Weekend Reading: April 5 Edition

Around Ohio

• Looking for some company to watch the eclipse Monday afternoon? COSI is on it.
• COSI is also teaming up for eclipse parties at Land Grant and Columbus Metropolitan Library.
• If you’re up for a drive, there’s also a Solar Eclipse Peace Summit happening at Woodland Altars in Adams County.
• Tuesday at Drexel Theatre, Wex Director of Marketing Content Erik Pepple will join CCAD professor Maya Dixon and Ohio State professor Scott Spears for a discussion following a screening of Wong Kar-Wai's sublime film In the Mood for Love.
• Matter News talked to artist Tim Blackwell about his April show at Blockfort.
• The site also caught up with artist, muralist, and former Wex staffer Nick Stull for the opening his new show of paintings at Sarah Gormley Gallery.
• Columbus Monthly talked to Mike Davis and Luke Haines, proprietors of the Clintonville’s Lovelight Records and Art.
• A new Confluence Cast dropped with writer and theater artist Mark Snyder.
• A concert this weekend highlights the remarkable histories of the Dayton Ballet and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.
• After some major tumult involving charges of a toxic culture, the Cleveland Ballet has made interim artistic director Timour Bourtasenkov permanent and is looking at a fresh start next season.
• Cleveland’s Playhouse Square has saved the city’s defunct Greyhound Station and plans to develop it into an entertainment space.
• Thursday, the Knowlton School will host filmmaker Olivia Loomis Merrion and a screening of her short doc Quilt Fever.
• Also Thursday, filmmakers Matt and Nikki Swift continue their documentary filmmaking workshops at We Amplify Voices.
• And Friday at WAV, you can collage with artists Charlotte McGraw and AJ Vanderelli.
• Next weekend also brings Franklinton Friday, including an open house with the residency artists at Gravity.
• And Saturday in Franklinton, Witchlab offers a workshop on Witchcraft 101.
• Next Saturday evening brings the opening of a fundraiser show for Star House to Herbert Cooper Gallery.
• Then Saturday night, head to Wild Goose for the multidisciplinary pop-up Retrograde Raid.

Around the Globe

• Ahead of the release of his latest film, Civil War, writer-director Alex Garland expressed fear of misinterpretation and held to his claim that this will be the last film he helms.
• A new interview with actor Bill Nighy makes him sound like a great lunch date—as long as he doesn't make the sandwiches.
• Film critic Ty Burr wrote an ode to the inimitable Marlon Brando on what would’ve been his hundredth birthday.
• Jewish creatives including Joel Coen, Todd Haynes, Joaquin Phoenix, and Ira Sachs have signed an open letter in support of writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s anti-war statements during his Oscar acceptance speech.
• Scientists at Western Kentucky University developed an app that lets users photograph the eclipse—and the pictures will help the team gather data about the sun’s structure.
• Over 100 LGBTQ+ artists gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to create one of the world’s largest cyanotypes in a visual and sonic performance supported by the National Center for Transgender Equality.
• The Aravani Art Project, a Trans-led art collective, is shifting perceptions of Transgender people in India through art.
• Canadian artists including actor Elliot Page and musicians Neil Young and Tegan and Sara denounced their government’s embrace of anti-trans policies.
• Armed groups ransacked the National Library of Haiti earlier this week.
• Ukraine’s Kherson Art Museum identified 100 paintings looted by Russian forces when they appeared in a propaganda video.
• Mexico’s National Library of Anthropology and History has just acquired rare Aztec Manuscripts from the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
• The Prado Museum has named April 5 ‘Hieronymus Bosch Day.’
• The Whitney Museum has promoted Kim Conaty to chief curator.
• The National Gallery of Art has hired Natalia Ángeles Vieyra as its first curator of Latinx art.
• Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung has been selected as the chief curator for the 2025 Bienal de São Paulo.
• Here’s a great piece on the power of public art.
• The next public art installation coming to Times Square? One huge hot dog.
• Mary Miss, creator of the iconic Greenwood Park installation in Des Moines, is suing the Des Moines Art Center to stop demolition plans.
• Art world fraud Inigo Philbrick is out of prison and looking to reinvent himself.
• The Marlborough Gallery will be closing its locations around the world in June, after nearly 80 years in business.
• Workers at California’s Creative Growth Art Center, a nonprofit center for artists with disabilities, have announced plans to unionize.
• A street in Manhattan was recently named after New York’s School of Visual Arts.
• A small design change by book publishers Harper Collins will save thousands of trees.
• Book distributor Small Press Distribution abruptly closed, leaving some small publishers scrambling.
• Tony-award winning playwright Christopher Durang died at 75.
• Eli Noyes, a stop-motion animator that shaped aesthetics for cable television and boosted the credibility of clay, passed at 81.
• Quisqueya Henríquez, a conceptual artist with a humorous flair, passed away at the age of 58.
• Gaetano Pesce, a designer that revolutionized art and industry with his surreal designs, died at 84.
• Postmodern novelist John Barth died at the age of 93.
• Journalist, activist, and Hollywood producer Paula Weinstein passed away at 78.