The first issue featured a cover with a work by the kinetic sculpture by Swiss painter Jean Tinguely suggesting the inchoate and indistinct identity of the fledgling publication.

One of Leider's final essays for the magazine, "How I Spent My Summer Vacation, or, Art and Politics in Nevada, Berkeley, San Francisco and Utah," is a reflective first-person account of a cross-country road trip visiting earthworks, such as Michael Heizer's Double Negative (1969) and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970).

The writers were mostly European male theorists like Slavoj Zizek, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Toni Negri, and Jacques Rancière.

[7] Michelle Kuo, a PhD candidate at Harvard and respected critic, was announced as the editor-in-chief in 2010 after Tim Griffin resigned to pursue other work.

[9][10][11][12] Artforum initially backed Landesman, saying the allegations were "unfounded" and suggested that lawsuit was "an attempt to exploit a relationship that she herself worked hard to create and maintain.

[15] Kuo released a statement in Artnews noting, "We need to make the art world a more equitable, just, and safe place for women at all levels.

In his first issue, featuring a self-portrait by the born HIV-positive artist Kia LaBeija, Velasco wrote a poignant statement: "The art world is misogynist.

The new editorial direction included writing and photographic essays by Molly Nesbit, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado, critic Johanna Fatemen, and artists such as Donald Moffet.

[7] Artist Nan Goldin published a harrowing text and photographic account of her addiction to the prescription pain-relief drug OxyContin in a 2018 piece that prompted the founding of P.A.I.N., a campaign to expose the role of Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family in the opioid epidemic in America.

"[18] In 2019, Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett published an essay in Artforum titled "The Tear Gas Biennial," decrying Warren Kanders, co-chair of the board of the Whitney Museum, and his "toxic philanthropy.

"[22] Although Kanders had donated an estimated $10 million to the museum, the source of his fortune comes from Safariland LLC, a company that manufactures riot gear, tear gas and other chemical weapons used by police and the military to impose order by force.

[26] The essay was instrumental in his resignation, and in the museum cutting ties with Kanders' financial endowments that were directly connected to the promotion and use of military weaponry and violence during peaceful social unrest.

[37] That same day, The New York Times reported that editor-in-chief David Velasco had been fired, leading to the resignations of senior editors Zack Hatfield and Chloe Wyma.

[34] Documentarian Laura Poitras, musician Brian Eno, artists Barbara Kruger and Nicole Eisenman, philosopher Judith Butler, academic Saidiya Hartman, and photographer Nan Goldin signed the original letter and called for a boycott of Artforum in response to Velasco being fired.

[38] As the magazine and its sister publications The Art Newspaper and Artnet lacked editorial leadership,[36] the December 2023 "Year in Review" issue of Artforum was trimmed because critic Jennifer Krasinski, art historian Claire Bishop, filmmaker John Waters, curator Meg Onli, and artist Gordon Hall withdrew their writing from the magazine in protest of Velasco's firing.