This Fourth of July weekend, we’re sticking to the essentials: water, sunscreen, and art. Amid an avalanche of propaganda on the United States’s 250th anniversary, critic Aruna D’Souza offers an illuminating art history of the Statue of Liberty. Artists from Faith Ringgold to Claes Oldenburg, she explains, have long wielded the monument as a tool of protest and creative expression — a particularly potent reminder as Trump strives to stifle them completely.
Also today, Ed Simon revisits the mythologies and ideals baked into the work of the Hudson River School painters, regarded as quintessential American artists. Two centuries later, what can we learn from their scenes of both settler colonial fantasies and marvels of the natural world?
Plus, a glimpse at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston’s newly reinstalled Art of the Americas galleries, art fundraisers to support Venezuela, and our beloved community columns.
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor
What Does the Statue of Liberty Stand For?
Last July, Amy Sherald announced that she was canceling the National Portrait Gallery stop of her solo exhibition American Sublime because of concerns that the Smithsonian Institution had attempted to censor her painting of a Black trans woman, Arewà Basit, posing as the Statue of Liberty.
As artists like Sherald, Marta Minujín, and Faith Ringgold remind us, the monument is far from a neutral symbol of so-called American values. | Aruna D’Souza
News
- A Mohawk artist’s bust of George Washington, a matrilineal home altar, and a Dunkin’ cup are among the 400 objects in a new major reinstallation in the Art of the Americas Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
- Art Movements: NYC’s Swiss Institute heads to the Bowery, Raymond Pettibon and Abdelkader Benchamma team up on a massive mural, Seattle Art Museum’s new chief curator, and more.
- Art sales featuring everything from paintings and prints to photographs, artist books, and zines are benefiting urgently needed aid efforts in Venezuela.
- After 11 years in business, the contemporary art gallery Lyles & King announced its closure.
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Opinion
The Hudson River School’s American Apocalypse
One of the United States’s first major art movements registered anxieties about industrialization, empire, and environmental ruin. | Ed Simon
Community
- Required Reading: James Turrell in Denmark, a new album by Raven Chacon, a Black radical history of the Declaration of Independence, World Cup songs across time, and more.
Member Comment
—Charles Pompilius on “Steve DiBenedetto’s Cosmic Sense of the Absurd”
From the Archive
In 2026, Democracy Needs Museums
As the United States marks its 250th, institutions must resist the pull to simply commemorate and instead communicate the relevance of history. | Ken Weine
Opportunities This Month
Residencies, fellowships, grants, and open calls from the Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation, Ucross, AICA International, and more in our monthly list of opportunities for artists, writers, and art workers.
