Hi friends – you don’t need our show to tell you how profoundly strange the world can feel right now. After all, we live here too!
What this show is going to do for now is keep sharing some of the great and wild and wonderful stuff happening all over the world with you. I think we can definitely use a little bit of that presently.
Hang in there!
My inbox right now is several thousand emails from museums, zoos, concert halls and festivals announcing that for some time to come, they are keeping their doors closed.
Not unexpected, even if unprecedented and understandable.
But that also means some of the iconic parts of world culture, including works of art known the world over, are temporarily out of reach.
But not completely so, judging by the story I read on Artnet last week.
When Italy went on more or less total lockdown, the director of the Castello di Rivoli museum in Turin, Italy, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, said it was a public duty for the museum to find a way to serve people even while closed.
Artnet reports that she and her staff have been putting in marathon days at the museum to make the entire collection available online for those who aren’t allowed to go see it in person, including three special exhibitions that had just launched before the closure.
Other museums and galleries have been doing the same thing, while musicians are among those streaming special performances for their fans who may be at home.
As one museum director put it, “Even though museums have had to close their doors, art doesn’t stop.”
Here’s another story from the “art doesn’t stop” desk.
It’s the story of Wendy Hawkins, a North Carolinian who volunteers at a thrift shop in Kitty Hawk.
She said she was going through a stack of paintings late last year when she noticed one that stood out from the others.
Hawkins thought there was something unusual about the piece, so she took it to a local art museum for a consult.
It turns out the painting was part of a series of wood engravings from none other than Salvador Dali!
The work, which has Dali’s signature on it, sold to a local art lover for $1,200.
Hawkins says thrift shop customers started coming in to ask what other great works she may have spotted in the stacks.
Original Salvador Dali artwork discovered at Outer Banks thrift store (WAVY)
