left us this year. Artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, filmmaker David Lynch, architect Frank Gehry, and photographer Nona Faustine are among the giants who will remain with us in spirit and through their outsized imprint on the world. Each week, my colleague Associate Editor Lisa Yin Zhang’s In Memoriam column offers thoughtful tributes to artists we lost, part of Hyperallergic’s commitment to honoring legacies as we look ahead.
Because art never sleeps, you’ll also find below our usual mix of criticism, news, community columns, and opinions: an art worker’s letter to incoming NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Wes Anderson recreation of Joseph Cornell’s studio in Paris, A View From the Easel, and lots more.
Finally, please take a few seconds to read this personal message from our Editor-in-Chief Hakim Bishara to learn a little more about Hyperallergic’s work and why it matters so much that you support us in this moment.
—Valentina Di Liscia, senior editor
Best of 2025
The 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World: 2025 Edition
Hyperallergic’s annual antidote to the lists of wealthy collectors, royals, and so-called tastemakers that pervade the art media.
10 Artworks That Spoke Truth to Power in 2025
From public murals to museum walls, artists mobilized their practices to call out injustices, expose wrongdoing, and advocate for a better world.
Art-World Giants We Lost in 2025
Legendary filmmaker David Lynch, sculptor of skylines Frank Gehry, powerhouse of Indigenous aesthetics Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, beloved curator Koyo Kouoh, and others we’ll carry with us.
Hyperallergic’s 20 Most Read Stories of 2025
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