This week on Artblog Radio we’re featuring audio from the Blue Note Salon, an April 21st panel curated by Black Quantum Futurism at the Icebox Project Space. This interactive discussion covers a wide range of topics from the role of jazz musicians and jazz culture in paving the way for the Civil Rights Movement to current efforts by local artists to connect their work to social change movements addressing gentrification, displacement and cultural heritage preservation.
Read MoreOur advice column, Ask Artblog, debuted earlier this month with Dave Kyu’s column about should I go to graduate school. In June, we will be launching Ask Artblog twice a month with Beth Heinly answering your questions. See Beth’s note below and tell all your friends about this new opportunity for them to ask questions of a pro, whose advice will be honest, as she says, and could be pretty hilarious, too. The mailbox is open! Send your questions to Beth at ask@theartblog.org
Read MoreWe hope you have a wonderful 2018, beginning with love and ending with love and affirmation…and lots of art and art making and art loving, too! We love having your friendship and are thankful each year for your support!
Read MoreJust for you, we offer this annual curated list of notable people, groups, books, and other art world stuff from the outgoing year: The 2017 Liberta Awards!
Read MoreAll of us at Artblog wish you a Happy Holiday filled with friends and family, camaraderie and love. We give thanks for all the love and support you have given us through the years. Thank You!
Read MoreArtblog’s Imani Roach and Roberta Fallon talked with Taji Ra’oof Nahl about his complex art practice that includes collaboration at its core. Nahl ran his own gallery in Old City from the late 1980s to 2010, where he showed, among others, Terry Adkins’ work. Taji was a friend of Adkins, and their practices both involve music, found objects, and researching under-known African American historical figures. In the interview Nahl tells Imani and Roberta about discovering the Colonial-era polymath, Benjamin Banneker, who became the subject of his installation in ‘Unlisted,’ the big multi-curator, multi-artist show at Icebox Project Space in 2016. We interviewed Taji Nahl at Moore College of Art and Design’s TGMR radio station on Sept. 14, 2017, and the podcast is 37 minutes long.
Read MoreThis is the third year of the New Art Writing Challenge, a community-wide festival about the importance of art writing in Philadelphia. We invite you to submit your writings to our art writing contest. Five cash prizes will be awarded this year and we will be publishing the winning articles and honorable mentions on Artblog and on other publications partnering this year with us. Roberta Fallon and Matt Kalasky co-organized the Challenge again this year. Our partners this year are these great Philadelphia online publications: Curate This, Thinking Dance, Title, and Velvet Glove. Help us shine a light on Philadelphia’s great under-sung art writing community. Participate in the Challenge!
Read MoreCarl(os) Roa is bringing Andean Mountains, his Fringe Festival solo performance, to Taller Puertorriqueño Sept. 7-15, 2017. Roa tells Roberta and Imani that Andean Mountains is about a generational displacement between Latin youth who love anime and manga and their elders’ who love telenovelas. How can the children of immigrants reconcile the various streams of culture coming at them? By repurposing familial culture and making it your own, says Roa. Andean Mountains will have digital elements, movement, and storytelling, in English and Spanish. Get your tickets now, this is going to be great!
Read MoreEarlier this year, Karen Chernick wrote about the missing Royal Theater mural, a history mural on South Street commemorating the legacy of the Royal Theater, a once-thriving black theater where Billie Holiday, among many others, gave concerts. The mural, painted by Eric Okdeh depicted jazz greats who played at the Royal, and neighborhood greats, like Ron Washington, of Ron’s Ribs, a restaurant landmark at 1627 South St., across from the theater. In this podcast, Roberta and Imani Roach (Artblog Managing Editor) speak with Brandon Washington, son of Ron. Brandon talks about the neighborhood, his father’s important role as a community leader and of his own and his brother’s hope to revive Ron’s Ribs in the future in a Ron’s Ribs food truck.
Read MoreEnjoy this full-on tribute to our founding fathers, our eagle, our cats and our heavy metal guitarists. Image by Max Kimbrough, with permission. Check out Max’s Instagram feed for more cat-tastic images. @fade_resistant
Read MoreIn this podcast interview, Matt Kalasky talks with Amanda Buck and Alexa Smith, two of the editors of Apiary Magazine, a beautiful Philadelphia literary publication in print and online, started in 2009 and publishing a wide variety of community voices, in a variety of genres including poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Apiary also includes visual art.
Read MoreIn this From the Vault post from 2011, Libby and Roberta talk with Amze Emmons about his work creating pastel-hued dystopias that are magnetic and enigmatic. Emmons’s works are featured at the Gershman Y right now in a pairing with (also wonderful) work by Lynne Clibanoff. The show is up to August 27, 2017. Be sure to get over and see it.
Read More2016 was a standard year by many measures, with one major difference (ahem you know what that is). Regime change is coming and like most in the art community, Artblog is greeting Jan. 20 with trepidation — and resolve. We are re-committing ourselves to our core mission of diversity — to write about and celebrate the excellence of artists, who are routinely shunned by the mainstream media. The task seems more urgent now than ever.
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