Arts & Culture
Robert Harris, Buffalo Artist
I now own four of his paintings, but this kind of stuffy collector language feels silly to use. People at his shows are always smiling, because it’s impossible to be art-gallery-serious around this work.
Martin Luther King in Dayton
Although the irony is not lost on us that the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday falls on the forty-seventh presidential inauguration, EbonNia and Black Palette Art Gallery provide beacons of communal light and hope.... We must remain a kind, resilient people who are not afraid to be vocal and broadcast empathy. We are never too old to learn and embrace new information.
Art and Radicalism in St. Louis
Trump’s election was just one of a global turn rightward. Anti-democratic, illiberal, proto-fascist political movements were gaining ground internationally. Even still, eight years later, the Midwest and the Rust Belt are regarded as at the center and engine of the neo-reactionary and radical right-wing movements today.
Charles “Teenie” Harris’s Photographs Make Space for Joy
One of Harris’s many gifts was his ability to capture expressions---smiles, scowls, and all the nuances in between.
Improvising Milwaukee and Jazz
Milwaukee’s actually representative in many ways of jazz in other cities. “It’s probably no different than any other Midwest city.... you have these smaller midsize, Midwest cities like Columbus, Ohio, and Milwaukee, and Cleveland. They have this great history, but it’s largely unacknowledged by the greater folks that are interested in jazz.”
Botticelli in the Burgh
All of these paintings, the originals in Tuscany, are also viewable down to the most granular detail, by the most strict parameters of verisimilitude, in an Italianate building of white granite and red terra cotta roof in the middle of Pittsburgh.
The Year Ceramics Took Cincinnati
Cincinnati is one of the best places in America to be an artist now because of a combination of low cost of living and a vibrant arts community.
Maxo Vanka’s Radical Gaze
If a focus on workers tied Vanka with New Deal artists, he diverged by drawing on Catholic spirituality and forcefully critiquing capitalism.
St. Louis Brick by Brick
To understand the history of St. Louis’s bricks is to unearth systems of power, economy, dispossession, decline, and manifest destiny; the storybook decorative brickwork we see today becomes a tale as complex—and as sinister—as American history itself.
Unlocking the Gateway to the West
My city has also not been particularly adept at acknowledging its sins, past or present, let alone attempting to atone for them.
Midwest Arts and Culture
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