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Weekend reading: February 19 edition

Melissa Starker, Creative Content & PR Manager

Feb 19, 2021

Artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko stands against a curtain under pink lighting, holding a foil-covered toy machine gun, as he shoots a short film for his American Chameleon project

Around Ohio

A male and female performer face each other across a bare floor space with a gray curtain in the background in a scene from the Urban Arts Space presentation of Hear We Go

Hear We Go; image courtesy of Urban Arts Space

  • Join the King Arts Complex on Saturday for a virtual celebration of what would’ve been Aminah Robinson’s 81st birthday.
  • Here’s a terrific review of our current show Climate Changing from Nancy Gilson for the Columbus Dispatch. (Remember, you can see it for free every Sunday thanks to a grant from The AEP Foundation.)
  • Dublin’s Abbey Theatre will virtually premiere its production of #Charlottesville on Sunday.
  • Wednesday afternoon, the Columbus Metropolitan Library kicks off a series of programs centered on race with a discussion and screening of Raoul Peck's essential documentary I Am Not Your Negro.
  • Wednesday night, the Mid-Ohio Filmmakers Association will virtually host the fifth annual "State of Film in Ohio" meeting.
  • Through March 7, OSU’s Urban Arts Space is streaming Hear We Go, a performance work that tells the story of a mime and a foley artist locked in an inter dimensional struggle.
  • Artist Ashley Pierce will be beautifying a tunnel in the Harrison West neighborhood.
  • The Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland has launched an ambitious, multi-venue show to put its own “anti-Black practices” under the microscope.
  • And congratulations to the Columbus Museum of Art for the $1 million gift it received to support the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Curatorial Fellowship for Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts.

 

Around the globe

Two young women look at an unseen artwork with two draped canvases by Sam Gilliam on walls in the background during the opening of the Wexner Center exhibition Inherent Structure

Unstretched abstract works by Sam Gilliam presented as part of the Wex's summer 2018 exhibition Inherent Structure; photo: Kathryn D Studios

  • There’s a new interview with Wex Artist Residency Award recipient Jaamil Olawale Kosoko from Dance Magazine. (That's Kosoko at top of page, during the shooting of his Wex-supported short film American Chameleon.)
  • Torkwase Dyson also discussed her Wex Artist Residency Award project in a new interview out this week.
  • In advance of a new doc series from Netflix, Mahershala Ali has recited Frederick Douglass“Fourth of July” speech.
  • On Wednesday, you can log into a free virtual conversation with actor Dame Judi Dench.
  • Here’s the latest controversial film essay from Martin Scorsese, about the devaluing of cinema.
  • After weeks of sharing stories of award wins for Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, we’re happy to share at last info on how you can watch it.
  • What’s up with Amazon shutting independent documentarians and short film creators out of its self-publishing program?
  • After earning raves at Sundance for his first film, Summer of Soul (Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Questlove has announced that his follow-up with be a doc about legendary funk artist Sly Stone.
  • Black dancers and dance companies, such as Dance Theater of Harlem Executive Director Anna Glassgot candid about their struggles to survive during the pandemic.
  • The amazing Bill Irwin talked about his new performance centered on the work of Samuel Beckett, which is streaming through March 7.
  • Alex DaCorte has been tapped to design a new work for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop.
  • A new project from Google Arts + Culture aims to give you a multi-sensory experience of the work of Wassily Kandinsky.  
  • MoMA has received a substantial gift of women-focused photography by artists including Louise Lawler and Lorna Simpson.
  • How many women artists have been lost to history because they changed their name following marriage?
  • Sam Gilliam and Howardena Pindell are among the artists who pop up in this piece on how Black abstract painters are finally getting their due. 
  • New York’s DIY art community, including Paper cofounder Kim Hastreiter, is re-embracing print.
  • Meow Wolf has opened its new, neon-lit interactive supermarket installation in Las Vegas, Omega Mart USA.
  • Thousands of Indigenous oral histories are going to be digitally archived.
  • John G. Hampton, the first indigenous leader of a public art gallery in Canada, has some thoughts on decolonizing museums.
  • Here’s how Texas art museums took care of staff and their respective holdings during widespread power outages.
  • This fall, visitors to Marfa will have another art destination to check out nearby.
  • This week in facepalms, the President of the Indianapolis Museum of Art has resigned after a job listing for a new director called for a candidate who could maintain the institution’s “traditional, core, white art audience.”
  • And this week in “history is a circle,” a century ago, Cole Porter created a pro-immigration protest ballet.
  • Despite all the interesting news and new shows openings, we’re thinking the most amazing and profound thing we’ll see all week is this.

 

Top of page: Jaamil Olawale Kosoko during production of his 2020 short film American Chameleon.

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