This week felt like a battlefield of ideas. Not the loud kind. Not the trending kind. The deeper kind. The kind where we questioned power. Where we examined money, art, control, division, resilience, and survival in a world that never stops shifting beneath our feet.

If you’ve been walking with me inside The Romulus Kingdom this week, you already know — this wasn’t random content.

It was connected.

So let’s step back and look at the bigger picture.

Because warriors don’t just create.

They reflect.

Alright… today we’re stepping into international art drama. Not the petty “he copied my brushstroke” drama. I’m talking about Frida Kahlo, Mexico, Spain, colonial history, museum politics — and a controversy that proves once again art is never just art, it’s identity, it’s power, it’s memory. And sometimes… it’s a diplomatic headache. So grab your metaphorical armor. We’re going in.

I’ve been watching the timeline lately and it feels like we’ve entered a new era of modern survival behavior. Not survival like “hunt mammoth.” Survival like “rent is due, groceries cost a kidney, my group chat is stressed, and now people are trading probabilities on the Super Bowl halftime show.”

And in the middle of that chaos, we’ve got something weirdly fascinating happening:

NFTs are so down bad that people are literally betting on their comeback on platforms like Polymarket.

Prediction markets are exploding in attention and volume—Kalshi reportedly hit about $1B in trading volume on Super Bowl Sunday.

Even Robinhood’s CEO is out here calling it a possible “prediction market supercycle.”

Meanwhile, the global economy is “steady” on paper… but the lived experience is still tight, expensive, and uncertain. The IMF projects ~3.3% global growth in 2026, with inflation easing, but a lot of people still feel squeezed.

This week in the NFT world felt less like a hype cycle and more like a reckoning.

No champagne-spray announcements. No cartoon apes declaring victory. No “we’re so back” nonsense. Instead, we got something rarer — clarity.

Platforms shut down. Markets consolidated. Old assumptions cracked. New directions quietly took shape. The noise dropped just enough for the signal to come through.

Let’s break down what actually happened — without denial, without doom, and without pretending this space is something it isn’t anymore.

We have entered what some are calling the NFT winter, a season of contraction, hardship, and survival tests across the blockchain frontier — and Rodeo is the latest casualty.

In a world that once worshiped NFTs as digital gold, speculative rockets, and cultural badges of honor, the ground beneath many projects has shifted. Rodeo Shuts Down as NFT Platform Closures Accelerate is not just a headline — it’s a signpost in the larger saga of Web3’s evolution.

This week the art world didn’t whisper — it kicked the door open wearing armor, silk robes, and a scandalous grin.

At the center of the noise? Erotic Samurai art. Ancient Japanese imagery. Warriors with blades in one hand and desire in the other. And suddenly, the internet remembered what it does best: argue, panic, moralize, and misunderstand history in real time.

Let’s talk about it. Not the polite, museum-placard version. The real one.

Another week. Another crack in the glossy illusion of the NFT dream.

This time, the story doesn’t come from Twitter spaces, influencer drama, or a rug-pull Discord vanishing overnight. It comes from the Netherlands, where authorities arrested four individuals connected to a €1.4 million ($1.6 million) NFT theft—a reminder that the digital art world has officially crossed into the same dangerous territory as traditional high-value assets.

NFTs are no longer “just JPEGs.” They are targets.

And that changes everything.

Another headline made the rounds in the NFT world, and this one hit quietly. No chaos. No meltdown threads. No panic in the streets. NFT Paris has been cancelled.

For some people, that sentence alone is enough to shout “NFTs are dead.” I don’t see it that way. Not even close. What I see is a market finally being honest with itself.

Another door just closed in the NFT world, not with fireworks, not with a dramatic collapse. But with a quiet announcement that still echoes loud if you’ve been here long enough.

Nifty Gateway — one of the earliest mainstream NFT marketplaces — is shutting down its platform. For many, this is just another crypto headline. For OG collectors and artists, it feels like watching an old battleground fade into memory. Let’s talk about what this really means.

Some artists whisper through history. Others bleed into it.

This year, Houston becomes sacred ground as a major Frida Kahlo retrospective opens at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston—and I’ll say this plainly, from the heart and from the battlefield of art.

I love Frida Kahlo. Not in the polite, academic way. Not in the museum-label way. I love her because she was a warrior, long before Instagram quotes tried to soften that word.

Every so often, the art world does what it has always done best — it presses its finger directly onto society’s most sensitive nerve.

This time, the spark came from Vienna, where a museum exhibition featuring contemporary interpretations of religious imagery ignited backlash from religious groups, conservative commentators, and cultural critics. Accusations flew fast: blasphemy, disrespect, provocation for provocation’s sake.

Some demanded removal.

Others demanded apology.

Others demanded silence.

And art, as usual, refused.

If this feels familiar, it should. Because this isn’t really about Vienna. It’s about something much older — and much deeper.

This is about why art and religion have always collided.

Why museums become battlegrounds.

And why artists keep walking straight into cultural lightning storms even when they know the fire is waiting.

Of course it happened on New Year’s Eve.

Of course it happened at Mar-a-Lago.

And of course it involved Donald Trump, art, religion, money, and controversy — all colliding under crystal chandeliers as champagne glasses clinked and the calendar flipped to 2026.

While most of the world welcomed the new year quietly — reflecting on loss, hope, survival — Trump did what Trump does best: he turned the moment into a spectacle. Not just political. Not just cultural. But symbolic.

At a lavish New Year’s Eve gala hosted at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump presided over a charity auction that would soon ripple through headlines and art circles alike. The centerpiece? A freshly painted, live-created portrait of Jesus Christ, completed in front of the audience and sold for $2.75 million.

This wasn’t just an art sale.

It wasn’t just charity.

It was a mirror held up to our age.

And Warriors — the reflection was uncomfortable.

Just when you thought 2025 couldn’t get any more Banksy-ish(I’m so funny ), the phantom of street art struck again — right as winter began to whisper its cold secrets across London. The world’s most mysterious artist dropped a new mural so perfectly timed for end-of-year introspection it could’ve been scripted by the North Star itself. Let’s talk about Banksy’s latest London drop, what it might mean, and how it fits into the mythic arc I first dove into in my own piece “A Warrior’s Tale: Banksy”.

The global art world has long been a battleground — not just of beauty and expression, but of money, power, and narrative. After years of decline, uncertainty, and market contraction, the tide may finally be turning. In 2025, Sotheby’s and Christie’s together generated $13.2 billion in sales, marking a rebound in the art auction market that has serious implications for artists, collectors, and institutions alike.

This isn’t just another quarterly headline. It’s a signal — a story of resilience and reinvention — and it’s reshaping conversations about value, legacy, and the future of cultural investment.

Today, we step into a moment bigger than art, bigger than accolades, bigger than any single institution’s approval. Today, we witness history being carved by the hands of a man who understands the power of material, memory, and reclamation. Ibrahim Mahama, the Ghanaian artist known for transforming discarded objects into monumental installations, has just become the first African ever to top ArtReview’s annual Power 100 list—a ranking of the most influential figures shaping contemporary art across the globe.

Every empire rises with genius and falls with time.
Every bastion of culture eventually faces its reckoning.

Today, we stand witness to another monumental shift in the ever-changing battlefield of the art world: Sperone Westwater — one of New York’s most legendary galleries — announced it will close its doors after fifty years.

Five decades of influence, innovation, and prestige… gone.

If this feels familiar, it’s because I’ve already warned you, Warriors.
In my article When the Storm Hit the Art Market, I wrote about the seismic waves shaking the gallery world — closures in NYC, collapses across continents, and the end of the white-cube empire style of exhibiting art. That article wasn’t a prophecy.

Greetings Warriors!

Every so often, the art world trembles.

Not because of controversy.Not because of scandal.Not because of hype or trends.

But because an old master rises again — louder, stronger, and more undeniable than before.

This week, the world watched Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” break records at Sotheby’s, selling for $236.4 million, instantly becoming the second-most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. A number that didn’t just shake the room — it rattled the entire foundation of what we think we know about art, legacy, and value in 2025.

Some weeks come and go quietly. This was not one of those weeks.

Harlem — a sacred battleground of culture, rhythm, resistance, and renaissance — just witnessed a resurrection. The Studio Museum in Harlem, one of the most important institutions in Black art history, has finally opened the doors of its bold, long-awaited new home on 125th Street.

And Warriors… this isn’t just an architecture story.

This is a soul story.

A story of survival.

A story of communities refusing to vanish.

We’ve all sat before a painting and nodded politely. But lately something deeper calls: we don’t just want to look at art — we want to walk into it, become it. The shift toward immersive art is not just aesthetic—it’s a cultural hunger. As noted by Time-Out’s roundup of “incredible immersive experiences to do in NYC” the demand is for “art as fully physical, synesthetic experience.”

oday, I write not from the battlefield of creation but from the uneasy quiet that comes before a storm.

I’ve watched policy drafts turn into shackles. I’ve seen speeches dressed as decrees. And now I fear we are witnessing a war not of armies, but of ideas — a war on art itself.

The new wave of political control washing through America’s institutions feels deliberate. It’s not just budget cuts or bureaucratic tinkering. It’s a philosophy — one that views art not as expression, but as a threat.