Weekend Reading: December 22 Edition

Around Ohio

• Columbus Dispatch contributor Peter Tonguette spoke to recently retired Wex Curator-at-Large Bill Horrigan, who’s been shaping programming at the Wex since its earliest days.
• The Dispatch also touched on the legacy of current Hammond Harkins Galleries owner Marlana Hammond Keynes.
• Matter spoke to Wex Film/Video Studio Head Jennifer Lange and former Studio Editor Mike Olenick for this heavily-sourced story about long-simmering frustrations around Film Columbus.
• Filmmaker Kamisha Thomas and artist Aimee Wissman, who’ve both worked with the Film/Video Studio, debuted their new podcast, Call Declined.
• Greater Columbus Arts Council President Tom Katzenmeyer announced changes coming to the organization’s grant programs.
• A mini art vending machine is coming to Wild Goose Creative.
• Do you love Libby? You can thank Cleveland Heights native Steve Potash for making the free e-book app.

Around the Globe

• Several shortlists for the upcoming Oscars were released this week. Contenders for a Best Documentary Feature nomination including Sam Green’s 32 Sounds and Nancy Buirski’s Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy.
• Actress Taraji P. Henson spoke out about Hollywood’s ongoing issues with pay disparity.
• David Lynch revealed the role Cheetos played in his appearance in The Fabelmans.
• Illustrator Nathan Gelgud put images to his recent reconsideration of the career of Francis Ford Coppola.
• VHS is back, baby.
• Writer Marie Myung-Ok Lee and her autistic son Jason collaborated on this overview of current representations of autism on screen.
• Dance Magazine covered the new research field of neuroaesthetics.
• Artist Bethany Noël shared how she makes paintings from the visual auras that come with her chronic migraines.
• Censorship of Michelangelo’s David in Florida and a “relationship” between a man in Peru and the mummified body in his backpack are included in this roundup of the year’s wildest art stories.
• ARTnews continued its year-end coverage with a list of “the defining artworks of 2023.”
• Google’s “Year in Search” places the Louvre Museum at the top of search rankings for museums in 2023.
• T Magazine’s resurfacing of some favorite 2023 stories brought back this piece about the cocoon-like modernist architecture of Brazilian Jorge Zalszupin.
• Affidavit ran a joint interview between Orange Barrel Media CEO and Wex Board Trustee Pete Scantland and Pérez Art Museum Miami Director Franklin Sirmans.
• TV crime procedural juggernaut Dick Wolf is donating more than 200 works from his private collection, including paintings by Boticelli and van Gogh, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• A new exhibition in London looks at how chemical breakthroughs in pigmenting impacted art in the Victorian era—including how the era embraced Christmas cards.
• The New York Times uncovered the story of Curt Bloch, who created a weekly satirical magazine while hiding from the Nazis in an attic in the occupied Netherlands.
• Computer art pioneer Vera Molnar died at the age of 99.
• Sculptor Richard Hunt passed away at the age of 88.
• And here’s a tribute to artists lost this year, including Harry Belafonte and Sinead O’Connor, featuring the late artists’ own words.