A Year in Blue and Green
As writers and artists, we say the quiet part out loud, and we leave a record of our refusals and dreams.
As writers and artists, we say the quiet part out loud, and we leave a record of our refusals and dreams.
Detail of Rose B. Simpson, "Heights I, AP 2/2" (2024) on the campus of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (photo courtesy Jason Ordaz)
Blue became my favorite color as soon as I laid eyes upon that most reproduced of artworks: Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” a framed poster of which still hangs in my grandmother’s room. Maybe you grew up with a print of this piece somewhere in your home, too.
Over the last 12 months though, as blue as they’ve been, I find myself drawn more and more to the green that hooks my eye: the brushstrokes behind enthralled ballet dancers in British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s “Harp-Strum” (2016), the shifting fabric in Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka’s 1931 “Young Woman in Green” and the candy paint of the Bugatti in her 1929 self-portrait, the phthalo green skin of Byron Kim’s ’90s Belly Painting series.
But color is also an entrypoint — a way of changing how I see. Working with the many critics, artists, authors, and poets who have contributed to Hyperallergic this year, particularly our Opinion and Books sections, has required me to wipe my lens clean and reframe my thinking. That’s one of the gifts of editing; I love to learn and unlearn as I go along. And this year, I got to work on pieces that did what we in the arts are called to do — to respond and speak out. In New York City, artist Caitlin MacBride eulogized Kremer’s, a beloved and vital pigment shop that closed its physical storefront after three decades due, in part, to the Trump administration’s tariff policies. She describes how perusing its shelves became a meditative part of making art, grounding the process in tactility and sensation from the beginning.
Among the excerpts we published, I was particularly proud to share essays drawn from Black in Blues by Imani Perry and Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair by Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee). Perry writes unforgettably: “The same color could be a slur and a praise. Brown could be both luxurious and grotesque, and blue adornment could be garish or gorgeous.” What better year to read her words than this one, I wonder. Meanwhile, Pierce’s chapter begins with the bright red blanket in a haunting painting of Apache leader Geronimo, a reminder of the continuing fight for Indigenous sovereignty.
In our Opinion section, artist Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo) took up this question in a moving statement in support of the Institute of American Indian Arts, a nexus of Native and Indigenous art of all kinds, after the Trump administration threatened its funding. Scholar Clementine Bordeaux (Sicangu Lakota Oyate) provided a true history of Mount Rushmore, first and still known as Six Grandfathers, that you won’t get from a park tour. “Our eyes are trained to see the four awful faces of settler violence,” she writes. “But I still see the Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe and all the non-human relatives that will continue to exist in the region beyond white supremacy.”
Perhaps more than any other, this year in editing has only strengthened what artists and art writers do. We say the quiet part out loud, and we leave a record of our refusals and dreams. In 2026, Hyperallergic’s work of pushing our art worlds forward will be as important and vital as ever. Please consider supporting our work as a paying member — which, among other perks, enables you to comment on our articles. I hope you’ll consider joining the conversation and contributing in whatever way you can. Happy New Year!
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor
Art-World Giants We Lost in 2025
As the year winds to an end, we cannot move forward without remembering who we've lost: legendary filmmaker David Lynch, sculptor of skylines Frank Gehry, beloved curator Koyo Kouoh, powerhouse of Indigenous aesthetics Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and others we’ll carry with us.
Indigenous glass art takes center stage at the National Museum of the American Indian: Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass celebrates culture, craft, and storytelling. Now on view in New York City.
Lightscape, the holiday light show at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (photo Jeremy Weine, courtesy Brooklyn Botanical Garden)
Required Reading
Reckoning with Harry Potter fandom as a trans person, Hallmark Christmas movie plot twists, a hard-hitting interview with Santa, and the "best latte art in all of antiquity."
A View From the Easel
Welcome to the 317th installment of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. This week, artists from New Mexico and Ohio make work alongside their daughter and draw inspiration from local museums.
My 2025 Picks
A visitor taking a photo of Édouard Manet's "Woman with a Fan" (1862) in the exhibition Black models: from Géricault to Matisse at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris in 2019 (photo by Francois Guillot/AFP via Getty Images)
The History of Blackness Is Entwined With Blue
Manet’s portrait of Jeanne Duval reveals how racism trains us to see colors in particular and sometimes contradictory ways. | Imani Perry
This Is Not the Real Geronimo
Elbridge Ayer Burbank’s haunting paintings of the Apache leader capture a likeness that was only ever real from the vantage point of a White man with a gun, canvas, or camera. | Joseph M. Pierce
We Can’t Afford to Lose the Institute of American Indian Arts
The threat of defunding this precious, influential university is heartbreaking to those of us who know the worth of the IAIA experience. | Rose B. Simpson
Mount Rushmore Is Not My Monument
For a century, our connection to the Black Hills has been disrupted by this eyesore and those who flock to a place that we see as our relative, our grandfather and grandmother. | Clementine Bordeaux
Remembering the Pigment Shop That Taught Me How to See
Kremer’s New York City location, a painter’s paradise and key resource for conservators, is closing in November. For artists, the loss goes far beyond a storefront. | Caitlin MacBride