I’m Robin, Editor of Misstropolis.
I hope this site brings you some joy and some knowledge (or at least a nice distraction) during this surreal, enlightening and historic time.
I like to write about art, style and purpose. If you have ideas for stories or would like to contribute, I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading!
Misstropolis
Spirit & Style, Inside & Out
Every year Misstropolis’ Annual Holiday Gift Guide delivers inspiration just when you need it most. It’s always a reader favorite, and for 2025 we’ve made it even better with selections from some of the East Coast’s top tastemakers. Anne Poole, Mel Robbins, Alisa Neely, Lisa Pierpont, and Tiffany Chu weigh in on their favorite gift ideas, offering selections from near, far, and even the future.
Inaugural recipients of the Wagner Foundation Art Fellowship L’Merchie Frazier and Daniela Rivera share their experiences venturing into the print studio with Lucy Rosenburgh of Caira Art Editions. Coming from their tactile, large scale, three dimensional and often participatory practices, both artists found expansiveness in the print experience, tapping into the medium’s history as a tool for public engagement and protest.
SMFA, MASS ART and BU host open studios on November 8. Come find the future stars you will want to collect before they price you out!
“She has absorbed all of art history like a sponge. But when she wipes the sponge across our consciousness, the message is all Danielle Joy McKinney.” Misstropolis sits down with Gannit Ankori, Chief Curator of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis to discuss the artist’s first solo North American museum show Danielle McKinney: Tell Me More. The artist will be in conversation with the curator at the gallery on November 6.
This year, the Foster Prize, curated by Tessa Bachi Haas, recognizes four artists whose work addresses our current moment in deeply personal and uniquely technical ways. Through their artistic labor, Alison Croney Moses, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Damien Hoar de Galvan and Sneha Shrestha (aka IMAGINE) remind us of the power of art to bring us together, especially when the world seems to want to tear us apart.
Here it is, the last weekend of September 2025, and we haven’t seen all of the art yet. There’s always too much inspiration to soak in, too much beauty to behold and not enough time. But Misstropolis is here to guide you to the best. These don’t-miss shows will have you ending the month on a creative high note.
If all the world’s a stage, then it follows that one must dress for it. As Shakespeare’s character Jaques explains in As You Like It, we play many roles in life and make many entrances and exits. The Peabody Essex Museum’s stunning exhibition Andrew Gn: Fashioning the World has me thinking about life’s theatricality and the way we dress ourselves for our most public and consequential performances.
Andrew Gn: Fashioning the World makes its North American debut at PEM now through February 16, 2026.
Visual artist Evelyn Rydz was raised in Miami to Colombian and Cuban parents. Her body of work explores movement, migration, identity, climate and resiliency as understood through studies of water. In 2016, she launched a participatory community project called Comida Casera to bring people together from diverse backgrounds to share stories of immigration, food, and home. I was lucky enough to join a Comida Casera event at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park this August. I left with dozens of new friends and a deep gratitude for the timing of the event, given the censorship, erasure and violence faced by immigrants in America today.
The Safarani Sisters: Submerged in Time is a solo show of new work by the Iranian-born, Boston-based twin sisters. Ethereal and deeply moving, the show addresses themes of time, longing, celebration and the intangible nature of memory through the artists’ signature video-paintings. On view at ShowUp Gallery in Boston’s South End through September 28, 2025.
A comprehensive exhibition of work by the sculptor Ming Fay opened last week at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Edge of the Garden explores memory, cultural identity and connection to nature with over 100 objects from Fay’s abundant oeuvre. Misstropolis talks with Parker Fay, son of the great artist who passed away in February, about growing up in the studio, the exhibition and the importance of gardens to his remarkable father’s art and life.
At Arrival Art Fair in North Adams, MA a spirit of congeniality, persistence and hope spread from the art to the hearts and minds of participants and visitors alike. Again and again people remarked on the friendly, welcoming atmosphere. Over 30 galleries from across the U.S. participated, bringing a wide range of contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, design, textiles and furniture to the heart of the Berkshires.
In Part Three of our How to Triennial Series, we head to downtown Boston where the Triennial public art installations reflect today’s public mood of outrage and resistance. Challenging hegemonic untruths in Native histories, political apathy around youth homelessness, and unchecked violence against immigrants, these works are inspiring acts of protest in themselves.
In our second guide to the Boston Public Art Triennial, we enjoy the Charlestown Navy Yard where four powerful works of pubic art respond to the historic maritime site with fresh perspectives on urgent issues including climate change, connection to nature, Black motherhood, and finding space for joy.
The inaugural edition of the Boston Public Art Triennial is here, the result of years of planning, collaboration and work. This once-every-three-years celebration of public art’s power to unite and lift up a city gives us multiple opportunities to see art in neighborhoods we know well and those we’ve yet to explore. Misstropolis has created a series called How to Triennial. In this edition, we take you on two art-packed tours of multiple Triennial sites, through Matappan, Dorchester and Fenway. Next up in the series: Charlestown Navy Yard and Downtown on a date.
April 30, 2025 is Denim Day. Recognized across the globe, Denim Day is a campaign against the persistent culture of victim blaming. Today, get dressed in solidarity with survivors of rape and sexual assault. Today your favorite pair of jeans are a powerful symbol of protest.
Frieze LA opened only weeks after the California fires which devastated Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Vielmetter Gallery's exhibition of April Bey's work was the salve Los Angeles and the art world needed.
A solo exhibition of papier-mâché sculpture and paintings by Haitian-American visual activist Fabiola Jean-Louis at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents a transformative vision of Haitian spirituality and culture. The artist talks with Misstropolis about why she chose paper, inspiring social change, and diving deep into the waters of the abyss in a search for freedom.
Two significant Boston artists—Eva Lundsager and Cicely Carew—exhibit powerful new work in a two person painting show at Philip Slein Gallery in St. Louis.
Petra Slinkard has devoted her career to educating the public about the role fashion and design play in the human experience. Through extensive cross-cultural research and partnerships with global leaders in the field, Slinkard has established herself as an expert-to-watch and helped make PEM’s innovative and inclusive fashion initiative into one of the best in the country. With storytelling as her magic power, she brings the past into the present in ways which capture hard-to-reach contemporary audiences. She is one of the women putting the Boston area on the map as a global cultural hub, and for all those reasons, she is the latest in Misstropolis’ Visionary Series.
An important new show opens at the MassArt Art Museum (MAAM) this Thursday, January 23. Curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of the independent consultancy c2-curatorsquared, in collaboration with MAAM’s Director Lisa Tung, Future Fossils brings together the work of 20 international artists representing tremendous diversity of place, material, process, thematic concerns and career stage. The exhibition’s scale and themes make it one of the most important on Boston’s 2025 cultural calendar.
