Ruth Asawa Reshapes Art History

"The addition of Asawa to art's overwhelmingly white-male hit parade comes at a critical time in our country, as the policies of the current Administration challenge the undeniable fact that the United States is a nation of immigrants. Asawa's parents were farmers, who emigrated to rural California from Japan. ('Sculpture is like farming,' the artist once said. 'If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.')"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/ruth-asawa-reshapes-art-history

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Cabaret is uncannily timely in the age of Trumputin

"Strong performances from all include Hogeland's wounded Sally, who makes the title song truly dramatic because she's still deciding what to do rather than celebrating her decision. It's genuinely raw, and again we glimpse what's really at stake. Frederick embodies Cliff's Yankee innocence while making the modern version's suggestions of bisexuality believable. Christopher Patrick Mullen excels as Ernst, Cliff's German friend with a big secret. Music director Alex Bechtel's band, perched above the stage, is superb, and Olivera Gajic's period costumes (and the cast's many quick changes) are likewise splendid."

http://www.broadstreetreview.com/theater/arden-theatre-company-presents-cabaret#

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 23 CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ARTISTS

“23 Contemporary Indian Artists,” Lloyd E. Oxendine’s essay for A.i.A.’s July-August 1972 issue, was the first major survey of Native art to appear in a national magazine. As such, it is a seminal document. “Even today,” Kathleen Ash-Milby writes in our October issue, “most students and teachers of Native art are familiar with Oxendine’s article because it was such rare coverage for the time.”

Oxendine offers an appraisal of the contemporary Native art scene. His central observation is that that young Native artists had begun to rebel against folkloric conventions and embrace new artistic techniques. This was a response to changing circumstances rather than a rejection of their roots. Indian artists, Oxendine writes, “are, no matter how tribally oriented, modern men and women.” Oxendine’s essay is accompanied by twenty-three capsule critical biographies of emerging Native artists.

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/23-contemporary-indian-artists/