LINKS + INK: ALLOW ME TO CATCH UP EDITION

In the downtown Las Vegas Arts District, this wall with bold pinks stepped away from the usual abstract typography of graffiti. 
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​C. Moon Reed on Tokyo-born printmaker Yoshiko Shimano's exhibition "Engraving on Land" at CSN's Fine Arts Gallery. "Through a variety of printing methods—woodcut, silkscreen, stencil, monoprint, linoleum cut—an abstract portrait of a place and people emerge from the layers of prints" I Las Vegas Weekly
​Opening today, March 30 in, Washington DC, is Renwick Gallery's exhibition that includes six Burning Man sculptures "a stone’s throw from the White House" I Hyperallergic

NEXT DAY ADD "The Smithsonian’s Burning Man Art Show Is Actually Quite Good"I Bloomberg

Sarah O’Connell, Las Vegas-based theater director and publisher of culture site eatmoreartvegas, is featured in this report on "brave delegation of art-loving Nevadans" who traveled to Washington, D.C. to take part in Arts Advocacy Day I Las Vegas Weekly

More coverage of the trip and outcome at Review Journal.

If you missed it, Trump signed spending bill that increases NEA funding.  Also: "Earlier this month, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the NEA released a report that found that the arts contribute $763.6 billion to the US economy, which is more than the agriculture, transportation, or warehousing industries. It also stated that the cultural sector employs $4.9 million workers across the country who earn more than $370 billion"  I ArtForum.

​Curated Instagrams of the local arts community.

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ELSEWHERE:
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Roger Gastman, the graffiti historian who helped assemble that MOCA's Art in the Streets, returns to to L.A. for a new show that takes over 40,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor displays in Chinatown. Beyond the Streets looks at global street art movements by over 100 artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Takashi Murakami, Jenny Holzer, Martha Cooper, Shepard Fairey, RETNA, Ben Jones, CHAZ Bojórquez, and Gajin Fujita I LAMagazine  + LATimes
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'Photographers Harry Gamboa Jr. and Luis Garza on pushing back against 'bad hombre' Chicano stereotypes" I LATimes
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"The Chicano Art of a Red-Blooded American Sangre Colorado, an exhibition by Carlos Frésquez, reminds viewers that 'American' is an abstract and malleable concept" I Hyperallergic

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In a topic PtD had covered before, "social media isn't just changing the way we interact with each other; it's driving the culture, especially in cities full of tourists eager to beef up their photo feeds with dispatches from elsewhere. At the same time, it is redefining the nature and intent of public art"  I The Globe

Ancient statue of a winged bull destroyed by ISIS recreated by Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz. It is the "latest public art installation to sit on a sculpture platform here known as the Fourth Plinth, on Trafalgar Square" I  NYTimes + ArtNet

​There was buzz about Justine Ludwig's move from Dallas Contemporary to New York art nonprofit Creative Time.  In an interview with ArtNet News, Ludwig spoke with ArtNet on the importance of public art. She said: "Public art is an integral part of New York City’s urban landscape. It’s a city that lives and breathes art, and public art is central to that—greatly expanding the art-going audience by enabling greater accessibility. A major issue facing cultural institutions right now is the sense so many people have of not belonging: the feeling that they don’t have access or that these institutions are not tailored to them. Central to public art is the idea that art should be part of the everyday, of everyone’s life. It’s a very different way of presenting art. Everyone has access and everyone belongs, because it’s a part of the urban fabric itself."
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​Banksy recently invaded New York with politically outspoken works I Art Newspaper

Artist Haifa Subay used street art to mark the third anniversary of full-scale war in Yemen I
The Interept

​The best public art opening in New York this Spring I Observer
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​Wheatpaste and 80s-design are the focus of DC Hirshhorn Museum’s newest project, “Brand New SW.” New works draws on the Hirshhorn’s exhibit “Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s” and the exploration of artist branding. I Washingtonian

About the exhibition: Thirty years ago, seismic shifts in politics, economics and technology brought about a golden era of contemporary art in the United States, particularly in New York City, with its heady Wall Street wealth and gritty streets.

Brand New offers a fascinating alternative history of art in the 1980s by tracing how a pioneering group of young downtown artists appropriated the tools and psychology of growing consumer culture—advertising, logos, products, even cable TV—to change the landscape of the art world. Like today’s celebrity influencers, artists crafted branded personas to both market themselves and as a form of creative expression.