Weekend Reading: April 12 Edition

Around Columbus

• Wex Executive Director Gaëtane Verna is the curator of the Canada Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, which opens Wednesday. Gaëtane’s in Italy for the big reveal of the pavilion installation by Tricontinental Cinema contributing artist Kapwani Kiwanga and recommended this episode of the Art Angle podcast for a good overview of the art event.
• Sunday afternoon at ROY G BIV, Ohio Arts Council Grant Coordinator Chaz O’Neil will talk about the resources available through the agency.
• The Columbus Arts Festival announced the artists participating in this year’s event, including locals like printmaker Evangelia Phillippidis, The Smithery jewelry artists Anne Holman and Jen Townsend, and mixed media artist Benjamin Lamb,
• Columbus Commons announced its programming for 2024. Among the offerings are the 614 Funk Fest in August and a free outdoor movie series in September.
• The Columbus Metropolitan Library is taking your eclipse glasses through April 18 so they can be sent to schools in Latin America for the next eclipse.
• Matter News offered its take on Jason Isbell’s sold-out show Wednesday at Ohio University.
• Columbus-born writer Elisa Gonzalez won the prestigious Whiting Award.
• Glass Axis will be staying in Franklinton after all.
• Columbus Underground had a rundown on what you’ll find in Ohio State’s new Theatre, Film, and Media Arts Building.
• Tuesday night, Ohio History Center hosts the latest program from the Story Lab for Reimagining Columbus.
• Thursday, artist Sarah Cain will be speaking at the Columbus Museum of Art.
• Also Thursday, you can check out some jazz from Devin Gray, Drew Wesely, and Gerard Cox and Troy Kunkler at Old First Presbyterian Church.
• Friday, Clintonville Jamboree brings art pop-ups, live music, and family activities to the N. High Street corridor.
• Downtown Friday night, DJ Mike Servito will do a set at Skylab.
• Looking ahead to next Saturday, it’s Record Store Day, with events at local shops such as Lost Weekend Records and Spoonful Records.
• Next Saturday also brings the Ohioana Book Festival to Columbus Metropolitan Library.
• And there’s Seventh Son Brewing’s 11th Anniversary Party Saturday, featuring live music, comedy, and a dance party with DJ George Brazil.
• You could take a break from that event for a new show of works by Aly Elliott and Loie Greenwood at nearby 934 Gallery.
• Or head to Olde Towne East Saturday for the latest edition of the monthly dance party Candy Rain, featuring the Wex’s in-house DJ and jack-of-all-trades Dorian Ham.

Around the Globe

• The 2024 Guggenheim fellows were announced, and the list includes a lot of familiar faces: Wex Artist Residency Award recipients Harold Mendez and Abby Zbikowski (who also teaches dance at Ohio State), and past visiting filmmakers Lilli Carre and Jude Chehab. Congrats also go out to photographer, Ohio State Professor, and new Guggenheim Fellow Gina Osterloh, whose work was recently on view at the Columbus Museum of Art.
• The Cannes Film Festival revealed its 2024 lineup. Films to make their world premiere include Rumours, the latest from Wex friend Guy Maddin and collaborators Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, starring Cate Blanchett. Expect to see the film at the Wex in the months ahead.
• The Indigo Girls documentary It’s Only Life After All is a New York Times Critic’s Pick, delving into the archives of Amy Ray and the charming, heartwarming “uncoolness” of the duo.
• The Academy Museum debuted a permanent exhibit spotlighting the Jewish founders of Hollywood.
• Jane Fonda is teaming up with Gagosian and Christie’s for an art charity auction in Beverly Hills, raising funds to fight an oil drilling referendum on California’s November ballot.
• Thursday, you can get a jump on our summer exhibitions by Zooming into a program featuring artist Tanya Lukin Linklater.
• Artist Shana Moulton responded to her video series Whispering Pines, starring her hypochondriac alter ego Cynthia, with Meta/Physical Therapy, a reflective piece on health and wellness now at MoMA.
• An anonymous worker at Pinakothek der Moderne museum in Munich was fired for sneaking one of his own artworks onto the institution’s walls. This prompted Artnet to gather other examples of artists as self-appointed museum curators.
• Recently retired New York Times art critic Roberta Smith reflected on her long career.
• London-based artist Rocco Ritchie, son of Madonna and Guy Ritchie, debuted his latest work, Pack a Punch, in Miami’s Design District.
• The 2024 Whitney Biennial features more art from millennials, international artists and women, according to Hyperallergic.
• This weekend brings the opening of Chicago’s annual miniature art event Barely Fair, which runs concurrent with the full-sized art fair Expo Chicago.
• A new touring art exhibit give overdue attention to three Japanese women artists who made work while trapped in US internment camps.
• Yayoi Kusama was the top-selling contemporary artist of 2023, according to the latest Hiscox Artist Top 100 report.
• Get a glimpse into the Palmer Museum of Art, opening soon at Penn State’s Arboretum.
• Vulture hosted a tour of the creative process from start to finish, led by artists Louise Glück, Cheryl Pope, and Kara Walker.
• A German puzzle depicting Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” is raising important questions about who gets to profit off the work of the greats.
• Courtesy of AI, Salvador Dalí is now taking questions via a replica of his Lobster Telephone.
• Here are some of the most breathtaking pictures of Tuesday’s solar eclipse.
• Scientists are using eye-tracking technology to try to quantify the embodied experience of viewing art.
• A story from this week looks at why some artists are setting up LLCs for their practice.
• Several museums in the UK reveal that hundreds of items were lost, stolen or destroyed over the past five years.
• The Sculpture Center has received a $1 million donation from the Elaine Graham Weitzen Foundation for Fine Arts, intended to fund commissioning from new artists.
• Jazz saxophonist Claude Lawrence debuted new paintings inspired by Porgy and Bess at Venus Over Manhattan.
• Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is one of the legislators backing a bill to provide financial support to struggling nonprofit theaters.
• American Library Association President Emily Drabinski discussed increasingly heated efforts to ban books.
• Political prisoner Aleksei Navalny’s memoir will be published posthumously this fall.
• A new exhibition in Berlin about iconic dancer Josephine Baker prompted a revisiting of her life and legacy.
• Here’s a profile of the French dance collective (La)Horde, which boasts collaborators ranging from Madonna to the Ballet National de Marseille.
• And here’s a new piece on the art of audio description.
• Writing a research paper on a niche subject and concerned no one will read it? Try setting the study to music like this professor in Florida.
• Patti Astor, cofounder of Fun Gallery, a New York space that brought graffiti to the mainstream, has died at 74.
• Dinh Q. Lê, an acclaimed Vietnamese artist who chronicled Vietnam’s fractured history, died at 56.
• Eleanor Coppola, filmmaker, wife of Francis Ford Coppola, and mother of Sofia Coppola, passed away at the age of 87.
• Vietnamese-born artist Dinh Q. Lê died at 56.
• Actor Cole Brings Plenty was found dead at 27.