For many people on the West Coast, the weekend is starting off on a somber note as multiple wildfires continue to ravage LA County. As my colleagues have reported throughout the week, fires along the Pacific Coast and in Pasadena and Altadena, and spreading to other parts of the greater Los Angeles area, have caused massive evacuations and at least 10 deaths. As horrific as the images are, they don’t communicate the overlap of cultural and natural losses in this unique part of the country. I’ve spent a third of my life in Southern California and lived near the Getty Center for five years. I faced near evacuations, but never anything on this scale, and I can’t pretend to know what Angelenos are feeling right now. However, I know that it’s not just cultural heritage that’s in danger. Mountain lions and other already threatened wildlife make their homes in the canyons near the two Getty sites — as do people from a range of cultural milieus and economic strata, some of whom have lost not only their homes and belongings, but their local communities, in an almost inconceivable nightmare of populous urban and suburban areas being destroyed. Hyperallergic’s News team and LA-based contributor Matt Stromberg talked to impacted artists in Altadena, a gem of natural desert beauty just north of LA, and home to many working artists, and covered the loss of historic buildings in Pacific Palisades and the encroaching threat to the Getty Villa, which houses thousands of ancient artifacts as well as J. Paul Getty’s gravesite. This past October, I drove a friend through Topanga Canyon to where it dead ends in Malibu and Palisades and we both marveled at the sublime beauty around us. As I write this, I hope that we can stop covering these losses soon and return to the vast reservoir of creativity and resilience in Southern California. — Natalie Haddad, Reviews Editor | |
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| | | “I literally only have the clothes I’m wearing, but that’s the same story as thousands of others,” artist Amir Nikravan told Hyperallergic. | Valentina Di Liscia, Matt Stromberg, Maya Pontone, and Rhea Nayyar
Museums and galleries are shuttering as the deadly firestorm continues to burn through LA County. | Rhea Nayyar
The blaze impacted vegetation surrounding the structure but its staff and collection remained safe, a spokesperson said. | Valentina Di Liscia |
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SPONSORED | | | | The artist’s photography will be on view at three special evening performances in January and February. Learn more |
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LATEST NEWS | | | Four ancient clay fragments unearthed in northern Syria bear inscriptions that may be the earliest known alphabetic writings. Editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned from the Washington Post, claiming that her editor’s rejection of a satirical sketch prevented her from “hold[ing] powerful people and institutions accountable.” In Mexico City, a protester defaced the sculpture of Benjamin Netanyahu at a local wax museum in an action protesting Israel’s attacks on Palestine. UC Berkeley received a $2.6 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to fund a new initiative to confront artistic and academic censorship. After laying off its 10-person team and cutting its hours, the Pacific Tsunami Museum in Hawaiʻi is fighting to stay open amid crippling financial woes. |
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THIS MONTH'S CROSSWORD | | | | Ring in the new year with a new patchwork of clues, including the author of Maus, Leonardo’s secret scents, LGBTQIA+ flags, our EIC’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and more. | Natan Last |
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| EXHIBITION REVIEWS | | | | An eternal fall permeates most of the artist’s landscapes, in which gloomy and Gothic towns are shot through with a sense of impending doom. | Elaine Velie
A new show at London’s Freud Museum throws feminist ideas at the wall to see what sticks. | Olivia McEwan
Beuys tackled masculinity through humor and irreverence — but the subjects he parodied are increasingly a fixation for an oppressive segment of the population. | Renée Reizman |
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| | | | Diamond’s attention to the brush’s capacity to be simultaneously expressive and responsive is visible throughout her strongest paintings. | John Yau
One of the most beautiful aspects of Buddhist art is how intertwined an image is with its philosophical meaning, giving us a deeper understanding of the world around us. | AX Mina
The artist’s career in Rome was curtailed by the sacking of the city in 1527 by the armies of Charles V but they were so impressed by his visionary painting that they spared his life. | Michael Glover |
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MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC | | | | From the visual pleasures of Mary Sully to the cultural critique of Gary Simmons, to a lesson in Haitian art history, there’s plenty of great art to see right now. | Natalie Haddad, Hakim Bishara, AX Mina, Seph Rodney, Julie Schneider, and Daniel Larkin
Jacopo Ligozzi gave visual expression to the developing myth of empirical objectivity, of being able to successfully collect, measure, analyze, and categorize. | Ed Simon
For the so-called “1.5 Generation,” music allowed an escape from the binary between home and school, Vietnamese traditions and American culture. | Sigourney Schultz
In an amusing branding move, the Vatican debuted an anime-style cartoon mascot named Luce to mixed reactions online.
This week: photojournalists amid California’s wildfires, Leonora Carrington in Mexico, Black Philly artists sew reusable pads, an AI lawsuit tracker, and can fiction make men better people? |
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| COMICS | | | The final part of our NYC Housing Stories series focuses on its creator, who was displaced from his Brooklyn brownstone. | Noah Fischer |
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