What We're Reading: 3/19/24
Chicago has a new ‘I voted!’ sticker. Meet the artist behind the bold and simple design.
As Tuesday’s Illinois primary election approaches, early voters have been introduced to a new unique design for what’s arguably the most fun part of casting a ballot in Chicago — getting the iconic “I voted!” sticker.
The Chicago Board of Elections ordered 2 million of the apple-size stickers. The new design features a ballot box set over a dark blue backdrop and above the four red stars from Chicago’s city flag. The stickers are handed out like little prizes after voters cast their ballots, passed out at precincts and included in vote-by-mail packets across the city.
The artist behind the new sticker, Jane Ignacio, has designed everything for the board for more than 20 years, from its social media posts to its election judge handbooks.
“Going to the polling place on Election Day is like my Super Bowl,” the freelance designer said in an interview Thursday.
Via Chicago Tribune
International museum attendance figures back to pre-pandemic levels
Visitor numbers at the world’s largest museums of art have largely returned to their pre-pandemic levels, an exclusive survey by The Art Newspaper has found.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused museum visitor numbers to plummet across the world as institutions shut their doors and people were forced to stay inside. The number of people visiting the most-visited 100 museums fell from 230 million in 2019, the last full pre-pandemic year, to just 54m in 2020. Since then we have seen a slow recovery, with 71m visitors in 2021 and 141m in 2022.
Via The Art Newspaper
Women are spending more on art than men – we look at why
From a distance, a work by Mitsuko Asakura might read as a linear interplay of glowing, expressionist color – until the middle drops out in a pendulous swoop of slackened silk. The Kyoto-born septuagenarian textile artist, who fuses traditional fiber dyeing and European tapestry methods with experimental forms, has been revered among a community of craftspeople in Japan. But it was not until her inclusion in a group show at collector Lisa Perry’s female-focused Onna House in East Hampton, New York, in 2022, that her work was noticed by a board member of the Museum of Arts and Design and subsequently entered the permanent collection.
Via Art Basel
Mexican artist crushes Tesla under giant stone head
A giant stone head resembling an ancient Indigenous sculpture sits on top of a crushed Tesla car. It's not the scene of a freak accident, but a piece of art -- whose creator says he wanted to provoke Elon Musk.
Chavis Marmol, a 42-year-old sculptor who has never owned a car and travels by bicycle, came up with the idea of dropping the nine-ton carving onto a blue Tesla 3 in Mexico City using cranes.
Via AFP