010 Year End Lists in January

Art! Books! Playlist! Newsletters! Podcasts!

Jan 16, 2025

But first

I’ve been enjoying getting back into good habits after the weeks of carousing with friends and family that embody the end of December. Never eating or drinking again, obviously. Working out! Going outside! All the cliches we shout from the mountain tops of January and try to hold on to through at least February.

I don’t know what I can really add to the conversation about the fires in LA, but I’ve been thinking about everyone affected over the last week. Friends and people I’ve worked with over the years, know through the internet, etc too many of them have lost their houses, lost everything. While this must be absolutely devastating to these families, I was heartened by the many shelters saying they have too many clothes and all the GoFundMe’s I’ve seen are well past the requested amount. A little positivity in this terrible situation. I hope everyone in LA has as many people rallying around them as what I’ve seen through my little box back in NYC.

Alec Egan | *Night Setting, 2025* | Archival Pigment Print on Sunset Hot Press Rag 310g | 24 x 16 1/2 inches | Edition of 200 | $500

I was so crushed to see that Alec Egan lost all of his work for his upcoming show at Anat Ebgi as well as a full show of work for Charles Moffett at FOG. What a huge blow for him and the galleries (though it sounds like Charles Moffett has pulled together some older work of his to show at the fair). I think they’re postponing the Anat Ebgi show, but that is a huge emotional and financial hurdle for everyone. Years of paintings from a talented artist that we’ll never get to see. I’m sure this is the case for many artists and that must be a special kind of devastation. To have so much work suddenly evaporate, like leaving a finished manuscript in the back of a cab. All proceeds from the sale of the limited edition poster made for his 2022 show go to the artist, same for all proceeds from the print from Charles Moffett. You can get the Anat Ebgi poster here. And Charles Moffett print here.

Edition of 1000 produced on the occasion of the artist's exhibition *Look Out*, 2022 | CMYK on gloss paper | 33 x 24 inches | $100

Doing things a little different for the end of 2024 issue in first half of Jan. Here are too many lists, arts shows, books, podcasts, newsletters. There were other things I considered listing but it was all taking too long to get this out as it is.1

One more thing

Ok one more regular newsletter item. I would truly regret if I didn’t inform you in time that a limited edition Danielle Mckinney will be available for 24 hours on January 23rd through Avant Art. Prints will be signed and numbered after edition closes for $736 unframed (framing available.)2

Danielle Mckinney | Sandman | 20 x 15.94in. | Archival pigment print on 330gsm Somerset Enhanced Satin 100% Cotton paper.

Art shows

I’m certain I’ve missed something. I combed through my photos for the last year to see what I’d seen, but every time I tried to put this out I thought of another show I forgot to include. But this is a majority of the best I have seen this year, I think, in no particular order.

Cecily Brown at Paula Cooper - I’ve always loved her work. But her last two shows at Paula Cooper near perfection. She is doing her best work now.
Amy MacKay at la BEAST (LA) - Still thinking about this show and regretting not getting one. Email in drafts asking what works are still available.
Amie Dicke at Anat Ebgi - This show was so incredible. I’m so glad to have discovered this artist this year. I can’t wait to see what else she does.
Viviene Sassen at 212 Photography (Istanbul) - It was very cool to see such a large collection of her work. I can’t believe I found out about this show after I’d already arrived in Istanbul, I so easily could have missed it.
Laura Krifka at Luis de Jesus (LA) - She is so good. Period.
Tristram Lansdown at Luis de Jesus (LA) - I was really wowed by these quiet landscape/still life/abstract/surrealist pieces.
Esaí Alfredo at Spinello Projects (Armory) - This show was so dramatic, so narrative driven. A very talented painter.
Alexandra Barth at Mrs. (Armory) - Such stunning, magnified, quiet beauty.
Robin F. Wiliams at P.P.O.W. - Erie, epic, cool. Including that Meg Ryan orgasm scene amongst all these thriller references is the cheekiest move of the year. I hope I never forget it.
Jean-Pierre Villafañe at Charles Moffett - I loved how playful and sexual these pieces were, while still feeling elevated and not campy. Such a rare combination.
Anne Rothenstein at Stephen Friedman Gallery - Obsessed with these moody beauties.
Sarah Ball at Stephen Friedman Gallery - These. Portraits. Kill. Me.
Guillaume Linard Osorio at Carvalho Park - I laughed when I found out he was an architect, because he so obviously is! I love these pieces, I really can’t think of anything similar. I just try not to think about how he’s too successful now for me to ever have an original and they would never work as prints.
Hard Copy by Aaron Stern - I thought the whole show and premise was great, but there was something that made me feel like a teenager being in this space with no supervision.3 There were loose extras they didn’t hang just piled up in a corner. The whole point of the show being reproduced originals,4 it almost felt like they wanted me to take one? A la Felix Gonzalez-Torres? To be clear, I did not, but I was tempted.
Hildur Asgeirsdottir Jonsson at Tibor de Nagy - Weavings and textiles are having a moment and I am here for it. I loved these oversaturated landscapes, which on paper is something that I would absolutely hate, but were actually so tasteful and perfect.
GaHee Park at Perrotin - I never miss one of her shows. She seems so quirky, sexy, cool, interesting. You can just tell from her paintings. I’d want to be friends with her, but you know it would be one of those friendships where you can never really relax, because you just want to impress her.
Danielle McKinney at Marianne Boesky - Love Danielle McKinney’s work, I think she is so talented and I love her whole story of painting full time only since the pandemic. But the shade of dusty lavender that they painted the walls for that show was absolutely perfect, it made the paintings look so good and I still think about it.
Tim Kent at Hollis Taggart Gallery - I like each of of his shows better than the last. My favorite piece in this one was unlike anything else I’ve seen from him and I was told it was the last one he finished. I can’t wait to see the body of work that follows that piece.
Louis Fratino at Venice Biennale - What hasn’t been said about this show? It was amazing.
Tesfaya Urgessa at Venice Biennale - Nearly ran across Venice to get to this before it closed and I’m so glad I made it. What an an incredible first pavilion for Ethiopia.
Grace Carney at P.P.O.W. - Beautiful nearly abstracted paintings, just a little something to grab onto, gorgeous colors.
Tim Wilson at Nathalie Karg Gallery - God damn, I just love a good interior painting. And these are very, very good.
Chris Watts at Galerie LeLong & Co - Loved how emotional and ethereal these felt. Glad to have found his work this year.
Frank Stella at Jeffery Deitch- I saw this show just before he died and I remember thinking - Look how much fun Frank is having in old age! With these enormous, colorful, space age looking blob sculptures made out of car parts. It felt fresh and exciting. I went back after he passed to enjoy it again.
Julia Garcia at Gaa Gallery - I was blown away by how effective her technique of bleeding paint emphasized the narrative of memory and nostalgia.
Colleen Herman at Olympia - Loved the paintings. Obsessed with the installation.
Delcy Morelos at Dia: Chelsea - Someone please bottle the scent in these rooms and sell it to me. I went and walked around that giant haystack5 every time I was in Chelsea. There was something about barely being able to fit in this massive room, it was so big. And how what very little sound there was to being with, dramatically faded away as you walked into the center point. May I never forget the smell of that towering haystack.
Nora Sturges at JJ Murphy - I’m still thinking about how much weight these tiny gems carry.
Paul D’Amato at Chicago Cultural Center - Mr. D’Amato was my doc teacher at Columbia,6 he’s an even better photographer than a teacher, and he was a pretty good teacher.7 Some absolutely incredible photographs, fully worth going to Chicago a day early to be able to see it.
Elizabeth Schwaiger at Nicola Vassell - More absolutely gorgeous interiors. Neon can look so tacky and she makes it feel so chic. Her light, loose, layer upon layer of paint is really something special. And orange in particular looks very expensive in her hands. I want to live in these spaces.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby at David Zwirner - I was so thrilled to see this show. I just love her work. The way she is subtly layering so much imagery is incredible.
Christopher Wool, See Stop Run - What a cool show. I don’t know the history of how this came about. But every piece felt so perfectly integrated into the space. That it was a retrospective of 20 years of work is still hard to believe. I mean the pinks in some of the pieces perfectly matched the insulation hanging from the ceiling. It was absolutely perfect.
Floridas: Anastasia Samoylova and Walker Evans at The Met - I was really looking forward to this show. I had just discovered Anastasia’s work this year, and had no idea that Walker Evans spent any time in Florida. The show itself is small, but really good and the book they made for it includes a lot more work.8
Hollis Heichemer at Hollis Taggert - Technically I missed this show, because I tried to go on the last weekend on a Saturday, but they had switched to summer hours already. I love Hollis’ work forever and couldn’t leave it off the list. It looked great through the glass I pushed my face up against to get a peak at what I could see from the outside.

Books

I wrote a bit more about most of these in previous issues, but here is a collection of some of my favorites from this year with a brief summary. What was at the top of your list this year?

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Molly by Blake Butler - One of the most devastating books I’ve ever read. (Issue 009)
Margery Kempe by Robert Gluck - An unhinged sex romp with Jesus. I can’t think of another book like it.
The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector - An existential roller coaster ride. My first Lispector and not my last.
Middlemarch by George Elliot - It’s as good as they all say. I still think about it. An unvarnished look at marriage, consequences, and your place in a changing society. (Issue 001)
Playboy by Constance Debré - Sparse, sexy, cool. (Issue 001)
The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn - Very good. I almost never read sci-fi, but this is so subtle and clever. (Issue 003)
A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith - We are never going to live on Mars. I will die on this hill.
The Powerbroker: Robert Moses and the fall of New York by Robert Caro - Still collecting my thoughts on this one. It is very good. It should be illegal to publish as one volume.
Money: A Suicide Note by Marin Amis - Is there a Martin Amis scholar that I can take out for a drink? I have a lot of thoughts. Mostly good ones. I’ve only read this and Time’s Arrow, and it seems I’ve really been too slow to get on the genius train that is Martin Amis.

Newsletters

I will eventually write a whole thing about why I don’t pay for subscriptions,9 but the short version is there is no one who I want to read everything from and many people that I want to read some things from. I subscribe to hundreds of newsletters at multiple email addresses. It’s a whole thing. But these are the ones I seek out most frequently.

Sic Weekly by Ben Dietz - I always need to be at a computer when I read this newsletter because I will have dozens of tabs open by the end. For what’s going on and K holes galore, links on links on links.
After Images - I have no idea who this guy is and I don’t remember where I found his newsletter. It appeared in my inbox one day and now I read every single one. He’s reading the books that have been on my shelves for years and what I haven’t heard of, I’m often purchasing before I even get to the end.
Snake by Sami Reiss - He focuses mainly on furniture, design and vintage. Including current round ups of auctions happening online. It is a financially dangerous place, but a beautiful place.
Why is this interesting? - I like the day to day posts about random things like the history of matchbooks, to the African smartphone market, to DC Shoes, but what I really love is the Monday Media Diet, where they ask people in Media the same questions every week like, What are you reading? and what is a k hole that you recently fell in to? I have found many good internet corners and books this way.
Noah Kalina Newsletter - Captain of the Internet, Noah Kalina, returned to the newsletter format this year and it’s great to have him back. I love the updates on what he’s thinking about, working on, and that one tree.
The Cereal Aisle by Leandra Medine Cohen - I am deep in the sinkhole of shopping reco newsletters. I honestly try not to open them because I end up buying something. But Lendra’s combo of quirky but elevated style is maybe my favorite. I wouldn’t even say I overlap with her very much as far as what I actually wear but there’s always a piece or two that I’d never considered, or never in that way and end up incorporating at some point.
Person Canon by Celine Nguyen - I’m new to her newsletter, but I’ve come to really look forward to it. We have exactly the same taste in books and she has great movie recos as well. She’s either reading something I just read and I want to know what she thinks of it. Or it’s something thats on my shelf, or saved in a cart that I haven’t pulled the trigger on yet.
The Honest Broker by Ted Gioia - Books, music, culture, but really any and everything. I always walk away with something worth considering.
Perfectly Imperfect from Tyler Bainbridge - I love the newsletter and I love their social media app as well. Very normal to very wild recos from A-list celebrities to people I’ve never heard of, but everyone has something interesting to recommend. And the app is one of the most fun and positive corners of the internet where everyone is sharing things they are really excited about.
Garbage Day by Ryan Broderrick - No one is taking the nonsense on the internet as seriously as Ryan Broderrick and it’s about time. That every news outlet doesn’t have a person who solely covers the internet is insane to me. The world is the internet. There is no online or offline and you can not fully be engaged in the world if you are not engaged with what is happening on the internet.

Podcasts

I try to do at least an hour walk every morning10 and I listen to podcasts while doing this. For certain work days I will listen to hours of podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts. Its the most effective way for me to consume and consider new ideas.

How Long Gone - The only podcast I listen to pretty religiously even though I only know who the guest is about half the time, which often doesn’t matter since they rarely talk about what the guest is there to talk about. Two coastal elites eliting to the max.

Search Engine - Was Reply All our greatest loss at the height of cancel culture? It might have been. But PJ Voght prevails in a similar vein, asking the important questions like, “Why are there so many chicken bones on the street?” and “Why are we still buying diamonds?” and “What is the best phone to commit crimes on?”

The Big Picture - I like hearing their thoughtful takes on movies,11 and their old married couple vibe is charming. (They are in fact married to other people, not each other.) This pod must be huge now because they get very big guests in recent years.

Note Bene - These guys are so deep in the inner workings and upper echelons of the art world that they have lost all perspective for how pretentious they are. But in a way that is somehow still charming and I love it. I literally laughed out loud on the street when they said they couldn’t possibly think of artists under 15k to recommend to their clients.12 Great for restaurant recos and art gossip.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things - This season they break down what is messed up in healthcare. They manage to get into the nitty gritty efficiently and still keep it interesting. I’m biased, of course,13 but I thought they did a great job of breaking down structural issues, many of which I wasn’t even aware of.

Honestly with Bari Weiss - After DT got elected the first time I tried to expand my media diet to be more inclusive of people I don’t agree with and hear directly from voices I wouldn’t encounter in my before-times news cycle. When Honestly came along it filled this gap very nicely. I think this is a good place to hear some interviews from people on the right, the debate episodes are people that actually disagree with each other and it is hosted by someone who is no question a sane person and a good interviewer.

StraightioLab - I absolutely cackle listening to this pod. The Alison Roman episode from a while back I remember in particular sending to a few people because I thought it was so funny.

99% Invisible - The Power Broker - Thank you to Roman Mars and the other guy for putting this podcast together. I wouldn’t have finished The Power Broker otherwise. And considering they do a 2hr plus recap for each episode you can get a pretty good taste if you don’t want to actually read or reread this doorstop.14

Tasteland - On everything in culture now, sometimes focusing on writing, including newsletters. Recos abound.

Reflector - Andy Mills is finally in front of the mic in his new pod, and all of the episodes have been wide ranging and interesting so far. Topics like drugs that make you quit drinking, the Young Thug trial, and the history of stolen elections.

The Ezra Klein Show - I went through a phase where I found Ezra Klein annoying and ignored him for awhile. But around a year ago, either he changed or I did, or both of us, and I was really impressed with the questions he was willing to ask and how thoughtful he was about the topics he took on. I’m back!

Bandsplain - I miss the old episodes when she would play full songs, but tech changes, and so must we all! Do you want to listen to 7 hours on the history of insert band here? Yasi Salek’s got you.15 The current season is focusing on Brit bands. I used to love her other pod as well, 24 Question Party People, where she would ask the same 24 questions to everyone she interviewed. But we haven’t gotten a new one in almost a year, so maybe that’s over?

Music

I love making playlists and never have a reason to do so outside of my end of year playlist. This includes not just what came out in 2024, but music from any time that I listened to and really liked in 2024. I didn’t keep up on new music as much as I have in years past so I spent a lot of December combing through other year end lists and found a lot of good stuff I missed! What were some of your favorites this year? Did you make a playlist? Can I have it?

Movies

I watch nearly all movies in January and February that came out the previous year. Partly because I have friends very into the Oscars and I want to participate,16 but also what else are we doing in Jan and Feb. So here is my list of movies to watch so far (and where you can see them). Slashed ones I’ve already gotten to. I’ll do a recap in March sometime. Let me know if there are others I should include!

Lastly

My favorite looks from the Golden Globes (which I wasn’t able to watch)

Seriously, trying to comb through a whole year of all that I’ve consumed was much more time consuming than I could have imagined. Next year I might include lists like, theater, concerts, items purchased, etc and will be building this list year round, not trying to find all this info at the end of the year.

I really have to figure out if I keep buying prints from artists I’ve loved for years but originals have moved out of my price range or if I buy originals from more emerging artists. I’m always afraid it’s going to be my last chance to own anything by the larger artists. They all, mostly, stop making prints once they get to a certain point. How do you know which print is the last one??

At the front desk they were unclear if the show was even still up, but they said to take the elevator up and check for ourselves.

I had no idea that they made xerox machines that could handle paper this large. How much longer will xerox machines exist? Does Gen Z or Alpha know what xerox machines are?

Almost certainly not a haystack, I’m currently not interested in any more info other than what I felt while I was in that room, but will look it up eventually.

Columbia College Chicago, not Columbia University. Art school baby!!

Learning my own lesson yet again. BUY THE BOOK. Art books rarely get a second pressing, and no one ever sells them, they sit on people’s shelves forever. When they are sold out, they are basically gone. There are books I have had google alerts on for years and have never gotten a hit. I just looked up D’Amato’s books. Barrio which was published in 2006, when I was his student, is now out of print and for sale used anywhere from $125-$900. ugh. ALWAYS BUY THE BOOK.

I was very annoyed because I’d specifically asked when the book store was closing, knowing I would want to get the book that accompanied the exhibition before even seeing it. And they closed the book store early! and wouldn’t let me in to buy it, so now I’ll have to go back or get it delivered. Annoying, The Met! NYC cheat code - The Met is open until 9pm on Saturdays and it’s pretty empty. We’ll go up there at like 7pm see a couple things and get dinner on the upper east side. We ate at Hoexters this time, which I feel like is a little secret unto it’s self.

I want to pay 25 cents to read every article, every newsletter, every podcast, anything long form (I don’t know how that would scale to social media.) Instead of clicking a subscribe button to finish what you’ve started reading or listening to I click “Pay 25 cents” and I get to keep reading/listening, and I get to pay for everything that I consume. I think this would generate better content, period. But also allows people to read more widely and not hold people trapped inside of their own silos that they feel obligated to participate in because they are already financially invested.

Believe me, you think 20 degrees is too cold to walk around in for an hour, but it isn’t! I hate the cold but I usually have coat unzipped 20min in because I’m too hot. I’m out there nearly every morning unless it’s raining really hard or if I have a very early start time that day.

I basically only watch new movies in Jan and Feb so I listen to a lot of this pod, but only around that time of year.

Not to worry, I got you.

H produced this and I’m so proud of him! But I would have reco’d it even if he hadn’t worked on it.

Don’t even know how to begin talking about this book, full take coming…later.

Yasi also lost her house in the LA fire you can contribute to her GoFundMe here.

Although I only watch the movies I think will be good, which is often not all of the Oscar movies (we must stop making biopics) and then I do very poorly during the betting portion of the evening.