RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK - Anila Quayyam Agha

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

Anila Quayyum Agha in Studio. Photo by Esther Boston for No Mean City.

We're bringing home another piece by Anila Quayyum Agha this week, the third in our small collection of 121 pieces. As an interdisciplinary artist, Agha creates artwork that explores the barriers of race, religion, and gender.  In the last year, she's been our artist of the week thrice, because of the news she generates, including this week's story about the "Transcendent Spirituality" exhibit in Vermont. This week you too can also find a tiny 5"x5" painting by Agha at the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and that's why Anila Quayyum Agha is our artist of the week.

Art Review: 'Transcendent: Spirituality in Contemporary Art,' BCA Center

SEVEN DAYS
By Amy Lilly

"Hidden Diamond-Saffron" by Anila Quayyam Agha

In 2016, shortly after Heather Ferrell became curator and director of exhibitions at the BCA Center, Seven Days asked her whether she found it important to bring in outside artists. Having spent the previous four years consulting for two major art museums in Doha, Qatar, Ferrell said, "I think we have a responsibility to look locally as well as internationally, while always keeping ourselves grounded in our community." The Burlington gallery's current exhibition, "Transcendent: Spirituality in Contemporary Art," cocurated by Ferrell and Shelley Warren, fulfills that promise impressively. Of the seven artists included, four are internationally prominent; the rest have national reputations, including two locals. [More]

Late artist's work steeped in peace, healing, 'common ground'

BERKSHIRE EAGLE
By Clarence Fant

Artist Wendy Rabinowitz worked in mixed media, such as metals, fabric, paper, papyrus and silk.

PITTSFIELD — For Judaica textile artist Wendy A. Rabinowitz, her work represented peace, healing, the earth and women's issues. "We can meet on common ground through our art," she told The Eagle in 2006. "When darkness appears, just watch for the light." Rabinowitz, who died in a traffic accident Tuesday at 72, grew up on Chicago's south side, where she liked to watch the sun rise over nearby Lake Michigan. Her father, Sam Rabens, was an accountant who had changed the family name; her mother was Geraldine Bielsker, a homemaker. For more than 30 years, Rabinowitz worked at her Living Threads Judaica studio at the East New Lenox Road home she shared with her husband, Jeffrey Borak, arts and entertainment editor of The Eagle. [More]

Long-hidden mural revealed at Burlington synagogue

VT DIGGER

The “Lost Shul” Mural now hangs in the entrance of the Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington

VERMONT---Painted over a century ago in the style of the richly decorated murals that once adorned hundreds of wooden Synagogues across Eastern Europe, it is a unique piece – the finest surviving example of this Lithuanian-Jewish art form in the world, said Jewish art historian Samuel Gruber. Two heraldic lions flank the decalogue, holding up the tablets with their forepaws. This, Gruber said, is a traditional symbol found in numerous works of Jewish art. The lions represent the Jewish people, supporting and defending the Torah, he said. [link]

MacArthur Awards Go to 21 Diverse Fellows

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Felicia R. Lee

New MacArthur fellows include Joshua Oppenheimer, who made the highly debated film “The Act of Killing,” pictured.

PHILANTHROPY---Twelve men and nine women, whose work is as diverse as studying the racial elements in perceptions of crime and translating contemporary Arab poetry, have been named the 2014 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The fellowships, based on achievement and potential, come with a stipend of $625,000 over five years and are among the most prestigious prizes for artists, scholars and professionals. [link]

Shavuot: BAJC Marks Jewish Holiday and Gay Pride Month

THE COMMONS ONLINE

Ruth and Naomi by Arthur Szyk. Courtesy of Contemporary Jewish Museum

VERMONT---On Tuesday, June 3, from 7 p.m. to midnight, Brattleboro Area Jewish Community (BAJC) will offer a fun evening of study for the holiday of Shavuot and to mark June as Gay Pride Month in Brattleboro. On Shavuot, it is customary to stay up all night to study Jewish texts. In honor of Gay Pride Month in Brattleboro, the community will study the contemporary midrashic (interpretive) reading of this text as a story of lesbian love and commitment between Ruth and Naomi. They’ll also consider Naomi as a stranger in a foreign land, Ruth as a convert, and Ruth and Naomi as powerful women who use gender relations to their advantage. [link]

Century-Old Jewish Mural Was Hidden For Decades In Vermont

NPR | NEWS
By Jon Kalish

In 1910, Lithuanian artist Ben Zion Black painted the interior of Burlington's Chai Adam
Synagogue. Much of the painting was destroyed when the building underwent renovations.

VERMONT---There was a time in Eastern Europe when the landscape was dotted with wooden synagogues, some dating to the 1600s. Inside, the walls and ceilings were covered with intricate painted designs. Almost all of these structures were destroyed during the Holocaust, and with them, a folk art. But in Burlington, Vt., has been uncovered where it lay hidden for a quarter century. Two years ago, the Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, where Goldberg serves as archivist, started renting the apartment. It tore down the wall that had been erected to protect the mural and hired art conservator Connie Silver to help restore it. [link]

Vermont's Fleming Museum of Art Presents Provocative Contemporary Tibetan Art

ARTDAILY

VERMONT---The Fleming Museum of Art at the University of Vermont presents "Anonymous," an exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art featuring paintings, sculpture, installation, and video art by artists living in Tibet and in diaspora. Realized by guest curator Rachel Perera Weingeist, the exhibition is largely drawn from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection. Beginning January 28, the show will be open through June 22. A free public reception will be held Wednesday, February 5, from 5:30-7 p.m. Anonymous seeks to explore the tension between an ancient culture’s unbroken artistic tradition and the personality-driven world of contemporary art. [link]

Century-Old Jewish Mural's Hidden History in Vermont

JEWISH FORWARD
By Samuel D. Gruber

VERMONT---An old apartment building in Burlington, Vt. seems like an odd place to find a rare survivor of Lithuanian synagogue art and a relic of American immigrant Yiddishkeit. The Lost Shul Mural, as it has come to be called, was revealed beneath the walls of an apartment building that once housed the Orthodox Chai Adam Synagogue, founded in 1889, after splintering off from Ohavi Zedek. It was probably decorated in 1910 when the congregation engaged a young Lithuanian Jewish artist, Ben Zion Black, to paint the synagogue. The mural is a rare and striking painting, one of only a small number of extant synagogue murals in North America painted by immigrant Jewish artists for congregations that were still tied to their distant homelands, the Yiddish language and traditional Jewish religious practice. [link]

'Jesus of the People' Artist Reflects on Art and Inspiration

THE HARVARD CRIMSON 
By Ann Powers

"The Holy Family" - 36" x 48", oil on canvas, 
collection of Loyola School, New York, NY

MASSACHUSETTS---Standing behind her acclaimed painting “Jesus of the People”—a depiction of Christ as a young black man—artist Janet McKenzie spoke about her art and inspiration Monday night at Memorial Church. She created the painting for the 1999 National Catholic Reporter competition that challenged artists to portray Christ for the new millennium. McKenzie said her inspiration was her nephew, who, as a young man of color, had trouble relating to her work. [link]

Artist Asks, "What Does it Feel Like to Wear a Burka?"

ALJAZEERA
By Eric Bleich

VERMONT---When I invited artist Marie Rim to Middlebury College, I didn't know what to expect. Her project "Burka Fittings Across America" asks randomly selected people to try on a burka for a few minutes and to look at themselves in a full-length mirror. Her artistic goal is to explore "otherness, embodiment and empathy, as well as the meanings Americans associate with the burka". Marie Rim grew up on the East Coast and is a painter by training. Some people are outraged that she is appropriating the burka for her own purposes. Others worry that it will reinforce Islamophobia. If you are optimistic, like Rim, you hope it will undermine people's preconceived notions and generate greater cross-cultural understanding. This is not your grandfather's art project, blandly hanging on a gallery or museum wall. [link]

Janet McKenzie's "Black" Jesus on Display in Chicago Museum

AOA NEWS

"Jesus of the People" by Janet McKenzie

"Holiness and the Feminine Spirit: The Art of Janet McKenzie" is an exhibition of work by the Vermont artist that considers her paintings as a celebration of people, particularly African-Americans and women. The exhibit will include McKenzie's painting "Jesus of the People," which won the 1999 National Catholic Reporter's competition and received international attention for its portrayal of Jesus as an African-American. The works in the exhibition are also available in a hardcover book of the same title on Amazon.com. The exhibit runs through Oct. 23 at Loyola University Museum of Art, 820 N. Michigan Ave.; 312-915-7600, luc.edu/luma.