Hrag Vartanian

Hrag Vartanian is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, an arts blogazine. Based in New York, New York, he is an editor, art critic, curator, and lecturer on contemporary art with expertise on the intersection of art and politics.

Hrag co-founded Hyperallergic in 2009 in response to changes in the art world, the publishing industry, and the distribution of information. Breaking news, award-winning reporting, informed opinions, and quality conversations about art have helped Hyperallergic reach an audience as high as a million visitors per month.

In 2016, Hrag launched the "Hyperallergic" podcast, which tells stories from around the world. Some notable episodes have delved into the history of Surrealism in Egypt, the little-known story of female Abstract Expressionists, and front-line coverage of the artists taking part in the #StopDAPL action at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota.

He helped champion a type of straight-forward online art criticism that believes in the power of journalism while retaining a sensitivity to the cultural and economic realities that inform the world of art, culture, and politics. In May 2018, art critic Mary-Louise Schumacher wrote about the rise of Hyperallergic for Neiman Reports at Harvard University.

His curatorial interests are focused on theories and practices of decolonization, which is informed by his own experience of being part of a post-genocide diaspora. In 2010, he moved Hyperallergic into a gallery at Outpost in Ridgewood, Queens, to stage #theSocialGraph, the world’s first multi-disciplinary exhibition of social media-related art. In 2015, he orchestrated Jade Townsend’s Crazy Amazing Garage Sale exhibition at Auxiliary Projects, Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The three-day liquidation sale of unsold art was an attempt to release the capital trapped in one artist’s storage unit -- it liberated over $3,000.

In 2017, he kicked off a 10-year project exploring the contemporary legacy of Ottoman studio photography with an exhibition at Minerva Projects in Denver, Colorado. It included works by R. Caracashian, Dor Gues, Aram Jibilian, Gabriel Lékégian, Ottoman Gendarmerie, Hrair Sarkissian, Gariné Torossian, Garo Varjabedian, and Akram Zaatari The book is forthcoming in 2020.

He is a regular visiting critic, having visited universities and colleges including RISD, Brooklyn College, UC Davis, Pratt Institute, American University, Vanderbilt University, Columbia University, and UNLV. He has moderated panel discussions and juried exhibitions for various organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Ford Foundation, and Chautauqua Institution.

Beyond his writing and research, he is an avid photographer and collector of historical studio photographs.