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Dear Arts readers,

We are proud to present the 2019 Arts Year-in-Review — an annual round-up of the best films, albums, TV shows, and books of the year.

In the six years since the first edition of this supplement, Arts readership numbers have been steadily climbing (and in turn, our GPAs steadily falling — don’t tell our mothers). At the start of our tenure in January, we made it our goal to hit one million clicks by the end of the year. We know what you’re thinking — us? One million? Who do we think we are — Kylie Jenner singing “rise and shine” or Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello pretending to make out on Instagram? We could never reach that kind of Internet stardom!

Well, reader, at the time of this letter, we are on the cusp of making history. (We know, cliffhangers are irritating. But what can we say? We’re committed to journalistic ethics.) We’re so close we can taste it!

In short, we’ve had quite the momentous year. In our relentless pursuit of virality, we covered territory as varied as Cupcakke’s retirement and Lil Pump’s unofficial Harvard commencement speech. We published a spring supplement on art and fashion, as well as a summer supplement on art about love. We even got celebrity shout-outs from Neil Gaiman and Caroline Calloway themselves, whose contributions to pop culture are, ahem, equally substantive. Our reporting took us to Cannes and New York, from literally dark hijinks in Westeros to adolescent antics in Riverdale.

That’s right, Arts has definitely made it to the big leagues. And we couldn't have done without our wonderful team of execs and our talented staff writers, as well as our amazing designers Mireya C. Arango '20 and Ashley Bryant '22 and our multimedia execs Mariah Dimalaluan '20 and Naomi Castellon-Perez '21.

Before we bid our final adieu, we’d like to say good luck to our successors, the wonderful Iris M. Lewis ’21 and Allison J. Scharmann ’21, whose tenure as comp directors has been unparalleled (trust us, we used to be in their shoes). We know Arts will be safe with you (just don’t feed it too much sugar, and its bedtime is at midnight) — and we’re so excited to see how much you’ll achieve next year.

If you need us, we’ll be sunning ourselves* on vacation in the Maldives**.

*weeping over our theses

**in the shadowy, sunless depths of Lamont

Onto the next million!

Arts love,

Kaylee S. Kim ’20 and Caroline A. Tsai ’20