What Sin Is Purged Here in the Circle Where We Are Standing? (2023)

Tammy Nguyen’s painting was not on view the last time I visited the Toledo Art Museum — at least I’m pretty certain it wasn’t. But even if it were, this was the visit during which it demanded my attention. Here’s a link to more about this startling and compelling work.

At the Smart Museum yesterday, I experienced a similar sense of discovery when I encountered Patrick Nagatani’s Beware Artist. We were in the area for the Sunday matinee of An Iliad at the Court, which is drop-everything-and-get-your-tickets theater. We had seen Timothy Edward Kane in this role three times before — live in the 2013 production and in the 2020 production at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum (formerly, the Oriental Institute) and streaming during the pandemic. Mesmerizing as he was then, he is even more spectacular in this iteration of The Poet. The post-show discussion with Kendall Sharpe of the University of Chicago Graham School and Charlie Newell, former artistic director of the theater, was time spent well, too. We returned for the evening performance, which featured Kane’s understudy, Jason Huysman. To me, the role of The Poet is not necessarily to be interpreted as Homer but rather as one of many singers of the Iliad, so it was a gift to hear another vocalist, to encounter the material in a different way. While both actors impart the heroic, the beautiful, and the doomed, however, Kane is, as Newell suggested in his remarks, a demigod, and like Achilles, his work towers above that of other men, his shield illuminates worlds, and his voice stops hearts.

After sleeping in this morning, we walked, then finished all of the yard work in time to watch the Vera C. Rubin Observatory “First Look Event.” Sharing the link with my sister and nephew, I wrote, Humans may be warriors and conquerors, but we are storytellers and stargazers, too.