March 2011 Blog Posts (22)

In "A Minute With..." we catch up for a New York minute with artists and cultural workers in New York City to see what they are up to and what they love about the city. In the first of the series, I caught up with Aaron Friedman, Founder and President of the wildly successful…

If you are a fan of dance you will want to check out the archives of Jacob's Pillow Dance, America's longest running international dance festival.  My personal favorite is a video of…

For anyone who has lived in or visited LA, the idea of a neighborhood art walk is a little bizzare-- (unless you can valet-park your car on the way there!). The historic neighborhood of Leimert Park, which John Singleton (Boys n the Hood) once called the "black Greenwich Village", has nevertheless succeeded in getting huge amounts of people to its new art walks, meant as a way to preserve and revitalize this historic neighborhood. In this video, the organizers asked the art walkers…

In Yoruba spiritual traditions as well as its descendant Afro-diasporic faiths like Vodou and Santeria, Eshu is the divine messenger between Gods and Man, the gatekeeper, protector of travelers, guardian of the Crossroads, offering choices and reveals possibilities.

Often identified by the number three, and the colours red & black, Eshu represents the…

I spent some time on The Municipal Art Society of New York's website today and noticed they offered some really interesting walking tours.  Here's a sample:

When Brooklyn Met the Middle East

This is a tour of Brooklyn’s earliest Arab-American…

My lips came with a caravan of slaves

That belonged to the Grand Sanussi.

In Al-Jaghbub he freed them.

They still live in the poor section of Benghazi

Near the hospital where I was born.

This is the first stanza from Khaled Mattawa's poem "History of My Face."  Give the current state of affairs in Libya, I…

You Are Now The Owner of This Suitcase is the second installment in a trilogy of plays produced by Theatre 167, currently playing at PS 69 in Jackson Heights, Queens until April 3, 2011. I had chanced upon the first production, 167 Tongues, last year (which I blogged about here) and had been looking forward to the next chapter with…

The Guardian's Charlotte Higgins looks into the reasons why so many British artists move to Berlin. One artist is quotes as saying: "London seems to get more and more like Manhattan in terms of its inequality. As an artist, one can sometimes feel that one exists to provide entertainment to the wealthy: you are simply a skilled servant. In Berlin, as someone making art,…

WNYC's Julia Furlan reports on a story that has been gathering pace and that the Guggenheim would like to see go away:  "There may be a few key art works missing from the Guggenheim's collection in Abu Dhabi. More than 130 artists have signed onto a petition boycotting the Guggenheim's new Saadiyat Island museum over alleged unfair working conditions for migrant workers building the project."…

Chris Gill tells the story in The Art Newspaper of 30 artists in Shanghai who are being evicted of the building that houses their art studio (is Shanghai the new Manhattan?!). They are not leaving without a fight though.…

The JapanNYC Festival currently hosted by Carnegie Hall will go on despite the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. So far none of the artists have needed to pull out. Daniel Wakin in the New York Times writes: "The hall’s programmers and managers face challenges on two fronts: the practical problem of bringing in performers from a devastated…

Writer Lee Rosenbaum describes recent installations at the National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan and the Brooklyn Museum by writing:

The effect of these stereotype-busting displays is sometimes jarring, especially because the canon now includes contemporary art. Today's curators want visitors to view Indian artworks not as quaint…

Joshua Hammer of Smithsonian Magazine offers a behind the scenes portrait of several artists, including visual artists and rappers, who are at the forefront of the arts in Myanmar (formerly Burma) and are using their work to educate citizens and protest the government. Artists like J-Me…

I've just seen the news on WNYC's web site that the much beloved Five Pointz building in Long Island City, Queens, a global mecca for graffiti culture, is up for demolition, and will be replaced by luxury apartments. From what I know this used to be home to several artist studios until it became unsafe a few years back, but street…