Arts

Arts

Become a paid member to listen to this article As 2025 comes to a close, we take a look back at our top 10 stories that got the most attention this past year. Our most popular articles span the topics you care about most-from transit and art to historic preservation, film locations, and the hidden secrets of NYC. Enjoy our countdown and let us know what your favorite story was this year!

turning the city into a living canvas where art became accessible to all. Through their perspectives, the theme 'In the Blink of an Eye' emerged not only as a reference to light and speed, but also to the city's rapid transformation and its deeper cultural timelines. The curators describe the festival as a public encounter with memory, imagination, and everyday life, revealing how light can connect communities across generations and geographies.

By now, you will be used to the feminist practice of finding a historical woman and rescuing her from the clutches of evil biographers who have done her dirty. What if Marie Antoinette or Typhoid Mary were a more rounded figure-more constrained by the expectations of her time, perhaps, or a victim of her circumstances and upbringing? That is not the approach that the playwright Cole Escola has taken in Oh, Mary!, which is currently playing on Broadway and has just opened in London.

Aside from the nationally famous amphibian who cavorted in front of the ICE facility in South Portland, though, our theaters were alight with the passion and profound insights brought to us by an array of directors, actors, musicians and designers. Not only has their work sparked conversation and mirrored the pain and joy of being human - in general and specifically in 2025 - these artists offered us something we all crave: delight and entertainment.

Foreboding music begins. A scary green witch announces her arrival with a cackle. It's the opening of Wicked Witches, a British holiday-time play known as a "pantomime," at a North London theater. But soon after she walks on stage, it's clear the witch isn't happy with the audience. She says the audience is being too quiet, and should boo her as loudly as they can, because she is the "villain" of the pantomime.

As this year comes to a close and we gear up for an exciting 2026, let's take a moment to reflect on Hyperallergic 's most read stories of 2025. From our coverage of the Louvre heist to the rising authoritarianism in the White House, this year has generated plenty of fodder for art discourse, memes, and more. We're proud of our coverage of the art world this year and the fact that we've published so many stories that have resonated with you.

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.

"I came home finally from a red eye, and I slept for, I want to say, like, 30 hours," she told Morning Edition host Leila Fadel. "I clearly needed it. And now my back hurts. I'm 40, so that's okay."

In a year marked by political unease, cultural whiplash, and an industry still recalibrating its sense of purpose and underlying economics, New York theater often looked backward even as it searched for new ways forward. This list reflects the ten best Broadway and OffBroadway shows that opened in 2025. Thus, it does include shows that were part of the 2024-2025 season but opened in 2024, including Maybe Happy Ending and Sunset Boulevard.

For instance, I didn't expect to be writing this very piece just days after PG&E shit the bed (again) and sent most of our fair city into a days-long blackout. I didn't expect said blackout a mere two weeks after a PG&E gasline caused another residential explosion in the East Bay. And I certainly didn't expect to write that the aforementioned blackout made notoriously-homocidal robo-taxis cause the very sort of gridlock everyone was expecting to happen from closing The Great Highway.

I've always wanted to bring it back home,

In the heart of San Francisco Chinatown, Portsmouth Square. As Seen on "America's Got Talent" Season 7, LionDanceME & Yau Kung Moon Kung Fu Sport Association USA will be showcasing their amazing acrobatic dragon dance, and high flying lion dance, as well as some traditional martial arts. This festive showcase is open to the general public for drop in. So if you ever wanted to see Dragon & Lion Dance up-close personally...

Experts are using artificial intelligence (AI) to help reassemble a priceless fresco by the early Renaissance artist Cimabue that was reduced to tens of thousands of fragments when earthquakes devastated a 13th-century basilica in central Italy nearly 30 years ago. The project has revived hopes for the full recovery of a masterpiece hailed by Italy's prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, as a symbol of national pride.

As the year winds to an end, we cannot move forward without remembering who we've lost. David Lynch, a filmmaker so revolutionary that his style became a new standard. Frank Gehry, the sculptor of skylines. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, the multi-hyphenate force of Indigenous aesthetics. Alonzo Davis, who was one of the first Black gallerists in this country and didn't stop there. Koyo Kouoh, who would have been the first African woman to direct the Venice Biennale. And so many more.

The name Ana Fedina may not ring a bell, but if you've played games like "Diablo IV," you've seen her work. For more than seven years, Fedina has been working as a professional artist and has contributed illustrations to games like "Raid: Shadow Legends" as well. Most recently, she was the illustrator for "The Armory of Heroes," a full-art compendium of weapons and character art released by the gaming and media company Critical Role in July.

Perhaps a more uncontroversial and profound Turing test is the mystery of the absolute arbitrariness of what makes us happy. Looking over this year's list, patterns emerge-trips, new friends-but much more here inheres in the mundane, lowercase, sense-activating thinginess of life: walking through clouds of butterflies, eating candy alone, homemade stew, wearing pink glitter, cold clementines in a hot bath. Joy is not second-hand. Its unpredictability identifies us as precisely as our fingerprints.

Art duo Cooking Sections bring their immersive, environmental practice to Centro Botín in Santander with a stirring audio-visual exploration of lost waves. Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe are known for deeply researched projects that sometimes lead to tangible change. In 2020, they prompted Tate to remove farmed salmon from its menu, while their Ministry of Sewers at the 2025 Folkestone Triennial invited the public to submit official complaints about sea pollution.

A late Picasso painting on cardboard, Paysage (1965), carries an estimate of $2m to $3m. The work depicts the French Riviera landscape around the village of Mougins where the artist spent his later years with his last wife Jacqueline Roque. Anish Kapoor's concave mirror sculpture, Untitled (2005), also goes under the hammer (est. $600,000-$800,000) along with Andy Warhol's Disquieting Muses (After de Chirico), 1982 (est. $800,000-$1.2m) and his complete set of four screenprints of Muhammad Ali he made in 1978 (est. $300,000-$500,000).

Lam's impact lies in his refusal of singular origin. Born in 1902 in Sagua La Grande, Cuba, to a Chinese immigrant father and an Afro-Cuban mother, he inherited a plural visual and spiritual vocabulary from the start. From his father came an understanding of objects as vessels, of line as philosophy, of restraint as power. From Afro-Cuban cosmology came ritual, invocation, and the inseparability of body and spirit.

To be clear, the people and entities on this list are by no means weak or pitiable. Quite the opposite: They are the most resilient, unbreakable individuals and communities we can think of. This list celebrates their strength and the inspiration they give to all of us. Per tradition, we've peppered some of the entries with a bit of humor, another important means of resistance. Here's to hoping for a new year that finds power in the hands of the many, not the few.

Hyperallergic 's tarotscope series is a combination of tarot with astrology, a reading for the collective readership combined with cards for the major astrological signs, grouped by their elemental associations. These are developed by AX Mina, a Hyperallergic contributor and producer for Five and Nine, a podcast about magic, work, and economic justice. These tarotscopes have a special focus on the arts and creative practice, for each solstice and equinox, to mark the turning of the seasons.

For the last month or so, every time I've left my apartment in Astoria I've cut through an aisle of Christmas trees, some festooned with bright red bows, some bare. Around me are those cutting wreaths down to size, taking selfies, begging their parents for a bigger tree, and lugging them away. Despite the cold, the uncertainty, the relentlessness of the news cycle, it makes me feel grounded, in community - which is what the holiday season is about.

That arresting image was made from a tiny portrait of the artist's brother, expanded to monumental public proportions, that announced the Met's "Witnessing Humanity" exhibit, a Wilson retrospective that continues through February 8. In the picture, the brother's brow is steadfast, his gaze grave and alert, mouth and chin resolutely composed; perhaps no Black face has ever so effectively stared down the self-regard of Manhattan's Museum Mile.

Since the 1990s, has been a constant presence in the creative pulse of San Francisco. His imagery, populated by hybrid figures, spiritual bonds between humans and animals, and emotionally charged atmospheres, was shaped within the same ecosystem that gave rise to much of the city's underground culture. From Upper Playground to global collaborations with brands like Nike and Adidas, his path has always been defined by a deeply personal drive for exploration.

An identical mural has also appeared outside the Centre Point tower by Tottenham Court Road, though Banksy has only confirmed that the Bayswater artwork is his. Centre Point has long been associated with homelessness; after it was completed in 1966, the tower was left empty for a decade and became a site for protests about the city's housing crisis, with homelessness charity Centrepoint taking its name from the building.

9:30 am Free Legion of Honor Museum Day for Bay Area Residents (Every Saturday) FREE* *Free general admission to Bay Area residents. Valid ID or proof of residency required. This offer applies only to the permanent collection galleries. Timed advanced tickets required 9:30 am Free de Young Museum Day for Bay Area Residents (Every Saturday) FREE* *Free general admission to Bay Area residents. Valid ID or proof of residency required. This offer applies only to the permanent collection galleries. Advanced timed tickets required.