Weekend reading: February 4 edition

Around Ohio

• Columbus Monthly did a terrific write-up on our new exhibition, To Begin, Again.
• Cafe Bourbon Street is playing host to a show of Simpsons fan art this month.
• There’s a new book out on Columbus Black history from historian Rita Fuller-Yates.
• Writer Scott Woods offered his sage advice on how to book Black artists for Black History Month events.
• Arts Midwest announced that in Fiscal Year 2021, the return on member state investment was over 1000 percent.
• Columbus author Elissa Washuta has been nominated for a PEN Open Book Award.
• Fingers crossed, roads around Columbus should be clear in time for Franklinton Friday on February 11. Highlights include Gwen A.P. at The Vanderelli Room and a love-themed group show of resident artists at 400 West Rich.

Around the globe

• Exciting news to start things off: the Wex-supported short Chameleon (A Visual Album), codirected by Ima Iduozee and Wex Artist Residency Award recipient Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and edited by our own Alexis McCrimmon, won the Experimental Shorts Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival.
• Starting Monday, The Boston Globe is holding a free online film fest for Black History month with panel discussions and free streams of movies like Moonlight and 13th.
• Next Friday, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art is hosting a virtual screening and panel discussion about the films of Nollywood.
• Here’s a pre-Oscars feature on new technology  available to animators right now, with input from the creative team behind frontrunner The Mitchells vs. The Machines and Czech animator Michaela Pavlátová.
• Method acting was put under a microscope.
• The female-focused list of 213 artists whose work will appear at the 2022 Venice Biennale went public; included on it are a few who’ve been seen at the Wex recently, like Barbara Kruger, Carolyn Lazard, Sable Elyse Smith, and Cecilia Vicuña.
• President Joe Biden has reversed an order issued by his predecessor to permit only representational pro-American art in federal building.
• Newly confirmed NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson discussed the future of the endowment.
• If that interview prompted thoughts about how America might better support the arts, this story about how the French Republic has staged a nationwide art exhibition to combat Islamophobia is for you.
• Also this story of how the Italian government is turning an unused, centuries-old prison on the remote island of Santo Stefano into a creative hub.
• On the other end of the spectrum, far right Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has opened an environmentally destructive music museum in Budapest.
• A natural gas crisis in Italy is threatening the centuries-old legacy of glass production in the city of Murano.
• A 400 pound, 24-carat gold cube was installed for a day in Central Park in one of this week's NFT launches.
• A new Pandora Papers report unearthed more than 1600 works of art that have been used by the ultra-rich to hide their wealth.
• Here’s a look back at a massive strike wave among artists such as Robert Koehler and Rosa Luxemburg in the 19th and 20th centuries, which transformed how artists advocate for the working class.
• Interscope Records commissioned 47 contemporary artists including Titus Kaphar and Chloe Wise to create new album cover art for catalogue titles to commemorate the label’s 30th anniversary.
• Here’s a group of dance world experts discussing great music that has inspired choreographers.
• A trending Instagram profile illustrates the fun you could have at art school in the ‘90s.
• Here’s the story behind Marvel Comics’ first Spider-Woman: a Black librarian named Valerie.
• Here’s a list of books about cursed films that mess people up, inspired by Netflix’s Archive 81.
• Postmodern choreographer David Gordon died at the age of 85.
• Filmmaker James Bidgood passed away at the age of 88. Here's a tribute to the Pink Narcissus director from writer William E. Jones.
• And Italian cinema leading lady Monica Vitti passed away at the age of 90.