Woodworker Jesse Rinyu and Poet LindoYes attempt to fix their shared sculpture's nutty brain.
LindoYes performs his poem, "Irregular Heartbeat."
The Poetry Gumball Machine Project Museum for Art in Wood 141 N. 3rd St. Philadelphia April 27, 2024
“Tough love is being punched until you don’t cry — and crying is the only thing that stops the punching from hurting as much,” Philly Poet and local organizer LindoYes recited softly. His words were resonant enough to reach his audience without relying on a mic as he stood next to a wooden robot designed to dispense his poems — and social service supports — to the city at large.
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Robin Lapid
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Feb 19, 2024 11:00 am
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The "Black Migration Stories" exhibit at the Camron-Stanford House in Oakland.
Opening event Town Treasures: Black Migration Stories Camron-Stanford House Oakland Feb. 16, 2024
Even if you regularly walk along Lake Merritt in Oakland, you might not notice the Camron-Stanford House, the stately old Victorian sitting on the southwestern shore. Somehow, it never caught my eye. At sunset on Friday, I overheard a couple strolling past the house as one struggled to place its history (“That’s an old landmark or something”).
It’s actually a former home built in 1876 by Samuel Merritt and owned by a succession of wealthy Victorian families, before it was bought by the City of Oakland and served as the original Oakland Museum until 1965. Now it’s a historical landmark open to the public, offering tours, events, and exhibits, which was why I found myself roaming its Victorian rooms upstairs, and attending the opening reception for its latest exhibit downstairs, “Town Treasures: Black Migration Stories.”
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Jamil Ragland
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Feb 5, 2024 3:32 pm
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Stowe's parlor, where seances occurred.
Spiritualism as Resistance: Spirits at Stowe Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Hartford Feb. 2, 2024
The central truth of American history is that every question you can ask has its answer in slavery. It is the foundation of the United States, predating its existence and continuing to reverberate throughout the present.
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Rebecca Giordano
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Jan 28, 2024 3:00 pm
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YOSHIESAKAI: GRANDMAENTERTAINMENTFRANCHISE Vincent Price Art Museum Monterey Park, Cal. Through Feb. 3, 2024
Like the siren song of a real nightclub, a karaoke version of “Fergalicious” lures visitors from the front desk of the Vincent Price Art Museum into a kitschy carnival for an unlikely audience. Yoshie Sakai: Grandma Entertainment Franchise features three installations that each simulate a commonplace leisure space: Grandma Day Spa, Grandma Nightclub, and Grandma Amusement Park. Past a merch stand, past an inflatable heart-shaped pool – cum – video screen in front of two tulip chairs serving as Grandma Day Spa, past the merry-go-round with TV/VCRs riding sorbet-colored cryptids, visitors reach Grandma Nightclub. The videos on the carousel show duplications of Sakai in gray wigs dancing, playing instruments, and hyping up other grandmas
At the beginning of the Stranger Times exhibit, panels are situated in a circle, citing the Emmy-winning Netflix show Stranger Things as part of the origin story. Stranger Times uses the show’s alternate dimension “the upside down” to symbolize what life was like for teens living in Durham at the height of Covid-19. A spotlight is put on every area of their life that changed.
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Jamil Ragland
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Jan 22, 2024 12:03 pm
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Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America Mark Twain House Hartford Jan. 19, 2024
My journey through college was not an easy one. It took me three different schools spread across 10 years to finally earn my bachelors degree. In the meantime I’d had a son, been married and divorced, moved and changed jobs several times. College is difficult enough for young adults with few responsibilities; it becomes almost impossible when you also have a family to care for.
I would have never made it without the support of professors and other staff when I got to Trinity College, especially my major advisor, Professor Scott Gac. He’s one of the kindest, most patient people I’ve ever met, which makes his study of the brutal violence in American history all the more ironic.
Beyond Curie: A Celebration of Women in Science is a dynamic display of breakthroughs and advances made by a diverse group of women over the last 100+ years.
As visitors step off the elevator on the fourth floor of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, they’re greeted by walls doused in history making discoveries.
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Robin Lapid
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Jan 11, 2024 10:18 am
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Robin Lapid Photos
First Sundays Oakland Museum of California 1000 Oak St. Oakland
The Oakland Museum of California is not that crowded around noon on this Sunday. But there are a lot of families with young kids of all colors wandering around, absorbing the state’s history, taking in the stories, gazing at the pictures and artifacts.
I’m searching for my face in the museum.
Not literally, of course (though, maybe someday). But as a person of color, I often long to see a representation of myself, my identity, and my culture in the stories of others. To be seen and heard is such a wonderful relief sometimes. And as I wander through the Oakland Museum of California’s “Gallery of California History” on the museum’s first free Sunday of the month — the first of the new year — I can only hope.
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Jamil Ragland
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Nov 17, 2023 9:33 am
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Ninigret, the sachem (chief) of the Eastern Niantic tribe
When Two Worlds Met: Through European Eyes Stanley-Whitman House Farmington Nov. 16, 2023
The European colonization of the Americas is one of those world-altering events in history. There were nearly 60,000 indigenous peoples living in New England in 1600. Today, despite explosive population growth in the region, only 47,000 people identify as Native American.
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Sasha Patkin
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Oct 6, 2023 10:17 am
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Irene Schwachman's 1962 photograph of Washington Street, Adams Square.
Developing Boston: Berenice Abbott & Irene Shwachman Photograph a Changing CityThe Boston Athenaeum 10 – 1/2 Beacon St. Boston, MA 02108
Cities tell stories. This is particularly evident (if not inescapable) in Boston.
Developing Boston: Berenice Abbott & Irene Shwachman Photograph a Changing City, which is on view at the Boston Athenæum through the end of the year, is a clear demonstration of the stories that surround us. The exhibit features the photographs of Berenice Abbott, a famous 20th-century photographer who was commissioned in 1934 to create a photographic survey of Boston’s nineteenth-century buildings. Twenty-five years later, Irene Shwachman, her mentee, photographed Boston’s redevelopment for her project The Boston Document, which she began in 1959 and continued for nine years. The exhibition showcases the two women’s photographs in conversation, examining how each photographer approaches and views the city.
You can grab one off the wall and start strumming "Walk on the Wild Side."
At the Meteor Guitar Gallery, an up-and-coming music venue in Northwest Arkansas, I was hoping to see a Lou Reed tribute act. The act, a local band audaciously named Blew Reed, was opening a show there recently.
I was mistaken, but not disappointed.
Blew Reed is the stage name of Clint Reaser, a retired machinist from Rogers, Arkansas. He’s the harmonica (reed) player and singer of the four-piece blues-rock group Blew Reed & the Flatheads. And flathead refers not to a punk haircut but an old Ford or Harley motor.
The Meteor is a large music hall in a repurposed movie theater in downtown Bentonville. It includes the Guitar Gallery where you can view a few hundred vintage guitars and even buy them.
Lou Reed is gone, but Meteor owner Leslie Key is dedicated to music with the old-school rock spirit, along with an appreciation for vintage guitars and the gritty bands that play them.
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Agustin Maes
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Sep 4, 2023 8:53 am
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Agustín Maes Photo
Entrance to the Great Hall.
A longtime fan of work by artists at the Bay Area’s Creative Growth, Creativity Explored, and NIAD (Nurturing Independence through Artistic Development) workshops, I was eager to see Into The Brightness, a show of pieces by artists from all three workshops currently at the Oakland Museum of California. Anticipating the usual delight I take in such innovative and surprising work, I didn’t expect the expert curatorial choices that facilitate this show’s vibrancy. Into the Brightness is more an experience than an exhibit.
