Items of Interest, Real Problem Edition

"I want insurance against the probability that people in power will suppress or punish me for my views."

Joan Hanley, Three Bodhisattvas, oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches, courtesy of the artist

Micah Mattix

, The Real Problem with New MLK Statue. “[T]the statue does what many have been doing to King for years, which is to make him into an ambiguous symbol of love and acceptance so that his name and legacy might be more readily used to support a variety of projects, which all invariably involve fund-raising.”

Brad Woods, 3D in CSS.

Emma Camp, She Lost Her Job For Showing a Painting of Muhammad in Class. Now, She's Suing. “In the wake of López Prater's lawsuit, Hamline has walked back its most inflammatory claims against her, writing in a statement that ‘based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term “Islamophobic” was therefore flawed… It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students—care does not “supersede” academic freedom, the two coexist.’”

Angelica Villa, Hamline University Professors Call for President’s Resignation After Prophet Muhammad Paintings Controversy. “The majority of full-time faculty at Hamline University have called for the resignation of the school’s president, Fayneese Miller, over its response to a dispute involving an adjunct professor’s display of religious imagery in an art history class.”

Scott Bunn, A Minimalist, Digital Sludge Studio. “These days, I don’t need much.”

Ira Glasser, Why we must fight for the right to hate. “I can never be certain who will have political power. I can never be certain that the only people who get elected will agree with me. I know – because it has happened many times – that people will gain political power who will, if they can, act to punish me or people I agree with, because of our views. So what I need is an insurance policy. I want insurance against the probability that people in power will suppress or punish me for my views.”

Rachel K. Alexander, Winter’s Silence. “Our souls have not just nutritive and appetitive faculties but rational capacities, and this means that we are made not just to eat, work, and sleep but to have leisure. So said Aristotle, echoed by many other thinkers and texts of the Western tradition. But by leisure, they did not mean passive entertainment—watching Netflix, playing video games, or scrolling social media feeds. In the Western tradition, leisure is not an escape from the demands of the real world but an entry into the essence of reality, the experience and awareness of which our day jobs necessarily obscure by narrowing our focus to the task at hand.”

Daniel Dreisbach, The Convention’s Story on Canvas. “With barely veiled condescension toward Christy, a mere illustrator, art critics were quick to disparage the 1940 painting as less high art befitting its subject matter than a mawkish illustration, more suitable for a sentimental giftshop poster than the hallowed walls of the US Capitol building. This ‘six hundred square feet of canvas,’ one critic sneered, ‘is nothing more than a blown-up illustration. . . . Our Founding Fathers are embarrassed.’ It was, to be sure, a work that appealed more to the common man than the highbrow critic.”

On now: “Screens & Shadows: New Work by Joan Hanley and Humberto Ramirez” at Conant Gallery, Lawrence Academy, Groton, MA through February 27. Contact the studio of Joan Hanley for more information.

Current earworm: Azealia Banks, 212. (NSFW)

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