2017: Indigenous Futures

By Kate Morris and Bill Anthes

On November 15, 2016, a “National Day of Action,” demonstrators in cities from Los Angeles to New York took to the streets in support of the efforts of the Standing Rock Sioux to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL). According to tribal leaders, the presence of the pipeline constitutes a dire threat to the tribe’s water supply, and will desecrate scores of sacred, historical, and cultural sites along its intended 1,172-mile route

Building a Table

By Ryan Kuo

In “Building a Table,” artist and writer Ryan Kuo discusses his use of HTML to construct the data tables in his artist’s project, Tables of Content, and the profound implications that seemingly benign systems of ordering have on society. With an introduction by Art Journal Open’s former web editor, Gloria Sutton

Restructuring Place in Hawaiʻi: Jaimey Hamilton Faris and Margo Machida in Conversation with Sean Connelly and Lynne Yamamoto

By Jaimey Hamilton Faris and Margo Machida

Jaimey Hamilton Faris and Margo Machida speak with Hawaiʻi-born artists Lynne Yamamoto and Sean Connelly to discuss their sculptural works for the inaugural Honolulu Biennial, Middle of Now|Here (March 8–May 8, 2017). Connelly’s Thatch Assembly with Rocks (2060s) (2017) and Yamamoto’s Borrowed Time (2017) recognize the significance of locality and place in illuminating the enduring impact of entwined histories and shifting alignments among the native, local, and global

The Prehistory of Exhibition History

By grupa o.k. (Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska)

Art history has long included studies of exhibitions as episodes or turning points within more expansive narratives. Such moments have opened art histories based in the studio, or among the members of a small, bohemian circle, to a larger social field that includes politics, audience, and market, before returning to the private or small-group interactions that have equally served to drive art’s internal means

Introduction: The Politics of Legacy

By Rachel Middleman and Anne Monahan

In 1974 news that David Smith’s executors had stripped paint from some of his sculptures catalyzed a long-running public conversation about executors’ responsibilities to artists, artworks, and art history. Forty years later, news that the same estate’s administrators tried to stifle the exhibition and sale of Lauren Clay’s diminutive, painted-paper objects inspired by that earlier incident has yet to prompt a similar critical response

Art Embedded into Protest: Staging the Ukrainian Maidan

By Nazar Kozak

Around 9:00am on January 24, 2014, Maxym Vehera, an amateur artist, comes to Hrushevskyi Street in Kyiv, mounts his portable easel some one hundred yards from the riot police line, and spends five hours painting the scene of a street fight in progress. Black smoke from the burning barricade veils the sky, tear gas irritates the frosty air, a stun grenade explosion shuts all senses down. The canvas falls to the ground, into the mixture of snow and ashes. Vehera picks it up, wipes off the dirt, and continues to paint amid chaos

In Submission

By Ryan Kuo
“As platforms from Submittable to Snapchat streamline personal publishing into drag-and-drop gestures,” writes Ryan Kuo, “the work being submitted becomes not the work, but a signpost redirecting us to a semblance of the work, subject to Terms and Conditions.” “In Submission” is the first of a three-part series by writer and artist Ryan Kuo for Art Journal Open