June 26, 2016
Flint Artists & Cultural Organizations Help the City Cope: As the water crisis continues in Flint, Michigan, complicating daily life for the city’s residents, many local arts and cultural communities continue to help raise political awareness and assuage ongoing grief. Documentaries, spoken-word performances, gallery shows, and urban revitalization efforts all contribute to helping the city of Flint cope with the water crisis and begin a return to normalcy. “Raise It Up! Youth Arts and Awareness,” for example, helps the children of Flint participate in national poetry competitions and express the myriad of emotions accompanying the unstable conditions in the community. “Studio on the GO” likewise helps young Flint residents engage in the arts, providing production equipment to local schools for after school arts programs. Local artists use their work to draw attention to the water crisis and its consequences; Flint artist Desiree Duell, for example, creates crime-scene-like outlines of children’s bodies from recycled water bottles in her performance art “A Body of Water.” The local Buckham Gallery is set to host a show displaying works about the crisis; one of the painters involved in organizing the event explains: “The water crisis has become so deeply ingrained in the culture here that it has to affect your work.” In the face of crisis, the arts have helped empower the Flint community and aided its residents in processing grief and ongoing daily challenges.

Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ Reimagined in Legos: Lego master builder Veronica Watson has recreated many of the memorable moments in Beyonce’s visual album “Lemonade” using the iconic building bricks. Known for her epic Lego recreations, Watson’s previous projects include an impressive version of Picasso’s “Guernica” and caricatures of popular TV characters. Even to such a master builder, “Lemonade” was a challenge. “The album was so visually captivating and I thought Lego bricks could be a really great way to interpret some of her now iconic imagery,” explains Watson, whose official title is Legoland Discovery Center Westchester’s Master Model Builder. An Urban Design and Architecture Studies graduate from NYU, Watson now both fixes and conserves Lego creations and builds her own. There are, of course, challenges to reimagining complicated works of art in colorful bricks: “With Lego, you have a limited palette, so yo make something you have to analyze it to its simplest form,” Watson explains. Check out the “Lemonade” scenes and some of her other impressive Lego creations here.

Artist Makes Louvre Pyramid Appear to Disappear: French artist JR has covered the Musée du Louvre’s iconic pyramid with a black-and-white photograph, creating the illusion from certain angles that the pyramid has disappeared. The illusion, according to JR, is meant to symbolize–and condemn–the recent tourist trend of turning backs to landmarks to take “selfies.” He explains: “I was watching people taking photos of the museum with their selfie sticks, turning their back on the pyramid and it really shocked me.” The draping of the pyramid is also meant to evoke the trend of renting monument facade space for advertising; JR purposefully did not accept sponsorship for the Louvre project to fight against the trend. The installment, “JR au Louvre” will run until the end of June. His project is certainly a powerful statement calling for a more authentic engagement with the monuments and architecture tourists visit every day.

Ancient Sculpture Garden May Be Evidence of Creative Neanderthals: Archeologists excavating in a cave near the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France have discovered a pair of stone rings potentially challenging assumptions about Neanderthals and creativity. The rings, made from nearly 400 stalagmites (mineral deposits that form on the floor of caves) cut to a similar 16-centimeter length, suggest that the ancient ancestors of human beings may have been more intellectually advanced than previously suspected. Living 200,000 to 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals have been commonly characterized by their protruding brows and brutish behavior; the purposeful construction of the stalagmite rings, however, suggests at least a rudimentary level of creative thought–potentially an example of early art. The archeologist who led the dating tests on the rings, Jacques Jaubert, explains; “Neanderthals were inventive, creative, subtle and complex. They were not mere brutes focused on chipping away at flint tools or killing bison for food.” This fascinating discovery has helped to disprove stereotypes of early human ancestors and give us a glimpse into the earliest of artistic creations.

May 24 2016
Exploring the Secret CIA Art Gallery: Unbeknown to most of the public, the Central Intelligence Agency houses a fine arts collection at its headquarters in Virginia. The CIA museum’s director, Toni Hiley, explains that the museum commissions historical paintings to ensure new CIA employees can learn about the past: “Fifty-two percent of our officers have joined since 9/11, and it’s absolutely critical that they understand where we’ve come from as an agency so they can lead us to where we will go.” Paintings in the collection depict both successful missions–like the rescue of “The Canadian Six” in the ARGO mission–as well as tragic events–like the loss of four pilots in the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion. The latest commissioned work, “A Contingency for Every Action,” is a large oil panting depicting artifacts from more than fifty years of agency operations, some of which remain classified. Most people will never get to see any of these paintings in person, but seeing pictures of some of them gives a fascinating glimpse into a collection of art dedicated to commemorating important events in recent U.S. history.

The Art in Science – How Software Developers Need Creativity: As jobs and funding continue to move to favor hard-skilled degrees like engineering and computer science, businesses and institutions continue to question the value of liberal arts degrees. Co-founder of Sun Microsystems Vinod Khosla argued in a viral blog post entitled “Is Majoring in Liberal Arts a Mistake for Students?” that indeed, yes, students should direct their attention to science and make time for the humanities “later.” Bucking the persistent science versus art mentality, however, former software developer J. Bradford Hipps argues in a New York Times opinion piece that creativity and artistic talent are vital to the world of computer science. A liberal-arts major himself, he explains how he has seen throughout his career examples of scientific problems that could be solved, not only effectively but in the best way, by creativity. A pianist coworker discovered a method that revolutionized one of their projects. Another coworker, a philosophy major, was able to grasp abstract concepts with ease. Hipps argues: “To say that more good developers will be produced by swapping the arts for engineering is like saying that to produce great writers, we should double down on sentence diagramming.” Hopefully Hipps’ argument and continued advocacy for the value of an arts education helps future generations of students see the value in arts education, even for those planning careers in science.

Composing New Music for Ancient Instruments: The histories of many Chinese instruments date back much further than most contemporary Western instruments, and a wave of new composers are creating fresh music for these cultural treasures. Jacob David Sudol highlights seven contemporary composers bringing new life to traditional instruments like the xiao (a vertical end-blown flute), the dizi (a horizontal side-blown flute), the guqin (a seven-string fretless zither), and the guzheng (a 21-string zither with 21 movable bridges). Many contemporary Chinese composers, like Chou Wen-chung, are purposefully drawing on the cultural associations of these instruments and their links to specifically Chinese aesthetics and philosophy. For more information on these talented composers and the beautiful instruments they use, read more of Sudol’s article here. His fascinating look into the history and future of these instruments helps showcase the beautiful and unique music being made in China.

“Nude” Leotards for Every Dancer: To address the difficulties faced by girls and women of color in finding “nude” leotards, former swimwear-maker Whitney Bracey founded Mahogany Blues, an apparel line dedicated to offering dancewear in a variety of skin tones. The line currently offers leotards in four tones, with two more planned to come out by the end of the year; it also provides dancers with shoe polish to color their shoes to match their own skin tone. Bracey currently makes all leotards for the line by hand, but hopes to begin mass producing as she has dealt with increasing demand. Mahogany Blues sponsors several dance studios, providing young dancers with a “Ballerina Care Package” and a leotard to match their skin tone. What a wonderful company helping to meet the needs and support the dreams of young ballerinas of all colors!