David Velasco

David Velasco (born October 23, 1978)

Career In 2005, Velasco began working at Artforum. He became the site editor in 2008 and frequently wrote features and columns on artists, artworks, and events. He initiated a series of books on modern dance published by the Museum of Modern Art in 2016. The first issue included writing and photographic essays by Molly Nesbit, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado, critic Johanna Fatemen, and artists including Adrian Piper, Sable Elyse Smith, and House of Ladosha. Over his tenure, some cover stories included Wolfgang Tillmans, Arthur Jafa, Barbara Hammer, Sam McKinniss, Martine Gutierrez, hannah baer, and the Palestinian Museum.

Artist Nan Goldin published a harrowing text and photographic account of her addiction to the prescription pain-relief drug OxyContin in a 2018 piece in Velasco's first issue. This 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. The campaign coincided with Christopher Glazek's breaking report in Esquire and, several weeks later, Patrick Radden Keefe's report in The New Yorker on the Sacklers' "criminal misbranding." Both journalists reported that Purdue Pharma led doctors to believe Oxycontin was less addictive than had been reported. Goldin demanded in her essay that the Sacklers donate half of their fortune to drug rehabilitation clinics and programs. Thessaly La Force of the New York Times Style Magazine wrote of the artist, "It is rare these days to see a lone artist like Goldin — especially one both critically and commercially successful, whose work is in dozens of important museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art — step into the ring as an activist."

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." Kanders had donated an estimated $10 million to the museum, and the source of his fortune came 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. Although the Geneva Convention in 1925 outlawed the use of tear gas in all international military conflict, the tear gas fired at peaceful protesters and civilians by the police and military during the George Floyd protests in 2020 as well as on migrants on the US-Mexico border is the same brand of tear gas manufactured by Defense Technology, a subsidy of Safariland. A wave of artists from the Biennial, including Korakrit Arunanondchai, Meriem Bennani, Nicole Eisenman and Nicholas Galanin, demanded immediate removal of their work from the Biennial within hours after the essay was published. After mounting pressure from artists, critics, and gallerists urging the public to boycott the show, Kanders stepped down from his leadership position at the museum. 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, Velasco was fired by Penske Media Corporation after the publication reprinted an open letter, which received 8,000 signatories, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during the Gaza war. The letter was published on October 19, and initially failed to report the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed 1,400 Israelis and the taking of around 200 people as hostages. The letter originally circulated as a Google document, and also appeared in e-flux and Hyperallergic. Prominent collectors like Martin Eisenberg and Eleanor Cayre contacted artists to demand they retract their signatures, and several did so. Magazine publishers Danielle McConnell and Kate Koza stated that he violated the "standard editorial process" of the magazine with the letter, following a campaign of art collectors and advertisers who objected to the letter, though Velasco has disputed this account in subsequent interviews and argued that "he sudden invention of phantom procedures is one of the more despicable attempts to disguise my firing as a matter of protocol rather than politics."

Velasco told The New York Times that he had "no regrets," and that he was disappointed that Artforum "bent to outside pressure." Poitras wrote to Penske stating that Velasco had “elevated the magazine and institution intellectually, politically, and artistically," and, “s a journalist, it is important for me to stress this is not only about Artforum—this is about free speech, editorial independence, and press freedom.” Zack Hatfield, a senior editor for Artforum, announced he was leaving following the firing of Velasco, which he called "unacceptable," as did editors Chloe Wyma, Kate Sutton, and several others. Writers Against the War on Gaza formed the same day as an ad hoc organization, and signed more than 700 writers, artists and cultural workers to a boycott of Penske Media Corporation's three art publications: Artforum, Art in America, and ARTnews. According to a conversation between Velasco and the writer Sarah Schulman in April 2025, the boycott is ongoing.

In 2024, Velasco received a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation; prior recipients include Angela Y. Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mike Davis, and Mohammed El Kurd.

Velasco is on the board of directors of the Poetry Project.

Personal life In a 2018 interview with SSENSE, Velasco stated that he was a vegetarian. He relayed a story when he was disappointed there was not "a vegetarian option" and added that he was "shocked because I assumed that most people in the art world would be vegetarians."

In a 2025 article in Harper's detailing the murder of his friend Brent Sikkema, he describes growing up "poor in Oregon, a Mexican bastard born to a sixteen-year-old white high-school dropout."