iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Attention Philly Families! It is critical that we show Drexel and city government that our enthusiasm for the Academy of Natural Sciences is going strong! Bring your kids, friends, & neighbors down to the parkway on Saturday from 2-6pm. It's a kid-friendly rally to support the academy!

dinosaurs and bugs happily party together at the Save the Academy family rally. Saturday September 26, 2-6pm 1900 ben Franklin parkway, come dressed as your favorite dinosaur, insect, animal, or just yourself! There's a duck billed dino, a triceratops, a brachiosaurus, a pterodactyl, a millipede, dragonfly, and beetle!

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 10/08/2026

I've long hoped that the 250th anniversary would be used as an opportunity to spark investment in the nation's historical and cultural infrastructure. Instead, we're seeing money siphoned from NEH and NPS to fund the President's pet projects. To say that's a disappointment is an understatement. /8

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Steven Nelson @snelsonus.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Betye Saar would have tuned 100 on Thursday. She was an incredible artist and an amazing interlocutor. Rest in Power. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/a...

nytimes.com

Betye Saar, Artist Who Upended Black Stereotypes, Dies at 99 (Gift Article)

Working with dolls, family photographs, fabric scraps and other found objects, she became a leading figure in assemblage art.

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Garth Greenwell @garthgreenwell.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I shared some thoughts on David Hockney, whom I never met but whose work I’ve kept close for a long time. Also: his kindness to the great neglected painter Patrick Angus. Free post, no paywall. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/some-thoug...

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Carin Ruff @carinr.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Here is a gifted link to the NYT obit for Dito: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/t...

nytimes.com

Dito van Reigersberg, Avant-Garde and Drag Virtuoso, Dies at 53

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

The AAUP chapters at Vanderbilt & Wash U have issued a joint statement denouncing the “State of Scholarship” report commissioned by their chancellors. Please, let’s make this as widely read as the gaslighting to which it responds.

Joint Statement on the "State of Scholarship" Report
The Vanderbilt University and Washington University chapters of the American Association of University Professors express our profound disagreement with the "State of Scholarship" report commissioned by our universities' chancellors. The report distorts the state of humanistic and social scientific scholarship at our universities and in the academy overall. Worse, it proposes a shocking intrusion of university administration into faculty governance and portends greater threats to academic freedom that should concern all faculty.
The report currently appears on Vanderbilt's website under the insignia of both Vanderbilt and Washington Universities. It is already receiving public condemnation. As the American Council of Learned Societies makes clear, the report is founded on false premises and anecdotal evidence and thus does nothing to "ensure deeper and more meaningful relations among scholars and members of the public." No doubt more rebuttals from scholars, departments, and professional societies will follow. It suffices for us to say that the report falls far short of the standards of political neutrality and disinterested inquiry it claims to champion. Historians, literary scholars, and anthropologists are singled out for caricature while the authors fail to acknowledge their own public biases against scholarship performed in the name of social justice. Nor does the report divulge its source of funding or conflicts of interest that may entail - standard practice for any work of humanistic or social scientific scholarship. In sum, the report is itself a clear example of "politicized" research that its authors attempt to decry.
What is most alarming is the guidance the report offers to its intended audience of university chancellors and presidents. By falsely arguing that humanities and social science departments are in the throes of an epistemological crisis, the authors lay the groundwork for university adminis…

Weakening faculty governance does nothing to solve the real challenges facing our universities, and undermines our ability to effectively address society's most profound problems and challenges, from the inequalities of wealth and white supremacy to the political consequences of climate change.
Indeed, the direst threats to public trust in higher education are not philosophical debates about the nature of truth. Currently, the federal government is dramatically cutting funding for the humanities and social sciences as well as for the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, public health, and the arts. In response, university administrations have instituted austerity measures, even as administrative salaries and administrative positions have taken up an increasing share of decreasing budgets.
The best way for scholars to cultivate diverse opinions and advance knowledge is by strengthening academic freedom. Political threats to higher education have degraded, and will continue to degrade, the quality of all fields of our universities' research, to the detriment of America's global standing.
We note that the organizations now working most actively and successfully to defend academic free inquiry from politicized federal interference are not university leaders but the American Council of Learned Societies, the Modern Language Association, and the American Historical Association - professional societies of the very disciplines chastised by the report.
We call on our chancellors to rescind the report and affirm their commitment to the intellectual autonomy of faculty, academic departments, and governing faculty bodies. Administrative interference into academic departments, as licensed by this report, is a violation of the standards of academic freedom that have made American universities the envy of the world. Rather than undermining these bedrock principles, administrators should vigorously and publicly defend them.
Vanderbilt University AAUP
vanderbiltaaup@gmail.com
Wa…

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Internet Archive @archive.org · 08/06/2026

🎩 Visit MOROCCO from anywhere! 🌐 Even if you can't attend our in-person screening, you can watch this iconic Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper romance on the Internet Archive! Get your popcorn 🍿 & enjoy this 1930 classic, newly in the #publicdomain this year! 📽️ archive.org/details/moro... #PreCode

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The Advocate @advocate.com · 08/06/2026

Van Reigersberg helped expand what drag could look and sound like in Philadelphia: theatrical, literary, absurd, deeply musical, and emotionally alive.

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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 30/05/2024

Given current state of the Supreme Court, looks like I'm fated to post this Romare Bearden 1930s political cartoon critiquing the court ("The Supreme Court: The Great Barrier to Equality") over & over again until the end of time

A diminutive figure stands before an oversized judge's bench labeled "The Supreme Court," a hand appearing at top holding a gavel. A group of sheets falls in a cascade, each bearing a legend relating to Supreme court decisions. A caption above reads: "The Great Barrier to Equality"

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Mark Athitakis @mathitak.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

A beautiful appreciation by @bobmehr.bsky.social of D. Boon 40 years after his death, and profile of Watt and Hurley soldiering on. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/a...

nytimes.com

D. Boon’s Death Shook Punk Rock. 40 Years Later, Minutemen Look Back.

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Marin R. Sullivan @sculpturalthings.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Please consider signing this open letter regarding the shameful closing of the DePaul Art Museum openletter.earth/letter-oppos...

openletter.earth

Letter Opposing the Closing of DPAM

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Bradford Pearson @bradfordpearson.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Isaiah Zagar made Philadelphia, and in turn the world, a more beautiful place to live. May his memory be a blessing.

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Sarah Hotchkiss @sahotchkiss.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Scanned this incredible 2018 artifact of Bay Area arts spaces/projects, made by Carrie Hott for The Lab. How many have since closed and how many new things could we add?

dense text of art spaces in overlapping boxes with founding year and operating budget

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Frank Smigiel @frank-smigiel.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Thanks Sarah — it’s wild to spin such a catastrophic blow to the Bay Area arts community as some kind of win for downtown. Will CCA artist faculty be picked up by the new org? Will young artists still come to learn + dream & call the Bay home? How does this create new infrastructures for art?

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Mattilda B Sycamore @mbsycamore.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

"So if the violence of the deportations, and the crackdowns, and the cuts, and the raids, and the air strikes, haven’t been enough for you, let something so simple and evil as the daytime execution of a poet move you to action." Thank you, @literaryhub.bsky.social 💥

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Tony Bravo @tonybravosf.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Days before it was slated to close, Oasis gets a Christmas gift that will allow them to reopen in 2026. D'Arcy Drollinger gave me the exclusive! www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...

sfchronicle.com

Exclusive: S.F. drag club Oasis saved with multimillion-dollar gift

The LGBTQ cabaret and club was slated to shutter after New Year’s Eve, but will now continue, Oasis owner D’Arcy Drollinger confirmed, calling it “a Christmas miracle.”

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BeatGhoul @beatgrrrl.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Diane Arbus, Santas at the Santa Claus School, Albion, New York, 1964

image captures a moment in time with four men dressed as Santa Claus at the Santa Claus School in Albion, New York, by American photographer Diane Arbus in 1964.

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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

“I felt an urgency around protecting these stories that weren’t being told and wanting to make a more complete history," -Lauren O’Neill-Butler on her new essay collection, “The War of Art: A History of Artists’ Protest in America.” lareviewofbooks.org/article/america…

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Tom & Lorenzo @tomandlorenzo.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Getting to know this legend has been one of the greatest joys of my life and I'm so pleased to introduce you to her with this gorgeous feature from the Inquirer, where she speaks for the first time in over 30 years on her incredible journey share.inquirer.com/XdfXr9

share.inquirer.com

Harlow's still here

Fifty years ago, Harlow was the queen of Philadelphia nightlife, Jack Kelly’s girlfriend, and the city's most famous transgender woman. Today, she’s ready to tell her story.

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Brian PJ Cronin @brianpjcronin.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

In honor of Gehry, here’s a gift link to Herbert Muschamp’s memorable piece about the Guggenheim in Bilbao before it opened. “Have you seen the light? Have you seen the future? Does it work? Does it play?”

nytimes.com

The Miracle In Bilbao (Published 1997)

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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Oscar Wilde died on this day in 1900. Hear Patti Smith read the stunning letter he penned in prison, where he was thrown for loving whom he loved and where he received the injury that resulted in the cerebral meningitis that killed him www.themarginalian.org/2016/11/07/p...

themarginalian.org

De Profundis: Patti Smith Reads Oscar Wilde’s Stirring Letter on Suffering and Transcendence, Penned in Prison

“I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me… There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul.”

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Observations of Deviance @obsofdeviance.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Thousands of rare American recordings — some 100 years old — go online for all to enjoy A collaboration between UC Santa Barbara and the nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation laist.com/news/arts-an...

laist.com

Thousands of rare American recordings — some 100 years old — go online for all to enjoy

The project, which will include some 50,000 songs from private record collections, is a collaboration between UC Santa Barbara and the Dust-to-Digital Foundation.

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Publishers Hedi El Kholti and Dan Simon remember their friend Gary Indiana on the anniversary of his death: “I took Horse Crazy home with me and read it over the weekend, and I was amazed. It felt like a major personal discovery.”

buff.ly

“You’ll See, a Lot Will Happen When I Die.” Remembering Gary Indiana

At the time of Gary Indiana’s death on October 23rd, 2024, the writer was at work on several new projects with both his current publishers, Semiotext(e) and Seven Stories. Here Hedi El Kholti of Se…

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Frank Smigiel @frank-smigiel.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

“Documents reviewed by The Art Newspaper show that BXP, the property company leading the demolition effort and redevelopment of the Plaza, has largely been responsible for maintaining the Vaillancourt Fountain for almost 50 years.” news.artnet.com/art-world/va...

news.artnet.com

Fate of San Francisco's Brutalist Fountain in Question as New Documents Emerge | Artnet News

New documents show the property developer pushing to demolition Armand Vaillancourt's sculpture is responsible for maintaining it.

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Siddhartha Mitter @siddharthamitter.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Two very good essays on the selected writings of Okwui Enwezor, recently published by Duke University Press. One is by Oluremi C. Onabanjo: 4columns.org/onabanjo-olu... (1/2)

4columns.org

Okwui Enwezor

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Hyperallergic @hyperallergic.com · 06/10/2025

Over 16 years, Hyperallergic has been home to over 2,500 voices in independent art journalism. Now, it's time for a new Editor-in-Chief. Welcome, Hakim Bishara.

hyperallergic.com

Meet Hyperallergic’s New Editor-in-Chief

After 16 years in the role, I'm passing the torch to Hakim Bishara as I transition to the role of editor-at-large.

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Garth Greenwell @garthgreenwell.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Beauford Delaney’s final self-portrait is a moving testament to his lifelong quest to accept his sexuality, especially when seen alongside his first portrait of James Baldwin. Free post; no paywall. Full essay here: garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/on-beaufor...

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Faye Anderson @andersonatlarge.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

My nomination was approved! 🎉 In 2026—the 250th anniversary of his birth—Moses Williams, a master silhouette artist, will be honored with a PA historical marker. For too long, only his enslaver, Charles Willson Peale, was remembered. #MosesWilliams250 #TellTheFullStory @vruss.bsky.social

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Brian Boucher™️ @brianboucher.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Trump’s promised review of Smithsonian exhibitions was too much for these historians. So they pushed back using good old-fashioned email lists. news.artnet.com/art-world/ci...

news.artnet.com

Meet the Historians Documenting Every Object at the Smithsonian

A group of citizen historians, alarmed by Donald Trump's targeting of Smithsonian museums, are on a mission to document their displays.

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gregorg @greg.org · 22/09/2025

I had to track down this 1986 photo of designer Willi Smith's Lispenard St loft from NY Mag because it showed his friends' art: Christo & Jeanne Claude's prints, the painting Keith Haring made for him for New Years, and Dan Friedman's Africa-shaped coffee table greg.org/archive/2025...

a screenshot of a 1986 photo of a mostly white loft, with a pillow filled white sofa on the left, and a dark metal looking screen behind it, and a coffee table shaped like africa in front of it, and zebra printed rugs on the floor in the foreground, and behind a bent plywood breuer armchair, a set of five christo lithographs and a black and white keith haring painting hang on the white wall. some distinctive floor lamps I wish I'd looked into more are in the middle right. from ny magazine 1986, designer willi smith's loft, designed with rosemary peck

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Frank Smigiel @frank-smigiel.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Ted Barrow: “Vaillancourt’s fountain blasts with Brutalist vim — massive concrete tubes jutting upward, like a kinetic portrait of the city itself in rushing water and bas-relief abstraction.” www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...

sfchronicle.com

Removing the Vaillancourt Fountain will destroy more than an epic skate spot

OPINION: Armand Vaillancourt’s Brutalist fountain has always provoked debate. To destroy it, however, would be to obliterate the last truly insurgent modernist voice left in the Embarcadero.

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Carolina A. Miranda @cmonstah.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

The first graf in this obit is the sort of life I aspire to: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/b...

nytimes.com

Rosalyn Drexler, Artistic Whirlwind Who Defied Categories, Dies at 98

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San Francisco Review of Whatever @sfreviewofwhatever.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

In “Vaillancourt Fountain,” skateboarder and art historian Ted Barrow situates everyone’s favorite fountain, currently under threat of redevelopment, on the past and future Embarcadero. To read SAN FRANCISCO REVIEW OF A FOUNTAIN, order Issue Two here: sfrw.square.site/product/issu...

Image from around 1970 of the fountain flowing.

Tomato pink background with black outlined rectangles and black and blue text within: In skate videos and magazines of the late eighties and early nineties, the fountain looked otherworldly—an enigmatic relic from some radical civilization. That is what it was! What city but San Francisco could have built something so bold? Ted Barrow, Vaillancourt Fountain

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Frank Smigiel @frank-smigiel.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

SF Examiner on RUPTURE's "immersive" *Diasporadica*: “‘Immersion means, in our case, a reckoning with the raw elements of our performance environment, and more broadly, world,’ said San Francisco-based co-creator Gabriele Christian. ‘We don’t do immersion as a numbing agent or an escape.’”

Central scaffold set in Fort Mason’s pier 3 Festival Pavilion for RUPTURE’s *Diasporadica* immersive performance suite.

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Mission Local @missionlocal.org · 21/08/2025

Christo Oropeza, the owner of Incline Gallery in the Mission, wants to cultivate emerging artists in San Francisco. missionlocal.org/2025/08/sf-i...

missionlocal.org

How one Noe Valley kid turned a detour from S.F. State into a defining arts role

Christo Oropeza, the owner of Incline Gallery in the Mission, wants to cultivate emerging artists in San Francisco.

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Mission Local @missionlocal.org · 01/08/2025

Ruth Asawa and David Ireland both left their artistic mark on the Mission. Today, collaborative art projects in the neighborhood connect people who never even knew them. missionlocal.org/2025/07/ruth...

missionlocal.org

Ruth Asawa and David Ireland inspire art in the Mission

The two artists never knew one another, but this summer 13 Bay Area teenagers have been making art that connects the two.

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Peaches Christ @peacheschrist.com · 23/07/2025

Since Monday’s announcement, I’ve heard from folks wondering why SF Oasis is closing. Marke B at @48hills.bsky.social had a heartfelt conversation with D'Arcy Drollinger and does a great job laying it all out. Read here: 48hills.org/2025/07/why-...

48hills.org

Why beloved drag club Oasis is closing—and how its spirit must live on - 48 hills

'I want to see SF continue to have an underground art scene,' says owner D'Arcy Drollinger. 'But this is where we're at, and it's sad.'

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Siddhartha Mitter @siddharthamitter.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

New from me — on Mavis Pusey, her survey show open now at ICA Philadelphia (coming next to the Hammer in LA and Studio Museum in NYC) — and the decade of curatorial sleuthing to locate her artworks and fill out her story. GIFT LINK www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/a...

nytimes.com

This Groundbreaking Artist Vanished. A Decade of Sleuthing Reveals Her Greatness.

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