Opportunity (Reflection), Hank Willis Thomas, 2022.
Courtesy of Hank Willis Thomas
Eugene Lee, Set Designer for Broadway and ‘S.N.L.,’ Dies at 83
For decades it was possible for Saturday night theatergoers in New York to get a double dose of Eugene Lee’s work, though it’s likely that few would have realized they were doing so. They might have taken in “Sweeney Todd,” “Ragtime,” “Wicked” or other Broadway shows whose striking sets were designed by Mr. Lee, then could arrive home in time to tune into “Saturday Night Live” — a show for which he served as production designer when it began in 1975, and on which he was still working this season.
Mr. Lee, an inventive and remarkably prolific set designer who was also known for his decades with Trinity Repertory Company, a respected regional theater in Providence, R.I., died on Monday in Providence. He was 83.
His family announced the death, after a short illness that was not specified.
Mr. Lee won or shared three Tony Awards for his Broadway sets — for “Candide” in 1974, “Sweeney Todd” in 1979 and “Wicked” in 2003 — and six Emmy Awards for “Saturday Night Live,” most recently in 2021.
In theater, he was known for imaginative designs imbued with authenticity.
“Eugene loved real objects, objects with history,” Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, who worked with Mr. Lee at Trinity Rep and elsewhere, said by email, “but he’d use them in utterly nonrealistic ways onstage.”
He was known for reconfiguring entire theaters, as he did for “Candide,” the musical based on Voltaire, which was staged at the 180-seat Chelsea Theater Center in Brooklyn in 1973 before moving to the much larger Broadway Theater in Midtown Manhattan the next year. Mr. Lee, working with his partner at the time, Franne Lee, and the director Harold Prince, turned the Chelsea into “a ramped and runwayed circus midway,” The New York Times wrote, “surrounded by booths and mini-stages that could be changed, in a twinkling, from a corpse-littered battlefield to a vizier’s seraglio.”
“The audience sat up, down and all around,” The Times said, “on stools, benches and ballpark-style ‘bleachers,’ between the ramps or along the runways or anywhere they wouldn’t be in the actors’ way.”
Preserving that staging when the show transferred to Broadway took some effort, which included removing numerous seats, and for the first few performances some theatergoers asked for refunds because of problems with sight lines and other issues. But eventually the bugs were worked out.
The show ran for almost two years and won five Tonys, including one for Mr. Lee and Franne Lee for scenic design. (Their relationship lasted for most of the 1970s but they were nevermarried, Patrick Lynch, Mr. Lee’s assistant and fellow designer, said by phone.)
Five years later, for the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd” (which, like “Candide,” had a book by Hugh Wheeler and was directed by Mr. Prince), Mr. Lee brought pieces of an old iron foundry from Rhode Island and turned the Uris Theater into a stylized Industrial Age scene out of Victorian London.
“The stagehands at the theater still remember how heavy the set was,” Mr. Lee told The Boston Globe in 2007. “You had to knock away bricks to support it. You can still see the scars all these years later.”
The designs won him a second Tony Award, and a third came with “Wicked.” For that show, whose set featured an imposing dragon and a time motif, Mr. Lee drew inspiration in part from smashing apart old clocks in his Providence workshop and fiddling with the innards.
Mr. Lee had more than two dozen Broadway credits, including “Agnes of God” (1982), “Show Boat” (1994), “Ragtime” (1998), “Glengarry Glen Ross” (2012) and, most recently, “Bright Star” (2016). While working on those projects and others, he oversaw the sets for “Saturday Night Live,” including creating the basic stage look that has remained largely unchanged since the show began in 1975.
Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and executive producer, said in a phone interview that when he began formulating “S.N.L.,” he had recently seen “Candide” and was impressed with the look the Lees had created.
“In those days, television was always on the floor,” he said — filmed on one level, with a polished sort of look — but Mr. Lee, still working with Franne Lee, had a different idea.
“He said, ‘Well, I think we should probably build stages,” Mr. Michaels said. “And that meant we’d build a balcony, basically turn the studio into a theater.”
“It looked like the city,” Mr. Michaels added of the look Mr. Lee created. “Something about it rang true.”
Over the decades — taking a break only when Mr. Michaels did for five years in the 1980s — Mr. Lee would travel from his home in Providence to oversee the show’s design each week, whether it included a living room, a fake Oval Office or a special setting for the musical guest.
In his work on “S.N.L.” Mr. Lee encountered many up-and-coming comedians, and he helped some of them branch out, working on the Broadway shows of Gilda Radner (“Live From New York,” 1979), Colin Quinn (“An Irish Wake,” 1998) and Will Ferrell (“You’re Welcome, America,” 2009). He also became production designer for “The Tonight Show” when Jimmy Fallon took it over in 2014.
“When we were discussing the ‘Tonight Show’ set, he just had such a clear vision on the look and the stage and the curtain and the color of the wood,” Mr. Fallon said by email. “Every inch of it had meaning.”
Whoever was in the “S.N.L.” cast in a given year, Mr. Michaels said, owed a debt to Mr. Lee.
“He built this place for us to play in and do the show,” he said, “and it feels whole when we’re in it.”
Eugene Edward Lee was born on March 9, 1939, in Beloit, Wis. His father, also named Eugene, was an engineer, and his mother, Elizabeth (Gates) Lee, was a pediatric nurse.
His academic history was a patchwork.
“I don’t think I have a degree from any place,” he told American Theater magazine in 1984. “Maybe I have a degree from Yale; I can’t remember.”
He started out studying at the University of Wisconsin.
“Then I saw Helen Hayes talking on television about Carnegie Tech and the stage,” he told The Times in 2000, referring to what is now Carnegie Mellon University. “So I got in my Volkswagen, which my grandmother had given me, and I arrived at the front door and said, ‘I’m here.’”
He had a similarly casual approach to the Yale School of Drama, where he arrived in 1966 and studied for a time, although he did not finish his degree. (Some two decades later, the school granted him a master’s degree — “a real degree, not even an honorary one,” he told Yale Alumni Magazine in 2017.)
With or without degrees, by the second half of the 1960s he was getting plenty of design work, including at Trinity Rep, where Adrian Hall, the founding artistic director, brought him in as resident designer. (Mr. Hall died on Feb. 4 in Van, Texas.) When Mr. Hall added the job of artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center in 1983, Mr. Lee worked with him there as well.
Wherever he was working, Mr. Lee favored the genuine over the artificial.
“Once you start painting, it has a painted look,” he told American Theater. “What please me are real textures used in the way nature left them. There’s nothing like a real piece of rusted tin — really rusted — put up on the stage. I don’t care how heavy it is, how dirty it is.”
Mr. Eustis recalled one production — “Hope of the Heart” in 1990 — on which Mr. Lee’s enthusiasm for the realistic had to be reigned in.
“Eugene could be risky, even reckless,” he said. “When I first worked with him at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, he insisted that the actors should use live ammunition (mercifully, only BBs) in the course of the show. We had to do a full-scale test, with a dozen of us wearing goggles, to prove to him that BBs would fly all over the auditorium and blind the audience if we used them. Reluctantly, he agreed to abandon the idea.”
Mr. Lee married Brooke Lutz in 1981. She survives him, along with his twin brother, Thomas; a son from his relationship with Franne Lee, Willie; a son from his marriage, Ted; and two grandchildren.
Mr. Lee was known as a man of few words, and a man who loved the water. Mr. Eustis recalled that Mr. Lee took him out on Narragansett Bay on his sailboat when they were working on Trinity’s production of “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1995.
“We spent a couple hours on the water, talking but not referring to the play, and then he said, ‘It would be too bad if they actually left the stage when they say they are leaving,’” Mr. Eustis recalled. “That was our whole conversation. He delivered one of the most brilliant and beautiful designs I’d ever seen.”
Iris Fanger, reviewing the production in The Boston Herald, described that set as a series of rooms “that seem to stretch back into eternity.”
Galway art exhibition celebrates LGBT+ community – RTE.ie
Galway art exhibition celebrates LGBT+ community RTE.ie
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How To Take Better iPhone Night Photos
Imagine you’re driving through a beautiful cityscape with a skyline or visiting natural landscapes where wonders like the Northern Lights and Milky Way are visible. Chances are, you’ll want to take photos of the stars and the moon, or of the reflections of city lights, especially at nighttime. With advances in technology and the popularity of photography, more people are exploring the world of night photography and capturing stunning images in the dark — and all you need is your iPhone.
Taking night photos with an iPhone can create some stunning images, but only if done correctly. Whether you’re shooting a monument or a nighttime family gathering, capturing the right amount of light is essential to getting a great shot. We spoke to professional photographers to gather some tips on technology, technique and creativity to help you take the ultimate iPhone night photos.
1. Turn on Night mode and adjust your settings
Remember to turn on Night mode (it’s that moon-looking thing in the upper left corner of your camera app), a feature available on iPhone 11 and later models, and to adjust its settings like exposure time and speed.
Although Night mode sets exposure time automatically, you can also manually adjust it to get the results you want by swiping up or down on the screen. If you swipe up, the exposure time increases, making any photos you capture brighter, but if you swipe down, the exposure time decreases, making any photos you capture darker.
“Unlike professional cameras, iPhones adjust settings like ISO (which refers to the sensitivity of the camera’s sensor) and shutter speed automatically, but sometimes the settings are off, so you might not get the result that you were looking for,” said Sehee Kim, a professional photographer with Flytographer, a concierge service that connects local photographers all around the world.
“Remember to manually change the settings on your phone, by swiping left on the camera app and tapping the moon icon. Don’t rely on the auto settings all the time.”
Photographer Andrew Ling, who has been in the industry for nearly a decade, noted you can also adjust your camera’s exposure setting when not in Night mode by holding your finger down on the screen when you are focusing on your subject, prior to snapping your pic. This will trigger a square box, and you can then increasing the exposure level by swiping your finger up or down when the sun icon appears.
2. Use a tripod and external lighting
If you don’t have a steady hand, you might want to consider purchasing a tripod to help you. They come in a range of sizes and prices, but any inexpensive tripod can help keep your iPhone stable to capture clear images even in dimmer lighting.
According to Kim, to avoid grainy photos of yourself in surroundings that are especially dark, you can use illuminating light objects like battery powered string lights positioned near your subject’s face, or surrounding areas like storefront or neon signs.
“You can get beautiful photos by illuminating the face and body!” Kim adds. She recommended these Amazon string lights because of how bright they are. An added benefit, according to her, is that the battery part is small which means it won’t show up in photos and distract from the subject.
3. Avoid using the flash
It might sound counterintuitive, but the flash on your iPhone camera is not always the best option for night photos because it can wash out details in your photos or cause bright spots that will take away from the image you are trying to capture. Some natural light will definitely enhance your photos, which is why Kim also recommends lowering the shutter speed on your phone to allow more light into the photo and avoid harsh shadows.
4. Use the Live Photo feature
According to Ling, your iPhone’s live photo setting is a great way to create a “new age” form of memories because it is a cross between a photograph and a video. It captures moving images that can later be converted to a short video clip.
Plus, it works great for night photography because the live photo feature also doubles as a long exposure technique to create effects like light trails or to get a beautiful glowing effect from city lights.
“Plan before you shoot your live photo,” Ling suggested. “One of the biggest benefits comes in the editing options after the photo is taken, where you can choose the ‘Key Photo’ or you can turn it into a loop, etc. Just select the live photo in your Photos app, and find these options in the top left dropdown menu.
“Pro tip: Try this effect on a foggy evening.”
According to Ling, newer iPhones automatically go into Night mode, which will be disabled if you turn on Live Photo mode, so be sure to choose the mode that works best for you to capture the shot you desire.
5. Edit your photos
Your instagram feed may be littered with blurry photos (there’s definitely an aesthetic model for it), but if you aren’t into that, you can experiment with editing your photos. In addition to the editing functions in your iPhone’s Photos app, secondary apps such as Adobe Lightroom, VSCO and Snapseed can adjust the brightness, contrast and saturation to make your night photos pop.
“Play around with the contrast levels, and highlights and shadows, until you get the look you are happy with! Photography is art — have fun with it,” Ling added.
15th Century Bowl Bought For $35 At Yard Sale Resells For $722,000
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — An exceptionally rare 15th century porcelain bowl made in China that somehow turned up at a Connecticut yard sale and sold for just $35 was auctioned off Wednesday for nearly $722,000.
The small white bowl adorned with cobalt blue paintings of flowers and other designs — one of only seven such bowls known to exist in the world — was among a variety of Chinese works of art sold by Sotheby’s as part of its Asia Week events. The names of the seller and buyer were not disclosed.
Sotheby’s had estimated the value of the artifact at $300,000 to $500,000. Wednesday’s auction included 15 bids, starting at $200,000 from someone online and ending at $580,000 from another person bidding by phone. The official purchase price, which included various fees, was $721,800.
An antiques enthusiast came across the Ming Dynasty-era piece and thought it could be something special when browsing a yard sale in the New Haven area last year, according to Sotheby’s. The buyer later emailed information and photos to Sotheby’s asking for an evaluation.
“Today’s result for this exceptionally rare floral bowl, dating to the 15th century, epitomizes the incredible, once in a lifetime discovery stories that we dream about as specialists in the Chinese Art field,” Angela McAteer, head of Sotheby’s Chinese Works of Art Department, said in a statement.
Sotheby’s confirmed it was from the 1400s when they were able to look at it in person — there are no scientific tests, only the trained eyes and hands of specialists. The bowl was very smooth to the touch, its glaze was silky and the color and designs are distinctive of the period.
The bowl dates back to the early 1400s during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, the third ruler of the Ming Dynasty, and was made for the Yongle court. The Yongle court was known to have ushered in a new style to the porcelain kilns in the city of Jingdezhen, and the bowl is a quintessential Yongle product, according to Sotheby’s.
The bowl was made in the shape of a lotus bud or chicken heart. Inside, it is decorated with a medallion at the bottom and a quatrefoil motif surrounded by flowers. The outside includes four blossoms of lotus, peony, chrysanthemum and pomegranate flower. There are also intricate patterns at the top of both the outside and inside.
McAteer said only six other such bowls are known to exist, and most of them are in museums. No others are in the United States. There are two at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, two at museums in London and one in the National Museum of Iran in Tehran, according to Sotheby’s.
How the bowl ended up at a Connecticut yard sale remains a mystery. McAteer said it’s possible it was passed down through generations of the same family who did not know how unique it was.
As $1.6 Million in Rare Photos Vanished, the Excuses Piled Up
As J. Ross Baughman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, prepared to downsize into a new apartment in 2020, he realized he would not have the wall space for his entire collection, which included prints by marquee names like Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon.
Hoping to sell about a third of it, he reached out to Thomas Halsted, a Detroit-area gallery owner who in the early 1970s had helped Baughman acquire his first artwork, an Arbus print of a human pincushion.
Halsted’s daughter, Wendy Halsted Beard, broke the news that he had died. But she had inherited the business, and within a month, Baughman agreed to consign the Arbus and 19 other prints, many of them signed by the photographers.
Their contract gave Beard one year to sell the photos, which she valued at $40,000. But nearly three years later, Baughman has not received a cent — or any of his cherished images back.
Baughman, 69, is one of several victims in what the F.B.I. has called a criminal scheme by Beard to swindle older collectors, including an 89-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease, out of $1.6 million worth of fine art photos.
Beard allegedly went to great lengths to deceive her clients, according to court documents, creating email addresses for nonexistent employees, making up a double lung transplant and other medical emergencies, and swapping one client’s signed photograph with a $405.26 purchase from the Ansel Adams Gallery’s gift shop.
Baughman said he grew suspicious when Beard became evasive about the status of his prints. Then emails to her started to bounce back.
“She was willing to take advantage of me,” said Baughman, who had received some of the images he had consigned as gifts from his photography students. He said it felt like “she had taken my life’s work — all of these very fun, sentimental personal artifacts.”
Beard, who is in her late 50s, has been charged with wire fraud and bank fraud. Her lawyer, Steve Fishman, said that “this is a complicated case which does not lend itself to any commentary right now.”
In a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan last year, the F.B.I. alleges that Beard repeatedly obtained fine art photographs on consignment with the intent of defrauding collectors.
When the images did sell, including a $440,000 transaction for a large Adams print from Grand Teton National Park, Beard kept all the profits rather than just her commission, the complaint said. When they failed to sell, she did not return the photographs as promised, instead keeping them in her Franklin, Mich., home or abandoning them in a Florida gallery.
In another unresolved deal, the F.B.I. said a 72-year-old longtime friend of Beard’s paid her $73,000 for a copy of “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” one of Adams’s most famous photographs, but never received the work. Referring to one of the medical emergencies the agency determined were fictitious, Beard explained the delay in an email to her friend:
“On Computer finally. Been a crazy last bit….Not all gone but at least out of the months long coma. Nice to see the sunshine sorry so short more later.”
The F.B.I.’s criminal complaint detailed the experiences of five victims, including Baughman, who was in his 20s when he received the 1978 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography for his war reporting in Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia. Bank records and business records, the complaint said, indicated that there were likely to be more victims.
One person who was not part of the complaint had an unsettling realization about his two Adams photos after watching a television reporter detail the accusations against Beard, said Fritz Knaak, a lawyer based in St. Paul, Minn., who represents the anonymous victim.
Knaak said his client was a serious collector who knew Beard personally and consigned the two photos, valued at $30,000, with her in late 2019.
“It’s very embarrassing to have to admit to your peers that maybe you’ve been taken advantage of,” Knaak said. “What made it most painful was a violation of trust in a fairly small circle of collectors.”
The most valuable photograph that the F.B.I. said was stolen was a mural-size print by Adams titled “The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park.” Beard sold it for $440,000 to a gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyo., near where Adams took the black-and-white landscape of a river winding toward snow-capped mountains.
But the agency alleges Beard never bothered to tell the print’s original owner, an 82-year-old who had consigned $900,000 worth of fine art photography with her. Beard was due a 5 percent commission for her efforts, but the F.B.I. said she took the full amount of the Adams sale instead.
The print was sold several times after that, eventually landing in a private home in Idaho for a price of $685,000. It is unclear if that work or any of the other photos, many stowed away as F.B.I. evidence, will be returned to their original owners.
Baughman met Halsted, Beard’s father, in 1972 at his gallery in the ritzy Detroit suburb of Birmingham. Baughman was a budding photographer, while Halsted was an entrepreneur and early believer in the field of photography as fine art.
They became friends after Halsted sold Baughman a print of a little-known photo by Arbus titled “The Human Pincushion, Louis Ciervo, in His Silk Shirt, Hagerstown, Md., 1961,” an arresting portrait of a man working as an oddity attraction at a circus. Baughman had recently seen her work at a landmark photography exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
“The fact that it was more than $250 seemed pretty stiff to me back in college days,” Baughman said of the print.
Decades later, Beard valued “Human Pincushion” at $8,500. As their consignment agreement ended, Baughman asked Beard whether there “was even a tiny nibble of interest” in his prints and said he would be happy to renew their contract under the same terms.
In her response two weeks later, Beard wrote of health issues and asked if she could lower the asking prices.
“Sorry for the delay. Hope you are well,” Beard wrote. “We have just survived a bout of covid where all 4 of us got at same time so a bit behind on life.”
After he agreed to lower the price, Baughman says he never heard from Beard again.
In an attempt to track her down, Baughman contacted a gallery in Palm Beach, Fla., where Beard said she was displaying his photos. He was told to contact “Katy Welsh,” an alias that Beard had used with other clients, according to the F.B.I. (A representative from the gallery, Palm Beach Art, Antique & Design Showroom, said the photos Beard left were no longer there but declined to comment further.)
Baughman is still trying to recover his prints, which he now considers even more precious.
During the consignment saga, an apartment fire destroyed his collection of cameras and photo books, and nearly one million negatives and transparencies were turned to ash. “I finally have enough space on the wall where I can hang these pictures,” he said.
‘It just feels warm and fuzzy’: how Hallmark built an empire of unashamedly schmaltzy rom-coms | Movies
Avon, Connecticut, lies toward the north of the US state, a small town of perfect contour and construction, where even on a bare-branched midwinter afternoon, the light falls pleasingly across East Main Street. The population is largely white and affluent, and alongside the Walmart and the Whole Foods, there is a congregational church and a country store that, in the autumn months, offers hayrides to a nearby pumpkin patch.
When Julie Sherman Wolfe moved to Avon from Los Angeles five years ago, it was a relocation she came to regard as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sherman Wolfe is the screenwriter behind 22 Hallmark movies, from The Convenient Groom, via Right in Front of Me and Always Amore – films that were often set in precisely the kind of quaint New England town to which she and her family had moved. The draw for Sherman Wolfe echoed the on-screen appeal for viewers. “I think the more unsafe the world seems, the safer a small town seems,” she says. “It’s the idea that less bad stuff is going to happen to you in Avon than it is in Brooklyn. It’s a nostalgia thing, where it just feels warm and fuzzy.”
For the uninitiated, the Hallmark movie is a genre of made-for-TV romantic comedy now so ubiquitous that the term “Hallmark movie” has extended to encompass any TV movie of a similar tone and aesthetic, regardless of whether it has been made by the Hallmark Channel. There are variations on the basic theme – different locations, the possible involvement of royalty, perhaps an element of the supernatural – but the plot invariably runs along the lines of: high-flying career woman returns from the big city to the small town where she was raised in order to sell the family pecan farm. She insists upon wearing inappropriate footwear and brims with disdain for small-town life. But a series of unexpected events leads her to appreciate the charms of a simpler existence, and to rekindle her love for her high school sweetheart, who is now the town baker.
Thanks to the predictability of the Hallmark movie framework, over the past few years the films have become rich meme-fodder. There was even an AI experiment in which a bot was fed 1,000 hours of Hallmark movies then asked to write its own screenplay (the result was a heartwarming tale of a widowed single mother working for a small-town snow globe company).
So unchallenging and untextured is the Hallmark world that it is easy to regard these movies as harmless entertainment. But as their reach has spread they have also diffused an idea of home and life and relationships that has been traditional and conservative, and perhaps even retrograde. “In this particular kind of romance, there’s always an affirmation of some really conventional standard,” says Billy Mernit, author of the bestselling textbook Writing the Romantic Comedy, and a story analyst for Universal Pictures. “It’s straight up middle-American heartland values.”
The Hallmark Channel can trace its lineage back to the early 1990s, when two religious cable TV channels, the American Christian Television System and Vision Interfaith Satellite Network, began companionably sharing time on a satellite service. Over the years that followed, the combined network moved through several incarnations and investment structures, until in August 2001, now owned by Crown Media Holdings, itself owned by the Hallmark Cards Inc, it was rebranded as the Hallmark Channel.
While the network introduced secular shows alongside its faith-based output, its programming remained resolutely wholesome (aside, perhaps, for the vague lustfulness of repeats of the Golden Girls). When it began creating original movies, the romances they portrayed were remarkably chaste. To this day, there is no sex, drugs or swearing in a Hallmark film, no politics or violence or drunkenness. “In standard theatrical romcoms it all busted open in the 60s,” notes Mernit. “But Hallmark movies kind of act as if that never happened.”
For Sherman Wolfe, these parameters make for something distinct. “The thing that makes these movies special is they’re a safe thing for everyone to watch,” she argues. “Your little kid and Grandma can watch it together.”
While other production companies have attempted to imitate the genre, she argues that they often fall flat precisely because they don’t work within the same family-oriented restrictions. “They have more freedom, they can have sex and swearing and murder, but it dilutes the beauty of what it’s supposed to be,” she says.
Compared to your average cinematic release, Hallmark movies are cheap to produce, rumoured to be a little over $2m per film. Accordingly, there is something gently low-budget to the productions: the sets, the wardrobe, the effects feel more homely than Hollywood. Although the likes of Danny Glover and Megan Markle have starred in Hallmark fllms, the actors are usually familiar but not famous. You are most likely to recognise them from other Hallmark movies (Candace Cameron Bure, for instance, has 30 Hallmark credits to her name).
There are, after all, a lot of movies to make. The Hallmark scheduling year has nine distinct seasons: films devoted to New Year, to spring, and to Valentine’s Day; then comes the countdown to summer, followed by actual summer, June weddings, Christmas in July, and autumn. Then, in October, the channel begins its much-vaunted countdown to Christmas. The season is big business for Hallmark. In 2021, the channel made 41 Christmas movies – an increase from just 11 in 2010, and more than 35 million people tuned in to watch them – the majority female, aged 25 to 54. With the holiday market secured, it makes sense for the channel to also try to corner other seasons.
The weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day have been branded as Loveuary by Hallmark, and this year offerings number six new films, including Sweeter Than Chocolate, A Paris Proposal and Welcome to Valentine, which stars Kathryn Davis as Olivia, a career-driven New Yorker who loses both her boyfriend and her job in quick succession and must return home to her home town of Valentine, Nebraska. Along the way she hitches a ride with her roommate’s friend George (Markian Tarasiuk) and as their roadtrip unfolds, she begins to re-evaluate her ideas of love.
This is Davis’s second Hallmark film, and her first as a lead (she made her debut in a supporting role in 2020’s A Christmas Carousel). As with most Hallmark movies, the turnaround was fast. “I got the offer on the Thursday, I took the offer on the Friday, and then I was flown out to Ottawa on the Wednesday,” Davis says, speaking from her home in Toronto. “Then we started rolling the Monday after.”
Welcome to Valentine’s premise seemed to Davis both hopeful and accessible. And there is a place, she believes, for this kind of story in among rolling news cycles and the disconnection of social media. “It’s just optimism,” she says. “Good stories kind of get buried in the turmoil of everyday life. So I think it is that opportunity to just remember that just beyond your door, there’s the opportunity to fall in love, to meet someone, to make a connection.”
Sherman Wolfe is the first to admit that there is a formula to Hallmark movies. There are nine acts (as opposed to a conventional movie structure of three) to accommodate eight advertising breaks. “Act one and act two, is setting everybody up, a little conflict,” she says. “Act three, they’re put together and maybe there’s a couple of little moments where they think: ‘Oh, I really think I really like this person, despite my misgivings.’ And then acts four, five, six, they start actually falling in love. But that conflict is still there. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we know something’s going to go wrong. And in act seven something goes wrong. In act eight, it’s over. And then the last act they make up happily ever after.”
Traditionally, she says, the Hallmark formula did not allow the actors to kiss before the final scene. In more recent times, they might be permitted an earlier kiss, somewhere around the midway point, to shore up their burgeoning affections.
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Alongside this structural pattern runs a distinct moral path for the films’ protagonists. “One of the most important things that we try to do is make sure that where we have a relationship, each one of them helps each other in some way to grow,” Sherman Wolfe says. “So a lot of times if people are just starting out writing for Hallmark, you’ll see a story where the man will change the woman, or the woman will change the man. But we like to have both of them help each other get on the right path.”
You could trace Hallmark’s familiar narrative all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, the founding father who did most to imbue the US with this notion of rural superiority and the pleasures of the simple life. “When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe,” he said, “we shall become as corrupt as in Europe.” Rural America, he argued, was the real America.
Ever since, this trope has played a recognisable role in American cultural and political rhetoric. When Pete Buttigieg embarked on the presidential primaries in 2020, he drew on his midwestern upbringing to bolster his campaign: “We need Washington to look more like our small towns, not the other way around,” he declared. Bill Clinton’s political narrative has long rested not on his time spent at Oxford or Yale, but on his childhood in Hope, Arkansas – a town that all but sounds like a Hallmark movie setting.
Finding the archetypal small town often falls to Andrew Gernhard, locations specialist and founder of Connecticut-based Synthetic Cinema International. When we speak, Gernhard is in North Carolina, shooting a film called A Biltmore Christmas, which stars Hallmark favourite Bethany Joy Lenz. Gernhard came to Hallmark movies via horror films (a curiously common route), and is now adept at finding the kind of warm and intimate setting appropriate for a TV romcom, sometimes shooting in Canada or even Iceland, but most often in Connecticut. “Connecticut is perfect because it’s this old New England style,” he says. “There’s something about the Victorian houses and the history that’s there. It just feels like Christmas.”
Mernit likens the sets of Hallmark movies to model train layouts, “where you could assemble your little town and the people in it. They are trying to reconstruct a quasi-imaginary America of some 40 or 50 years ago.” It is a strange depiction of America, Mernit says, suggesting that a more accurate portrayal might be 2020’s Nomadland, in which Frances McDormand leaves her fading industrial town to find seasonal work, living out of a mobile home, her life becoming increasingly itinerant.
But the more unrooted our lives and communities feel, the more we might cling to the idea of a world that seemed simpler, safer, sweeter. “You have this determined attempt to turn the clock back, says Mernit. “Where else are you going to find the apple pie you baked for dinner, with the family in that imaginary cookie-cutter home? It’s alive and well on the Hallmark screen.”
Those who work for Hallmark are keen to note how the channel is evolving. Davis says that as a mixed-race actor she has noted an increasing diversity in casting. Sherman Wolfe, who is Jewish, talks of writing the Hallmark film Hanukkah on Rye, and of a broadening, more inclusive notion of what “the holiday season” might mean. Last year also brought the network’s first gay romcom. “The core of it is still where it was, which is about love and family and friendship and all those things,” says Sherman Wolfe. “It just expands the world that we can see them in.”
Still, the Hallmark world is so distinct for Sherman Wolfe that she carries the thought of it – accessible, joyful, comforting – into her office each morning. There she lowers the window blinds, turns on the Christmas lights and sits down at her desk, in her white colonial house, with its red front door and its black shutters, in her small Connecticut town, where the light falls pleasingly across East Main Street.
In the UK you can watch Hallmark via Amazon Prime.
'A Discombobulated Mess': Book Adaptations That Broke The Hearts Of Fans
‘A Discombobulated Mess’: Book Adaptations That Broke The Hearts Of Fans
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Home-Cooked Spaghetti Dinners and a Glam Photo Shoot: Eight Unusual Oscar Bids
When the actress Andrea Riseborough wrapped a 19-day shoot on the microbudget indie “To Leslie” in Los Angeles during the height of the pandemic, her hopes probably extended to positive reviews from critics and indie film enthusiasts.
But now, after a social media campaign on her behalf by some famous friends, among them Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Norton and Sarah Paulson, she’s been nominated for an Oscar for best actress — an honor she can keep, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ruled Tuesday after reviewing the unorthodox lobbying on her behalf.
While the regulations around campaigning have become ever murkier in the age of social media, the Riseborough campaign was hardly the first to stretch the rules, which forbid, among other things, mentioning competitors or their films directly or calling academy members personally.
Here are eight memorable bids for a statuette that went rogue.
1961
Chill Wills, ‘The Alamo’
After Chill Wills was nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Davy Crockett’s buddy Beekeeper in “The Alamo,” he hired the veteran publicist W.S. “Bow-Wow” Wojciechowicz to run his campaign. Wojciechowicz submitted an ad to Variety with a photo of the film’s cast and text that read, “We of the ‘Alamo’ cast are praying harder — than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo — for Chill Wills to win the Oscar as best supporting actor.”
Variety refused to run it (The Hollywood Reporter did), and John Wayne, the film’s director and star, took out his own ad in Variety rebuking Wills that said neither he nor his production company was in any way involved in the effort. (“I am sure his intentions are not as bad as his taste,” Wayne wrote of Wills, who later blamed Wojciechowicz.) After this fiasco — Wills lost to Peter Ustinov for “Spartacus” — it became rare for actors to run their own campaigns, which have since mostly been the purview of studios and teams of publicists.
Interviews With the Oscar Nominees
1974
Candy Clark, ‘American Graffiti’
The nostalgic coming-of-age feature “American Graffiti” included some future big names like Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford among its ensemble cast, but Candy Clark, then a little-known actress, was the only one to embark on an Oscar campaign. She paid $1,700 to take out a series of quarter-page ads in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety — a strategy that paid off when she was the only member of the film’s cast to be nominated, for best supporting actress. (She lost to a 10-year-old Tatum O’Neal for “Paper Moon.”)
1975
Liv Ullmann, ‘Scenes From a Marriage’
The Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann delivered a standout performance in Ingmar Bergman’s domestic drama “Scenes From a Marriage,” but a potential nomination was tripped up by a technicality that The New York Times likened to a situation “one usually encounters at obscure border stations in Central Asia.” Because a television cut of “Scenes From a Marriage” had premiered on Swedish TV in 1973 — the year before its American theatrical release — it was deemed ineligible for the Oscars thanks to an academy rule that prohibited the film’s being shown on television during the year before its theatrical release.
Three of that year’s eventual best actress nominees — Ellen Burstyn (who went on to win), Diahann Carroll and Gena Rowlands — took up Ullmann’s cause, even signing an open letter supporting her right to compete, but the academy stood firm. (Ullmann, now 84, did receive an honorary award from the academy last year.)
After being nominated for best supporting actress for “The Color Purple,” Margaret Avery used $1,160 of her own money to pay for a Variety ad promoting her performance. Intended to suggest the voice of her character, Shug Avery, it read: “Well God, I guess the time has come fo’ the Academy voters to decide whether I is one of the best supporting actresses this year or not! Either way, thank you, Lord for the opportunity.” Avery was criticized for the ad, which did not reflect the way her character actually spoke in the film. (She lost to Anjelica Huston for “Prizzi’s Honor.”)
1988
Sally Kirkland, ‘Anna’
Sally Kirkland took a letter-writing fiend approach in an effort to score a best actress nomination for her role as a once-famous Czech actress in the small indie “Anna.” Kirkland not only personally wrote letters to academy voters, she also financed her own ad campaign — the film had no budget to do so — and spoke to any and every journalist who asked. Her persistence paid off with a nomination, though she eventually lost to Cher for “Moonstruck.”
1991
Diane Ladd, ‘Wild at Heart’
After she was nominated for David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart,” Diane Ladd — Laura Dern’s mother — decided that the way to voters’ hearts was through a home-cooked spaghetti dinner. She embarked on a one-woman blitz that involved not only writing personalized letters to voters, but also inviting 20 academy members to a screening of her film, accompanied by a spaghetti dinner that she prepared herself. She might have wanted to spend more time perfecting that spaghetti recipe, though — she lost to Whoopi Goldberg, who won for “Ghost.”
2011
Melissa Leo, ‘The Fighter’
Unlike other nominees who took matters into their own hands, Melissa Leo was considered the front-runner when she began her campaign to secure a best supporting actress win for the boxing drama “The Fighter.” But she took out her now-infamous “Consider” ads anyway, she told Deadline in 2011, because she was frustrated at not being able to land magazine covers as a 50-year-old woman. The ads, which showed off her glamorous side as she leaned forward in a low-cut black evening gown, presented a stark contrast to the gritty, blue-collar mother and fight manager she played in the film (which was not even mentioned in the ad). There’s no way to say for sure if the strategy helped her chances, but it certainly didn’t hurt — she beat out her co-star Amy Adams, as well as Helena Bonham Carter of “The King’s Speech,” to claim the Oscar.
2013
Ann Dowd, ‘Compliance’
Ann Dowd received stellar reviews for the Craig Zobel thriller “Compliance,” a flop of an indie with such a tiny budget that Dowd was paid just $100 per day for her role. But she believed in her performance, and after raising $13,000 by dipping into her bank account, borrowing money from friends and colleagues and maxing out her credit cards, she mailed DVDs to academy members and placed ads in trade publications in an effort to secure a best supporting actress nomination. While the Oscar recognition proved elusive — Anne Hathaway won that year for “Les Misérables” — the media coverage of her efforts may have helped put her on the radar of directors. (And now she has an Emmy for “The Handmaid’s Tale.”)
A Painting Today: Karin Jurick
“You should keep on painting no matter how difficult it is, because this is all part of experience, and the more experience you have, the better it is… unless it kills you, and then you know you have gone too far.”
~ Alice Neel
~ Alice Neel
“If I had the energy, I would have done it all over the country”
– Edward Hopper
This robot can create finger paintings based on human inputs – Popular Science
This robot can create finger paintings based on human inputs Popular Science
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Questions To Ask Yourself When Choosing A Paint Color
Choosing a paint color can feel utterly overwhelming. The swatches are endless and the stakes seem high.
“Color sends a message,” interior designer and color consultant Mary Nolte told HuffPost. “Color can be bold or timid, bright or muted, playful or serene. They can brighten a room or create coziness. Color can create drama or relaxation. The colors you select should set the scene for the mood you are trying to create.”
Indeed, interior paint colors have the power to transform a space for a relatively affordable price. They can create a sense of cohesion in the home, while also separating out spaces.
But how to do you go about selecting the right shades for the spaces you inhabit? We asked interior designers and color experts to share their advice for choosing a paint color for your home. Read on for six questions they recommend asking yourself as you make this decision.
Does the color feel comfortable and welcoming?
“When we design home interiors, we often spend time considering the look we want to go for, and how that will be conveyed to those who visit. Less often considered is how the use of color can impact both our and our visitors’ physiological and psychological state,” said Lee Chambers, an environmental psychologist who has researched the psychological aspects of color and space.
“Not until very recently in the human journey have we been able to select the color of the spaces we exist in,” he added. “The color of a space can impact a variety of factors, from how we feel in the moment, to how welcoming a space is.”
Chambers also noted that color can affect our heart rates, impact our energy levels and generate a range of responses and behaviors, which varies between individuals.
“Pinks are comforting and a great color for creativity. Blues are known as the colors of the mind so great for work-from-home office spaces.”
– Tash Bradley, head color specialist at Lick
With that in mind, you should choose colors that make you feel comfortable and at home in your house. And once you’ve settled on a general color, give that same consideration to the specific hues.
“Ask, ‘Are they warm? How vibrant is the tone and how dark is the shade?’” suggested Chambers. “While the trends have changed, and the color of the season moves, the welcoming colors don’t tend to vary too much, with soft warm colors being valued for their welcoming characteristics.”
Paint swatches on your walls and consider which ones evoke the feelings and sensibility you want in the space as you go about your day there.
“Certain colors provide a more homely feel than others, making them more appealing,” said Tash Bradley, head color specialist at the paint and wallpaper brand Lick. “We often find certain colors are consistently on trend due to the feelings they transpire into the home. Browns and beiges are stable and grounding. Pinks are comforting and a great color for creativity. Blues are known as the colors of the mind so great for work-from-home office spaces.”
Gladiathor via Getty Images
Does it bring the outside in?
“It is worth remembering that 99.9{abdbf1aafee1705a3934b904a34e25e9fc41880f65382909ec0927360d773d22} of our human existence wasn’t based in the built environments we have today,” Chambers said. “The colors prevalent in natural environments in abundance, such as greens and blues, will always have a welcoming element as they represent home in a way beyond our four walls.”
Colors that bring the outside in are particularly appealing now after we’ve spent so much of the last two years inside amid the COVID-19 pandemic, noted Erika Woelfel, vice president of color and creative services at Behr Paint Co.
“We launched our 2022 Color of the Year and Trends Palette last month,” she explained. “The colors bring the outdoors inside and welcome a hopeful sense of renewal, restoration and healing. Over the past year and a half, we’ve spent more time in our home than ever before, so we recommend turning to these colors if you’re looking to elevate your space and create a new sense of balance.”
She noted that hues that are reminiscent of colors found in nature can also serve as “an easy backdrop that doesn’t fight for attention with furniture, artwork and other decorations.”
Is it a reflection of my individuality?
“One important thing that I try to get across to my clients is that color really should represent your own personal sensibility,” said color expert Joan Ffolliott. “I think people are afraid to embrace their individuality. But paint colors can really lend a home its unique quality to the people who live there. It can be an individual expression of their style, what they value, their own particular influences, cultural influences, financial influences, all sorts of stuff.”
“[S]ome blue-green blends can give have a ‘spa-vibe’ and are supposed to be relaxing. However, if you were raised in an environment where this color negatively affected you, you might not find it relaxing at all!”
– interior designer Kylie Mawdsley
Interior design is about letting your personality shine through the home, whether it’s through soft, soothing paint choices or vibrant accent walls. Your individual experiences and preferences are crucial when it comes to determining the right interior paint colors for your home.
There’s often an emotional component as well. While some people adore bright saturated colors, others may feel much more at home with neutrals.
“What is appealing to one can be appalling to another!” said interior designer Kylie Mawdsley of Kylie M Interiors. “For example, some blue-green blends can give have a ‘spa-vibe’ and are supposed to be relaxing. However, if you were raised in an environment where this color negatively affected you, you might not find it relaxing at all!”
Beyond the emotions a color evokes, we also have different views of what looks luxurious or expensive. For some, it’s dark, rich colors that feel like they belong in palaces, but for others, it’s a clean white that suggest ancient statues and marble.
“Whether it’s the power symbolized by red, the noble regality conveyed by purple, the exclusive luxury conferred by black or the champion-like messaging of gold, color can be used to articulate value,” Chambers explained. “The beauty is that, as humans, we value different aspects of life, and for some, the green of the dollar may feel expensive, but to another individual, it may represent dirt and germs. It also impacts us on a cultural level, with certain colors being portrayed as expensive and exclusive, and these change depending on where in the world you reside.”
Wachirawut Priamphimai / EyeEm via Getty Images
What are the current trends?
Although the goal is to choose a color that best expresses you and your desired mood, it’s OK to look at what’s popular at the moment. Sometimes trends can inspire ideas or help you identify what you definitely do or do not want.
“When it comes to selecting paint colors, interior trends and psychology are interconnected and have a bearing on a person’s color selections,” Nolte said. “Interior trends change. People tend to feel comfortable feeling ‘up to date.’ Paint color is a relatively easy and economical way to achieve a refreshed look.”
Sometimes the image we want our homes to portray and the feelings we want them to create involve feeling on trend. The trends can change and circle back around, and some colors trend because they simply feel classic and appealing at all times.
“Brasses, mauves and blush used to be associated with the 80’s and faux pas but now are all having a massive resurgence due to changes in trends,” said interior designer and color expert Jennifer Guerin. “And then there is the fact that some classic colors are just done right and truly appeal to the masses year after year.”
Does this suit the space?
While trends can help guide you toward colors you like or dislike, it’s more important to consider whether your chosen color suits the space you’re painting.
“I tend to steer people away from following trends, or at least if you’re going to choose a trendy color, examine maybe why you’re doing it,” Ffolliott said. “Maybe your space doesn’t have the bones or capacity to carry that color like the one in the picture. People have Pinterest of all kinds of colors but you might not have the space for this or your architecture doesn’t support that.”
The function of the room can help dictate the feeling or mood you’re seeking to create there.
“One thing to consider is how the room is used, and the size of the room, as certain colors can create space and even facilitate and complement the use of the room,” Chambers said.
Darker colors might make a small room feel even smaller, but strategic accent walls or even ceiling paint can transform the sense of space. It’s OK to play around with bright colors if they seem to suit the vibe you’re going for.
“Making a home most desirable to fit your own personality and function is the paramount reason for investing in the right colors and paint everywhere and anywhere,” Guerin said. “Don’t stop at going big and bold on bath vanities. Look at your laundry room to infuse some fun and color and let it just be you.”
imaginima via Getty Images
How does it work with the decor?
In addition to the bones of the space, you’ll also want to make sure your paint colors work with your furnishings and other decor.
“Sometimes the finishes in our homes are limiting, meaning we have to choose wall colors we don’t 100{abdbf1aafee1705a3934b904a34e25e9fc41880f65382909ec0927360d773d22} love in order for things to flow. From there, it’s about adding the colors we love in decor, accessories or even feature walls and accents!” Mawdsley said.
If trendy paint colors don’t suit your home, you can always achieve an updated vibe with decor details.
“A person can select a paint color that works with their existing furnishings, then add some current accessories to achieve a revived space to come home to,” Nolte said.
You can also choose to make the decor more of the focal point by choosing a less bold wall paint color.
“If you’re nervous about adding color to the walls, then make your dominate hue for the walls stay as the background in a hue that reflects light and sets the stage for the accessories to bring in the fun such as throws, vases, rugs and pillows,” Guerin said. “You can change them easily as your palette evolves.”
Think about textures as well as colors, advised color consultant Amy Wax.
“The textures you choose can enhance your color selections,” she said. “Richer colors ― a deep plum, saturated charcoal grays or even navy or teal blues ― look and feel more luxurious when they are in accompanied by contrasting soft linens, shimmering wall papers or smooth velvets. On the other end of the spectrum, off-whites, feathery soft blues or even a soft blush feel luxurious against brilliant white linens and feathery soft accessories.”
Above all, get creative with the process and don’t stress too much. And if at first you don’t succeed, paint, paint again.
An Elegy to a Pluralistic, Polyglot India Wins Readers and Critics in the West
As Shree wrote about Amma’s metamorphosis — a journey that culminates in a fateful trip to Pakistan, which she had fled after violence erupted during Partition in 1947 — she found herself composing an elegy to pluralistic, polyglot India, a place teeming with a diversity of languages, religions, cultures and dialects.
“The book kept bringing up the kinds of divisions that have crept in and the unities that are being lost,” Shree said. “That’s what we seem to be losing, now that there’s a kind of monopoly of certain languages and cultures.”
Shree didn’t expect the novel to resonate with an international audience. Several of her previous novels had been translated into English, but none were released outside of India, and she had no reason to believe “Tomb of Sand” would be any different.
Then, an unlikely series of breaks vaulted her to literary stardom. After the Hindi edition came out, the translator Arunava Sinha reached out to Shree and introduced her to Rockwell, who was looking for contemporary feminist fiction to translate. Rockwell did a sample translation, and the publisher, Titled Axis, a small, independent British press, acquired it and secured a grant for Rockwell to translate the full text.
The English version was published in Britain in 2021. The following year, it won the International Booker, which is given jointly to the author and translator. “Tomb of Sand” sold 30,000 copies in Britain, an impressive number for a work in translation from a relatively unknown author. In India, the English edition sold 50,000 copies, making it a resounding success for a work of literary fiction, and the Hindi version, titled “Ret Samadhi,” sold more than 35,000 copies. The novel became ubiquitous in train stations and airports across India; Shree’s name was a question on a popular game show hosted by the Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan. “Tomb of Sand” is now being translated into several other Indian languages, among them Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi and Assamese, according to Shree’s literary agent.
“It was considered a little bit out there,” Rockwell said. “Now everybody’s reading it.”
“Tomb of Sand” was a daunting text to translate, Rockwell said. The narrative is experimental, fragmented and dreamlike, full of language tricks and invented words. It’s laced with references to Sanskrit classics, Bollywood movies, song lyrics, prayers and chants, and contemporary Hindi and Urdu novelists. To capture the polyphonic flavor of the prose and Shree’s freewheeling sense of wordplay, Rockwell preserved fragments of the text from Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Sanskrit, leaving them untranslated.
In a way, it’s fitting that “Tomb of Sand,” a novel about the permeability of borders — between countries, religions, genders, languages, ages, life and death — is transcending linguistic barriers, despite the obstacles.
“Language is not just a vehicle to convey a message, it’s a complete entity in its own right,” Shree said. “It has a personality, it has a cadence, and sometimes it has no message.”
As Hank Willis Thomas Makes Super Bowl Debut, He Surveys His Public Art – ARTnews.com
Hank Willis Thomas is finally ready to sit back and enjoy the game.
On Sunday, the Brooklyn-based artist will cheer for the Philadelphia Eagles from his reserved seat at the Super Bowl in Arizona’s State Farm Stadium, where local art handlers and a member of his studio team have installed a large stainless-steel sculpture of an athlete’s hand grasping for a football. The ten-foot-tall statue, titled Opportunity (reflection), has been in the works for nearly six months, ever since the National Football League asked Thomas for help celebrating the sport’s importance in American culture.
“There is a metaphor here,” Thomas told ARTnews in a recent interview, explaining how the sculpture’s reflective surface resembled the Vince Lombardi Trophy given to the winning Super Bowl team. “That trophy symbolizes the highest peak of success in the league.”
Only a few weeks earlier, the artist was receiving a different kind of top honor. On an unseasonably mild January afternoon in Boston, Thomas presided over the unveiling of The Embrace, his monument to the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King. That day was five years in the making — time spent navigating a labyrinthian public approval process and hundreds of questions about how to transport the 37,000-pound bronze statue — likely the largest in the United States — from a foundry in Walla Walla, Washington to the Boston Common.
Elected officials including Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, as well several of Kings’ relatives, were at the ceremony, as were many of the historians and activists who have urged Boston to include more representations of Black historical figures among the many white men featured in its tourist attractions and monuments about the city’s colonial past. A nonprofit called the Boston Foundation helped provide resources and $10.5 million in funds so that the statue could stand in the park’s 1965 Freedom Plaza, which honors 64 local civil rights leaders from the 1950s to the 1970s.
“We are learning how to have critical discourse in the public and how that works is not for the weak-stomached.”
Hank Willis Thomas, On The Response To The Embrace
The new MLK monument, according to Thomas, is about love. He wanted to push the boundaries of the figurative style usually associated with public art. With his collaborators at the architecture firm MASS Design Group, Thomas worked from a photograph of the couple hugging shortly after King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. The resulting sculpture — a 20-foot tall statue made of 609 pieces of welded bronze — focused on that loving gesture and omitted the civil rights icons’ faces. In Thomas’ vision, visitors could walk under the monumental work’s arched arms and experience King and Coretta Scott’s famed embrace, a living memorial honoring King’s vision of a more loving and just society.
“The invitation of our work is for the viewer to walk inside and feel like they are in the heart of that embrace between King and his wife,” Thomas said.
But images of the sculpture shared on social media illustrated a different kind of love. Mayor Wu was still speaking at the dedication ceremony when the sculpture was transformed into a meme on TikTok and Twitter, with users describing it irreverently as “a masturbatory metal homage” and a “horny Rorshach test.” Many users coalesced around the idea that the statue depicted sexual acts from every angle, and conspiracy theorists alleged that Thomas had intentionally disgraced two of the most beloved figures in American history.
None of that was true, but the rumors spread so quickly that some attendees of the opening celebrations were still at the monument site when they started receiving text messages from friends asking: Did the Martin Luther King Jr. monument really look like an enormous phallus?
“The internet is going to internet,” Yng-Ru Chen, a Boston gallerist who attended the opening told ARTnews. She disagreed with the online reactions to the memorial and said that experiencing the sculpture in person made it difficult to see what others did. “I very much enjoyed the monument when I was standing in front of it.”
How such a prolific artist like Hank Willis Thomas could see one of his greatest achievements sullied was a question that has stumped the art world. Few artists are as engaged with the public, and virtually none have the same level of expertise when it comes to navigating questions of representation and memorialization.
Thomas’ Long History With Public Art
Between 2015 and 2020, Thomas served on the New York City Public Design Commission, which oversees the municipal collection of permanent monuments and votes to approve new ones. His appointment coincided with a tumultuous period in the agency’s history, when the de Blasio administration greenlit nearly a dozen monuments that it ultimately never built. Some activists blamed the Public Design Commission for not doing enough to increase the city’s miniscule number of statues honoring women and people of color.
At the time, Thomas was not afraid to weigh into such controversial topics. “There are what, five or six [male] statues that I think could easily be replaced by individual statues of each of these women,” he said during a 2019 hearing about increasing gender diversity in the city’s statues. That comment was picked apart by the New York Post in an article claiming that he was putting the city’s monument men in peril. But colleagues described Thomas as taking that role very seriously.
“Commissioners make a choice to serve and contribute to the City of New York and with that, bring in their expertise and experience,” Mary Valverde, a commissioner who served alongside the artist, told ARTnews. “I can say that as a colleague Hank has been pleasant and I have only known him to be open and generous in nature.”
During the same period that Thomas served as a commissioner, he expanded his public art practice.
In 2016, Thomas, along with fellow artists Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery, founded Super PAC For Freedoms to serve as an artistic platform for civic engagement. The “collective,” as Thomas has characterized it, has commissioned artists to create billboards during political elections and has staged awareness campaigns tackling issues like the Iranian government’s treatment of women. According to Thomas, the collective has about 30 members, many of whom work on the artist’s personal projects. “We don’t really draw lines with the studio,” he said.
During his tenure on the Public Design Commission, Thomas also marshaled his own permanent monument onto the city streets. Near the Brooklyn Bridge, he erected Unity, a 22-foot bronze arm with an index finger pointing skyward. The work was commissioned by another city agency called the Percent for Art program, though it still needed approval from the Public Design Commission. (Thomas recused himself from those deliberations.) When the statue was unveiled in 2019, a New York Times critic described it as “a traditional and fairly conservative work.”
Thomas still remembers the detractors who claimed his piece was extremist. At the time, a handful of preservation activists and Republican politicians claimed that Unity was a symbol of ISIS, the terrorist group. A city spokesman eventually came to the artist’s defense. “This accusation is completely absurd — is every sports fan who holds up a foam finger an ISIS sympathizer?” Ryan Max, an employee with the Cultural Affairs Department had said. “The gesture depicted by this sculpture is a universal sign of uplift and aspiration.”
The experience with Unity prepared Thomas, he said, for “disparate and unexpected responses” to his public art works, adding that his proposal for The Embrace was the most representational option from the five finalists, which included abstractions by Yinka Shonibare, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and other famous artists. Chosen from over one hundred artist proposals, the finalists’ designs were shared with the public in 2018, receiving over 1,000 comments, before Thomas’ Embrace was finally selected in 2019 by the Boston Art Commission, which oversees public art in the city.
Thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters holding signs walk past Unity, which towers over the streets of New York at 22 1/2 feet tall. The big bronze arm sits right at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge and points towards the sky on June 19, 2020.
Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images
Though other people have characterized the debate around The Embrace as a controversy, Thomas sees it as a public conversation. “We are learning how to have critical discourse in the public and how that works is not for the weak-stomached,” he said. “Lots of people heard about the monument before the online feedback, but ten times more people heard about it after. Kim Kardashian on her trip to Harvard Business School even felt the need to drive by and post about it.”
As he mentioned Kardashian, he received an update on Instagram — the artist Nina Chanel Abney was posting positively about The Embrace on her social media account.
“It’s important that I talk about how my practice is a conversation with the viewer,” Thomas continued. “To whatever degree there is adversity, it is also an opportunity for me to engage. How could I be upset or disappointed when a work about communal love is so well-embraced?”
Thomas said he was “fascinated” to see how responses to The Embrace became shaped by a particular photographic angle once it was fed into social media and that he was “surprised” that there was far more focus in web publications on that response than King’s legacy.
“It was surprising, like a reality check,” Thomas said, explaining that he made a series of maquettes so that his team, funders, and public officials could scrutinize the design. Nobody, he said, had ever raised an issue as far he knew with how the memorial looked from different angles.
“You forget that the media is a business, and they say sex sells,” Thomas said. “So it’s like, oh right, how naïve of me to think we can talk about social justice and not have it overshadowed with juvenile conversations.”
Not everyone has agreed that the controversy was all spectacle. There are some relatives of the Kings who were displeased with the monument. Seneca Scott, a cousin of Coretta Scott King, tweeted “I still can’t get over how they tried to play my fam,” adding in an essay that he found the sculpture “rather insulting.” Later, in the week, when speaking to The Guardian, he revised his original statement. “When I wrote that, I was in the anger part of grief. Now I’ve accepted the grief,” he said, adding that the fact that the statue was privately funded had made him “not nearly as upset.”
The initial blowback, however, forced advocates into damage control. Even Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, had to defend the monument to her own colleagues. “I went to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, I think the next week, and I told everyone off,” she said in a recent interview. “I said it was our monument. We are proud of it. We love it.”
Making Public Art Means Accepting That ‘You Can’t Please Everyone’
The Embrace statue by artist Hank Willis Thomas is seen in Boston surrounded by onlookers.
Photo by George Amman/Courtesy of Hank Willis Thomas
Other artists who’ve experienced their own public art controversies are sympathetic to Thomas.
“Criticizing specific angles of the sculpture out of its context is like judging an entire painting based solely on specific details,” artist Lava Thomas, who is not related to Hank, told ARTnews. “It’s a limited perspective.
In 2019, Lava Thomas learned that San Francisco had scrapped her winning proposal for a Maya Angelou monument because an elected official did not like the nonfigurative elements of her design, which included a nine-foot-tall bronze book with Angelou’s portrait on one side and her words on the other. It would take the artist another year of fighting through bureaucracy and organizing support until public officials reinstated her version, though it has yet to be completed.
When asked how to prepare for the public art process, she recommended that artists “develop a tough skin and accept that you can’t please everyone.”
Hank Willis Thomas seems to have developed that thick skin. He has been attending an classes at Harvard Business School in a classroom not far from where his 2015 artwork “Ernest and Ruth” once sat on the campus quad (That edition of the work has since been moved to Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C.). And, while he commutes between Boston and his homebase of New York, he is already planning a series of other public artworks — at least six in the near future — in cities like Seattle, Chicago, Miami, Austin, and San Antonio
It would stand to reason, then, that traveling to the Super Bowl and seeing Opportunity (reflection) surrounded by the 60,000 sports fans walking toward the game must be something of a relief for Thomas. The sculpture is based on his previous work, Opportunity, which belongs to a private collection and has a chameleon-like finish that changes color as the viewer passes it. Like many of his public artworks, the new monument will be placed outside, temporarily placed on the lawn outside the State Farm Stadium. it will then be on view for one year in front of the Arizona State University Art Museum.
“Hank’s powerful sculpture showcased during Super Bowl week beautifully represents the passion, strength, and hope at the heart of our game,” Peter O’Reilly, a spokesman for the NFL, said in a statement. “We hope the sculpture inspires the thousands of individuals who experience it throughout the week and well beyond.”
Thomas remains close to the spotlight, but this weekend he will not be the subject of scrutiny; for the moment. He can leave that burden to the coaches and players on the field.
“I just feel honored to be a part of all of it,” Thomas said.