issue, featuring a self-portrait by the born HIV-positive artist Kia LaBeija, Velasco wrote a poignant statement: “The art world is misogynist. Art history is misogynist. Also racist, classist, transphobic, ableist, homophobic. I will not accept this. Intersectional feminism is an ethics near and dear to so many on our staff. Our writers too. This is where we stand. There’s so much to be done. Now, we get to work.” Art critic Jerry Saltz immediately praised the new direction the magazine had taken, noting, "And just like that, an Artforum that needed to disappear was gone." 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. This 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 the drug that led doctors to believe Oxycontin was less addictive that 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." 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 enforce violent order. 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