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ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Greg & Ernest Disney-Britton "Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene" (1581) by Lavinia Fontana. Oil on canvas, 80 x 65,5 cm; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence This week, we were consumed by " The Handmaid's Tale ," a chilling new television series written and directed by women about religious extremism in a future America. Yesterday afternoon, we experienced the reading of a play written by women in prison. The historical drama titled, " The Duchess of Strongtown " is the story of both women of the church and women of the brothels. It's through those eyes that we come to this week's Art of the Week: " Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene " (1581) by Lavinia Fontana . In this work, the female painter puts Mary Magdalene at the center of the Easter story. Mary kneels at Christ's side, but it is she who glows with a light of a new age. We need more stories like the Duchess, the Handmaids, and Mary Magdalene.

THE NEW YORK TIMES The Handmaid's Tale  By Angelica Jade Bastien Elisabeth Moss, second from right, in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Credit George Kraychyk/Hulu After two episodes, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has shown that it excels at placing the horrific, the surreal and the achingly mundane side-by-side. In one image, four handmaids speak about the weather as dead bodies are strung up behind them, the only acknowledgment of their supposed crimes being the symbols on the bags that cloak their face. “ The Handmaid’s Tale ” may be grotesque, but it’s also honest about the cost of survival and the cruel complicity of women like Serena Joy who fiercely hold onto what limited power they have at the expense of others’ subjugation. [ link ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS "Drawing Memory" musral by Victor Ekpuk MEMPHIS--- Memphis Brooks Museum of Art commissions Victor Ekpuk , a Nigerian American artist, to paint "Drawing Memory: Essence of Memphis" for the African art gallery. His art is inspired by nsibidi , a sacred means of communication among male secret societies in southeastern Nigeria. Evolving out of the graphic and writing systems of nsibidi , Ekpuk’s art embraces a wider spectrum of meaning to communicate universal themes. “The subject matter of my work deals with the human condition explained through themes that are both universal and specific: family, gender, politics, culture and identity,” said Ekpuk . The 58-foot mural is the beginning of the renovation of Arts of Global Africa, which will culminate in fall 2017.

ARTNET NEWS By Sarah Cascone The latest tourist attraction at the Luxor Temple in Luxor, Egypt, is a towering statue of Ramses II, now fully restored for the first time since its 1958–60 discovery, when it was found in 58 pieces. The massive work measures 36 feet tall and weighs 82 tons. The black granite statue, which depicts the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, was damaged during an earthquake in the fourth century. The unveiling of the restored colossus took place the evening April 18, just after Egypt announced the discovery of the 3,500-year-old tomb of the nobleman Userhat. [ link ]

THE TELEGRAPH By Alastair Sooke, art critic Chris Ofili
's Cocktail Serenaders (Spray) (2014), on display at the National Gallery CREDIT: © CHRIS OFILI COURTESY THE ARTIST AND VICTORIA MIRO, LONDON LONDON---Hard on the heels of Marc Quinn’s sexy show at the Soane Museum, and Damien Hirst’s disastrous, bloated offering in Venice, comes another exhibition by an artist associated with the Britart movement: Chris Ofili . In a free display in its Sunley Room, the National Gallery presents The Caged Bird’s Song, a new tapestry designed by Ofili, suffused with a sense of magic, myth and sensuality – and, boy, is it gorgeous. [ link ]

TIMES OF ISRAEL  By Renee Ghert-Zand Blood, Milk & Tears' installation at Fentster in Toronto, Canada, April 2017. (Justine Apple Photography) TORONTO---Currently on display in the Fentster until May 24 is an exhibition titled, “Blood, Milk & Tears,” a collaboration among local Jewish and Muslim women. Inspired by classical Jewish and Islamic religious texts on menstruation, breast feeding and mourning, the women studied and discussed the texts together before recently creating their artworks. Coming in the wake of the deadly attack on a Quebec mosque by a white nationalist in late January, participants said that the timing of the interfaith collaboration was fortuitously healing. This is Fentster (Yiddish for window), a new exhibition space in Jewish organization Makom‘s building, used for rotating site-specific art installations connected to the Jewish experience. [ link ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Saints and Kings: Arts, Culture, and Legacy of the Sikhs is organized by the Asian Art Museum. SAN FRANCISCO---Celebrate the artistic and cultural heritage of the Sikhs in "Saints and Kings Arts, Culture, and Legacy" at the Asian Art Museum . With nearly 27 million adherents worldwide, Sikhism is among the world’s largest religions, and also one of the youngest. A diverse selection of 30 paintings, prints and textiles celebrates the artistic and cultural legacy of the Sikhs and the community’s longstanding connection to California. This exhibition explores the artistic and cultural creativity that flourished under the patronage of India’s Sikh kingdoms, established in the 1800s by the dynamic warrior Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839), which was continued by later Sikh rulers.

PATHEOS By Gregory Wolfe Just released by Oxford University Press, When Art Disrupts Religion: Aesthetic Experience and the Evangelical Mind has received praise from such leading scholars as David Morgan and Randall Balmer. Image editor Gregory Wolfe recently interviewed the author, Philip Salim Francis . "I’m trying to make the case that the arts have the ability to unsettle and rework deeply ingrained religious beliefs and practices—perhaps like nothing else can. I wanted to test the limits of these claims through ethnographic study: could art disrupt and reconfigure the religious identity of even a people who had been steeped—for a lifetime—in the more conservative strains of twentieth century American evangelicalism?" [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Robin Pogrebin Brooke Shields in her Manhattan townhouse, with a Keith Haring heart above her fireplace and images of her daughters by Will Cotton on either side. Credit Tony Cenicola/The New York Times NEW YORK---To walk with the actress Brooke Shields through her West Village townhouse is to spend time with someone in the nascent stages of becoming a collector. She does not go to art fairs, and the only live auctions she has attended have been at her daughters’ school. In a global art market that one estimate recently valued at $45 billion, the most Ms. Shields has spent on a painting is about $7,000. Ms. Shields’s Keith Harings include a heart over her bed, inscribed, “For Brooke Merry Christmas 1984,” and a Buddha in the study of her husband, Chris Henchy, inscribed, “For Brooke … one of the sweetest (honestly) people I’ve met, with lots of love and respect.” A Warhol is in the laundry room. [ link ]

YONHAP NEWS AGENCY This photo, provided by The Chinese Cultural Center in Seoul, shows the entrance of the Mogao Caves. (Yonhap) SEOUL---The Chinese Cultural Center in Seoul opens an exhibition Monday to shed light on ancient cultural exchanges through the Silk Road and sophisticated Buddhist art that flourished along the trade route linking Asia and Europe. "The Silk Road: Reflection of Mutual Learning -- Dunhuang Art Archive Exhibit" will showcase some 50 pieces of art that include mural-related drawings, old photos of the Mogao Caves -- also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes -- and paintings about Dunhuang by modern Chinese artists. There will also be a 4-D documentary on the murals. [ link ]

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE By Michael J. Crosbie The sanctuary will serve the spiritual needs of people from all faiths and belief systems Despite a well-documented drop in enthusiasm for organized religion among young people, many are still looking for avenues to spirituality that value dialogue, understanding, empathy and authenticity. The recently opened Snyder Sanctuary at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., is an architectural answer to facilitate this spiritual search, to help people of all backgrounds find common ground and to inspire them. The sanctuary, designed by Newman Architects of New Haven, Conn., provides a space for sharing, a place for those from different faith traditions, values and cultures to meet and engage in dialogue, and to nurture the Lynn University community. [ link ]

ALETEIA By Daniel Esparza New technology offers additional proof of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. In an interview with RCF Liège, the numismatist Agostino Sferrazza addressed the old question on the coins that cover the eyes of the Man of the Shroud. According to his conclusions, these pieces must have been coined in the days of Pontius Pilate, circa the year 29. This could constitute an additional proof of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. Back in 1976, the hypothesis of the presence of coins covering the eyes of the Man of the Shroud was first introduced, thanks to a 3D projection of the mysterious image. The hypothesis states these might have been leptons: small coins of low value that were common in Palestine in Roman times. [ link ]

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO By Laurel Wamsley Minnesota teen, 16-year-old Amaiya Zafar has been granted a religious exemption to fight in one bout while wearing hijab. In November, young boxer Amaiya Zafar traveled from Minnesota to Florida to fight her first competitive bout. But before Zafar even had her gloves on, officials called off the fight – they told the 16-year-old she had to remove the hijab she wore or forfeit the match. A devout Muslim, Zafar refused, and her 15-year-old opponent was declared the victor. USA Boxing, the sport's national governing body, has dictated that athletes fight in sleeveless jerseys and shorts no longer than the knee. Zafar adds long sleeves, leggings, and a sporty hijab to the uniform. The organization appears to be shifting its policy, and last week it granted Zafar a religious exemption to compete wearing the hijab so she can fight this weekend in Minneapolis. [ link ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Amir-Hussein Radjy The displays in the Museum of Islamic Art were redesigned by Adrien Gardère in 2010. Photo: B.O'Kane/Alamy Stock Photo CAIRO---At 6:31 a.m. on 24 January 2014, a large bomb went off by Cairo’s central police headquarters. The explosion ripped through the windows and door of the Museum of Islamic Art. The museum was able to rescue almost all of the 179 damaged objects (an official catalogue of the items has not been released). Today, the pieces that have been restored after the 2014 bombing are discreetly marked by red dots. When I visited in March, two months after the museum reopened, staff described the Qur’an’s ‘protection’ as a miracle. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Evelyn Nieves Portrait of a dancing clown with the typical costume. They prefer to use masks and not reveal their identity. From the group Cuadrilla de Juquilita in Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico. 2016. Credit: Luján Agusti/Native Agency During a religious procession in Veracruz, Mexico, Lujan Agusti encountered an odd sight: clowns. They did not clown around, not at all. These clowns gracefully, piously, danced. Ms. Agusti’s “Dancing Clowns” is a series of surreal portraits, elaborate and visually unsettling. In other words, they are like clowns in the real world, or, as she stresses, in the religious world. Garish, they clash with their backgrounds and even themselves. "Syncretism," Ms. Agusti said, was used by colonizers as a tool to exercise power over a community. Her Mexican clowns, she hopes, bear witness to that history, however lost it may seem today. [ link ]

CHRISTIES Studio of Andrea Solario (Milan c. 1465-1524) Ecce Homo One of Andrea Solario's most enduringly popular compositions, this "Ecce Homo" is among a number of high quality studio repetitions that survive. Two autograph versions are listed in David Alan Brown's 1987 catalogue raisonné: one, signed, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is thought to be the prime; and a second in the Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig. Both paintings are thought to date from the artist's stay in France in 1507-1509. Christies: Old Master Paintings and Sculpture , 27 April 2017, New York, Rockefeller Center.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By James Poniewozik Elisabeth Moss as Offred in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Credit George Kraychyk/Hulu A decade ago, Elisabeth Moss began co-starring in “Mad Men,” which among other things was about how women were objectified and subjugated — in the past, the 1960s, the bad old days. In Hulu’s spectacular “ The Handmaid’s Tale ,” Ms. Moss is Offred, a baby-making slave in the Republic of Gilead, which is what part of the United States (New England, roughly) has become after a fertility crisis and a theocratic coup. It’s set in a near future that looks like the 1600s. “The Handmaid’s Tale” argues — with an assist from current events — that progress is neither automatic nor irreversible. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel, is a cautionary tale, a story of resistance and a work of impeccable world-building. It is unflinching, vital and scary as hell. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Jacey Fortin Works of art by Kenny Scharf and Okuda San Miguel adorn the interior of International Church of Cannabis in Denver. Credit Marc Piscotty/Getty Images DENVER---For the International Church of Cannabis in Denver, there were three reasons to celebrate (last) Thursday. First, it was opening day. The church, a more than century-old building recently adorned with brightly colored paintings by the artists Kenny Scharf and Okuda San Miguel , welcomed the public early in the afternoon, at which time no cannabis consumption was allowed inside. Second, it was April 20, an unofficial holiday of sorts for marijuana users. And third: A challenge to the church’s legality, in the form of an amendment proposed in the state’s House of Representatives, was shut down almost as quickly as it arose on Thursday morning. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Katherine Rosman Movie poster for "The Case for Christ" produced by Pure Flix CHICAGO—Before breakfast at Sixteen, a restaurant in the Trump International Hotel and Tower here the morning after the premiere for the film “ The Case for Christ ,” David A. R. White and Andrea Logan White requested a pause. The disconnect between the mainstream news media and evangelical Christians is also a major theme of “The Case for Christ.” It was produced by Pure Flix , a faith-based entertainment production and distribution company in Scottsdale, Ariz., that Mr. White helped found in 2005. [ link ]

ROLLING STONE  By Phoebe Reilly 'Handmaid's Tale' star Elisabeth Moss and show's creators talk about turning Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel into a look at our post-Trump world. Hulu The promise of a "new normal," spoken by an apparatchik of a totalitarian theocracy – it's chilling, and like so many other scenes in The Handmaid's Tale , Hulu's 10-episode adaptation of Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian classic, it stays with you in part because it doesn't feel unfamiliar enough. Like the book, the series – starring Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, and Alexis Bledel, and which begins streaming on April 26th – takes place in the former United States now known as Gilead. A surveillance state with Puritanical roots, the nation has responded with violence to plunging birth rates caused by environmental crisis. The day after Trump was elected, sales of Atwood's book increased 200% from the year before. It shot to the top of Amazon...

HI-FRUCTOSE By Andy Smith Entheon will exhibit the finest works of the Visionary Art movement, including Alex Grey’s acclaimed Sacred Mirrors.” Alex Grey is a leading practitioner of visionary art, which attempts to tap into the metaphysical and expand awareness. He’s done this through several mediums, but he’s currently working on an ambitious project far bigger than the canvas: an entire temple. Entheon is the name of the structure Grey and wife/artist Allyson Grey are currently building. The project’s funding comes partly from $354,917 raised through a Kickstarter campaign. The temple, currently being erected, is located in the Hudson Valley of New York, 65 miles north of NYC. [ link ]

ALETEIA By Elizabeth Lev "Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene" (1581) by Lavinia Fontana, where Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for a gardener, and so she paints him in a broad-brimmed hat holding a shovel. We do not always know Christ when we first meet him, and the recognition is always a powerful moment. Throughout the centuries, the resurrection of Christ has posed particular challenges to Christian art. Paleo-Christian art avoided the subject altogether, perhaps out of respect for the Gospels’ scant detail in describing the blessed event. After several centuries, however, Christ’s return from death grew into a popular depiction, and imagination began to supply what the scriptural account lacked. While Barocci , Caracciolo and Francesco Albani all wrestled with the story of Christ’ meeting with the Magdalene (Jn 20:11-17), one of the most poignant Counter-Reformation images of Noli Me Tangere was painted by Lavinia Fontana in 1581. [ link ]

ARTDAILY Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sacrificio di Isacco, 1530 circa, matita nera, matita rossa, penna (recto), matita nera (verso), mm 482 x 298. Firenze, Casa Buonarroti, inv. 70 F. ROME---A newly-discovered drawing by Renaissance master Michelangelo, found during the restoration of his "Sacrifice of Isaac", has gone on show in Rome, along with another drawing found by restorers 30 years ago. Restorers painstakingly working last year on the "Sacrifice of Isaac", a biblical drawing executed in black pencil by the Florentine artist in 1530, found a hidden sketch for the same scene on the back. It was when restorers removed the cardboard that they discovered the secret sketch by the Italian sculptor, painter and architect who was famed perhaps above all for his frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. [ link ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Masterworks is organized geographically, showcasing the diverse regional traditions of western Tibet, central Tibet, eastern Tibet, and Bhutan in relation to the neighboring areas of India, Kashmir, Nepal, China, and Mongolia. NEW YORK----Masterworks, a regularly changing exhibition at the Rubin, explores major strands in the development of Himalayan art, covering a period of over one thousand years, and presents regional artistic traditions in their broad cultural, geographic, historical, and stylistic contexts. The 2017 iteration of this exhibition draws primarily from the Rubin collection and is augmented by a few select long-term loans. A special area of the gallery is devoted to an extensive display of all 59 folio of The White Beryl , a prominent recent acquisition and an exquisitely illuminated manuscript illustrating the Tibetan system of elemental divination.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Greg & Ernest Disney-Britton The face of Christ in Mark Wallinger's "Ecce Homo" (1999) at St. Pauls. Courtesy of St. Paul's Cathedral Mark Wallinger’s life-sized sculpture of Christ, "Ecce Homo," took to the road in the UK, this spring, and Alpha Omega Arts is taking to the road this summer. While we're not headed to the UK, you are invited to join us on three road trips to Chicago, IL  (June 24), Cleveland, OH  (July 15), and Williamstown, KY (August 6), to explore religious fashion, artifacts, and an ark. It's been five years since our last series of summer road trips, and we’re excited to bring them back! Over the last 40-days of Lent when Alpha Omega Arts paused publishing , we spent that time in prayer and planning for the future. We returned on Easter Sunday, April 16, with a new mission statement and new goals. We also agreed that these road trips are one of the most enjoyable ways to share this passion wit...

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD By Abraham J. Peck A piece of art by Holocaust survivor Helga Weissova-Hoskova. April is Holocaust Remembrance Month, recalling the crimes of genocide committed in Europe by the Nazis. It's also a time to remember other acts of genocide that continue to take place today. Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal Every April I remember and mourn. I mourn my maternal Jewish grandfather and the 12 uncles and aunts and their extended families murdered in the Holocaust by the evil that we call genocide. But I am comforted to some extent by the knowledge that I am not alone. Other communities share this month to commemorate their own genocides. Armenians, Cambodians, Rwandans and Darfuris share with me membership in a horrific fraternity/sorority of sorrow. But the murderers murdered and the dead cannot be brought back to life. What do we do with our memories and with our soul wounds, those of us who bear the burden of our genocides? And how can humanity begin to understan...

THE NEW YORK TIMES | SUNDAY REVIEW By Editorial Board The playground at Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo. Credit Annaliese Nurnberg/Missourian, via Associated Press On Wednesday, nine justices, including the court’s newest member, Neil Gorsuch, heard oral arguments in a religious-liberty dispute that, at first glance, looks unremarkable. In the interest of child safety, Missouri provides a limited number of state grants to playground operators to replace hard surfaces with rubber. Trinity Lutheran Church, in the town of Columbia, applied for one of those grants in 2012 to upgrade the playground for its day care and preschool. The state refused to provide the funds because Missouri’s Constitution bars spending any money “directly or indirectly, in aid of any church.” The church sued, arguing that the prohibition violated both the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. With Justice Gorsuch now on the court, a...

IRISH TIMES By Aidan Dunne Hilma af Klint, Altarpiece, No 1, Group X, Series Altarpieces, 1915 , Oil and metal leaf on canvas, Photo: Albin Dahlström / Moderna Museet DUBLIN, Ireland---One of numerous highlights in As Above, So Below: Portals, Visions, Spirits & Mystics is the inclusion of one of Bruce Nauman’s first environmental sculptures, Natural Light, Blue Light Room , from 1971. The artist was totally amenable to the installation being remade for one of the rooms at Imma. Catholic spirituality is also featured. A room is given over to the work of Patrick Pye , the foremost Irish religious artist of the latter half of the 20th century, for example, and his paintings look completely at home in the context. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin, Ireland.  [ link ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS "Henri Cartier-Bresson: India in Full-Frame” is organized by the Rubin Museum of Art in collaboration with Magnum Photos and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation. NEW YORK--- The Rubin Museum of Art presents disputed borders, refugees, charismatic leaders, assassinations—the India of the mid-century that does not sound so distant from the world today. It was a time and place captured expertly and in great depth by the pioneering photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004). The resulting photos of Gandhi’s last day of life and the events surrounding his funeral, which helped catapult Cartier-Bresson to international fame, are part of a selection of 69 photographs from the photographer’s travels to India shared in the exhibition.

CREATORS By Andrew Salomone Massive hand-stitched embroideries show the Kardashians' Last Supper Like counting prayer beads while saying the rosary, each stitch in a series of embroidered textiles is part of a meditation on religion and personal experience. Nico Mazza's hand-stitches tapestries focus on the role of cultural and religious backgrounds in the shaping of her personal feminism. Her work often compares religious iconography from her Catholic upbringing with representations from popular culture, including portraits of celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, and Drake. Nico Mazza is currently working on a new series titled Portraits of My Mothers , featuring embroideries based on stories, anecdotes or feelings she's collected from the women who raised her. See more of Mazza's work on her website and Instagram . [ link ]

NASHVILLE LIFESTYLES Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha and the Kings of Hell, Korea, late 19th or early 20th century, late Joseon period (1392–1912). Colors and cloth. Newark Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John P. Lyden, 2001, 2001.75.1 NASHVILLE---The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents Secrets of Buddhist Art: Tibet, Japan, and Korea at the Ingram Gallery February 10 through May 7, 2017. The exhibition showcases approximately 100 works from the Newark Museum’s authentic collection, exploring the depths of the Buddhist faith within Tibet, Korea, and Japan through art. Visitors will have the opportunity to watch Tibetan-Buddhist monks create a sand mandala painting. The painting will be on view in the galleries until the closing weekend of the exhibition, when it will be ceremonially destroyed. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Jane L. Levere In October, during the Blink festival, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will transform its facade into an art display with sound, video projection and LED technology. CINCINNATI | OCTOBER 12-15, 2017. Credit Blink This October, Cincinnati will host its first Blink festival , an evening art event with large-scale media and interactive art that will animate buildings throughout 20 city blocks. Brave Berlin, a local design studio, is overseeing the creation of animated installations for the facades of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and the Contemporary Arts Center. The trend dates back centuries: to 18th-century “son et lumière” shows and fireworks spectacles with wall-like sets in Europe, according to Erkki Huhtamo, a professor in the department of design media arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. Today’s technology includes projection mapping techniques that can display images and animations on a...

TIMES HERALD-RECORD "Purim" by Yitzchok Moully MIDDLETON, NY---“Pop Art Rabbi” Yitzchok Moully was the guest of honor at a Jewish Pop Art Event recently. It was hosted by Rabbi Pesach and Chana Burston, a terrific young couple who are well known for the many excellent programs they bring to Chabad of Orange County of which they are co-leaders. Yitzchok Moully is the founder of The Creative Soul and lives in Hillside, N.J., with his wife, Batsheva and six children. His website is MoullyArt.com. For information, visit the Burstons at 782-2770 or ChabadOrange.com. [ link ]

VANCOUVER SUN By Chuck Chiang VANCOUVER---One of Southeast Asia’s richest men, and a part-time Vancouver resident, wants to build a “world-class” museum dedicated to Asian and Buddhist art in the city. Oei Hong Leong, who is ranked by Forbes as the 19th richest man in Singapore with a personal net worth of $1.2 billion, usually keeps a low profile in Vancouver. But he said in a rare interview Wednesday that he wants to go public with the museum proposal because he believes it could be a significant cultural addition to Vancouver and B.C. “I love Vancouver,” said Oei, who is currently in Singapore but will return to B.C. in June. Oei started collecting Buddhist artifacts 40 years ago and now has 50,000 pieces in his personal collection, some of which are housed in a private museum in Singapore. [ link ]

DALLAS OBSERVER By Diamond Victoria Much of the art on display at the DMA takes the shape of animals and humans, like this oil lamp in the form of a fabulous beast. Courtesy Dallas Museum of Art DALLAS---This week, the Dallas Museum of Art opened its Keir Collection Gallery, and in doing so it's exhibiting more than the third largest collection of Islamic art in North America: It's also exhibiting a great sense of timing. Islam is one of the most frequently maligned religions today, and now DMA visitors can get a better understanding of it through more than 150 pieces of art reflecting the rich and unique history of Islamic cultures. Noted art collector and Hungarian-born Edmund de Unger, who praised Islamic art for its warmth of color, delicacy and boldness of design, cultivated the Keir Collection over five decades and cemented it as one of the world’s leading private collections of Islamic art. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Liam Stack Marvel said it would remove artwork from the first issue of X-Men Gold after readers suggested it contained religious and political messaging. XXXX---The X-Men have battled evil mutants, killer robots and alien invaders, but now one of the most venerable franchises in the Marvel universe has found itself embroiled in a new — and unexpected — conflict: the religious and political tensions in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. On Saturday, Marvel said that it would remove artwork from the first issue of X-Men Gold, part of a reboot of the X-Men franchise, after readers in Indonesia raised alarm bells on Reddit and elsewhere on social media about what they said were anti-Christian and anti-Semitic messages in some panels of the comic. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Janet Morrissey Visitors hearing the sounds of instruments from around the globe in the courtyard section of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan exhibition “America to Zanzibar: Muslim cultures Near and Far.” Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times NEW YORK---As terrorism fears have mounted and tensions have escalated toward Muslims in the United States in recent years, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan is doing its part to help defuse the rising anxiety. Its exhibition “America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far” showcases the history, art and traditions of Muslims, with the belief that education will beat back ignorance and hate every time. The show has been so popular since its opening in February 2016 that its run has been extended another year, and plans are underway to take it on a nationwide tour in 2018. The show is divided into five areas, where a combination of ancient artifacts, art displays, music and hands-on props take young peop...

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Louisa Buck Mark Wallinger alongside his sculpture of Christ, titled Ecce Homo, outside St Paul’s Cathedral (Photo: Graham Lacdao / St Paul’s Cathedral. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth © Mark Wallinger) LONDON--- Mark Wallinger’s life-sized sculpture of Christ, Ecce Homo , was the first work to be shown on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth back in 1999. This universal image of human vulnerability—considered by many, including this correspondent, to be one of the finest pieces of public art in recent memory—has found a new home on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral (until 22 May). It was installed....just in time for Easter—by Wallinger in collaboration with Amnesty International and St Paul’s. The work depicts Christ brought before the people by Pontius Pilate for judgment, with his hands bound behind his back and wearing a crown of gilded barbed wire. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Ross Douthat The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times Our intervention in Syria required me to be fully serious last Sunday, but now it’s time to return to this column’s ongoing series of implausible proposals, Easter Sunday edition. Which means I’ll be proposing — yes, I’m that predictable — that many of this newspaper’s secular liberal readers should head en masse to church. The wider experience of American politics suggests that as liberalism de-churches it struggles to find a nontransactional organizing principle, a persuasive language of the common good. And the experience of American society suggests that religious impulses without institutions aren’t enough to bind communities and families, to hold atomization and despair at bay. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Katrina Onstad Hulu's first poster for "The Handmaid's Tale." HOLLYWOOD---This is how a war on women ramps up: First, their bank accounts are frozen, and then they’re forbidden to work. Protesters gather, waving signs and chanting. Then, in this flashback scene from the first episode of the new Hulu series “ The Handmaid’s Tale ,” the police open fire on the demonstrators. Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, the series tells the story of a country reinvented: A violent religious coup has turned the United States into Gilead, a theocracy where women have been stripped of their rights and the more fertile conscripted into “handmaids,” forced to bear children for the elite. The television adaptation arrives with a newfound and unexpected resonance in Trump’s America. [ link ]

ARTNET NEWS By Sarah Cascone Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Untitled (2015). Courtesy of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Art. The Institute of Arab and Islamic Art (IAIA) , New York’s newest arts space, has not yet found a permanent home. But that won’t stop it from moving ahead with its first exhibition. The institute is opening to the public on May 4 in Little Italy with a show of work by four contemporary women artists. The space will serve as a temporary location while the institute searches for a permanent headquarters in New York. The project—dedicated to work by artists from the Arab and Islamic worlds—has taken on new significance following President Trump’s ill-fated travel ban, which targeted individuals from six majority-Muslim countries and threatened to dramatically suppress cultural and academic exchange. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Andrew R. Chow Josh Young, center, in the musical “Amazing Grace” at the Nederlander Theater in 2015. The musical is to open in Washington in November. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times WASHINGTON, DC---The musical “ Amazing Grace ” struggled to find an audience on Broadway in 2015, but now it will head to friendlier territory: the new Museum of the Bible in Washington. The Christian-themed musical will be the first production at the museum, and it is scheduled to run for eight weeks starting Nov. 18. “Amazing Grace” centers on the British slave trader turned abolitionist John Newton, who wrote the hymn for which musical is named. The musical will now play two blocks away from the National Mall, in the museum’s 472-seat World Stage Theater. The theater will feature a 360-degree mapping system that projects images. Producers for “Amazing Grace” expect that the museum run will be the first leg of a national tour. [ link ]

ARTDAILY Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, Milan or Caravaggio 1571-1610 Porto Ercole). The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, 1610 (detail). Oil on canvas. Intesa Sanpaolo Collection, Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Naples NEW YORK---The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, Caravaggio's (1571–1610) last painting, is on exceptional loan from the Banca Intesa Sanpaolo in Naples and presented with The Met's The Denial of Saint Peter, also created by the artist in the last months of his life. Commissioned by the Genoese patrician Marcantonio Doria two months before the artist's death in July 1610, Caravaggio painted The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula in an unprecedented minimalist style; its interpretation of the tragic event that is its subject, combined with the abbreviated manner of painting, has only one parallel: The Denial of Saint Peter. [ link ]

ARTDAILY Foreign students of the Bethlehem Icon Center work on their painting during their course, in the biblical West Bank city of Bethlehem. THOMAS COEX / AFP . BETHLEHEM (AFP).- Down a Bethlehem alleyway, sunlight illuminates a golden icon of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, signaling the revival of an ancient art being practised in the workshop inside. The building near the Church of the Nativity -- the site where Christians believe Jesus was born -- houses a group of enthusiasts specializing in the sacred art of iconography. They are doing so some 2,000 years after Christian iconography began in nearby Jerusalem -- also where Christians believe Jesus was resurrected after his crucifixion, to be commemorated this Sunday for Easter. They work in both silence and in prayer, with their art a far cry from the cheap mass-produced icons sold in souvenir shops to tourists and pilgrims. [l ink ]

AMERICA | JESUIT REVIEW By @MikeOLoughlin Master of the Bigallo Crucifix. Crucifix, 1230/1240. The Art Institute of Chicago, A. A. Munger Collection. CHICAGO - War and religion, two constants of life during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, are the subjects of a new permanent exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago offering visitors a look at more than 700 artifacts, including restored altarpieces, personal devotional items and elaborate clerical vestments and suits of armor. Anchoring the religious side of the exhibit—the sacred and profane are kept separate—is the Ayala Altarpiece, which was housed in a private chapel in 14th-century Spain. The painted wooden altarpiece, which stands eight feet tall and 24 feet wide, took three years to restore. [ link ]

KSUA-TV By Raquel Villanueva From his studio in North Denver, SeanTrujillo embraces the tradition of creating Retablos. Retablos are Spanish-Colonial folk art which is dedicated to honoring saints and religious figures. DENVER---Growing up, Sean Trujillo says he didn't draw the Power Rangers or the Ninja Turtles like most kids in his class. "I was always the one painting the crucifix and the holy cards," he says. That strong connection with his Catholic faith eventually lead him to become a Santero, an artist dedicated to the practice of painting saints and other Spanish-influenced religious art. Trujillo's work will be featured alongside other Colorado santero art at the CHAC Gallery and Cultural Center .  It will also highlight the background and history of Retablos, Bultos and Reredos. [ link ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Greg & Ernest Disney-Britton Robert Indiana (American, 1928-) creation date 1970 materials Cor-ten steel dimensions 144 x 144 x 72 in. accession number 75.174 credit line Gift of the Friends of the Indianapolis Museum of Art Happy Easter! While we were away during the 40-days of Lent, Robert Indiana's iconic LOVE sculpture came back on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Things go away, and things change hopefully for the better. Months ago, we sadly  announced its removal from outdoor display, but the sculpture came back on display indoors in March. It's an image inspired by his roots in the Christian Science Church in his home-state of Indiana. When we began Lent, we were not sure that AOA would return either, but below are a few of the Twitter connections/friends who helped get us through Lent this year (thank you). Most of all, God worked to resurrect our purpose: "Providing daily news to religious artists and collectors."