The Defining Artworks of 2025

By some measures, democracy is in downward decline in quite a few countries across the world, while censorship is only increasing. (A coincidence? Hardly.) But even with so much valid concern about the fragility of the world order more broadly, artists pressed ahead in 2025, producing valuable works that contended with police violence, abuses of power, fallen monuments, climate change, and trans rights.This list taking stock of the 25 artworks that defined the year includes many pieces confronti