Erin L. Thompson, hyperallergic

Erin L. Thompson

hyperallergic

New York, NY, United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • hyperallergic
  • Slate
  • The Nation
  • Smithsonian Magazine
  • Harper's Bazaar
  • BitchMedia
  • Salon.com
  • Resilience.org
  • AlterNet
  • Countercurrents.org
  • and more…

Past articles by Erin:

Guantánamo’s Artists Fight for Beauty

Remaking the Exceptional allows us to feel the furious joy that emanates from those who have saved their own lives with activism and art. → Read More

Sex Tourism With Statues

“Buddhist Art of Tibet: In Milarepa's Footsteps” is a cringe-worthy display of “spiritual colonialism.” → Read More

Artists’ Doomed, Inspiring Resistance to Hitler

The stories of the Red Orchestra show the power of joy, creativity, and love in the fight against the compliance, fear, and silence upon which fascism still depends. → Read More

All the Times People Have Shot, Puked Upon, and Meat-Cleavered Famous Paintings to Make a Point

Destroying art in service of justice is a time-honored tradition. Does it ever work? → Read More

The Artwork of Guantánamo Detainees

Interrogated, tortured, and held for decades without charges, Gitmo prisoners held onto their humanity by creating art. → Read More

Unlike Us, Ancient Societies Knew What to Do With Their Outdated Monuments

Smashing. Scrubbing. Symbolic humiliation. How Romans, Sumerians, and Egyptians handled the old-statue problem. → Read More

The Surprising Mix of Tradition and Innovation in Nepal’s Contemporary Art Scene

The work of many of Nepal's contemporary artists suggests that the distinctions between labels like ancient and modern, or foreign and Nepali, will blur if you shift your point of view. → Read More

Surrounded by Wealth, an Artist’s Comment on Education Loses its Edge

Within the well-patrolled boundaries of Madison Square Park, it’s hard not to see Hugh Hayden's Brier Patch as just another amenity, offering a pleasant opportunity for virtue signaling. → Read More

Meet the Indigenous Activist Who Toppled Minnesota's Christopher Columbus Statue

The unauthorized removal of the monument took place during the racial justice protests of summer 2020 → Read More

How the Met Museum Justifies Looting

The African Origins exhibition ignores the fact that approximately 160 objects from Benin are held by the museum under ongoing demands for their repatriation. → Read More

Returned to Nepal by the FBI, a Sculpture Becomes a God Again

Last week, I flew to Nepal and witnessed a ceremony to replace a looted Lakshmi-Narayan sculpture to its original location. → Read More

What Do We Do with the Work of Immoral Artists?

Where should we “draw the line” between sacrificing great art and supporting artists who are predators and bigots? → Read More

Ghosting the Confederacy

Charlottesville's Robert E. Lee statue was a focal point of violence during a white supremacist riot in 2017. Now, the city must decide what to do with it. → Read More

The Museum of the Bible Forgot That One Commandment

And no, it’s not “anti-Christian” to say so. → Read More

Letters From the August 9/16, 2021, Issue

Calling Arizona… Black Main Street… Privileged information… The bronze ceiling (web-only)… → Read More

Stumbling Towards Repatriation

We need to make it clear to our museums that we do not want to walk around in galleries of stolen artworks. → Read More

The Medusa #MeToo Monument Doesn’t Serve Sexual Assault Survivors

The statue embodies is the long historical pattern in which male competition plays out in the exploitation of female suffering. → Read More

The banality of evocation: Remembering a feminist movement that hasn’t ended

As statues topple across the country, the Pioneers Monument is a test case for the future of public art in America → Read More

Sorry/Not Sorry: How Viewers Express Judgment by Touching the Art

Anyone who deliberately damages art in a museum is regarded as under a delusion, either due to mental illness or a failure to perceive the nature of what they’re doing. But in reality, people touch art all of the time. → Read More

The Banality of Evocation

Perhaps in 2020, the best monuments to the fight for women’s rights -- for all our rights -- may look nothing like what most of us would imagine. → Read More