Litigations and festivities

Des Moines Metro Opera returns in late June.

The art world went to court this spring, a lot. In San Francisco the family of Armand Vaillancourt lost its legal fight to prevent The City from dissembling and moving his brutalist Vaillancourt Fountain from Embarcadero Plaza. San Francisco will spend $4 million to move the neglected political sculpture, labeled “one of urban America’s truly bizarre works of public art and a reminder of midcentury mistakes” by architectural critic John King.

In New York City it was leaked that Mayor Mamdani scolded King Charles of England to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India. The King’s office refused comment about the private meeting. Activists filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice demanding its return. Also in England, a Botticelli painting was placed under an export ban in an effort to keep it from going back to Italy.

In lawyer-free news, Taina H. Cruz broke out as the hottest artist of the moment. Worldly curators reportedly are “falling over each other to work with her.” Just graduated from Yale, she specializes in “female figures with a moody, woozy, sometimes unsettled or unsettling atmosphere” and “intimations of horror and fantasy,” according to critics Sonia Manalili and Ben Davis. Her themes sound a lot like Des Moines’ Anna Gaskill, another Yale art school prodigy.

Cruz is the youngest artist, by far, in the Whitney Biennial where her huge mural of a disturbing young woman was installed on the museum’s outdoor walls to the distress of neighbors.   

In Des Moines, another star-blazing prodigy wowed us. Amaryn Olmeda returned to the Des Moines Symphony last month for the first time since her debut here two years ago. She’s 18 now. We only learned that because the Dallas Symphony surprised her in March playing “Happy Birthday” after her performance with them. 

Olmeda has been shrouded in mystery since her sensational Carnegie Hall solo debut at age 14. Born in Australia, she is an American citizen now. San Francisco, New England and New York all claim her. Her ancestry has been described as Armenian, but usually just as LatinX. Her parents are unknown and her birthday was too until Dallas. Her Des Moines performance of Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto in E minor” was wildly applauded, the biggest ovation we have seen here in years.

June touts

Until the end of the month when Des Moines Metro Opera kicks off its challenging season of Polish, American and Puccini operas, summer arts here are mostly in aestivation. Thus, our June touts are road trips. “Violins of Hope” is a collection of 70 restored instruments played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust. They are in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area on a two-month residency. Exhibitions, concerts, worship services, films and lectures go on through June 29.    

In Kansas City, “Timeless Mucha” celebrates the visionary work of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939), whose elegant figures and whiplash lines defined the Art Nouveau movement and covered Janis Joplin albums. Featuring more than 100 works, this exhibition plays Nelson-Atkins through Aug. 26.

Another Nelson-Atkins show, through Aug. 23, explores “Water Embodied: Flow and Meaning of Water in Japanese Art.” It premiered after our press time but I wish we could send the Iowa legislature to see it on a mission of learning and respect.

In Chicago, a major exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago explores the aesthetics of another Iowa essential — corn. “Edgar Calel: Corn Mountain of Life (Ixim Juyu K’aslem)” is of, by and about corn. Calel presents a hut called K’ojay in Kaqchikel, the artist’s first language, which translates to “we have a house” and/or “we have a future.” In Maya cosmology, corn not only symbolizes the element from which humanity was formed but also is the central sustaining force of life. I wish we could send the curators of Des Moines Art Center on a mission of learning exactly what Iowa is, before they rename it The Caribbean Museum of Social Justice in Des Moines. ♦

Jim Duncan is a food and art writer who has been covering the central Iowa scene for more than five decades.