After nearly three decades, the British Museum’s contentious sponsorship deal with British Petroleum (BP) is ending, the Guardian reports. The news signifies a near-complete withdrawal of the oil giant from the UK arts world, as partnerships with other publicly funded institutions including the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery have also come to a close in recent years in the wake of pressure from anti-fossil fuel activists. Advocates who have long demanded that the British Museum part ways with BP are hailing the news as a “massive victory.” “BP’s sponsorship of the arts has never been ..read more

This article is part of Hyperallergic’s Pride Month series, featuring an interview with a different transgender or nonbinary emerging artist every weekday throughout the month of June. For the second installment of our monthlong series, we’re shining a spotlight on the work of Tara Asgar, a Bangladeshi trans woman, asylum seeker, and artist currently based in Brooklyn. Born in Dhaka, Asgar became involved in local LGBTQIA+ community organizing to push back against the conservative and state-sponsored persecution of queer people. Asgar was involved in mobilizing Bangladesh’s first-ev ..read more

Hannah Lee, “Walkthrough” (2023), oil on panel, 48 x 36 inches (all images courtesy Entrance Gallery) In January 2022, I concluded my review of Hannah Lee’s debut exhibition, First Language at Entrance (December 2, 2021–January 30, 2022), with this observation:  This is one of the strongest debuts I have had the pleasure of experiencing in years. The obvious effort that has gone into each painting, along with the artist’s disinterest in developing a signature style, conveys an ambition and confidence that speaks well for Lee’s future.  For these reasons, I went to see her second ex ..read more

SITE Santa Fe presents internationally renowned artist Bruce Nauman’s first solo exhibition in New Mexico, His Mark, running through September 11. The show features a collection of new and recent video installations, including never-before-shown self-portrait work and 3D video. Since the 1960s, Bruce Nauman’s work has questioned the very nature of what constitutes art and being an artist. He is known for making his body — his hands in particular — the object of his art and a tool for analyzing the relationship between language and meaning. Exploring intersections between personal and historic ..read more

For Mashable, Anna Iovane writes about the importance of memes in our love lives: Why is sharing a sense of humor so important? “When we laugh, our brains release a happy cocktail of hormones that increase our levels of trust, lower our levels of stress, and make us feel more relaxed,” explained Hinge’s director of relationship science, Logan Ury. “The dopamine hit from laughing reinforces our behavior and makes us want to go back for more.” Our digital sense of humor has become an important part of our identity, Ury continued. If a potential date has a ho-hum reaction to your memes ..read more

Hyperallergic’s monthly Opportunities Listings provide a resource to artists and creatives looking for grants and paid gigs to further their work. Subscribe to receive this list of opportunities in your inbox each month. Sign up here! Residencies, Workshops, & Fellowships FeaturedCharlotte Street – Curatorial Fellowship This two-year, full-time fellowship in Kansas City, Missouri, provides emerging US curators a public platform to develop original, community-responsive contemporary arts programming. The priority deadline has been extended to June 15. Deadline: June 15, 2023 (11:59pm CDT ..read more

Leah Ke Yi Zheng, “Untitled” (2023), acrylic and pigments on silk over mahogany stretcher, 108 x 85 inches (all images courtesy the artist and David Lewis) The second time I saw the exhibition Leah Ke Yi Zheng at David Lewis gallery, I brought the poet Laura Mullen, who was visiting briefly from out of town. I was sure she would be intrigued by the paintings, and I was not wrong, as we talked about the relationship between legibility and illegibility — something that is central to the artist’s work. Zheng works in acrylic, ink, and pigments (mixed in one case with ox-bone glue) on silk, which ..read more

This month, boundaries collapse between high and low, art and science, the street and the white cube. A major Keith Haring retrospective at the Broad and an expansive solo show by hometown hero Mister Cartoon highlight their links to both graffiti and the gallery. Sarah Rosalena enlists computers to create her beaded textile tributes to forgotten female science workers and Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez-Delgado creates handmade living systems for a dystopian future. Jackie Castillo recycles building materials to reflect the tumultuous transformation of the city, while Beck + Col’s anti-capitalist ..read more

Judy Giera at her recent exhibition And it can give some joy at Waterloo Arts in Cleveland, Ohio, which closed May 20, 2023 (all photos courtesy the artist) This article is part of Hyperallergic’s Pride Month series, featuring an interview with a different transgender or nonbinary emerging artist every weekday throughout the month of June. We’re kicking off our Pride Month series with Judy Giera, a visual artist based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Giera creates sculptural mixed-media works she links to the consumer stylings of the 1990s (she even cites Lisa Frank as one of her greatest aesthetic i ..read more

I’ve had a question about Yayoi Kusama’s work for a long time and the new survey publication Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now (2023) has finally resolved it. In short, the answer is money, but I’ll back up a bit.  The volume features a roundtable discussion between notable curators and museum directors, and quickly, the topic of Kusama’s marketability comes up. The argument presented is that the mass production of Kusama merchandise — Kusama coffee cups, Kusama figurine keychains, and so on — has accelerated the democratization of art.  “We couldn’t have invented a better artist to be a ki ..read more