Weekend reading: Best of 2021

Around Ohio

• April Sunami had a body-positive collaboration with Lane Bryant.
• The Greater Columbus Arts Council opened a gallery of its own.
• The rest of the country really caught up with Columbus-based writer Hanif Abdurraqib. He also got a podcast run from WOSU and his own mural on the Near East side.
• Pride of Akron Devo got its own holiday.
• The College of Arts & Sciences shared its top stories for 2021.
• Columbus lost the great painter Pheoris West in January after he struggled for several years with the effects of a debilitating stroke.
• Local architecture firm Moody Nolan won a major national award and started a new program to build affordable homes.
• No Place Gallery found a new place to call home.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art spread out.
• Nina West transformed first into a Disney Princess, then into Edna Turnblad.
• Franklinton devised plans to add a giant slingshot to the skyline.
• Maroon Arts Group bought the historic Pythian Temple.
• Columbus food goddess and video maker Black Forager blew up.

In Wex news:

• Accessibility Manager Helyn Marshall wrote about expanding accessibility in the arts.
• August brought the arrival of a new Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Wex, Kelly Kivland.
• And notable coverage of our programming included Marc Ribot in Alive.
• Jacqueline Humphries in Vogue; also, Hamza Walker talking Jacqueline Humphries in Vice i-D.
• Torkwase Dyson in Document Journal.
• Jaamil Olawale Kosoko in Dance Magazine.
• And Netta Yerulshalmy in The New York Times.

Around the globe

• In new developments, we were shocked—Shocked!—to read that efforts to ban books in US schools seem to have increased the popularity of those books.
• Former Pogues frontman Shane McGowan talked about his new art book.
• The Kitchen’s Executive Director Legacy Russell and Whitney Museum Director of Curatorial Affairs Adrienne Edwards discussed the future of performance art.
• Maria Rosario Jackson was confirmed as the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts.
• Healthcare workers used the arts to help cope with the enormous stress of their jobs during COVID.
• Here’s a roundup of the year’s award-winning novels.
• And a substantial list from Smithsonian Magazine of the year’s most fascinating art discoveries.
• Artnet chimed in with a year-end list of 2021’s biggest art controversies.
• Filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée died suddenly at the age of 58.
• And beloved Pop Art painter Wayne Thiebaud passed away at the age of 101.
• Here’s a roundup of other notable arts figures lost in 2021.
   
• Looking back at news from the past year, PBS released over a thousand hours of previously unheard interviews collected for American Masters.
• The art world had fun with an omnipresent pic of Bernie Sanders from Joe Biden’s inauguration.
• Marian Goodman Gallery and artist Steve McQueen launched an initiative to connect BIPOC curators with jobs.
• Indigenous oral histories were tapped for digital preservation.
• Beeple’s NFT sale put the new form of art acquisition in the spotlight.
• The arts and humanities were recognized as being essential to the future of work.
• The Oscar-winning film Minari was used as the basis for a video essay on media depictions of Asian Americans in the days following the Atlanta spa shootings.
• Museum workers jumped on the TikTok bandwagon.
• An effort was launched to create a global database of anti-racist street art.
• Antwaun Sargent shared some tips for looking at art.
• Disabled movement artists explored the creative possibilities of prosthetics in performance.
• Marfa caught fire.
• Podcasters replaced our friends.
• A 1979 interview with James Baldwin was newly unearthed.
• Jeff Bezos’ ex MacKenzie Scott doled out a load of Amazon money to arts organizations.
• Security guards became curators at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
• SFMOMA cut its acclaimed film program.
• And Dallas Museum of Art Director Bonnie Pitman turned illness into inspiration. Let us all aspire to do the same in the year ahead.