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Artwork Archive's curators select five Instagram accounts that will add some wonder to your weekend scroll. 

Instagram has become the de-facto online gallery for scores of artists, gallerists, and curators. In some cases, Instagram has even replaced the need for a brick-and-mortar exhibition space altogether. While the world awaits an end to lockdown, our collective eyeballs seem more glued to our screens than ever before. 

In fact, during the past year, the number of Instagram users ballooned to more than 1 billion. With so many feeds, it’s easy to get lost in the algorithm. So, Artwork Archive’s curators have scoured the Instagram multiverse for the best art accounts to follow — by artists, design collectives, curators, and more. Happy scrolling!

Antwaun Sargent @sirsargent 

Antwaun Sargent is a curator and critic best known for championing BIPOC artists whose work explores issues of identity and community. He recently joined the powerhouse “mega gallery” Gagosian as a director, where he’ll be contributing to the gallery’s Quarterly publication, curating exhibitions, and undoubtedly shepherding an under-represented cohort of artists into the art historical canon. 

Antwaun is the author of two books: The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion and Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists, which focuses on artists featured in the private collection of art patrons Bernard Lumpkin and Carmine Boccuzzi. Antwaun’s Instagram account expertly mixes images of works by artists he supports, as well as fashion-forward photos of his circle of artists, curators and other art world fixtures. As a veritable influencer, Antwaun’s expert eye frames a more equitable and avant-garde cultural landscape. 

Sophie Gunnol @sophiegunnol

Sophie Gunnol is a curator based in Los Angeles whose Instagram account revels in the monochromatic — strictly black, white, and shades of gray. Her ability to interweave various mediums by artists both well-known and emerging, while staying true to her minimalist palette, is practically a work of art in and of itself. 

Textures, materials, gestures, and forms become the central focus when color is absent. Whether shards of glass, neon lights, or concrete sculptures, the works that appear on Sophie’s IG feed form a constellation of luxurious reductivism. It’s a destination to discover new artists, as well as revel in the works of contemporary masters.

Katy Hessel @thegreatwomenartists

Katy Hessel is a curator and art historian based in London. She’s also the creator and host of The Great Women Artists podcast, which releases new episodes every Wednesday on her website. Her Instagram account is a repository of her encyclopedic knowledge and every post’s caption offers a mini art history lesson. Considering that most women artists have been practically invisible in terms of art world recognition, Katy’s ongoing explorations provide a much-needed — and long-overdue — critical take on the majority-minority. 

By filling in the gender gaps that punctuate the art historical narrative, The Great Women Artists is a celebration of the cultural contributions of the fairer sex. Recent artists featured include Sister Corita Kent, the so-called “Pop-Art Nun,” and Surrealist artist Leonor Fini, “who embodied the anti-muse in her life and work, constantly defying and subverting the largely male-led Surrealist movement.” As these two examples attest, the women whose art and lives Katy illuminates through her work are more than just “female artists” — they are iconoclasts, renegades, and creative visionaries that history would be wise to revere. 

Visual Citizens @visual_citizens

Shali Kelly and Adam Kelly comprise this artist collective and multidisciplinary design studio, which was founded in Cape Town and is now based in Rotterdam. Their other-worldly renderings offer a visual escape from the everyday, but without the dystopian dread that often accompanies the seeming acceleration of our collective digital future. 

Visual Citizens are hopeful world-builders, designing environments that marry organic elements with the hyperreal. The resulting images are exercises in utopian speculative design and biomimicry, which coalesce in dreamscapes that beckon the viewer into idealized spaces for our virtual selves.  

A Darling Find @a_darling_find

This anonymous Instagram account is a self-proclaimed “tribute to forms,” especially those of architectural gems and bohemian interiors dripping with romanticism.  If you’re among those still partial to physical — rather than virtual —  spaces, @a_darling_find will bring unbridled interior design joy to your Instagram feed. 

Peppered throughout are works of art and installations by iconic masters - Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Serra, Calder, and Picasso among them — but often framed in unexpected and delightfully charming compositions that offer a fresh take and some contextual eye candy. Since travel has been decidedly off-the-books over the past year, this IG account serves as a timely reminder that there are still countless corners of the world to be discovered — you just need to know where to look.