JOE MABEL/COURTESY CREATIVE COMMONS
Civic Life
A certain lovable public sculpture is returning to a certain city—with “a restored color scheme that may surprise some Philadelphians,” the New York Times reports. The work, a big “LOVE” sculpture by Robert Indiana, had been removed after 41 years for repair and repainting—as well as a correction of a prior botched job with “a blue paint that turned out to be the wrong color.” [The New York Times]
The Times-Picayune has a story about how art from Latin America is taking over New Orleans, from work in Prospect.4 and the Newcomb Art Museum to events like Mardi Gras Mambo and a screening of Sergei Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico. [The Times-Picayune]
Insiders
For the Washington Post, Philip Kennicott weighed in on the Lynne Cook-curated outsider-art show at the National Gallery: “‘Outliers and American Vanguard Art’ is not the first large exhibition to survey work made by isolated visionaries . . . But it definitely feels like an institutional moment. If it isn’t a benediction, it is certainly a resounding acknowledgment that something has changed in our understanding of these artists.” [The Washington Post]
“Dora De Larios, an inventive ceramic artist known for her bright public murals, whimsical sculptures and the crafting of a set of dishes on an impossible deadline for a White House luncheon, has died at 84,” Carolina A. Miranda wrote in an obituary for the Los Angeles Times. [Los Angeles Times]
Oppression
“Iran has sentenced an Iranian-American art dealer and his wife to prison under a little-used law that can target dual nationals,” ABC News reports. Iranian-American Karan Vafadari and his Iranian wife, Afarin Neyssar, were sentenced to 27 and 16 years, respectively. “Little information has come out about their case . . . though some reports suggested they were detained for having parties where men and women mingled and alcohol was served.” [ABC News]
The writings and artistic practice of Mirtha Dermisache are a testament to the fact that the impulse to write should bring fear to power. “Her work, which she created while living under the junta in Argentina, is lasting and subversive, all while barely penning a legible word,” according to Met Museum editor Will Fenstermaker in the Paris Review. [The Paris Review]
Show Us Some Art
George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg, who run the international design firm Yabu Pushelberg, are avid art collectors—and they opened up their home for the New York Times feature “Show Us Your Wall.” Among the bounties are works by Anish Kapoor, Yoshitomo Nara, Thomas Ruff, and Robert Mapplethorpe. [The New York Times]
The Guardian has some really cool and moody “Bauhaus-inspired urban photography” by Alan Schaller, whose series of pictures meditating on “disconnection between people in the digital age” is on show at Leica Story City in London. [The Guardian]
Misc.
For his own teeming website, David Byrne wrote about (and embedded some video of) getting together with a massive makeshift choir to perform a stirring rendition of David Bowie’s “Heroes” in the lobby of the Public Theater in New York. “There is a transcendent feeling in being subsumed and surrendering to a group,” Byrne says. [DavidByrne.com]
For the New York Review of Books, Robin Dembroff considers a recent change in California to allow “non-binary” as a gender choice alongside “male” and “female.” Progressives “may be acting from the best of motives, but this swath of new legislation rests on a dangerous mistake,” writes Dembroff, who identifies as genderqueer and uses the pronouns they and them. “For me, adding ‘nonbinary’ to the list of legal gender options does not address the core problem: any legal system that requires a person to record their gender perpetuates government control over our bodies and identities.” [The New York Review of Books]