Weekend reading: October 8 edition

Around Ohio

• The Athens International Film + Video Fest returns with an in-person event October 15 and includes a program of films by Cinetracts '20 contributor and AIFVF documentary jury head Tony Buba.
• Did you see the sweet write-up on the Jacqueline Humphries exhibition in the Columbus Dispatch?
• Or the interview with director Michael Schultz in Columbus Underground ahead of his retrospective next week?
• The kudos keep coming for Hanif Abdurraqib, who’ll be introducing Schultz’s Car Wash for us. He's now a finalist for a National Book Award for his latest, A Little Devil in America. Here’s a recent chat between Abdurraqib and the Dispatch's Earl Hopkins.
• Here’s the most up-to-date list of local venues requiring proof of vaccination for entry. (FYI, our performance spaces also require proof of vaccination when the artist requests it, so check event pages on this site for the policy for specific shows.)
• Here’s a look at changes coming to the Springfield Museum of Art, courtesy of Executive Director Jessimi Jones.
• And skipping ahead to next Saturday, you can support local makers at the rescheduled Craftin’ Outlaws pop-up market or the sweet 16 party for Wild Cat Gift and Party.

Around the globe

• Here’s a terrific piece on Arooj Aftab, who’ll be performing at Mershon next Saturday.
• Tuesday afternoon, Alice Walker will be reading her new children’s book, Sweet People Are Everywhere, in an online event hosted by Crayola.
• Tuesday night, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago will host a virtual lecture with Shirin Neshat.
• Laurie Anderson was profiled in the New York Times Magazine ahead of her upcoming show at the Hirshorn Museum.
• President Biden has made history by nominating Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson to be the first African American and Mexican American to lead the National Endowment for the Arts and Shelly Lowe, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, to be the first Indigenous chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 
• Nevada Democratic Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández has brought a bill to the House Floor to provide $300 million in grants and commissions to US arts workers.
• Here’s one reason why the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) has voted overwhelmingly to strike.
• Slovenia’s museum of modern and contemporary art took a heavy hit from the torrential rainstorms that are becoming more common in Europe due to climate change. Fortunately, the Picasso graphics on display there were moved in time.
• Last week’s story about Danish artist Jens Haaning producing empty canvases for a museum commission prompted this piece on the rise of art pranks with a message.
• Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera has agreed to leave her home country in exchange for the release of 25 political prisoners arrested in the past few months.
• The podcast I Like Your Work is accepting submissions from emerging and mid-career artists for its winter online exhibition.
• George Lucas has gone on a buying spree in preparation for the opening of the Lucas Museum in 2023. New acquisitions for the house that Luke built include works by Frida Kahlo and Alice Neel.
• Memoria, the new film by Cinetracts ’20 contributor Apichatpong Weerasethakul, will roll out nationwide more like an exhibition than a film, showing for one week in one city at a time.
• American University professor Patricia Aufderheide highlighted how Amazon is approaching the level of power that Hollywood studios had in the early 20th century—before they were successfully sued in an antitrust case.
• Appropriate for the season, here’s a list of favorite horror films from 45 directors including Mary Harron and Bong Joon Ho.
• A German publication distributed to provide an income source for the houseless (think Street Speech) was given an unlikely exclusive: the artist list for Documenta 15.
• Zanzibari novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in literature, and journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov have each won the Nobel peace prize. Ressa is the subject of the 2020 documentary A Thousand Cuts, which we screened last year and which is now available to stream for free.
• High school students in York County, PA successfully fought a school ban of books and materials that include the Raoul Peck documentary I Am Not Your Negro and Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be An Antiracist.
• Here’s an update on how Covid has changed college dance departments.
• Lastly, jazz keyboardist Dr. Lonnie Smith passed away at the age of 79.