What We're Reading: 1/11/21

Is Looking at Art a Path to Mental Well-Being?

During a dark period in his youth, Bill Murray thought about killing himself while wandering the streets of Chicago. “I was ready to die,” the actor said at a press conference several years ago. That day he decided to visit the Art Institute and found himself in front of Jules Breton’s 1884 painting The Song of the Lark, which depicts a young woman looking skyward, sickle in hand, a violent orange sunrise behind her. Suddenly, Murray felt hope. “I just thought, Well, there’s a girl who doesn’t have a whole lot of prospects, but the sun’s coming up anyway and she’s got another chance at it,” he said. “That gave me some sort of feeling that I too am a person, and get another chance every day the sun comes up.” Murray credits the painting with saving his life.

Via WSJ

Four Italian Collectors on Instagram Have Been Unmasked as Catfish Accounts. Was It a Scheme to Pump Emerging Artists? 

“It all starts at a fair, or by word of mouth from collector friends, or wandering around Instagram,” the collector Carlo Alberto Ferri recently told an Italian art blog. “Then, I get in touch with the gallery before I buy.”

It sounds like a typical response. What’s unusual is that Ferri is not actually a collector, or even a real person. And there are others like him, prowling the internet purporting to be Italian collectors, according to a report published in the newspaper Il Sole 24 Oreyesterday.

Via Artnet

Top 10 for Visual Art in Chicago: Big shows, big messages in the first months of 2022

As museums carry on showing pandemic holdovers too good to cancel, the embarrassment of riches continues. So many great shows, so little space to mention them all!

By Lori Waxman, Chicago Tribune

Showcase of African and African American Artists Comes to Prudential Plaza

A unique collaboration is bringing Black art to a popular Chicago building.

It’s a first of its kind exhibit happening now at One Two Pru, also known as Prudential Plaza, located in the Loop. It’s not unusual to see art in downtown lobbies, but most of the pieces in this art exhibit are from Gallery Guichard, a Black-owned art gallery in Bronzeville.

Via WTTW