Weekend reading: April 24 edition

Around Columbus

• The Columbus Urban League has created a grant to protect artists from eviction.
• The Columbus Foundation broke its own records for the most funding given to central Ohio arts organizations and the speed with which the funding cycle was completed. We’re eternally grateful to the foundation for including the Wex among the recipients.
• Middle West Spirits has become the latest microdistillery to launch public sales of its liquid hand sanitizer.
• Ohio State’s Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Chair of Art History Jody Patterson wrote about what the New Deal has to teach us about the importance of the arts for Art News.
• CAPA has a new Facebook Live music series.
• BalletMet Columbus will stream the full version of Artistic Director Edwaard Liang’s Airavata for 72 hours starting Saturday at 7 PM. 
• The 2020 OhioDance fest will go on online.
• Gather the family at 4 PM on Saturday—it’s Storytime with Nina West!
• There’s a new miniature show by local artist R. Tavani in the dollhouse-sized S.Dot Gallery.
• Roger Kent Grosswiler, the Columbus artist and writer who was a featured reader in the Wex Store last year, is part of an online show celebrating Prince.
• The Short North Alliance is accepting application through May 4 for a spray art project that’ll line Goodale Street this summer.
• If you haven’t picked up or sewn your face mask yet, here’s a list of local makers selling them.
• And don’t forget to mail your absentee ballot for the Ohio primary—it must be postmarked by Monday.
  
   

Around the globe

• All weekend long, Austin’s Fusebox Festival (pictured at top of page) is presenting an incredible lineup of livestreamed performances by dozens of artists, plus conversations, exhibitions, and more. 
• Head to Instagram for Home Mural Fest, a lockdown mural event for artists who typically work in public spaces.
• Common Field, a Houston conference on building equity, collaboration, and sustainability in the arts is presenting programming over the next couple of weekends via livestream.
• e-flux journal is offering fellowships for art researchers and writers.
• Hauser & Wirth has new virtual shows from George Condo and Rashid Johnson.
• Artist Wolfgang Tillmans and the foundation Between Bridges have organized a fundraiser selling posters by artists including After Picasso and Gray Matters alum Marlene Dumas to benefit arts organizations and venues in Europe and the US.
• If your sense of time is off right now, this probably won’t help: YouTube is only 15 years old. Here’s the first video that was uploaded to the paradigm-shifting platform.
• If you'd like to commemorate by going down a video rabbit hole, turn to the channel for Denmark’s Louisiana Museum, where you'll find everything from Kiki Smith’s advice to the young to an opportunity to “sing along with Brian Eno.”
• Start the next work week by virtually transforming your space with beautiful new Zoom backgrounds from the venerable Japanese anime house Studio Ghibli.
• John Martz, the Toronto cartoonist behind the blog Drawn, has rebooted it to share his animated short recommendations.
• In a new interview, HERE artist Jenny Holzer shares advice on how artists can use outrage.
• No, Marina Abramovic is not a Satanist. And she’s had more than enough of that rumor.
• A dance critic at The Guardian has a list of the five best dance videos made during lockdown.
• The Guggenheim has a series of commissioned virtual dance works premiering on Instagram and YouTube.
• The dance hits keep coming from the New York Times with a new home movement prompt featuring choreography by Merce Cunningham.
• Having trouble focusing on reading during the pandemic? You’re not alone.
• But if you can muster a long read, here’s a timely recommendation: Studs Terkel’s Working.
• Artnet has the remarkable story of “Zelig of the art world” Raül Giansante.
• Here’s an inspiring example of cross-disciplinary creation: Mexican luchadors are sewing protective face masks in the style of their identity-concealing, full-coverage work gear.
• Educators, Netflix is now making educational content available without a subscription fee, include Ava DuVernay’s powerful mass incarceration doc 13th.
• Art educators, here are some tips from peers on teaching art online.
• Museums around the world are competing on social for the title of the creepiest item found in a collection.
• Through May 8, the film distribution company A24 is selling props from films such as Uncut Gems, Eighth Grade, and Hereditary to fundraise for New York City’s essential workers.
• American Psycho, the cult classic from director Mary Harron and producer/past Wex guest Christine Vachon, has a new oral history.
• Here’s a fashion historian on the relationship between clothing and disease.
• Artforum offers a piece on how the 1918 flu pandemic changed the course of art history.
• The Atlantic has a history of the pandemic poster.
• We'll wrap with glimmers of light: museums overseas are starting to reopen.
• And right now, the Venice Film Festival is still on for September.

Back with more next weekend. Stay safe out there.