Weekend reading: 2022 in Review

The Wex in the news:

• Of the many stories on Wex happenings in the media over the past year, the most exciting is the appointment of new Executive Director Gaëtane Verna. She was featured in this Culture Type story on arts leaders with new jobs in ’22, and she’ll be profiled in The Columbus Dispatch next weekend.
• We also enlisted some friends to share the fabulous news about free gallery admission for all.
• Choreographer Abby Zbikowski was profiled by the New York Times during her rehearsals for Radioactive Practice in the Wex Performance Space. The dance work was later recognized by the Times as one of the year’s best.
• Pam Grier paid a visit in November, and spoke to Erica Thompson at the Dispatch in advance.
• Our much-discussed building was named one of the country’s most influential works of architecture in a Dezeen poll.
• Wex Artist Residency Award recipient Hope Ginsburg, who’ll debut a new work at the Wex in February, was name-checked in this piece about land artists.
• Ann Hamilton’s when an object reaches for your hand, a project she presented as part of the 2019 exhibition HERE, was featured in Flaunt.
• Columbus Monthly caught up with Brian Harnetty before the premiere of his latest work, Words and Silences, at Mershon Auditorium in November. The accompanying album has wound up on a number of year’s best lists, including MOJO.
• We’ve also told a few stories on our own about Wex artists and staffers. Here’s a handy Twitter thread with some of our favorites.

On the local front:

• 2022 started with Zanesville’s historic Masonic Temple, which was considered the heart of the city’s arts community, being destroyed by fire.
• Black Ohio Film Group launched in February.
• Also in February, longtime Columbus Museum of Art Director Nannette Maciejunes announced her retirement. She’ll be succeeded by Interim Director Terri Gehr.
• After a COVID-related delay, Cleveland saw its second Front International.
• Ohio State researchers saw indicators that you can train people to be creative.
• The Columbus Arts Festival returned in full force.
• It was a banner year for local artist Lance Johnson.
• Dr. Mark Lomax II released a tribute to Charles Mingus.
• Ohio State’s Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute nabbed the rights to the archives of Anne Bogart’s SITI Company.
• 2022 brought the debut of the Ohio Art Museum Trail, which includes the Wex.
• Locally made features Poser, They/Them/Us, and Those Who Spring of Me. all saw national distribution.
• And local filmmaker and educator Vera Brunner-Sung was the recipient of a new AAPI fellowship from the Sundance Institute.
• Members of domestic terror group the Patriot Front vandalized the murals covering the outside of The Vanderelli Room, and the late night act of cowardice resulted in thousands of dollars in donations to pay artists to repair the works.
• 934 Gallery also saw some controversy around a mural of the Aztec goddess of fertility.
• Nina West embodied Divine.
• The loss of Columbus Alive left a noticeable hole in the city’s arts coverage.
• But in better local media news, there was the resurgence of Matter News under former Alive editor Andy Downing. Stories from Matter in the past few months include this terrific look at the Wex’s partnership with local artists and Sanctuary Night and a profile of past Wex Path Fellow and curator Reg Zehner.
• And Columbus Monthly won a national award for its collaboration with Wil Haygood.
• Scott Woods called out the “Art Industrial Complex.”
• The Black Forager was recognized with a James Beard Award.
• The Short North lost Sherrie Gallery this summer, and Sarah Gormley Gallery relocated out of the neighborhood to downtown.
• In what could arguably be a sign of things to come, Glass Axis announced it’s moving out of Franklinton.
• However, Franklinton did get a fun new piece of public art, courtesy of artist Andrew Lundberg.
• Ohio State opened the Timashev Family Music Building.
• The Harmony Project gained a national platform.
• A holiday story hour with drag queens was canceled due to the threat of heavily armed protesters. The Guardian covered how this hateful phenomenon is happening globally.
• After a long, hard struggle with cancer, Oscar winner and longtime Wex friend Julia Reichert died at the age of 76.
• This year also saw the passing of Frank Gabrenya. We wrote a tribute to the former Columbus Dispatch critic.
• And local computer art legend and Ohio State Professor Emeritus Charles Csuri also left us. He was included in this national roundup of art world notables who died in 2022.

On the international scene:

• jaamil olawale kosoko, artist and curator of the dynamic, multidisciplinary summer exhibition Portal For(e) the Ephemeral Passage, started the year by winning a Slamdance award for his first work with Wex Film/Video Studio Editor Alexis McCrimmon.
• NFTs were a very big deal in the past year. On the good side, NFTs were used to aid plantation workers in Congo and to raise funds for Ukraine’s freedom fight. On the bad, some NFT investors were the victims of massive theft, some NFT creators were accused of stealing from artists, and gig workers behind NFTs were worked like dogs.
• Damien Hirst fully committed to the NFT craze by burning the original artworks that spawned his NFT launch.
• In the crypto world, these art investors are our pick for the winner of this year’s Darwin Awards.
• The caking of the Mona Lisa in May appears to be the incident that kicked off months of attacks on priceless artworks by climate activists. The Atlantic offered coverage of artists taking a less stunt-like approach to demanding change.
• The war in Ukraine had artists speaking out and conservators working to preserve historic artworks from Russian looting.
• John Oliver provided an overview of the hot topic of museums and repatriation.
• Two front-of-house workers at the Museum of Modern Art were stabbed by a mentally ill former member.
• Artists voiced concerns about theft or outright replacement by AI-generated art.
• The New York Times took a deep dive into the museum world.
• The paper also cast a critical eye at claims of liberal bias in Hollywood movies.
• Chris Rock got slapped.
• The Criterion Collection took a hit.
• But New York City’s iconic Kim’s Video came back to life.
• And John Waters announced plans to return to the world of filmmaking.
• The once-a-decade Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time had a big and internet-contested surprise at the top.
• Joe Biden reinstated the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
• The Supreme Court opted to weigh in on the issue of fair use in art.
• Artists such as Barbara Kruger and Nan Goldin responded to the end of Roe v. Wade.
• In related news, art about abortion entered the mainstream.
• Yay! Turner Classic Movies programmer Jacqueline Stewart was named president of the Academy Museum. And, boo! Her colleague, TCM Underground programmer and 2021 Wex guest Millie De Chirico was let go this month. The wonderfully weird and eclectic programming she brought to the channel on Friday nights has already ceased.
• Speaking of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, the organization issued a long-overdue apology to Sacheen Littlefeather.
• Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation launched a free screening room.
• Jafar Panahi was arrested by Iranian authorities. Again.
• The complete archives of Marcel Duchamp became available.
• The Encyclopedia of Indian Art also launched, making 10,000 years of Indian art history available for free online.
• Dancing was posed as a curative for anxiety.
• And museum visits were actually prescribed for anxiety in Brussels.
• The San Francisco Art Institute shuttered.
• Kim Kardashian pissed off fashion conservators.
• Kentucky film archive Appalshop was flooded.
• And the National Museum of Brazil was devastated by fire.
• Cheech Marin opened his museum of Chicano art.
• The growing field of “medical humanities” got some attention. Our Art & Resilience Department is working on similar initiatives with the community of caretakers at Wexner Medical Center.
• Nonetheless, other research found an implicit bias against creativity.
• The Baltimore Museum of Art opened the doors to security guards as curators.
• The art media world got smaller.
• Arts journalists, like a lot of users, reckoned with whether to keep posting to Twitter.
• The “great men” of American theater had a moment of reckoning.
• Book bannings sadly came back into vogue.
• Le Tigre, including recent Wex guest JD Samson, reunited for the first time in over a decade.
• Kate Bush had a much-deserved moment of resurgence.
• The Library of Congress preserved work by Wu-Tang Clan for the ages.
• Salman Rushdie got back to work after a near-fatal stabbing.
• More attention was paid to the accessibility practice of using alt text.
• A new Instagram algorithm flummoxed artists on the platform.
• Curator Helen Molesworth released a hot podcast series.
• The music world was stunned by the loss of jazz artist Jaimie Branch.
• We’ll end this roundup with this commemoration of film artists who passed in 2022 from Turner Classic Movies.