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Weekend reading: June 19 edition

Melissa Starker, Creative Content & PR Manager

Jun 19, 2020

Image of a black man and woman sitting on a couch from from the short film We Fight We Love by Michael Artis

Around Columbus

Breonna Taylor mural by Nick Stull and Liz Morrison

Breonna Taylor mural on Evolved Tattoo by Nick Stull and Liz Morrison, courtesy of GCAC

  • The city has two less public statues of Christopher Columbus than it did this time last week.
  • GCAC and CAPA have launched a website to see all the mural work made by local artists during the protests against systemic racism.
  • A group of circus performers discussed their experience after the van they travel in, “Buttercup,” was detained by a Columbus SWAT team and became the source of viral fake news.
  • The Columbus Museum of Art will reopen June 30.
  • There’s a new interview with Ohio State associate professor Joni Boyd Acuff about what the Jay-Z/Beyoncé video shot in the Louvre says about museums today.
  • There are several new calls for art this week, starting with the Columbus Moving Image Art Review looking for submissions for its next edition. (A scene from We Fight We Love by Michael Artis, a web series represented in the most recent program, is pictured at top of page.)
  • Work is also needed for an art auction to raise funds for Weinland Park Neighborhood Services Food Pantry.
  • And ROY G BIV is seeking proposals for its 2021 exhibition season.
  • Need a new summer tee? The incomparable Nina West has collaborated with Dolly Parton on a new merch line to raise funds for their respective charities.

 

Around the globe

HBO's The Watchmen

The Watchmen, courtesy of HBO

  • HBO is streaming The Watchmen, the series inspired by Alan Moore’s comic epic that includes a history lesson on the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, for free this weekend.
  • Portraits of former Confederate Speakers of the House are being removed from the US Capitol by current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
  • Monuments of historical figures from the Confederacy are also coming down around the country, not without incident.
  • Artnet’s Ben Davis writes about how Columbus monuments should be seen as monuments to the construction of whiteness in the US.
  • And while we’re thinking about problematic public monuments coming down, consider this: Do we really need new traditional public monuments?
  • Thousands gathered around the Brooklyn Museum to honor black trans lives, including Riah Milton, murdered in Cincinnati last week.
  • Here’s a small sampling of what’s new in artworks in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
  • And here’s a telling image for the ingrained nature of racism in America.
  • Dance Union podcast hosts J. Bouey and Melanie Greene are working to organize their community toward a more equal dance world
  • Artist and activist Tremaine Emory, aka Denim Tears, is insisting Nike make tangible strides toward supporting the black community before they can use his design for new Converse Chuck Taylors inspired by David Hammons’ African-American Flag.
  • The city of Philadelphia, which had announced it would cut city arts funding entirely, has restored it with money taken from the police budget.
  • Evan Ifekoya, the sole permanently employed black academic staff member in the art department at British art school Goldsmiths, has resigned in protest.
  • Resignations and charges of racism are also popping up in the National Book Critics Circle.
  • Bettye Saar is celebrating the retirement of Aunt Jemima.
  • Artist mutual aid organization CERF+ has launched a relief grant program for those who need help with essentials during the COVD-19 crisis.
  • MoMA’s Alex Haberstadt shares how two films—Todd Haynes’s Safe and John Waters’s Polyester—have been keeping him company through a bout of COVID-19.
  • The New Yorker has a piece on how the coronavirus will reshape architecture.
  • From the archives, Art in America has a feature on the work of Pope.L.
  • PBS is now streaming 2019 Unorthodocs selection Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project.
  • Choreographer Ronald K. Brown will receive the Jacob’s Pillow Award
  • The Oscars will move to April 25 for 2021.
  • No need for a passport to see Art Basel this week.
  • The Rhode Island School of Design graduate show is also now on view in a digital publication.
  • American Theatre Magazine has discontinued print publishing through at least the end of the year.
  • The Edinburgh Fringe Festival has a new lease on life.
  • The great British actor Ian Holm is no longer with us.
  • Yvonne Rainer offers a remembrance of cultural historian Sally Banes, who passed away at the age of 69.

 

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