Weekend Reading: December 8 Edition

Around Ohio

• Festivus is happening all weekend at 400 Square.
• Glass Axis is having its annual holiday sale on Sunday.
• Lisa Ragland spoke to Matter News about her delightful new show at Secret Studio.
• Artist and Ohio State educator Carmen Winant is featured in this story about how artists are breaking taboos around the depiction of birth.
• Musician and writer Micah Schnabel launched pre-sales for his new book, which is inspired in part by the protests that arose around COVID lockdowns. Schnabel and partner Vanessa Jean Speckman will have their eighth annual Holiday Office Party at Rumba Cafe Thursday.
• Columbus Monthly paid tribute to late sculptor David Black. One of his pieces, Breaker, used to reside in the footprint where the Wex now stands.
• Michael Barakiva has been named the new artistic director of the Cleveland Play House.
• Wednesday, Hanif Abdurraqib and Nabil Ayers will have a reading and chat at Two Dollar Radio Headquarters.
• Next Saturday, there’s an adult puppet show from Open Heart Creatures at the Vanderelli Room.
• Also next Saturday, Meagan Alwood Karcic presents new works at St. James Tavern.

Around the Globe

• The year-end lists are flowing. There’s The New York Times’s list of the best songs of 2023, featuring a track by the late, great jazz trumpeter and composer Jaimie Branch, who performed at the Wex in 2022.
• Frederick Wiseman’s haute cuisine doc Menus-Plaisirs—Les Troisgros is on the best-of-2023 lists of both Manohla Dargis and Alissa Wilkinson. Menus-Plaisirs will screen at the Wex January 13–14.
• The paper of record also praised 2023 dance premieres from Sarah Michelson and Rachid Ouramdane, among others.
• Time named singular cultural force Taylor Swift its Person of the Year.
• The American Film Institute’s list of the best film and TV of 2023 includes Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest, Poor Things, and the breakout FX hit The Bear.
• John Waters shared his much-anticipated list of the year’s best movies—this time for Vulture.
• More generally, there’s something a bit different about the latest print edition of Artforum.
• Congratulations to Greg de Cuir Jr. for being named one of five new curators for the 2024 Whitney Biennial; de Cuir curated the Želimir Žilnik retrospective that we featured in October and visited with the filmmaker during Unorthodocs.
• The lineup for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival is live and we’re thrilled to see Wex friends such as Yance Ford, Gary Hustwit, Richard Linklater, and Brett Story in the mix.
• Editor Thelma Schoonmaker was interviewed about her life and work with late husband Michael Powell and her longtime collaborator Martin Scorsese. Powell’s classic thriller Peeping Tom will be part of our 2024 Cinema Revival lineup.
• With the debut of Leave the World Behind, their latest production for Netflix, Barack and Michelle Obama expounded on their vision for their media company Higher Ground.
• Filmmaker Ava DuVernay may have found a solution to the current challenge of securing funding for “prestige” films.
• Nicolas Cage claims he may only have a few more films in him.
• A new documentary asks the burning question, why—oh, good gravy, why—the Star Wars Holiday Special was made.
• Someone stole $1 million worth of parts from an Anselm Kiefer sculpture. (We’re looking forward to presenting Wim Wenders’s 3D documentary on Kiefer next month, btw.)
• Mark Bradford won the 2024 Getty Prize.
• The Guggenheim Museum has added layoffs to its efforts to increase revenue.
• A program at the Smithsonian Museum is highlighted in this story about moves toward sensory inclusivity for museum visitors.
• A new fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art brings overdue attention to little known women designers by pairing more obscure artists with stars like Coco Chanel and Rei Kawakubo.
• The Guardian interviewed newly named Turner Prize winner Jesse Darling.
• Seoul, South Korea is on the ascent as a contemporary art capital.
• The New York Times checked in with gallerist Luisa Strina, “the grand dame of Brazilian art.”
• The annual artistic design exhibition Alcova has made its US debut in Miami and we’re now low-key obsessed with artist Sam Klemick’s Big Bell Chair.
• Amazon has cut ties with the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture following its presentation of a work the company claims is critical of its business strategy.
• Carrie Mae Weems has made a gallery move.
• Smaller New York galleries such as Mrs. in Queens are struggling post-pandemic.
• American Theatre reports that a new Harlem Renaissance is happening in the historic neighborhood’s performance scene.
• Choreographer Amy Hall Garner has a new work ready to go for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
• Performers such as Jamie Baum, alongside writers like Ron Scott, are on a mission to make you love jazz flute.
• On its 20th anniversary, The Killers’s “Mr. Brightside” gets due credit for generational anthem status.
• Peach fuzz is the 2024 Pantone Color of the Year.
• Did you hear the story about how librarians fought the Nazis in WWII?
• Or about how sci fi and fantasy books are a target for censorship in prison libraries?
• The Nieman Lab’s Predictions for Journalism, 2024, see a near future of AI-driven hyper-personalization.
• TV producer Norman Lear, who transformed the small-screen comedy landscape in the 1970s, passed away at 101.
• Filmmaker Jane Wodening, a collaborator and inspiration to ex-husband Stan Brakhage, died at 87.
• Actor and Life Goes On star Andrea Jay Friedman passed away at the age of 53.
• Photographer Elliott Erwit left us at 95.
• And computer art pioneer Vera Molnar died at 99.