Weekly

January 29, 2022 • View in browser

This week, a flawless blue glass bowl from the Roman era goes viral, art classes are helping transform medical education, and we published a special issue on under-recognized art histories, which includes stories on non-NFT-able digital art, Detroit’s Cass Corridor movement, and so much more.

Last Tuesday, Hyperallergic hosted its first Zoom talk with the first of five Emily H. Tremaine Journalism for Curators fellows. Over 250 people attended the talk with Tahnee Ahtone, and this Tuesday, February 1, I’ll be talking to La Tanya S. Autry about her articles that focus on care in curating and her recent Beholding, Black World Making project. Please RSVP and join us for the conversation.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief 

Sheila Pree Bright, #ATLisReady and Black Lives Matter Atlanta Chapter protest shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, Atlanta, Georgia, 2016. (courtesy the artist and used with permission)

“Mothers March On” and Beholding, Black World Making
La Tanya S. Autry expands on her upcoming curatorial project and how we should counter stereotypes about Black mothers while stressing the importance of memory, determination, love, and corporeality.

I envision Beholding, Black World Making as a series of networked exhibitions, installations, and programming that engage Black and anti-colonial pedagogies of fugitivity, abolition, collectivity, and co-resistance... While we mourn anti-Black violence, we also embrace the magnitude of Black love, determination, and imagination. 

NEWS THIS WEEK

2,000-year-old glass bowl unearthed in Nijmegen in the Netherlands (all images courtesy Marieke Mom)

• Archeologists in the Netherlands discovered a 2,000-year-old blue glass bowl in pristine condition.

• A Tennessee school board has banned Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, a famous graphic novel about the Holocaust.

• Activists and museum visitors share their thoughts on the removal of the American Museum of Natural History’s controversial Roosevelt monument.

• A sculpture by Simone Leigh unveiled during the closing ceremonies of New Orleans's Prospect.5 triennial replaces a Confederate monument.

• The Whitney Museum of American Art announces the 63 artists participating in this year’s biennial.

UPCOMING SPECIAL EVENT

Beholding Black Lives & Curating With Care: A Conversation With La Tanya S. Autry, Cultural Organizer and Curator

On Tuesday, February 1, at 7 pm (EST), join us for a special event with La Tanya S. Autry as she discusses her curatorial project Beholding, Black World Making and her upcoming Hyperallergic email exhibition, which will feature behind-the-scenes reflections on the project’s development alongside work by artist Sheila Pree Bright.

The conversation will explore Black people’s modes of defying ongoing precarity while loving one another, focusing in particular on artist images and information, activism and organizing, and scholarship rooted in Black liberation and anti-colonial pedagogies.

RSVP to attend.

UNDER-RECOGNIZED ART HISTORIES

To understand contemporary art, it is necessary to investigate the connections that are sometimes invisible to those who are unaware of the backstories. While we often seek out and publish under-recognized art histories, we compiled some unique stories into a special edition of Hyperallergic earlier this week.

Sadaf Padder writes about two Indo-Caribbean artists, Renluka Maharaj and Suchitra Mattai, in Colorado who situate female subjects in their art, based on ancestors, living kin, and deities.

Sarah Rose Sharp, who lives in Detroit, writes about the Cass Corridor movement that influenced generations of artists emerging from that city.

Artist Daniel Temkin writes about the open-ended, community-based, and collaborative “esolangs” that point to other threads of digital art histories not much discussed.

Writer John Seed tells the story of Bay Area artist and teacher Sam Tchakalian, who is best known for his abstractions that introduced squeegee-like techniques into his paintings long before others popularized that visual language.

(photo courtesy Self Help Graphics & Art)

Jordan Karney Chaim looks at the influence of the alternative spaces of Los Angeles and how they foster artists who are today the bold-faced names of contemporary art.

Scholar Serouj Aprahamian shares the final illustrated poems by PHASE 2, an artist best known as the first to create a 3D sculpture based on his graffiti work.

Ela Bittencourt considers the innovation of Brazilian video artist Rafael França, whose art is intertwined with the early history of AIDS in the US and his home country.

Anne Wallentine writes about the print studio of Frances Gearhart, which was a hub of the southern California Arts and Crafts movement.

LATEST IN ART

Hannah Lee, “Demonstration” (2020), oil and wax on panel, 30 x 40 inches (image courtesy Entrance Gallery)

Hannah Lee’s Dreamlike Realism
John Yau on Hannah Lee: First Language at Entrance.

Lee’s work quickly and smoothly draws the viewer into its clearly defined space, yet resists immediate comprehension. I liked being in that ambiguous state, where seeing and knowing dance around each other without letting go. 

Boris Lurie’s Search for Historical Truth in Trauma
David Carrier on Boris Lurie: Nothing To Do But To Try at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

What Is the Future of Monuments?
Michale Glover on Testament at Goldsmiths College.

Helen Levitt, New York (1973) (© Film Documents LLC. Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne)

A Photographer’s Portrait of the Theater of the Streets
Francesco Dama on Helen Levitt: In The Streets at the Photographers’ Gallery.

You must look and look, and look again. Helen Levitt’s artwork seems to spring up from such an imperative. A pioneer of street photography, Levitt worked her entire life in the same few locations: the most crowded and poorest neighborhoods of New York.

The Materiality of Memory in the Paintings of Eugène Leroy
Jake Romm on Eugène Leroy: About Marina at Michael Werner Gallery.

Robert Gober Looks Into Our Heart of Darkness
John Yau on Robert Gober: “Shut up.” “No. You shut up.” at Matthew Marks Gallery.

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MORE FROM HYPERALLERGIC

Anne Willieme's ArtMed inSight class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (all images courtesy the artist)

Art Classes Are Helping Transform Medical Education
Anne Wallentine takes a closer look at Anne Willieme's ArtMed inSight classes, which aims to tackle the disciplinary divide between art and science.

When We Confuse the Artist’s Muse with the Artist’s Model
Emma Shapiro: “The problem does not lie in the age-old tradition of the model/artist relationship; the problem lies in our need for it to be something more.”

What a Boxed Columbus Statue Reveals
"The box obscures a vast legacy of inequality without undoing it. It removes the most visible source of conflict without addressing the root causes.” — Hua Xi

Required Reading
This week, the Tonga eruption as captured from space, Boston gets a big gift of Dutch and Flemish painting, 30 years of New Queer Cinema, an important Marcel Breuer house is demolished, and much more.

IN OUR STORE

Louise Bourgeois Memory Card Game

Perfect for indoor fun on a snowy day, this boredom-buster brings together famous textile works and quotes from the artist herself in a game that can be played by both children and adults. If you really want to make the most of it, you can even stick the pieces on your wall.

Shop now.

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