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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
On October 26, 2023, he was fired by the magazine's publisher, Penske Media Corporation, after the publication reprinted an open letter, which received 8,000 signatories,[5] calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.
David Velasco was fired from Artforum primarily because the open letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza did not mention the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
"[11][3][5] A number of musicians, writers, philosophers, and artists, including Laura Poitras, Brian Eno, Barbara Kruger, Judith Butler, Saidiya Hartman, Nicole Eisenman, and Nan Goldin, signed the letter and several publicly called for a boycott of Artforum in response to Velasco being fired.
"[1] In an oral history interview, in June 2020, he noted that he was married to artist Ryan McNamara and recently, for Document Journal in 2024, said that the poet and publisher, Bennet Bergman, was his current boyfriend.