What are some of the first things that come to your mind when you see an Asian person wearing a mask? Wearing a mask is actually common courtesy in manyAsian countries, similar to coughing or sneezing into your elbow. In Japan, I would see commuters wearing masks on any given day all year round. There is an invisible threat spreading across the globe, and from my perspective, the first visible sign was people’s reactions to me. At the end of January 2020, I wore a mask during my commute from San Francisco to Boston and many people on that flight gave me dirty looks. That is when I realized I needed to respond to this stigma. You might know that Chinese businesses have been suffering (due to some people’s belief they contributed to the spread of the COVID-19 virus), but do you know the severity to which Asian-looking people are being attacked? Across the country, … [Read more...] about PREJUDICE IS A DISEASE
May/June 2020
LETTER FROM ITALY: SHUTTING DOWN THE VENICE CARNIVAL
Early February in Florence greeted me with calm weather, which augured well for a fine spring. I was to spend my semester immersed in art at Florence’srenowned Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze (Michelangelo and Bronzino, Cellini and Giambologna belonged to the revered institution, and Artemisia Gentileschi became the first female member), where I would also finish my university degree by completing graduate courses in Italian cinema and sociolinguistics. Spring was approaching. During my long walks to downtown Florence from the Fiesole Hills where I was staying (legend has it that Leonardo tested his flying machines in the same hills five centuries earlier), as I grew more and more familiar with local sights, scents and sounds, I began visualizing a distinct series of images, woven around themes linking the Renaissance to our time. … [Read more...] about LETTER FROM ITALY: SHUTTING DOWN THE VENICE CARNIVAL
CORNERED DURING VIRUS TIMES: STEPHEN DIRADO
Photographer Stephen DiRado was preparing for a March 19 book signing for his book “With Dad” at the Davis Art Gallery, whose host Davis Publishing in Worcester, Massachusetts, had just released his collection of images compiled over 20 plus years documenting his late father, Gene, going through the painful stages of Alzheimer’s, when Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker instituted an order limiting large gatherings. Once the governor ordered all nonessential businesses to cease in-person operations and issued his first stay-at-home advisory, DiRado, known for spending extended periods of time on his photographic series, including “Jump,” which documented divers leaping from the American Legion Memorial Bridge on Martha’s Vineyard made famous in the movie “Jaws.” A 2012 Guggenheim Fellow, DiRado is a professor in practice of photography at Clark University’s Visual and Performing Arts … [Read more...] about CORNERED DURING VIRUS TIMES: STEPHEN DIRADO
WELCOME STATEMENT MAY/JUNE 2020
Welcome to our May/June 2020 issue. The first real clue that this was going to be a different issue – and a totally new way of life – hit me hard on the morning of Friday, March 13. Social distancing to avoid the coronavirus had already moved into our daily lexicon and many colleges were in the process of shutting down for their annual spring break. I had just finished writing a Facebook post encouraging readers to get to Fairfield University to see its “Archives of Consciousness: Six Cuban Artists” before the campus closed when, checking my Artscope account, I noticed that dozens of emails had arrived in less than a half hour, and that in that time almost every exhibition we had reviewed or previewed in our March/April 2020 issue had been shut down — some before they could even open — in hopes of helping flatten the COVID-19 curve. Since then, my outline for this issue changed at … [Read more...] about WELCOME STATEMENT MAY/JUNE 2020