Weekend reading: February 18 edition

Around Ohio

• Celebrate Aminah Robinson’s birthday this weekend with this coloring page portrait by local artist Neisha Holloway, aka Art Dealer Chicc.
• Urban Arts Space has a new show opening: the MFA showcase this, that, and the other thing.
• When the Cincinnati Bengals lost to the Los Angeles Rams in last weekend’s Super Bowl, the Cincinnati Art Museum lost a bet, so they’ll be lending a Robert Henri painting to LA’s Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
• This week, Jon Fiume went from interim director of Akron Art Museum to board-approved head of the institution.
• Applications are open now for the Summer Dance Intensive and Archiving Black Performance Summer Program available through OSUDance.
• And vendor applications are open through March 11 for the Columbus Alternative Art Book Fair, happening May 7 in Weinland Park.
• Tuesday, Chris Bournea will discuss his documentary Lady Wrestler at Upper Arlington Public Library’s Tremont branch.
• And Gramercy Books has a virtual program with Vladimir author Julia May Jones.
• Wednesday, the Cleveland Museum of Art has a virtual panel in connection with its current exhibition Picturing Motherhood Now, featuring Andrea Chung, Alison Saar, and Rose B. Simpson.
• Thursday afternoon, Art Possible Ohio will host an epoxy clay mosaic workshop with Christi Friesen on Facebook Live. If you register in advance, you’ll be hooked up with supplies.
• There's also a lunchtime online talk celebrating Black comic creators on Thursday, presented by COSI.
• Looking ahead, next Friday and Saturday you can see Sweets by Kate by OSU Opera Theatre composer-in-residence Griffin Candey at Hughes Hall.
• Next Saturday, Fuse Factory will teach a virtual class for artists on building projects in Touchdesigner.
• And Ohio History Connection hosts a discussion with photographers Shellee Fisher, Steve Harrison, and James Reid about preserving cultural heritage through photography.

Around the globe

• Ontario’s Media City Film Festival, a reliable source of excellent experiment film programming, is streaming its lineup for free through March 1. Among the offerings are spotlights on the works of L. Franklin Gilliam (sibling of Ohio State Provost Melissa Gilliam) and Cecilia Vicuña, and new works by artists such as Kevin Jerome Everson and Sky Hopinka.
• The New York Times highlighted a Toshiro Mifune series at Film Forum, part of which will screen at the Wex in May.
• Spanish director Carla Simón and South Korea’s Hong Sang Soo were the big winners at the Berlin Film Festival.
• IndieWire sees a lesson for indie film distributors in the multiple Oscar nominations secured by Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car.
• Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet discussed his new film for Netflix with The New York Times.
• The Met Gala has commissioned eight filmmakers to add to the ambiance at this year’s event, including Julie Dash, Martin Scorsese, and Chloé Zhao.
• In an interview for Variety, Ken Burns spilled that he’s working on a doc about Leonardo da Vinci. (He’s also a bit worried about America.)
• US leaders are calling for the release of Cuban artist and hunger-striking political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántra.
• Here’s a new interview with art star Jordan Casteel.
• Antwaun Sargent wrote about organizing Virgil Abloh’s touring show Figure of Speech.
• Creatives Rebuild New York has opened its call for artists in the state to apply for a guaranteed income.
• Fast Company made a case for museums to invest in developing more diverse staffs instead of new buildings.
• Meta has rebranded and expanded its artist program, announcing new partnerships with institutions like the new Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco.
• The Dance Data Project released a new report on gender equity in collegiate dance programs.
• Tuesday, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has a virtual talk with Trenton Doyle Hancock.
• Wednesday and Thursday, Angela Davis leads a free virtual reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.
• Artist-inspired merch has its ups and downs, taste-wise; firmly on the latter level are the ear-shaped erasers created for a Vincent Van Gogh exhibition in London.
• Filmmaker Ivan Reitman died at the age of 75.
• We were sorry to hear of the passing of Carmen Herrera, who found fame late in life for the exacting minimalist work to which she devoted her career. Herrera was the subject of a winter 2017 exhibition at the Wex. She was 106.
• And on a related note, Hyperallergic ran an op-ed about word choice when it comes to women in art history: never “forgotten,” always “erased.”