Weekend reading: December 17 edition

Around Ohio

• Tuesday, young families and teens can start the day with a Winter Art Break at the Columbus Museum of Art…
• …And start the evening with a TRANSIT ARTS Solstice Open Mic at the Vanderelli Room.
• The annual Funkdefy Ohio James Brown Tribute will start spinning Thursday night at The Oracle.
• The Short North has a new public artwork: Pride Circles, commissioned by the Short North Alliance and Stonewall Columbus and created by Lisa McLymont.
• The Dublin Arts Council commissioned past Wex Artist Residency Award recipient Brian Harnetty to create prompts in response to its own public artworks.
• Ohio Wesleyan’s Ross Art Museum has received a $1.25 million gift to fund a new curatorial position.
• Here’s a great piece on ACE Gallery, a too little-known part of Columbus art history founded by photographer Kojo Kamau.
• Somali-born photographer Tariq Tarey spoke to Columbus Monthly about shooting Congresswoman Joyce Beatty for the mag’s cover.
• Planning ahead, WCBE-FM is having a fundraiser at Rumba Cafe December 28 with artists including Angela Perley and Shane Sweeney.
• And Maroon Arts Group is holding the creative micro-grant opportunity PitchBlack Columbus December 29 at Ohio History Center.
• Last but certainly not least, a gift from writer & Streetlight Guild proprietor Scott Woods: a Prince winter mood playlist.

Around the Globe

• Our own Film/Video Director Dave Filipi is among the film world notables to contribute to this list of 2021 best films and first watches.
• Congrats to recent retrospective subject Michael Schultz for his film Cooley High being added to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. If you missed our screening in October, the film is now available to watch for free on YouTube.
• Here’s what John Waters had to say about Pink Flamingos also making the cut.
• Following a year of controversy and a broadcast TV demotion, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the latest Golden Globe nominations. Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story are among the multiple nominees.
• And The Black List has released its list of the best unproduced screenplays floating around Hollywood.
• I Am Not a Witch filmmaker Rungano Nyoni is among the recipients of the inaugural Chanel Next Prize.
• Past Wex Film/Video Studio resident Jonathas de Andrade will be representing Brazil at the Venice Biennale.
• New York University established the Martin Scorsese Institute and Virtual Production Center with a gift from George Lucas.
• If you missed last week’s Pacific Film Archive webinar about the legacy of nonprofit film exhibition, the video is archived here.
• The son of photographer David Attie published his father’s behind the scenes images from the first season of Sesame Street, which were commissioned for an American Cold War-era propaganda project and have been unseen for 50 years.
• Right of Return USA has a call for applications for its 2022 fellowship, open to formerly incarcerated artists through January 14.
• The National Endowment for the Arts is accepting applications through January 12 for a grant supporting English translations of poetry, prose, and drama.
• There’s also a current call for entries from Pabst Blue Ribbon for its annual Art Can Contest. Submissions are being accepted through December 31.
• The Ford Foundation is working with MoMA on a Scholars in Residence program for those whose work deals with “historically underrepresented artists, moments, movements, and geographies, or offers new perspectives on art-historical topics.”
• The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and the Asia Society are launching awards for emerging artists focused on climate change.
• The New York Times Magazine has tips on how to hang a gallery wall.
• And the Times listed artist Jennifer Packer and dancer LaTasha Barnes among the “Breakout Stars of 2021”.
• ARTnews put out a list of the defining art events of 2021.
• Joan Jonas dressed up for Art21.
• Museum of Crypto Art founder Colborn Bell chatted about the virtual art world and the future of culture.
• The Smithsonian commissioned Philip Glass to create a performance in response to its longterm exhibition of Buddhist art.
• Two artists in Seattle have been charged with violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act by passing themselves off as Native American to sell their Indigenous-themed work.
• The Omicron variant is having a major impact on in-person arts attendance in the UK. Broadway’s also feeling the pain.
• It look like the events surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach may have been a collective super spreader event.
• Musician and Monkee Michael Nesmith succumbed to heart failure last week at the age of 78.
• Novelist Anne Rice also passed at the age of 80.
• And the week closed with the devastating loss of author, cultural critic and massively influential feminist bell hooks at the age of 69.

Weekend reading will be on hiatus for the holiday next week, but will return with a New Year's edition featuring some of our favorite stories of the year.