This week: the unsolved mystery of an 18th-century portrait, journalists leave X en masse, orcas wear “dead salmon hats,” exorbitant college furniture, a puppy art gallery, and much more.

Lakshmi Rivera Amin
Lakshmi Rivera Amin (she/her) is a writer and artist based in New York City. She currently works as an associate editor at Hyperallergic.
A View From the Easel
“I like to use oil paints on a reflective surface, bending the light to my will.”
Required Reading
This week: The Indigenous woman in Dorothea Lange’s famous photo, Brutalist speakers, a new mural in SF, horses as healers, and can we really speak to animals?
Which Artist’s Pie Takes the Cake?
After a tense week of competition and a food fight among the Surrealists, which contestants will advance to the next round of the Great Artists’ Bake Off?
A View From the Easel
“Ink is a simple material, but it’s given me everything I have in my life. It allows precision but demands surrender.”
Required Reading
This week: a queer Black architect and her archives, the cozy tech aesthetic, “paleo-artists,” honest reviews of elementary school plays, nonsensical design, and much more.
Required Reading
This week: the painting that inspired August Wilson, a lesbian magazine celebrates 50 years, sign language commodification, bodega cats in NYC, and much more.
A View From the Easel
“These four hours every afternoon are sacred, and if anyone disturbs me, I will bite their head off as my poor family knows all too well.”
5 Art Books to Light Your Path Through November
A biography of Andy Warhol’s mother, São Paulo’s Neo-Avant-Garde, resplendent Hokusai works, plus new monographs and catalogs to check out this month.
Required Reading
This week: Civil Rights photography, Chicago’s 1970s abortion network, the Nancy Drew convention, election memes so we can laugh to keep from crying, cinema-dog-raphy, and more.