Disney-Britton

CITYBEAT By MAIJA ZUMMO Anila Quayyum Agha (b. 1965), All the Flowers Are for Me (Red), laser-cut lacquered steel and lightbulb, 60x60x60 in, Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art, 2017.7 CINCINNATI--Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha's super popular sculptural installation All the Flowers Are for Me (Red) will once again be on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum, from Dec. 5-Feb. 7. First on view at the CAM in 2017, this immersive artwork features a decorative five-foot laser-cut cube, which illuminated and splayed geometric and floral shadows across the floor, walls and ceiling of the gallery room. According to the museum, All the Flowers are For Me (Red) is inspired by Islamic architectural forms and Agha's personal experience as a "diaspora artist." [ More ] 

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton This year is wrapping-up (thankfully), and that means it's time to vote for the 2020 artist who has done the most to promote religious dialogue in America. Total votes are based on page views. In a first, this year, none of the finalists had museum shows, so Covid-19 made way for the "un-museumed" to shine. The five 2020 finalists are Michael Cook (UK), Mous Lamrabat (Morocco), Harmonia Rosales (IL), Genesis Tramaine (NY), and Israel Solomon (IN). To vote, pick one from the list below and share the link and hashtag #AlphaOmegaPrize.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton   Greg Disney-Britton wearing a limited edition Ai Weiwei MASK - "Feishu," printed by hand at Ai's studio in Berlin. The cloth masks are not for medical use, nor are they even meant to be worn. Friday was our grandson's 1st birthday, so we masked-up and headed to Cincinnati. We arrived armed with extra face masks and disinfect, plus a plan for 15-minutes of indoor birthday time. We arrived, and plans quickly fell apart. His mom won't mask-up. She brought the boy outside. We hugged and played, and somehow we unmasked too. It was the freest spirited time in months. How do we justify it? We can't, but in July, we bought one of Ai Weiwei's limited edition masks of the Chinese mythical free spirit, "Feishu," and Friday makes it our art of the week.

ARTNET By Katie White Installation view of "Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara." © The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2020, photography by Anna-Marie Kellen. At the dawn of the first millennium, bustling trade routes crisscrossed the region known as the Western Sahel, a vast swath of land that inches up to just below the Sahara Desert and encompasses what is today Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Four great empires emerged and thrived in this dynamic region over the centuries—Ghana (300–1200), Mali (1230–1600), Songhay (1464–1591), and Segu (1640–1861)—forever imparting it with an incredible material culture. Now, that legacy of the region’s transformative impact on visual arts is being examined in “Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara,” currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Show Us Your Walls By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton   Greg Disney-Britton in living room in Indianapolis with "Capricorn Greeting the Celtic Moon" by Tony Melendez on his left. Ernest's mom and sister are connected in a way he can only observe. On Friday, the three met with an oncologist in Cincinnati, and as the two women talked with the same spirit, he felt like the "other." Still, it was reassuring and reminded us of the first painting we acquired together. Indy-artist, Tony Melendez , depicted nature and the universe as different but of the same spirit. Mom & sister make "Capricorn Greeting the Celtic Moon," by Tony Melendez , our art of the week.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton   Nina Chanel's Abney's "Imaginary Friend" in Lake Buhia, a virtual reality project with Acute Art. Image courtesy of shotlistproductions  Instead of our collection , let's talk about hope. During Friday lunch, I was viewing   Nina Chanel Abney's new “ Imaginary Friend ,” when he phoned his mother. Suddenly there was a loud beeping noise. Mom chuckled and said, "it's just a truck backing-up." Later, he learned she was in a hospital bed. It's pancreatic cancer. He asked why she lied, she said, "there was nothing you could do, and it'll all work out." As a Christian, mom believes in death and resurrection, and she faces trauma with the bold colors of hope. Color, that makes Nina Chanel Abney our artist of the week.

THE NEW YORK TIMES   By Hilarie M. Sheets Andy Warhol’s “The Last Supper” (1986) is being offered by Sotheby’s through private sale.Credit...The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York As museums face increasing financial pressures and industrywide demands from staff to create more equitable workplaces, a second institution is taking advantage of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ temporary pandemic-era loosening of its deaccessing guidelines: They now allow the selling of art from museum collections to fund the direct care of collections — not just the acquisition of other artworks. The Baltimore Museum of Art is deaccessioning three paintings, by Brice Marden, Clyfford Still and Andy Warhol , and expects to receive approximately $65 million from a combination of an auction and a private sale at Sotheby’s in the next several weeks. [ More ] 

https://hypebeast.com/2020/10/martin-wong-iglesia-pentecostal-1986-sothebys-charity-auction-info

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/917512371/every-piece-i-carve-is-a-message-elijah-pierce-aimed-to-do-god-s-work-in-wood

ARTNEWS   By Angelica Villa Rembrandt van Rijn, Abraham and the Angels, 1646. SOTHEBY'S Sotheby’s recent announcement of plans to auction a rare $80 million Botticelli portrait in 2021 has put a new spotlight on the Old Masters category. Now, the auction house has unveiled a biblical scene by Rembrandt titled Abraham and the Angels (1646), to be sold alongside the Italian renaissance work in January during the house’s Masters Week evening sale. The painting is estimated to sell for $20 million–$30 million. The small-scale work, measuring at only 6 ¼ inches by 8 ¼ inches and dated 1646, is one of five biblical scenes by the artist still held privately. Made during the artist’s prime, the work depicts a scene from the book of Genesis in which three angels posing as travelers visit the elderly couple Sarah and Abraham to deliver a divine message that Sarah will give birth to a son. [ More ]