I suggest going for six and adding Clementine Hunter forger, William Toye. The one above is genuine, from The Ogden’s permanent collection.
Laurel’s Mark Landis made artnet’s list, 5 of the Most Notorious Art Thieves, Swindlers, and Forgers of the 21st Century
Where He Is Now: Donating works, even phony ones, to museums without any financial incentive, it turns out, is not against the law—so Landis never actually saw any consequences for his deceptions — though the costs of his donations to museums cost something to the tune of $5 million. In 2014, Art and Craft, a documentary about his life, came out, and museums have made an effort to expose his works. That said, Landis seems undeterred and has attempted to donate dozens more forgeries even after his story was exposed.
Also: some of the aforementioned have already been made into docs/films but every one of them is A+ material for one or more.
A still I took from Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors, from its stop at The Frist in Nashville. I loved this experience so much I cried.
Artnet’s The 100 Works of Art That Defined the Decade, Ranked includes the Dread Scott Slave Rebellion Reenactment, Kerry James Marshall’s (he was born in Birmingham) Untitled (Gallery), 2016, my fave Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors (2012)
above: the thermostat at the Hyatt French Quarter. I set it to 45* before bed, and we woke up to…I don’t know…something approximating 45*. HyattFQ: you rock.
Super random: The Atlantic on Your Bedroom is Too Hot (the temp) — and fam, it is a glorious 60*.
If that wasn’t quite super random enough: Why the Amish are Montana’s Most Devoted Backcountry Skiers, which is really, really so so so good.
Jane Robbins Kerr: Bits and Pieces from Mississippi exhibit at Oglethorpe in Atlanta, running January 10 – March 1.
above: everyone likes their charoset a little different, so I do a charoset bar
Among Google’s top trending recipe searches of 2019: the Popeyes chicken sandwich recipe, king cake, hot toddy, and charoset.
Via Hyperallergic: Among the rolling green hills and grey-brown trees in winter, a rainbow of colors and patterns cropped up in Fort Smith, Arkansas. As part of a collaboration between Spanish street artist Okuda San Miguel, global creative house Justkids and 64.6 Downtown, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing the area, an uninhabited house received a fresh makeover into a “Rainbow Embassy,” welcoming visitors far and wide to the neighborhood.
one of Butch Anthony’s Intertwangalisms that hung in Balise
Coulter Fussell: The Raw Materials of Escape and Butch Anthony: Inside/Out will be on view now at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston January 17 to February 29, 2020.
Saw this last week: dreidel ornament on one of the Christmas trees at the Windsor Court — “I wish that I could get a autograph from Joe Burrow”
The NYT ran the obit for Barbara Testa, who found the manuscript for the first half of Huckleberry Finn in her attic. Backstory really interesting.
“It would certainly be the greatest literary discovery of the 20th century,” one expert told The Los Angeles Times. So revered was the novel that another expert likened its discovery to “the British finding a working manuscript of ‘King Lear’ or ‘Hamlet.’”
Flatfoot dancing is different from clogging, and are some of these people at the Happy Valley Fiddlers Convention in North Carolina wetting the bottoms of their pants? Does it keep them down so they’re not flapping while dancing?
Eutaw, Alabama represent.
Harlan Greene, author of “Mr. Skylark: John Bennett and the Charleston Renaissance” writes the Post and Courier about the beliefs behind haint blue ceilings.
Elizabeth Spencer, author of, most famously, “Light in the Piazza,” has passed away. Her obit was in the NYT:
Old enough to know ex-slaves and Civil War veterans, Spencer chronicled her complicated affection for her ties to tiny Carrollton, Mississippi — her determination to honor them and to leave them behind. Like her predecessor and fellow Mississippian, William Faulkner, she was an author praised by strangers and shunned by acquaintances.
Christie’s has announced its upcoming January 17 sale of Bill Traylor’s Man on White, Woman on Red / Man with Black Dog (double-sided), with an est of $200-400k.
Via artnet: It comes from the personal collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, who was gifted the work by Steven Spielberg after filming wrapped on the movie adaption of her novel, The Color Purple. Walker, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, described the artwork as “a gift from someone I consider a genius with soul,” but ultimately explained that “my spirit tells me it is time for it to find a new home.” (She went on to explain that wildfires in California have made her nervous, and happy to have the Traylor find “a safer wall than mine on which to hang.”)
From the NYT: In Appalachia, Crafting a Road to Recovery With Dulcimer Strings
But last year, an unlikely group of renegades — suspender-wearing luthiers from the Appalachian Artisan Center here — embarked on a novel approach to the hopelessness of addiction called Culture of Recovery, an apprentice program for young adults rebounding from the insidious treadmill of opioids and other substances. Participants, about 150 so far, learn traditional arts like luthiery — the making and repairing of stringed instruments — under the tutelage of skilled artisans.
KDRH #43- Van Ramey and Charles Lykins and The Troublesome Boys from Appalachian Artisan Center on Vimeo.
the roast duck at Little Chinatown
Ian McNulty on Flavors and Lessons in the Melting Pot of a Kenner Strip Mall and nice that Little Chinatown (my fave Christmas Day meal) and Pollas a la Brasas (also fab) get a mention.
Alex Beggs at Bon Appetit with a tiny piece called The Most Ridiculous Baking Project Is the Bûche de Noël. I found last week at Poupart’s Bakery in Lafayette, Louisiana:
This very 1986 house in Chastain Park (Atlanta)
at Poche’s in Breaux Bridge
Y’all keep this in mind (via Texas Monthly’s article Feral Hogs Are Invading Yankeeland. Northern Friends, Here’s What You Need to Know. Tips from Texans who trap, kill, and study wild pigs.):
“If you start throwing little box traps at them because they’re cheap, you might catch four or five and think you’re doing good,” he says. “Well, if there are fifteen pigs out there, you just educated the other ten. There’s only one thing worse than a feral hog, and that’s an educated feral hog.”
Seriously, though, feral hogs are no joke. Also: sorry too about the nutria, armadillos, fire ants, kudzu…
Bill Ferris’ 1978 Hush Hoggies Hush, about Tim Johnson’s pigs, taught to pray before they eat at the trough in Bentonia, Mississippi.
Don’t care that they are a DFW-area barbecue restaurant. No to this.
Carson McCuller’s home in Columbus, Georgia
Available for pre-order: My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (read the description here at Square Books)
hot fire chicken with pickles at Compere Lapin. Was great.
Esquire’s 40 Most Important Restaurants of the Decade which, how can you even, really (like most of these genre lists)? Nothingggg against these, but we’re missing just a lot of representation from <$$$ restaurants here. Among those listed:
Catbird Seat, Nashville
Compere Lapin, New Orleans
Curate, Asheville
The Grey, Savannah
Husk, Charleston
Knife, Dallas
Little Jack’s Tavern, Charleston
Nancy’s Hustle, Houston
Seven Reasons, DC
Turkey & The Wolf, New Orleans
Smoky Mountain Sushi, with (Benton’s) prosciutto, collards, and blackeyed peas, from Amy Campbell at the Tennessee Farm Table. And that is a great podcast, always.
We had a great holiday break and hope you did too. xoxo!