BY MAXWELL RABB
In 2025, art world influence proves harder than ever to define. Artists are breaking through in radically different ways: viral blockbuster solo exhibitions, sustained institutional recognition, fast-rising gallery momentum, viral robotic art fair presentations, and public advocacy that extends beyond the gallery walls.
This year was unusually volatile. As artists grappled with accelerating AI adoption, cuts to arts funding in the United States, and the aftershocks of climate catastrophe—particularly the devastating fires in Los Angeles—much of the year’s most resonant work addressed contemporary crises. In the face of these conflicts, artists who won a groundbreaking award or received a long-overdue solo exhibition are still cause for celebration. The names on this list, from Amy Sherald, who refused to compromise her values for the sake of an institutional show, to Beeple, who created the year’s biggest art fair spectacle, defined 2025 as they confronted contemporary anxieties and still managed to shock and move us.
Here are Artsy’s most influential artists of 2025.
Danielle Mckinney
Danielle Mckinney’s saturated, cinematic paintings focus on the intimate lives of Black women. The artist depicts her subjects in dimly lit interiors as they lounge, read, smoke, think, and find contentment within themselves. These pieces commanded attention from Maastricht, the Netherlands, to Massachusetts this year.
Mckinney debuted eight new paintings with Marianne Boesky Gallery at TEFAF Maastricht in March. Then, her first U.S. institutional solo show, “Tell Me More,” opened at Massachusetts’s Rose Art Museum in August. She capped off her remarkable year with a solo exhibition at London’s Galerie Max Hetzler, which opened in September.
The 44-year-old artist was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and is now based in New Jersey. Mckinney started her work as a photographer at 15 and earned an MFA in photography from Parsons School of Design in 2013. She only took up painting in 2020, during the pandemic. In just five years, Mckinney has cemented her reputation as an era-defining painter.
