Meeting a politician who strikes you as sincere and authentic is as rare an occurrence as a New York Knicks championship or a peace deal between the US and Iran. But I had this uncommon experience last week when I met New York State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, an artist and union organizer who’s running for Congress. Valdez is as progressive as they come, advocating for Medicare for all, universal rent control, taxing the rich, abolishing ICE, and freedom for Palestinians. She moved to the city in 2015 to become an artist and lived through the ordeal of fulfilling that dream, working jobs at Taco Bell, Trader Joe’s, and Pizza Hut. If she wins this Democratic primary on June 23, she would be making history, much like her top endorser, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. I met Valdez at a small gallery in Ridgewood, Queens, where we talked about her plans for Congress and her former life as an artist and art worker. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Another must-read this week is artist Julie Mehretu’s commencement speech at the Rhode Island School of Design. “Beauty and poetics carry weight,” she says in one of my favorite lines. “They are how human beings have always processed what is unbearable, imagined what is not yet possible, and kept alive the sense that something else could exist.” Amen.
You should also read Aruna D’Souza’s review of Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince’s joint exhibition in Venice. Spoiler alert: The show is too Black and White.
Also, happy Father’s Day tomorrow to all my fellow dads out there. To celebrate the occasion, we rounded up artworks about fathers by artists including Melissa Joseph, Arleene Correa Valencia, Ruby Neri, Mykolas Valantinas, and others. Nothing is greater than a great dad. Enjoy reading and have a lovely weekend.
—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief
Processing the Unbearable, Imagining the Radical
For the Commencement Address delivered to RISD’s Class of 2026, artist Julie Mehretu delivered a speech that reflected on what it means to make art in a world shaped by the ecological crisis, political violence, and institutional failure.
She encouraged graduates to think of their work as a radical invention, using an analogical mushroom to urge them, together, toward “fruiting in the wreckage rather than mourning what was lost.”
Mehretu highlights reaching into the “radical imaginatory,” the studio as epistemology, staying in discomfort, and a question posed to the graduates: how can we survive — and thrive — in the ruins we have made?
News
- The Obama Foundation revealed the first official portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama together, painted by Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby.
- The Knicks and Spurs game gets an arts wager: San Antonio’s Department of Arts and Culture challenged the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs to a friendly competition ahead of Game 5 on Saturday night.
- The Whitney Museum of American Art appoints Soyoung Yoon as the new director of its Independent Study Program following a year-long suspension of the fellowship.
- Arts advocacy groups are sounding the alarm after a congressional subcommittee last week approved a budget proposal that would eliminate the Department of Education’s only dedicated arts grant program.
- After Russia’s deadly bombardment across Ukraine, at least 11 people have been killed, dozens of others injured, and the nation’s treasured Dormition Cathedral was set ablaze within the 11th-century Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv.
- Russian political dissident and artist Robert Kuzovkov, better known by the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, has been killed in Poland, according to local prosecutors. He was 44 years old.
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From Our Critics
“Helter Skelter” Can’t Look America in the Eye
Richard Prince and Arthur Jafa’s exhibition at the Fondazione Prada cannot face the racial implications of its conceit. | Aruna D’Souza
“I Shot Andy Warhol” Upends the Myth of the Great Man
The radical feminist author of “SCUM Manifesto” and the bygone world of Warhol’s Factory come to life in the 1996 film, now restored to 4K. | Eileen G’Sell
Interviews
Claire Valdez Wants to Be Your Artist in Congress
After getting a Democratic Socialist Muslim mayor and winning its first NBA championship in 53 years, New York’s next big surprise could be a congresswoman who started out as an artist and art worker.
New York State Assembly Member Claire Valdez, a union organizer at heart, is running for New York’s 7th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. Valdez stands for abolishing ICE, taxing the rich, Medicare and unions for all, universal rent control, and a free Palestine. We talked about Valdez’s life as a painter, her political origin story, and her plans for Congress, if she makes it there. | Hakim Bishara
Features
10 Contemporary Artists Reckoning With Fatherhood
You’ve seen Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son.” You can picture Frida Kahlo’s family tree. There exists a litany of Dutch masters’ renditions of domestic scenes, children crouching at the ankles of adults. What about depictions of dads today? Fatherhood endures as rich subject matter, and there are a whole host of contemporary artists playing with it, questioning it, turning it over lovingly in their hands.
On the occasion of Father’s Day, Hyperallergic has rounded up 10 artists making work that involves dads of all kinds: immigrant dads, absent dads, flawed dads, fellow artist dads, adopted father figures — or an imagined vision of what future fatherhood could be.
In a Volatile Market, Art Basel Galleries Bet on Our Attention
For most exhibitors at the Swiss art fair this year, the answer is not spectacle, but rather laser focus. | Ela Bittencourt
Kaleidoscopic Subway Mosaics Celebrate Flatbush’s Theater History
At the Church Avenue station, Christopher Myers’s glass-tiled panels explore the rich legacy of vaudeville and Afro-Caribbean carnival culture. | Aaron Short
Kim Dacres Sculpts Resilience in Rubber
The artist, who uses scavenged auto parts, is concerned not just with materials but with what they reveal about the worlds they inhabit. | Daria Simone Harper
Guides
25 Art Shows Reckoning With the US at 250
From Indigenous survivance to quilting to modernism, these exhibitions and projects reframe and challenge the story of the United States.
10 Art Shows to See in DC This Summer
As the nation marks 250 years, exhibitions explore artists’ interpretations of the American flag, Joan Miró’s printmaking, collage as critique, Black design, Pueblo pottery, and more. | Emma Cieslik
30 Must-See Art Shows in New York City This Summer
Pierre Huyghe’s brain activity-inspired dreamscapes, Orientalism at The Met, a menagerie of mystical animals, and so much more.
10 Art Shows to See in the Bay Area This Summer
Demetri Broxton beads an ancestral path, Mildred Howard gets an overdue retrospective, 14 galleries share one space, Diedrick Brackens tends a garden, and more. | Max Blue
Community
- In Memoriam: This week, we honor a painter who made the everyday otherworldly, a poet-photographer, and a champion of Black artists.
- View from the Easel: Daniel Correa Mejía fills his shared studio with seeds, family photographs, and music that puts him in a painting trance.
- Art Problems: When you’re constantly asked for things you can’t deliver, it can be hard to tell who your real friends are. Paddy Johnson has tips.
Memorable Moment
Adorable Duck Family Steals Hearts at Frick Museum
Knicks in 5? The Frick Collection raises you “Ducklings in 11.” A darling mother duck and her 11 precious ducklings stole hearts at the Upper East Side museum after they were spotted paddling around in the reflective pool at the institution’s 70th Street garden last weekend.
