Chicago’s South Side Community Arts Center named a National Treasure

As the National Trust for Historic Preservation continues a push to oppose the elimination of the federal Historic Tax Credit program, the organization focused its attention on Chicago’s Bronzeville community today to officially designate the South Side Community Arts Center as a National Treasure.

Situated at 3831 S. Michigan Avenue, the historic Georgian-Revival style building was originally built as a residence for grain merchant George A. Seaverns, Jr in 1892.

-- Via Jay Koziarz, Curbed Chicago

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Here’s the Artist List for the 2018 New Museum Triennial

The New Museum has revealed the list for its 2018 New Museum Triennial, which opens on February 13 and runs through May 27. Curated by New Museum curator Gary Carrion-Murayari and Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami deputy director and chief curator Alex Gartenfeld, the exhibition will be titled “Songs for Sabotage,” and will include more than 30 artists from 19 countries—a much smaller group than the last triennial, in 2015, which included 51 artists.

The exhibition, which is the triennial’s fourth edition, will loosely focus on the relationship between art objects and the societies artists hail from, with meditations on the circulation of images and the legacies of colonialism and systemic racism interspersed throughout. “The exhibition amounts to a call for action, an active engagement, and an interference in political and social structures urgently requiring them,” a press release reads.

-- Via Alex Greenberger, ARTNEWS

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In Chicago, graffiti comes into its own as public art precedes major building developments

Graffiti in Chicago is not always vandalism. Though tagging, the stylized signatures sometimes used as gang markings, still pervade alleys and the occasional blank wall, graffiti has come into its own as public art. Whether on “permission walls” or commissioned by businesses, many neighborhoods in Chicago are filled with large-scale artworks that, until recently, were relegated to train cars and out-of-the-way places. But in neighborhoods on the near northwest side and near south of the city, fewer and fewer commercial walls are left blank. Partially as an attempt to stem random tagging and partially as an attempt to connect with young locals who may be future customers, businesses and developers are commissioning, or at least allowing,
massive works of graffiti on their property.

-- Via Matthew Messner, The Architects Newspaper

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Tracing the Education of Michelangelo

It’s rare that a major museum gives drawings top billing. They are not seen as alluring enough to engage the public. But one thing they can do is lift the veil on the artistic process, even for such a secretive artist as Michelangelo (1475-1564). And the Met’s new exhibition does this beautifully.

-Via Cammy Brothers, The Wall Street Journal 

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Why Richard Avedon’s Work Has Never Been More Relevant

In 1964, Richard Avedon published “Nothing Personal,” a lavish coffee table book with gravure-printed portraits of individuals who do not fit into any single classification: Allen Ginsberg standing naked in a Buddhist pose opposite George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party; the puffy-eyed Dorothy Parker, her bags containing a lifetime of tears, side by side with a sullen and deflated, if still-shimmering, Marilyn Monroe; a young and earnest Julian Bond among members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and the grizzled William Casby, who had been born into slavery about 100 years earlier.

“Nothing Personal” was published only months after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in the period of profound cultural soul-searching following President Kennedy’s assassination. Despite Avedon’s glamorous reputation, it was his social conscience — revealed in the range of photographs in this book — that may be the surprise that deepens his enduring legacy.

-- Via Philip Gefter, The New York Times

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