Weekend Reading: October 1 edition

Around Columbus

• We have to start with big congratulations to our Learning & Public Practice Director Dionne Custer Edwards for receiving a much-deserved Arts Educator Award from the Greater Columbus Arts Council’s 2021 Arts Partnership Awards. 
• And more kudos to author and frequent Wex collaborator Hanif Abdurraqib, recipient of an equally well deserved 2021 MacArthur Genius Grant. He’ll be joining us Friday, October 15 to introduce our screening of Michael Schultz’s comedy classic Car Wash.
• Don’t forget, Cartoon Crossroads Columbus will continue all weekend.
• Among the must-sees at Saturday's Gallery Hop is a show of new house paintings by Christopher Burk at Brandt-Roberts Galleries and the final show from Not Sheep Gallery, Letters to the World.
• Sunday, Secret Studio is setting up a pumpkin patch for all ages.
• Monday's the deadline to sign up for Columbus College of Art & Design's upcoming class on financial skills for creatives.
• Former Wex graduate assistant Anna Talarico spoke to artist Mary Lucier and past Wex Artist Residency Award recipient Brian Harnetty about their work in the current land art exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art.
• Thursday, CCAD’s Beeler Gallery will debut Triple Blood Knot, a new exhibition of work by No Place Gallery founder James McDevitt-Stredney.
• Fast forwarding to next weekend, there’s Franklinton Fridays and the social enterprise event Festival for Good nearby at Gravity.
• There’s the Community Pride Festival Saturday at Mayme Moore Park.
• And She Burns Bright will take over a corner of Franklinton Saturday and Sunday for music, art, film, and more by women makers including Sue Harshe and Marcy Mays, Nancy Kangas, and Amy Turn Sharp. (Disclosure: this writer organized the film program.)

Around the globe

• Marc Ribot, who’ll be performing at Mershon on November 14, dropped a video for “The Activist,” a track from his new album, Hope.
• Just in time for Halloween celebrations, film distributor Kino Lorber has launched a new, free streaming service for cult movie fans with titles by filmmakers including Mario Bava, Ana Lily Amirpour, and our good friend Guy Maddin.
• Armando Ianucci, creator of Veep and The Personal History of David Copperfield, wrote an epic poem in response to the pandemic.
• The 1927 German film Laws of Love, a very early example of pro-gay cinema that was once thought destroyed by the Nazis, has been found and restored.
• The great Mike Leigh reflected on his 50 years of filmmaking.
• The Florida Project filmmaker Sean Baker was the latest to speak up for the big screen experience.
• And David Byrne spoke about the value of other collective rituals.
• The Spanish government approved $42 million in funding to expand the Prado.
• The New Museum is launching a new award for women sculptors that over the next 10 years will give five artists each $400,000 to create new work.
• Los Angeles’ Underground Museum announced the curator recipients of its inaugural Noah Davis Prize.
• Here’s a rundown on individual efforts to hide cultural works in Afghanistan in response to the Taliban’s resurgence.
• Now in exile, Cuban artist Hamlet Lavastida opened up about his three months in state detention.
• Artist Jens Haaning made news this week by giving Denmark’s Kunsten Museum of Modern Art two blank canvases after receiving $84,000 in funding from the institution. The work’s title: Take the Money and Run.
• Here’s what Tomashi Jackson has been up to lately.
• Here’s the deal with the dispute between Jasper Johns and teenage Cameroonian artist Jéan-Marc Togodgue, whose work Johns appropriated for a new painting.
• Here’s an argument for how true equality may lie in artists of color being allowed to fail.
• Kimberly Bartosik provided a dance world perspective on the widespread problem of colleges undervaluing the work of adjunct professors.
• The New York Times wrote about the trend in theater design of placing performing within transparent boxes, like Lars Jan did at the Wex in 2018.
• Tell your New York friends: Cameron Granger curated a group exhibition, Put your hands where my eyes can see, for Flux Factory and it’s opening next Friday.