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The People Against the Arch

hyperallergic.com · November 9, 2026 · 11:00

Protesters in DC roast the Arc de Trump, plus the Whitney Museum announces the next curators of its blockbuster biennial.

Rise ’n shine! No sooner had the last Whitney Biennial closed than we got news about the next one — or its curators, at least. Staff Writer Anna Lee has the details on the appointment of Meg Onli, co-curator of the 2024 edition, and Zack Winokur, opera director and producer, for the blockbuster American art exhibition’s 2028 iteration.

Speaking of museums of American art, we caught up with pathbreaking Kiowa and Tongan curator Jordan Poorman Cocker, who just organized a major reinstallation of contemporary Indigenous art at Crystal Bridges. She talks with Petala Ironcloud about approaching Indigeneity as a global framework and telling a “more honest story of American art” through her community-driven work.

Protesters in DC rally against Trump’s ill-fated triumphal arch, a new book chronicles the tragic lives of the Jewish sisters in Renoir’s beloved painting “Pink and Blue," and more must-reads below.

—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor, books

South of Memorial Circle, within eyeshot of the Lincoln Memorial and John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame, more than 50 protesters gathered yesterday, November 5, to oppose Trump’s proposed 250-foot Triumphal Arch ahead of the National Capital Planning Commission’s (NCPC) final meeting to vote on the project.

Hours after the NCPC approved the arch in an 8–4 vote, a district court judge granted the District of Columbia and Virginia a 14-day restraining order to halt construction. | Emma Cieslik

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Author Catherine Ostler follows the lives of the two cherubic girls whose rarefied lives in an elite, artistic French family would be toppled by the horrors of the Holocaust. | Eurídice Arratia

The curator, who just organized a major rehang of Indigenous art at Crystal Bridges, reflects on the ways institutions can create space for Native artists to flourish. | Petala Ironcloud

Exhibition as Living Archive: the 1950s Baghdad Modern Art Group in the UAE Today

All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, Curated by Nada Shabout, on view at the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery through January 3, 2027

“As a mother, there are so many spaces in my life that are organized around other people’s needs. The studio is a space where I get to return to myself.”

A new book resurrects the oft-overlooked story of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, whose dome was saved from collapse by a team of mathematicians and the Pope. | Anthony Majanlahti