Wow: The third national race and education conference is coming right up at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma September 25 through 27, with a stupendous lineup of speakers and workshops. The headlining speakers are Henry Louis Gates Jr., Angela Davis, Winona LaDuke, and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. The artists who are speaking and/or performing are: pianist Awadagin Pratt, Marita Dingus, C. Rosalind Bell, Yazmin Monet Watkins, Carletta Carrington Wilson, and Antonio Davison-Gomez. Check it, check it, check it.

The Huffington Post Acknowledges Ellen Forney's Greatness: If you haven't read Stranger Genius of Literature Ellen Forney's brilliant memoir Marbles, the Huffington Post published an excerpt of it today under the headline "What Bipolar Disorder Really Feels Like," with additional commentary from Forney.

Cool Projects Up for Funding from Rhizome’s Internet Art Microgrants: A judge is making the final decision on who gets the five $500 grants, but it’s worth seeing the proposed art projects, ranging from Nous, a your-future-is-creepy project that’s “a comprehensive psychosocial monitoring service for mental health professionals,” where shrinks watch what you do online to track your changing emotional and psychological state; BANGED, "a platform for the women who have been on the receiving end of Roosh's dick”; and Kickended, a place where failed Kickstarter campaigns will live on in an archive of ideas that didn’t draw dollars. Ya gotta see all 20.

”No art, only labor”: Factory is the title of new director Scott Lawrimore’s first exhibition at the newly renovated Jacob Lawrence Gallery at UW, opening the night of October 14. From the press release: "Industry is the first Showroom program as part of Factory, a series of displays, labor demonstrations, motivational speeches, quality controls, and new product launches organized by the Jacob Lawrence Gallery to explore the question, 'Is a school a factory?’” The artist list includes El Anatsui, Lucian Freud, Mokarrameh Ghanbari, Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Ive, Jacob Lawrence, Julie Mehretu, Claude Monet, Griselda Pollock, Jackson Pollock, Augusta Savage, Paula Scher, Edward Steichen, Pablita Velarde, Peter Voulkos, Beatrice Wood, and many others. Part of the show is Factory Picnic, “a labor meeting open to the public held every Wednesday at noon at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery.” After this exhibition, part two of Factory, subtitled Idleness, opens November 19.

Raphaelle Peales 1814 still life.
  • Seattle Art Museum
  • Raphaelle Peale's 1814 still life.

New Old Stuff at SAM: Ruth J. Nutt was a really interesting woman; she was a nurse, she collected decorative arts, and she died in 2013. Now, part of her collection has come to Seattle Art Museum: 45 pieces of early American art, silver, furniture, and needlework. The headlining piece is a 12-by-19-inch oil painting on wood panel by Raphaelle Peale, made in 1814 and depicting “the exotic objects collected by Peale’s father, painter and naturalist Charles Willson Peale: a silver mounted ostrich egg from Africa, a Chinese export porcelain pitcher, a celadon bowl, a finely crafted silver spoon, and a gathering of strawberries cultivated on the family’s experimental farm.” There’s also a three-quart tankard, made circa 1685 by Jeremiah Dummer, which is unusually large and exceptionally decorated; a silver tankard by Tiffany and Company titled Son Chow, created for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893; and two pieces made by very early artists you might call African American. Those pieces are the Chatelaine Hook (ca. 1810), a piece of silver made by Peter Bentzon, the first silversmith of African descend working in America to be recognized by his maker’s mark, according to SAM, and a needlework sampler made in 1831 by a 10-year-old named Charlotte Turner, “a liberated African slave who was resettled to the Bathurst settlement in Sierra Leone. This is the only known example produced within this population.” The art isn’t on display or have an outing date yet, said spokeswoman Wendy Malloy.

The Best News We've Heard All Day: GWAR have a new frontwoman, and her name is Vulvatron.

There's a Line Between Tacky and Gross: And World of Wonder—producer of RuPaul's Drag Race—makes mincemeat of it by helping convicted murderer Michael Alig sell art he made in prison.

Hate Poor People? Why not join Netropolitan, the Facebook clone that costs $9000 to join?