Cookie Crumbles

July 9, 2025

The cookie crumbles, and with it, the old scaffolding of the art world is coming down—loudly, unexpectedly, and without apology. Galleries, once the cornerstones of artistic legitimacy, are shuttering their doors in quiet succession. Collectors, once predictably devoted, are now elusive, hesitant, and recalibrating their priorities in the face of shifting global tides. Artists—those sensitive barometers of the cultural atmosphere—are anxious. They're scaling back, rethinking, retreating into survival mode. The world, already trembling at the edges with geopolitical tension, environmental anxiety, and economic uncertainty, offers no comforting hand to those trying to hold onto a vision.

And yet—there's something happening.

It’s not entirely visible. It’s not organized. It doesn’t wear the polished veneer of institutional acceptance or follow the old rules of success. But it pulses, undeniable. In this moment of breakdown, something ancient and raw is rising again in the artist’s spirit—the urge not just to reflect the world, but to reshape it.

This collapse is not an end. It’s a clearing.

In the vacuum left by the closure of conventional spaces, new possibilities are making themselves known. The glossy prestige of the white cube might be dimming, but the freedom it inadvertently offers is bright. There’s a deeper calling now: to stop performing for gatekeepers and to start speaking directly, ferociously, honestly. The artist who is all in—who isn’t just creating for recognition but because they have to—will find this moment electrifying. Not safe, not easy, but charged with the raw material of change.

Now is the time to double down—not on scale, not necessarily on output, but on intent. On truth. On the kind of making that refuses to chase trends and instead distills experience into something potent. When institutions fall silent, the work speaks louder. When the market gets quiet, there’s finally room to hear the voice of the practice itself.

Of course, there’s fear. Of course, there’s grief. But right next to it, if you look closely, there’s a restless excitement, humming like an underground current. It doesn't yet have language, but it doesn’t need it. It’s better poured into the clay, slashed across the canvas, whispered in the margins of a sketchbook. It’s something beginning—not a return, not a revival, but a reimagining.

The playing field is flattening. The spotlight is flickering. And for those who’ve always been guided not by applause but by necessity, this might be the best time there ever was.

Something big is stirring. The best way to meet it? Get to work.