Hyperallergic

• Ancient Art, Wages, and Strikes: A 3000-Year-Old History of Labor

  At Hyperallergic, we take pride in covering protesting museum workers who take to the streets. But few realize that these workers are taking part in a practice that’s as old as some of the ancient artifacts in their institutions. In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, we’re joined by professor, public historian, and Hyperallergic contributor Sarah E. Bond, who shares her knowledge on labor organizing in the ancient world, which stretches back to the earliest recorded strike, which took place in 1157 BCE in the Ancient Egyptian artisan’s village of Deir el-Medina. We learn that it’s not just the overwhelmingly White and male field of Classics that is to blame for the lack of attention paid to the everyday workers of Ancient Egypt and Rome, but also the fact that the very authors they study, who tended to be extremely wealthy, often recorded striking workers as “rioters.” As Bond recently wrote, new studies are showing that the great artistic accomplishments and economic abundance of the ancient world were “heavily reliant on the collective contributions of the millions of enslaved persons laboring across the Mediterranean” — in fact, 20–25% of the Roman population at the height of the Roman Empire was enslaved. Some of America’s founding fathers would even quote philosophers like Aristotle, who supported this system, as justification for continuing slavery themselves. Bond joins Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian to talk about the stories that fill her new book, Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire, from women textile workers staging a walkout in Ancient Egypt, to the emperor and empress who slaughter tens of thousands of protesters in the Constantinople hippodrome — and even how Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with Ancient Roman stoicism (or rather, “bro-icism”) informs technocrats’ inhuman sense of the value of human labor.Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Watch the complete video of the conversation with images of the artworks on YouTube.Read more by Sarah Bond on Hyperallergic.Support this podcast and our journalism as a Hyperallergic Member. https://hyperallergic.com/membership

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• Lady Pink, the Queen of New York City Graffiti

  In 1971, a seven-year-old Sandra Fabara moved with her family from a city nestled in an Ecuadorian rainforest to the dense brick landscape of Brooklyn. By the time she was a teenager, she had gone from climbing trees to hopping the fences of the MTA train yards. Soon, she was known as the queen of New York City graffiti: the one and only Lady Pink. If you’re as mesmerized by the 1970s and ’80s world of New York City graffiti as we are, then you’ve seen her before, immortalized in classic photos by Martha Cooper and as one of the stars of Charlie Ahearn’s classic feature film Wild Style (1983). In what appeared to be an almost exclusively male scene, these images showed Lady Pink holding her own as one of the few women recognized for their contributions to the golden age of graffiti writing. While she is adamant that she was not the first female graffiti artist  — she credits others like Barbara 62, Eva 62, and Charmin 65, who she says “ got up more than most guys did,” even if those guys were “not willing to admit” it — she was one of the only women able to continue her career above ground in the gallery world. Today, her early memories of playing in the rainforests, which include killing a snake at the tender age of five, meld with the curves of her graffiti lettering and her inspirations from Antoni Gaudí, Hayao Miyazaki, and Frank Frazetta, to create uniquely fantastical worlds that perfectly depict the idea of an “urban jungle.” In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, Lady Pink sat down with our Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian in our Brooklyn offices, just a few blocks away from her childhood home. They discuss everything from what it was like to be a woman in the graffiti world and her collaborations with artists like Jenny Holzer and Jean-Michel Basquiat to her relationship with graffiti legend Lee Quiñones, tracing her journey from train yards to galleries, mural walls, and museums, inspiring countless young women artists across continents. You can see some of her work on display now in Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection at the Museum of the City of New York through August 10, 2025. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Watch the complete video of the conversation with images of the artworks on YouTube. 

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• Street Stories: Graffiti and the Legacy of Martin Wong

  The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) holds what is arguably the most important collection of early graffiti art and ephemera, amassed by Martin Wong, a queer Chinese-American self-taught painter who wore cowboy hats and, for a time, paid for his lodging in a dingy Lower East Side hotel room by working as a night porter. Drawn to the bustling art scene of late 1970s New York, Wong developed a tight network of friends in what may have seemed like an unexpected community at the time: graffiti writers, who would eventually be recognized as creating an entirely new style of art, emulated in every corner of the globe. At a time when society reviled graffiti artists as petty criminals, Wong began collecting their drawings, sketchbooks (or “blackbooks”), and eventually, paintings on canvas. He also painted moving,intimate portraits of the artists themselves. This was just one avenue he explored in his sprawling body of work, which ranges from detailed urbanscapes bustling with the life of the city, to surreal ceramics and scrolls influenced by traditional Chinese calligraphy. Before his death due to complications related to AIDS in the 1990s, Wong donated his beloved graffiti collection to the MCNY. Many of its prized pieces by renowned graffiti artists including Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Lady Pink, Rammelzee, DAZE, and others are on view now in the exhibition Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection. This episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast was recorded during a live panel at the MCNY on March 10 celebrating Wong’s collection and life. Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian moderated the discussion between Wong’s longtime friend and roommate Lee Quiñones, PPOW Gallery Co-Founder Wendy Osloff, and curator Sean Corcoran, who organized the exhibition. In front of a crowd of some 100 Hyperallergic Members and their friends, the panelists shared stories of the singular artist, his love of collecting, and his extravagant storytelling. As Quiñones recalls, Wong once said, “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection continues at the Museum of the City of New York (1220 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through August 10. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube.—Subscribe to Hyperallergic NewslettersThis podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership.

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• Talking a Big Game: The Art of Sports and the Sport of Art

  We’ve been taught by high school movies and pop culture at large that art and sports are diametrical opposites. You know the trope: The sporty jocks and the nerdy theater kids are all relegated to separate lunch tables, and never the twain shall meet, save the occasional High School Musical. But a recent exhibition, Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, takes this stereotype to the mat. In this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, Hrag Vartanian sits down with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) curator Jennnifer Dunlop Fletcher and independent curator and former Hyperallergic Senior Editor Seph Rodney, who designed this exhibition together with renowned art historian and SFMOMA Research Director Katie Siegel. Their conversation illuminates the striking parallels between the crafts of art and sports, whether it’s the tension between talent and persistence, the grand stages of sports arenas and museums, or countless hours of hidden labor. And, of course, people in both disciplines always talk a big game. As SFMOMA’s largest show to date, Get in the Game took up an entire floor of the museum when it was installed there, with 200 works by over 70 artists and designers meditating on themes around sports and athleticism. Over a third of these artists are either current or former athletes, from former football players like Shaun Leonardo to Olympians like Savanah Leaf. If you missed the show in San Francisco, start planning your trip to the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, where it will be on view later this year, or an early 2026 trip to Florida to catch it at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. The unconventional catalog that accompanies the exhibition is also on sale now, replete with vivid comic illustrations by AJ Dungo. SFMOMA is also continuing its exploration of art and sports with three current exhibitions: Count Me In and When the World Is Watching, both on view through April 2, and Unity Through Skateboarding, on view through May 4. The museum’s Bay Area Walls series also features three new murals by David Huffman, Jenifer K Wofford, and Gene Luen Yang, all meditating on the topic of sports. Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube.—Subscribe to Hyperallergic NewslettersThis podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership.

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• Nick Cave Is Serving You Everything

  One of seven brothers, Nick Cave grew up watching his family create magic out of scraps. His aunts would cut paper bags into patterns, and in just one day, make an entire new outfit to wear that night. Since then, the artist has been dedicated to studying how to lay ornamental patterns on the body. Leading the way for a current groundswell of adornment in art, Cave is known for highly decorated, maximalist works, particularly in his “Soundsuits,” which are both unapologetically joyous and respond to the deep pain of police brutality against Black people. His newest body of work, on view in Amalgams and Graphts at Jack Shainman Gallery’s large space in the Clock Tower Building through March 29, pushes and pulls the forms he’s known for playing with. Introducing needlepoint and portraiture, he flattened out his meticulous collections of objects into riotous rectangles, winking at the heritage of 19th-century floral paintings. But he’s also elongated his humanoid figures, using bronze casts of 3D scans of his own body that burst into tree forms branching toward the heavens. For this episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian visited Cave at his studio in Chicago. You’ll hear them discuss how queerness informs his sensibility, his perspectives on fashion, preservation, politics, his memories of dressing in his Sunday best for church, and how the self-taught women crafters in his family planted the seeds for him to become the artist he is today.Nick Cave: Amalgams and Graphts continues at Jack Shainman (46 Lafayette Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through March 29.Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is also available with images of the artwork on YouTube.—Subscribe to Hyperallergic NewslettersThis podcast is made possible by the support of our members. Join us today at hyperallergic.com/membership.

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