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The Maxo Vanka Murals, viewable online, may be Pittsburgh’s best visual entry point into consideration of the combination of economic inequality and global threat. Vanka (1889 - 1963), who painted his 25 murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale in 1937-1941. Served in the Belgian Red Cross during World War I. Many of his murals depict the horrors of war and of poverty. (The image of Injustice holds unbalanced scales and wears a gasmask.) As COVID-19 has many people thinking about both “putting on their own oxygen masks first” and helping those around them, Vanka’s murals may help to focus both thought and discussion. (A University of Pittsburgh focused note: Vanka’s image of Injustice is the cover image the most recent book by political scientist and Global Studies Director Michael Goodhart: Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World.) |
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The Life-and-Death Shift: Doctors on the Front Lines in Northern Italy—photographs by Andrea Frazzetta and text by Jason Horowitz |
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Named one of the top-ten art podcasts by The New York Times in March 2020, Momus: The Podcast promotes “criticism in conversation” on a variety of timely issues relating to contemporary art and the present moment. In the face of the pandemic, it is issuing new podcasts every two weeks, “staring directly at our present crisis, with an eye to both history and potential,” beginning with this question put to art historian Eleanor Nairne, curator at London’s Barbican Art Gallery: what’s changed – and what should? “This prompt was already set, but with the emerging pandemic and its irreversible effects on our economy, cultural metabolism, relationship to art, sense of agency, and connection to one other, there has never been a better time to ask it.” |
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14 Days of Enforced Home Quarantine by Gareth Fuller |