What is Art

Somewhere in between Santa Fe and the nation’s calls for reform and reparations, a new altar in the Railyard is open for poems and reflections. The O’Gah Po’Geh Community Altar, named for the Tewa moniker for the current site of Santa Fe, will be open to the public through March 23. The altar, made of adobe and reclaimed and wild-harvested wood, has four sides oriented to the cardinal directions. Each side has a ceramic mask created by a local artist, facing in the direction of the ancestral homeland of each. “The four directions represent so many things â€" different mountains to different animals to the stages of life,” said Savannah Ortiz-Junes, a contributing Diné and Ohkay Owingeh artist. “For me the altar is a place to grieve the treatment of Black and Indigenous people of color. It’s a safe space for people who need some sense of security.” Ortiz-Junes said the idea for the altar, a collaboration between the Earthseed Bla

The UnLonely Project, an initiative of the Foundation for Art and Healing, aims to treat the “epidemic of loneliness” in the United States using creative arts as medicine. Singer-songwriter Emily L. Maguire begins each day by writing a poem. It’s a process that takes her no more than a few minutes. “By the time I finish [my] coffee it just falls out of my head,” she says. “My poetry is really automatic writing.” Poetry offers Maguire a way to deal with bouts of depression, during which songs are simply too difficult to write. The act of writing, she says, makes her feel more connected to the world. Maguire is one of several artists collaborating with the UnLonely Project, an initiative of the Foundation for Art and Healing which aims to treat the “epidemic of loneliness” in the United States using creative arts as medicine. The project is the brainchild of Jeremy J. Nobel, faculty member at Harvard Medical School and avid poet and photographer. It reflects Nobel

Renowned poet Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. touched her heart with her hand and contemplated the limitations of poetry in comparison to the medium of painting, particularly as practiced by her friend and collaborator, the artist and author Ashley Bryan. "Poets have words," she said. "And that's really all we have." Giovanni, an activist and educator who came to fame in the 1960s and was often described as the "Poet of the Black Revolution," was speaking Thursday evening at an opening week Zoom lecture attended by about 200 fans of both the poet and the painter. A resident of Maine's Little Cranberry Island, about a mile off the Down East coast, Bryan is the subject of a new show at the Bates College Museum of Art, Let's Celebrate Ashley Bryan! inspired by a gift of more than 50 works from collectors Henry Isaacs and Donna Bartnoff Isaacs. Video by Theophil Syslo/Bates College Just before the lecture started, Gio

© MARTHA ASENCIO RHINE/Times/Tampa Bay Times/TNS Jasmine Parker, with Listen to Your Art Therapy & Empowerment Services, teaches an art therapy course through The Well for Life, at the Boys and Girls Club located at the historic, Royal Theater, on Wednesday in St. Petersburg. Jasmine Parker has been an artist since she was young. As an undergraduate at Rollins College, she developed an interest in psychology and discovered the field of art therapy. She went on to pursue masters degrees in art therapy and counseling. Now, the 36-year-old St. Petersburg native is a registered art therapist through the American Art Therapy Association. She has her own business, Listen to Your Art Therapy & Empowerment Services. She was inspired to open the business in her home town, in part after seeing young men from her community pass through the legal system while she worked with incarcerated youth. Her business officially opened in February of 2019, focusing mainly on teenagers. She al

Paintings, sculptures and everything in between were on display during the two-day Art Walk held in downtown Washington. While the participating artists say they are grateful for the chance to sell their wares to buyers, they are even more grateful for the opportunity to showcase different types of art to the public. For Sandra Mays, of Villa Ridge, that meant bringing her cheerfully colored paintings to downtown Washington and inside Loyal Bella, 120 Elm St. “Art is in our lives every day and in every way. We, as artists, see it, but sometimes other people don’t see it,” said Mays, a first-time Art Walk participant, who added that she has been inspired in the past by a particular cloud formation, the pattern on the floor tile, by a fabric pattern or simply an emotion she is feeling. Mays was one of seven artists who participated in the biannual Art Walk Oct. 16-17, which featured artists manning their own galleries, creating temporary displa

Associated Press Published 6:24 a.m. CT Oct. 21, 2020 | Updated 12:47 p.m. CT Oct. 21, 2020 The collections of Museum Island in Berlin earned a not from UNESCO in 1999 when they became officially listed as a World Heritage site. (Photo: Flickr/Ana Paula Hirama) BERLIN (AP) â€" More than 60 artworks and artifacts at some of Berlin’s best-known museums were smeared with an oily liquid by an unknown perpetrator or perpetrators earlier this month, authorities said Wednesday. They were hopeful that the apparently random damage can be repaired, but said the motive was a mystery. The works at the Museum Island complex, a UNESCO world heritage site in the heart of the German capital that is one of the city’s main tourist attractions, were targeted at some point between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Oct. 3. Investigators said they had watched hours of surveillance camera footage but hadn’t found any obvious sign of anyone applying the liquid. In all, 63 works at the Per

A group of powerful Black trustees in the stateside museum sector have joined forces in an effort to facilitate change and elevate diversity across programming, hiring practices and more in predominantly white-led institutions. The new advocacy group, called The Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, is seeking to further the spotlight of Black artists, curators and directors in the United States in lieu of the country's social unrest and the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. The steering committee met for the first time last month. The group includes prominent collectors such as AC Hudgins who is on the board of the Museum of Modern Art, Denise Gardner from the Art Institute of Chicago and Troy Carter from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "This is a different moment," said Pamela J. Joyner to the New York Times , a member of the alliance's steering committee who is a trustee at the Getty Trust, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum o