From the category archives:

The Best

All The Instagrams I Should’ve Taken at Fields Fest

by Michael Anthony Farley on August 24, 2016
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Last weekend, hundreds of artists, musicians, and weirdos decamped from Baltimore and turned a nudist campground into a temporary utopia. It was so utopian, it didn’t even occur to me to use social media. Thankfully, many others did.

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The Best of Art F City, 2015

by Rea McNamara on December 31, 2015
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Revisiting the ‘Simple Net Art Diagram’, reviewing an art fair’s virtual tour, calling out Georg Baselitz, breaking news on the USC MFA Class, and even bringing back nerdocracy. Readers, we truly feel a real sense of accomplishment for the stories we wrote in 2015, especially after amassing them in a ‘Best of’ list such as this. We not only paid artists to attend art fairs, but also investigated sexism is arts publishing and even had two Renaissance cosmetics experts dish on body hair removal. Who else publishes this shit? No one.

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The Best 25 Shows of 2015

by The AFC Staff on December 31, 2015
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2015 was great for art. For all the bitching that went on about art fairs, the dominance of the market, and sub-par museum shows (cough, cough Björk), I saw more great shows than I have in my ten years working as a critic in New York. Rather than try to whittle our picks down to a few select shows, we wrote up every show we thought was truly exemplary.

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The Best Unrepresented Artists of 2015

by The AFC Staff on December 28, 2015
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As 2015 comes to a close, the internet is awash with “top 10” and “best of” lists. But one art world metric of success that’s under-discussed (and nearly-universally sought) is gallery representation. So we’ve asked past and present AFC editors to weigh in on the artists that commercial galleries haven’t snagged exclusive contracts with yet—despite acclaim from critics, museums, and audiences. In the interest of gender parity in the notoriously sexist world of gallery representation, we’re each selecting one male-identified and one female-identified artist.

To that end, here are the best and brightest boys and girls who’ve yet to be drafted

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Vacation Art is the Best Art

by Michael Anthony Farley on September 23, 2015
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The former upstate home of Linda Montano has been given a new lease on life: as an informal, intimate artist residency where the only imperative is to have fun.

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Art at Its Best 2013: A Top Ten List

by Corinna Kirsch on December 23, 2013
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I’ve never been able to come up with a top ten list of exhibitions; big, lasting ideas don’t always take place in art on the wall. So, keep that in mind with my best-of list; there’re exhibitions, sure, but my main requirement was picking “art” that I keep coming back to time-and-time again.

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Amazon Art Customer Reviews are Hysterical

by Ian Marshall on August 9, 2013
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It’s only been a week since Amazon launched its new fine arts category, but the customer reviews are already pouring in. Naturally, we immediately took to combing the site for the best of them. Some of the juiciest comments have already been removed from the site, but luckily we were able to snag a lot them before they disappeared. Hoo-boy, did we ever find some good ones!

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Smörgåsbord Reviewed by Baynard Woods at City Paper

by Paddy Johnson on January 9, 2013
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I was the juror for a show called Smörgåsbord for Gallery CA in Baltimore. It just got its first review! Read all about it after the jump.

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AFC’s Top 5: Corinna Kirsch

by Corinna Kirsch on January 4, 2013
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When it comes to art, I’m hard to please. Looking back at the exhibitions I saw in 2012, there were only a handful I’d give a glowing recommendation. These are the very few that made the cut.

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AFC’s Top 10: Rhett Jones

by Rhett Jones on January 3, 2013
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Our personal top tens continue with Rhett Jones, AFC’s indispensable jack-of-all-trades and designated film person.

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