Weekend reading: June 17 edition

Around Ohio

• It’s a very busy weekend, with the Pride Parade and Festival, the Worthington Arts Festival, and Juneteenth celebrations such as Freedomworks, the Juneteenth Fest in Genoa Park, holiday festivities at King Arts Complex, another celebration at Ohio Village, and, of course, All Day Blackness at the Wex and at two local galleries.
• Saturday, there’s also local arts and crafts at Front Street Flea.
• And Sunday brings the Sunlight Market to downtown.
• The Greater Columbus Arts Council announced the recipients of its latest round of support grants, and we’re thrilled to be in such excellent company.
• Youth participants in the awesome Transit Artists Residency Program made a video featuring some of their recent art and social service collaborators.
• Barcelona opens a show of work by Michael Bush on Tuesday.
• Wednesday at Drexel Theatre, The Billy’s Caitlin McGurk will talk about the comic and film adaptations of Patricia Highsmith with graphic novelist Grace Ellis before a screening of the 2015 Highsmith adaptation Carol by past Wex Artist Residency Award recipient Todd Haynes.
• Local treasure Alexis Nikole Nelson, aka the Black Forager, won a much-deserved James Beard Award.
• Authorities in Tuscany are claiming that a sculpture stolen from local chapel that’s been missing for over a century has been hiding in plain sight at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
• Looking ahead to next weekend, Comfest is back in person.
• Celeste Malvar-Stewart is running an intriguing art event on Saturday: Farm to Fashion Day!
• The Billy is having a family day Saturday in conjunction with the Charles Schulz exhibition Celebrating Sparky.
• Also next Saturday, the makers of the upcoming local feature Obstacle Corpse are having a fundraiser for their post-production phase.

Around the globe

• Here’s a shortlist of recommendations for meaningful ways to celebrate Juneteenth.
• Monday, film critic and past Wex blog contributor Charles Taylor will give a free virtual talk about the 1972 Billie Holliday biopic Lady Sings the Blues.
• Andrew Bujalski talked to Filmmaker about his latest, There There, starring past Wex visiting artist Lili Taylor.
• Actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley revealed the trauma of working for Terry Gilliam as a child.
• Emma Thompson spoke about her sex-positive new film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.
• Here’s a rundown on the winners of last Sunday’s Tony Awards, including new EGOT-er Jennifer Hudson.
• New attention is being paid to 16th century musician Vicente Lusitano, the first published Black composer, who was erased from music history.
• Pride weekend is a perfect time for this deep dive into the art of voguing.
• And for a remembrance of James Baldwin’s trip to Fire Island.
• In language arts news, swearing can be good for you—if it’s done right.
• Here’s the buzz from Art Basel.
• And who’s showing at Documenta 15.
• President Joe Biden signed into law this week the creation of a commission of experts to study the creation of a museum of Asian American and Pacific Islander culture.
• Cheech Marin’s long-awaited museum of Chicano art, “The Cheech,” is open for business.
• Here’s a new approach to art appreciation: Understanding the work of Piet Mondrian through dancing.
• The latest video from Art21 shows the working process of Kevin Beasley, whose work was seen at the Wex in the summer 2018 show Inherent Structure.
• The New Yorker looked at how the internet has spawned a creative middle class.
• Here’s a peek at some of the art produced when Alexander McQueen Creative Director Sarah Burton asked artists to respond to her latest collection.
• Bronze sculptural works by Joannas Avramidis were almost lost when thieves mistook them for scrap.
• Award-winning critic Jerry Saltz may know art, but he could use some advice on how to make his own coffee.
• After weeks of stories about scams in the digital art world, NFTs are finally being used for good, by Congolese plantation workers who are selling them to buy back their ancestral land.
• Veteran actor Philip Baker Hall passed this week at the age of 90.
• French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant passed away at 91.
• Artist Duncan Hannah, who for a time was repped by local gallerist Rebecca Ibel, passed away at the age of 62.
• And artist Hunter Reynolds died at 62.