Last year, the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland (AAQGO) — a group of about 80 women who meet monthly at senior centers amid sheafs of fabric and spools of colorful thread — embarked on an ambitious project: They would create narrative quilts that told the complex social, political, and cultural history of their California city.
Oakland
Posted inIn Brief
Artist Murdered in Oakland While Painting Anti-Violence Mural
On Tuesday, the 27-year-old street artist Antonio Ramos was murdered while painting a mural that was meant to brighten the run-down streets of northwestern Oakland, which has one of the highest violent crime rates in the United States.
Posted inNews
Real Estate Developers Sue Oakland Over New Public Art Ordinance
Real estate developers are suing the city of Oakland over a new law that requires them to set aside funds to commission and install public art in new residential and commercial buildings.
Posted inArt
In the Bay Area, Adjuncts and Artists Unite to Unionize
SAN FRANCISCO — It is no longer a stretch to draw connections between adjunct professors and other workers in the service economy. The corporate university model is deeply invested in the notion that treating all of its employees as disposable labor can maximize profits.
Posted inArt
Revisiting the Radical Energy of 1968
Currently on view at the Oakland Museum of California is The 1968 Exhibit, which focuses on the culture of that unforgettable year. Organized by the Minnesota History Center, the Atlanta History Center, the Chicago History Museum, and the Oakland Museum, this expansive show explores the tumultuous year whose highlights include human space travel, the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the rise of the Black Panthers, the Beatles, and hippie culture, the first wide use of plastics, and many other things.
Posted inArt
The Fine Line Between Sexy and Sickness
Monet Clark’s current exhibition at Krowswork Gallery represents the first solo showing of 20 years worth of performance and video work in which her own body and life experiences serve as subject matter. Images of Clark as the ideal “California Girl” are juxtaposed with documentation of the deterioration of her body due to Environmental Illness, a condition that causes the sufferer to become allergic to common household chemicals.
Posted inNews
Cancelled Palestinian Kids’ Art Show Finds New Venue in Oakland
The Palestinian children’s art show that was slated to be exhibited at the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland, California before it was canceled under pressure from right-wing Jewish groups has found a new home nearby. [Mercury News]
Posted inOpinion
Bay Area Hypocrisy: No Penance for Otterness, No Palestinian Art for Kids
The Bay Area is full of artistic hypocrisy this month. On one side of the San Francisco Bay, two commissions by artist Tom Otterness are on hold because of a tasteless art video he did in the 1970s, and on the other side of the same bay, a Palestinian children’s art show is cancelled because it pisses off a small faction of right-wing political activists.
Posted inNews
Museum Bows to Pressure From Jewish Groups and Cancels Palestinian Children’s Art Show
Pressure from some Bay Area Jewish groups and others have pushed the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) in Oakland, California, to cancel A Child’s View from Gaza, which is an exhibition featuring 50 art works by Palestinian children aged 9 to 11.
Posted inNews
A Sculpture Divides Oakland & Berkeley, Knitters Protest
Rogue knitters … yes, knitters … encamp along the Berkeley-Oakland border to protest a public sculpture, inspired by a Gertrude Stein quote, they believe insults Oakland.
