Weekend Reading: July 21 Edition

Around Columbus

• No Place Gallery opens a summer group show this weekend
• Sunday, Wex Visitor Experience staffer and DJ Dorian Ham moves the monthly dance party Candy Rain poolside at Hoof Hearted Brewery.
• The state budget and support from the federal CARES act has given a much-welcomed cash infusion to the state’s arts groups.
• In related news, the Wex is grateful to the Ohio Department of Development for a grant of nearly $1 million.
• Erik Pepple talked with Laura Podalsky from Ohio State’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese about how the center welcomes collaboration.
• Greater Columbus Arts Council is seeking input from artists on what they need from the granting organization.
• Tuesday, local jazz great Phil Maneri will play Short North Stage as part of a free tribute to the 19th century double-bass instrument The Alsatian Queen.
• There’s new music from local super group Call Me Rita. Frontwoman and artist Vanessa Jean Speckman talked it up with Matter.
• Thursday, Lauren Quin, Emma Webster, and Blair Whiteford.
• On Friday, Urban Arts Space hosts an early evening, hands-on event that’ll help you upcycle your old clothes.
• And next Saturday afternoon, the Riffe Gallery is having a reception for its new show, A New World: Ohio Women to Watch.

Around the Globe

• The Pollock-Krasner Foundation announced $2.7 million in grants to artists such as Rita McBride and Oliver Lee Jackson, and organizations such as the new York residency space MacDowell.
• Related, MacDowell is having a ceremony Sunday to introduce Canadian artist and filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin as the 63rd MacDowell Medalist. Obomsawin visited the Wex in March for a retrospective of her work.
• Barrera Enciso is the 2023 recipient of the Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaker Grant.
• Are you fascinated yet overwhelmed by the film selection on free streamer Tubi? Here’s a guide to 25 great indie films on the platform. We’d add to the list films and filmmakers presented at the Wex, like the doc Kusama Infinity, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper, Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World, Ira Sachs’s Little Men, and Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know.
• After an eight-year delay, Myrna the Monster, a festival-favorite 2015 animated short with voice work by Kathleen Hanna, is available to stream for free.
• With the arrival of Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical drama Oppenheimer, AV Club wrote a piece in praise of confusing films like Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon and Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep.
• In other “Barbenheimer” news, Artforum dug into its archives for Rhonda Lieberman’s two-part column on “Jewish Barbie.”
• And Hyperallergic covered the complicated history of Barbie in contemporary art.
• Here’s a new story about how AI is fueling the fire behind striking SAG and WGA members.
• A new exhibition spotlights the photography work of French New Wave godmother Agnès Varda.
• A BBC podcast might’ve unearthed the voice of Banksy.
• The parent companies of Facebook and Google are fighting a new law in Canada that would require them to share ad revenue with local media outlets.
• There’s a new Guardian interview with Colson Whitehead, timed to the release of his latest novel, Crook Manifesto.
• There’s a lot of interesting news from the performing arts world this week, starting with How to Dance in Ohio. The musical, based on Alexandra Shiva‘s documentary about a Columbus-based dance group of autistic young adults, is headed for Broadway with a cast of seven performers on the spectrum. (The doc is streaming on Max, btw.)
• The social justice tech firm Not Impossible introduced haptic suits that are being used at Lincoln Center to help Deaf and hard of hearing people feel live music.
• Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation is combining sculpture with dance to explore how people interact with art.
• Gallerist David Zwiner has signed choreographer Sarah Michelson and plans to start a dance residency.
• And there’s a side effect of the shrinking space media outlets allot for dance criticism: a lack of reviews can impact whether international dancers even make it into the US.
• Heads up for next weekend: Chicago-based indie label International Anthem is hosting Tomorrow is Listening, a worldwide, 24-hour live broadcast starting Friday night, featuring a grand finale performance by past Wex guest Damon Locks. You can listen to the broadcast live via Chicago’s Lumpen Radio.
• Jane Birkin, the British actress, singer, and style icon who gave a timeless Hermès bag its name, died at the age of 76.
• Tony Bennett, the Grammy-winning singer who was also a fine artist, passed this week at the age of 96. By all accounts, Bennett was also a remarkable human; here’s one account of why.