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Meet The Women Challenging What A Successful Athlete Looks Like

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Eva McCloskey (or “Evalicious,” if she’s laced up) has no time for the stereotypes that often color public perception of Roller Derby.


“Only once you see a game live do you have an appreciation for the immense amount of dedication, strategy and training involved,” the captain of the Brooklyn Bombshells, a team in the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league, told The Huffington Post.


McCloskey feels that too many dismiss the sport she loves as a theatrical display of female wrestling ― a sweeping simplification that not only diminishes the sport’s fierce athleticism, but the values it espouses.


As one of the few sports that is defined by its female leagues, a feminist ethos colors every aspect of the game ― from the tattoos, piercings, and gritty pink skates found on the crash pad, to the type of dedicated athletes involved. Roller Derby women celebrate the diversity in their body types, ages, and sexual identities. The sport offers an alternative vision of what a successful, competitive athlete looks like, and this spirit extends beyond teams, leagues, and national borders.


You could pop down a skater in a new country and with a little bit of outreach you could find a group of friendly people who will take you in and invite you to practice with them,” McCloskey said.


As the sport becomes more popular and professional ― some skaters hope that Roller Derby will be an Olympic sport one day ― the women who have spearheaded its rise intend to preserve the game’s feminist ethos.


“Because everyone has been so involved in leading the sport since the beginning, everyone is trying to continue to do that in a really smart way and maintain control in terms of how we’re broadcast and who we’re talking to with international and national sponsorships,” said McClosky. 


Watch the video above to meet the athletes who are not only role models for the next generation of skaters, but girls everywhere.


Video produced, shot and edited by Savannah O’Leary, motion graphics by Isabella Carapella and Adam Glucksman

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The Poster Art At The Women's March On Washington Will Be Powerful

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The Women’s March on Washington is set to become the largest inauguration day demonstration, garnering well over 180,000 positive RSVPS on Facebook alone. After initial bumps in the organizational road, the event is moving full speed ahead ― and yes, that involves some impressive poster art planning.


Women’s March organizers partnered with the Amplifier Foundation, a “visual media experiment dedicated to amplifying the voices of grassroots movements,” to create a call out for poster art from women-identifying and non-binary people across the country. The group promised to award the artist behind each selected design a $500 grant, accepting submissions until Jan. 8.


Come deadline day, Amplifier had received over 5,000 submissions to the open call. The judges ― Carmen Perez and Paola Mendoza from the Women’s March on Washington, Amplifier’s Cleo Barnett, artist Swoon, and Jess X. Snow and Favianna Rodriguez ― originally planned on picking just five winners by Jan. 10, however, they ended up settling on eight different graphics that have already been sent to “female-owned and -operated printers in Philadelphia.”


Five of the eight poster designs are currently available, free of charge, for you to download and print ― and potentially hold high come Jan. 21. (You can check out those designs in full below.) Amplifier is also making sure that at least 30,000 posters and nine large-scale banners will be present at the march for participants who wish to pick one up (again, free of charge) on the day of the event. According to Amplifier, there will soon be a map of the various distribution points where interested parties can pick up their poster art around Washington, D.C.


“The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office,” organizers explain on the Women’s March website, “and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.”


We will be updating this post with more poster art, courtesy of Cleo Barnett from Amplifier, once it’s made available. So, if you’re planning on marching in D.C. or a city near you ― and are in need of some powerful signage ― check back in soon.






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This Man Is Writing Ridiculously Hilarious Gay Porn About 'Domald Tromp'

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Author Chuck Tingle is at it again with his hilarious gay erotica that regularly makes light of the current social and political climate.


Tingle previously made waves with works like Pounded By The Gay Color-Changing Dress in response to #TheDress that broke the internet and Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications of Britain Leaving The European Union in the aftermath of Brexit.


For his latest book, Tingle features a character that might seem more than vaguely familiar.


Behold: Domald Tromp Pounded In The Butt By The Handsome Russian T-Rex Who Also Peed On His Butt And Then Blackmailed Him With The Videos Of His Butt Getting Peed On.



In an email using highly unorthodox language and grammar, Tingle, who is 45 years old and lives in Billings, Montana, told The Huffington Post: “It is important to remember [the book] is about DOMALD TROMP... This is a notorious real estate man from a timeline very close to this one but he is a different scoundrel.”



The author, who told The Huffington Post he’s a “retired doctor of holistic massage” and who has 108 self-published books for sale on Amazon, says that the intent of all of his books is to “prove love.” He adds, “Every moment is so important even this one right now I would like us all to seize that and do something powerful with it.”


Tingle says he’s not worried about legal action from the notoriously litigious president-elect. “I do not write stories about Donald Trump, I write about DOMS TROMP or DONS TRUMP, who do not exist on this timeline,” he says. The author, who says his sexual orientation is “bud on bud,” also noted that, “I am very careful about my privacy as a doctor. I do not even upload my own books — they are uploaded by son’s online friend, so it would be hard to track me as [Chuck Tingle] — maybe like [Banksy].”


Tingle has written about a figure resembling the president-elect before in President Domald Loch Ness Tromp Pounds America’s Butt and we’re guessing he has more up he sleeve. Good thing, too. We need it now more than ever.


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This Little Bookworm Has Read More Than 1,000 Books -- And She's Only 4

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Georgia 4-year-old Daliyah Marie Arana has read more books than many adults. And what better way to celebrate her love for reading than by getting to be “librarian for the day” at the world’s largest library?


On Wednesday, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden tweeted two photos of herself and Daliyah walking around the Library of Congress. In the tweet, Hayden, who is the first woman and first African-American to lead the library, wrote that the 4-year-old has already read more than 1,000 books.






In an interview with the Gainesville Times, Daliyah’s mother, Haleema Arana, said her daughter began reading when she was about 2 years old. Arana had her participate in Georgia’s 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program, which encourages kids to read 1,000 books before their first day of kindergarten. Arana told the paper that Daliyah finished all 1,000 books before her first day of preschool. 


In the photos Hayden tweeted, Daliyah looked right at home in the Library of Congress. Her mom told The Washington Post it is her “most favorite, favorite, favorite library in the whole wide world.” 


Deliyah, who has a library card of her own so she can check out books as often as she desires, wants to encourage other kids to read as well. She may have already read more than 1,000 books, but she plans on reading many more. In fact, she told local news station CBS46 that she hopes to “read 100,000.” 

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This Underwater Art Museum Is An Ocean Lover's Dream

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Scuba divers, look out: You may encounter a few more humans below the surface soon.


Museo Atlántico, Europe’s first underwater museum, opened this week off the coast of Lanzarote, Canary Islands. The museum’s submerged sculptures will serve as an artificial reef for fish and other sea life, giving a break to heavily trafficked natural reefs and helping replenish an ecosystem that’s been worked over by erosion.


About $9 for snorkelers and $13 for divers (not including gear) gets you an hour with the sculptures, which convey urgent messages about the state of our oceans:






Museo Atlántico is the brainchild of Jason deCairnes Taylor, a sculptor whose work also appears off the coasts of Mexico and the Bahamas.


His new, nearly 27,000-square-foot wonderland is meant to be toured in order, like a real museum. By the end, swimmers should have a renewed sense of urgency around protecting our oceans, especially after witnessing the 98-foot-long, 1,102-ton wall called “Crossing the Rubicon.”


“In times of increasing patriotism and protectionism, the wall aims to remind us that we cannot segregate our oceans, air, climate or wildlife as we do our land and possessions,” deCairnes Taylor said in a press release. “The work aims to mark 2017 as a pivotal moment, a line in the sand and reminder that our world’s oceans and climate are changing and we need to take urgent action before its too late.”


We couldn’t agree more.





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Family Pays Tribute To Newborn Twin’s Short Life With Stunning Photos

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On Dec. 17, Lyndsay and Matthew Brentlinger welcomed fraternal twins.


The arrival of the two seemingly healthy babies, a boy named William and girl named Reagan, felt like a miracle to the Ohio parents. 


During Lyndsay’s pregnancy, doctors had told the couple that William would likely be stillborn due to heart abnormalities. A heart specialist also told them that there was a chance Will would be born alive, but that his time with them would be limited. The doctor told them that he couldn’t predict if they’d have hours, days or weeks with their son. 



“I was so happy they were finally here and that Will was stable,” Lyndsay told HuffPost. “But I was also scared of when I would lose him.”


The family decided they’d celebrate William’s life while they could.



“We snuggled him, loved him, read to him and in general just enjoyed him,” Lyndsay told HuffPost. 


Mandy Edwards, a family friend, wanted to help the family preserve this very special time.


A day after the twin’s birth, Edwards reached out to Lindsey Brown, a local photographer she had been following on social media, and asked if she was available last minute to take on a family photo shoot that she wanted to gift to the Brentlingers.



“I knew immediately I had to do this for them,” Brown told HuffPost, despite being booked solid due to the holidays. “How could anyone with a heart say no to that?”  


Knowing time was of the essence, Brown drove to the family’s home on Dec. 20 for the urgent photo shoot.



“These two parents are two of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” Brown told HuffPost. “They treated both babies like nothing was wrong whatsoever. That was touching to see.” 


Brown also noted that the babies were perfect models.



“You never would have known anything was wrong with William, which makes the story that much harder,” Brown said. “I will say we noticed he was quite alert, and calm. Just staring around the room, gazing, like he was trying to take it all in. Little Reagan just snoozed the entire time!” 


At the end of the session, the photographer and the parents all shed a few tears and went their separate ways.



William survived through Christmas and got to celebrate the holiday with his family.


Unfortunately, on Dec. 28, he passed.


The family has Brown’s gorgeous photos, which Lyndsay describes as one of her “most treasured possessions,” to remember him by.



She has already placed the pictures in a locket Matthew gave to her for Christmas.


“Most importantly, I plan to share them with Will’s sister, Reagan, when she is older,” Lyndsay told HuffPost. “I will use them to tell her about her brother who is now her angel in heaven.”

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Somehow, The Number Of Female Directors Got Even Smaller Last Year

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Another year has come and gone in Hollywood, and one unfortunate trend persists: There’s a lack of women behind the camera.


A new study from San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, released by executive director Dr. Martha Lauzen, paints a bleak picture of gender parity in filmmaking. Looking at the 250 top-grossing films of 2016, researchers found that just 7 percent were directed by women. This number is actually down from 2015, when 9 percent found women at the helm.


“It is remarkable that with all of the attention and talk over the last couple of years in the business and the film industry, the numbers actually declined,” said Lauzen to Variety. “Clearly the current remedies aren’t working.”


While non-male people take up roughly half of the country’s population, they certainly don’t behind the scenes in Hollywood. The same study found that women made up 24 percent of producers, 17 percent of editors, 13 percent of writers and 5 percent of cinematographers. The study didn’t factor race into these statistics, which likely means that women of color working on top films is even smaller.


Here’s a sobering bit of data from the study that shows how men are employed in greater numbers on films. 



In 2016, slightly over one-third or 35% of films employed 0 or 1 woman in the roles considered. 52% of films employed 2 to 5 women, 11% employed 6 to 9 women, and 2% employed 10 or more women. In contrast, 2% of films employed 0 or 1 man in the roles considered, 3% employed 2 to 5 men, 19% employed 6 to 9 men, and the remaining majority (76%) employed 10 or more men.



In a separate study from the same institute published in May 2016, women directors were shown to fare slightly better in independent films, taking up 28 percent of the share there. That’s no surprise given the surfeit of men hired to direct studio blockbusters.



If you’re wondering whether women didn’t create commercially viable or quality films in 2016, that's simply not the case. Women were behind a number of big-budget films, like “Kung Fu Panda 3,” co-directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson; “Miracles from Heaven,” directed by Patricia Riggen; “Queen of Katwe,” directed by Mira Nair; and “Bridget Jones’s Baby,” directed by Sharon Maguire.


Critically acclaimed films in 2016 like “American Honey,” “The Edge of Seventeen,” “Maggie’s Plan,” “Certain Women” and “The Fits” were also all directed by women.


The results of studies like the ones from San Diego State can come down to the gatekeepers — if female directors aren’t being considered for big-budget ventures or reboots of beloved films, it stands to reason they might not figure in box office hits. Without support from the ground up — be it in universities, funding, film festivals or major studios, it’s impossible to envision a Hollywood where all voices have an equal chance to be heard.

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Laurie Hernandez Proves She's (Kinda) Like Your Average Teen

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Laurie Hernandez is just like your average 16 year old.


The gymnast paid Ellen DeGeneres a visit on Thursday to talk about her new memoir, I Got This: To Gold and Beyond. But the New Jersey native also shared some of the simple teen-type things she’d like to do this year. 


After telling DeGeneres about the awkwardly prominent placement of her “Dancing With The Stars’” Mirrorball Trophy at home, she admitted that after such a busy year she wants to take it easy in 2017.


Hernandez said two things she wants to do in the new year is go on her first date and get her driver’s license. When the host asked her about how she’s planning to get that first date, the gymnast admitted she wasn’t sure.



“I don’t have a plan,” Hernandez said. “If he looks like Dave Franco then it’s fine.”  


Yup, Hernandez is just like any other teen ― well, minus the whole winning multiple Olympic medals and a celebrity dance competition, and writing a memoir before she’s old enough to vote.


Watch the full interview on The Ellen Show above. 

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This Clothing Line For Kids Is Saying No To Gender Stereotypes

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Inspired by her “spirited” daughter, a Kansas mom has developed a clothing line that says no to harmful gender stereotypes and encourages kids be themselves.


In June 2016, Tricia Steffes launched Crossing Arrows, a new brand that sells superhero capes, jeans and shirts with empowering messages for little girls. Steffes told The Huffington Post her 5-year-old daughter, Allie, is the inspiration for Crossing Arrows.



“After two and a half years of navigating her desire to wear boy clothes because her spirited (tomboy) taste didn’t have room for pink and princesses, I decided to design a line that allowed these spirited girls to embrace their individuality and say no to gender stereotyping,” she said. 


Steffes, who works in finance and also operates a clothing line geared toward tall women, said she got the idea to launch a brand for kids in 2015. In January 2016, she started the research process, and the website officially went live in June. As founder and CEO of Crossing Arrows, Steffes works with a marketing manager, Hannah Kowalewski, and designer, Kelsie O’Brien. 


The Crossing Arrows brand currently offers shirts with messages like “Be Adventurous,” “Future Coder” and “Donut Holes Not Gender Roles.” The website also has a selection of jeans, superhero capes and superhero-themed dresses



“We want all kids to be confident and feel empowered to pursue what they love.  If that is academia, athletics, music, robotics, dance ... whatever it is, we want them to go all out ― to get out of their comfort zones to pursue their passions,” Steffes said.


“We want to teach them through our line of graphic tees that progress is more important than perfection and that each child is unique in their own way,” she added. “Our overall mission for our clothes is to give children options that doesn’t force them into a stereotypical box based on their gender.”


Though Crossing Arrows was created with girls in mind, they’re working to expand their intended audience. “The initial concept of our clothing line was specific to what we call the ‘spirited girl’ or sometimes referred to as a ‘tomboy,’ Steffes said.



“However, through the process, we have realized that boys face gender stereotyping in clothing as well, so several of our designs are gender neutral,” she added. Steffes said they look forward to seeing how their business grows and changes over the next year.


But Crossing Arrows is also about more than clothes. “We are also building a community of parents to discuss all things parenting, and more importantly we are building a philanthropic component that surrounds our greatest passion, child advocacy,” Steffes explained.


The brand has pledged to give back a portion of its profits to organizations focused on child advocacy. They are currently working with several nonprofit organizations to build this component of the business model.



Steffes said they also hope to eventually establish a foundation with the same philanthropic goals and plan empowering events to inspire kids to embrace their individuality and take risks. Ultimately, the goal is to have a positive impact on as many children as possible. 


So far, they’ve received a lot of positive feedback from parents and kids. “I didn’t realize how much the gender stereotyping in children’s clothing had affected so many families until I launched Crossing Arrows,” the founder said, pointing to reviews from adults who said they wish there’d been a line like this when they were kids.



 As for the original target customer, it’s clear she’s a fan as well. 


“Allie is very opinionated and confident in what she likes, and she loves our designs and graphic tees,” Steffes told HuffPost, adding, “But what excites her more is knowing that we allow her to be who she is ... she appreciates that we don’t make her wear ‘girly’ clothes and dresses.”



Meet our inspiration, Amazing Allie! #spirited #crossingarrows #inspiration

A photo posted by Crossing Arrows (@crossingarrows_designs) on




The mom said both Allie and her older daughter have also been instrumental in shaping the designs. 


The Crossing Arrows team is gearing up for some exciting new developments as well. “We’ve had requests to produce other designs and one we are working on is a line of graphic tees for children with autism,” Steffes said.


What else does the future hold? She says you’ll have to “stay tuned!”

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Richard Prince Protests Trumps By Claiming Work Ivanka Bought Is 'Fake'

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A consummate art world troll has set his sights on the soon-to-be First Family. And his form of protest is, well, eccentric. 


“This is not my work,” notorious appropriation artist Richard Prince proclaimed on Twitter on Wednesday. “I did not make it. I deny. I denounce. This [is] fake art.”


The words appeared as a caption attached to an image that does, in fact, show an artwork Prince produced. That artwork ― pictured above ― is part of his “New Portraits” series, which essentially consists of screenshots of other people’s Instagram posts transferred to canvases and sold at frustratingly high prices. (Yes, it’s a controversial series.)


The “fake” art Prince was attempting to denounce features none other than President-elect Donald Trump’s daughter and famous businesswoman, Ivanka. Prince used one of her selfies as the basis for a work and, according to a Tweet posted on Thursday, sold it to Ivanka herself for a cool $36,000 in 2014.


Look, artnet reports that you can see the future First Daughter posing next to the massive canvas in a photo she uploaded to Instagram (wow, we’re getting so meta) roughly 24 months ago.




Beyond maintaining that the artwork he definitely helped produce is “fake” (a pretty clear nod to Donald Trump’s fast and loose interpretation of the term “fake news”), and using one of the president-elect’s favorite words to deny its value, Prince also claimed on Twitter that he returned the money Ivanka originally paid for the piece.


Why all the reimbursing and denouncing? In a series of statements made on Twitter, Prince explained that “redacting Ivanka’s portrait was an honest choice between right and wrong. Right is art. Wrong is no art. The Trumps are no art.”


“The Trumps left me no choice,” he cryptically proclaimed. “SheNowOwnsAfake [sic].”










It’s no secret that artists these days really, really don’t want their art on Ivanka’s walls. “Dear @Ivankatrump please get my work off of your walls,” Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte expressed on Instagram. “I am embarrassed to be seen with you.”


The sellers’ remorse stems from artists’ recent desire to distance themselves from a woman well known for collecting art, namely because the father she’s campaigned for has a history of promoting racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic views. Since Prince can’t physically remove his work from Ivanka’s wall, perhaps he believes that claiming it’s “fake” and returning her money will wash his hands of the whole ordeal.


Keep in mind, Prince is the same man who has been accused of stealing other people’s imagery and selling it off for upwards of $90,000. So we’re not sure this particular gesture holds much weight. Nonetheless, it’s pretty amusing to see him appropriate the term “fake” for his own mad artist antics. 


We have reached out to Richard Prince and Ivanka Trump, but have yet heard back from either. Until then, we’ll be contemplating the many layers of this decidedly complicated social media saga.





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All We Need In This Cold World Is Idris Elba

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Idris Elba always comes through when you need him. In the new movie “100 Streets,” he plays a former rugby star trying to keep his life together in the wake of marital woes. Because he is the king of charisma, Elba seems like consummate father, attentive husband and dutiful hunk all in one ― even if his character’s personal life is actually crumbling. He’s Idris Elba!


“100 Streets” depicts a love triangle involving Elba’s rugby luminary, his wife (Gemma Arterton) and his wife’s lover (Tom Cullen), also picking up on the lives of several others who enter their London orbit. The movie opens in theaters and premieres via on-demand platforms Friday. The Huffington Post has an exclusive clip below.




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Mom And Kids Build House, One YouTube Tutorial Video At A Time

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Turns out those YouTube how-to videos aren’t just for unclogging drains and cleaning the air conditioner. An Arkansas single mom and her four children managed to construct a five-bedroom, 3500-square-foot home (with three-car garage and a two-story treehouse) by watching hundreds of film tutorials.


“There was a lot of asking people at Home Depot for help, too,” said Cara Brookins of Bryant. But with “just a little bit at a time, we figured out how to lay a foundation block.” 


The family couldn’t afford to pay builders to construct a home, but they could pay for an acre of land and building supplies. So Brookins came up with the self-taught YouTube scheme, she told THV11-TV in Little Rock.


She became inspired as she drove by a tornado-hit home that bared some of its construction. “You don’t often get the opportunity to see the interior workings of a house, but looking at those [boards] and these nails, it just looked so simple,” Brookins told CBS News. “I thought, ‘I could put this wall back up if I really tried. Maybe I should just start from scratch.’”





Once the supplies were purchased and piled up there was no going back, she explained. “There was no Plan B,” she added.


“How are we going to build a house?” asked her oldest daughter, Hope, who was 17 when the work started in 2008. “We have no idea what we’re doing.” The other kids were 15, 11 and 2 years old.


But the family powered through and did everything from mixing to pounding nails and framing walls, Brookins said.



Brookins had left her husband because of domestic violence, and the project had the added benefit of helping her frightened children retake control of part of their lives, she said.


The mom has written a book about the house and the family’s transformation called Rise, How a House Built a Family.


And she has some sound advice for anyone struggling to overcome a problematic past.


“Everybody says, ‘If you just take a small step every day, it will get better.’ In my experience, though, it doesn’t,” she said. “You have to make a big leap. It has to be this huge, enormous act.  You need to do something big that changes your perception of yourself.”

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Miguel Is Planning To Release A Spanish-Language Album In 2017

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The new year could bring new Miguel music, and in Spanish no less. 


The singer, who is of Mexican descent on his father’s side, spoke to Latina magazine about his acting debut in “Live by Night.” During the conversation, he revealed his “ambitious” plan to release a Spanish-language album in 2017. 


Miguel stars as Esteban, a Cuban club owner, in the Prohibition era gangster film alongside Ben Affleck and Zoe Saldana. And it was this role, he says, that helped motivate him to work on music in Spanish. 


“I do think that the direction of my music is a little bit different [from Cuban band music], but I will say that the experience in getting to know about Cuban culture and history made me want to explore more and more my connection with my Latin roots, especially with music,” he told Latina. “Writing songs in Spanish is one of the things I started exploring after working on this film. I look forward to working on more music in Spanish. It sounds ambitious, but I’m looking to release an album in Spanish later on this year. If nothing else, at least releasing a single or two in Spanish. Hopefully, you guys stay tuned to that.” 


But a desire to write music in Spanish is nothing new for the R&B singer. When he dropped his 2012 "Kaleidoscope Dream" album, he told Mando Fresko of Power 106 FM Los Angeles, about his plan to eventually release a song completely in Spanish. 


“I want to be able to write an entire song in Spanish but I’m practicing my Spanish now just so I can get it,” he told Fresko more than four years ago. “You know, songs in Spanish are so poetic. I think that’s one of my favorite things about Latino music, and the rhyme scheme is completely different. So I’m really nervous to do it, I don’t want it to be bad, but I’m really excited to do it.”


We’re pretty excited, too. 

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Aussie Singer Justifies His Love For Madonna With An Epic Tribute

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Michael Griffiths made a name for himself in splashy musicals like “Jersey Boys” and “Priscilla Queen of the Desert,” but he hasn’t forgotten how to cut loose on the dance floor. 


So, when it came time to mount his first-ever solo show, the Australian actor-singer wanted to meld his theatrical chops with his admiration for the undisputed Queen of Pop, Madonna. He’s set to bring his award-winning cabaret act, “In Vogue: Songs By Madonna,” to the U.S. this winter, with a series of performances at venues in California and New York.


Accompanying himself on piano, Griffiths will re-interpret the diva’s classic hits, including “Borderline,” “Express Yourself” and “Into The Groove.” Embodying the spirit of the Material Girl herself, he’ll also explore some of her well-known personal dramas, like her tumultuous marriages and checkered movie career, albeit in a cheeky (and heartfelt) way.


Before his Jan. 26 stateside debut in San Diego, the 42-year-old Adelaide, Australia native gave The Huffington Post a sneak peek, performing snippets of Madonna’s oeuvre in the video above. While “In Vogue” hinges on the conceit that Griffiths is Madonna, the show is not intended as a camp homage or celebrity impersonation act. Instead, he said, “It’s a testament to her skill as a pop artist and her longevity.” 


Three decades into her record-breaking career, Madonna still battles criticism of her skills both as a singer-songwriter and live performer. In Griffiths’s eyes, many critics are misguided in their assessments of the superstar’s “take-it-or-leave-it” approach to music, which has been mimicked by Lady Gaga, Rihanna and other stars. 


“I feel like she’s not given enough credit for being a kickass songwriter, partly because the rest of her career is always so distracting,” he said. Naming “Open Your Heart” as his favorite Madonna song, he added, “She has always been impossibly strong and impossibly fragile in equal measure.” 


Michael Griffiths performs “In Vogue: Songs By Madonna” at Martinis Above Fourth in San Diego, California on Jan. 26, before heading to Catalina Jazz Club in Los Angeles on Jan. 29 and New York’s Feinstein’s/54 Below on Feb. 7. For further dates, head here






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Being A Musician Is Good For Your Brain

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Playing music keeps your brain sharp. 


Science has shown that musical training can change brain structure and function for the better, improve long-term memory and lead to better brain development for those who start in childhood. 


Musicians may also be more mentally alert, according to new research. A University of Montreal study, slated to appear in the February issue of the journal Brain and Cognition, shows that musicians have significantly faster reaction times than non-musicians. 


The findings suggest that learning to play a musical instrument could keep your brain sharp as you age, and may help to prevent certain aspects of cognitive decline in older adults. 


“As people get older, for example, we know their reaction times get slower,” Simon Landry, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. student in biomedical ethics, said in a statement. “So if we know that playing a musical instrument increases reaction times, then maybe playing an instrument will be helpful for them.”


For the small study, the researchers compared the reaction times of 19 non-musician students and 16 student musicians who had been recruited from the university’s music program and had been playing an instrument for at least seven years. The participants included violinists, percussionists, a viola player and a harpist. 



"We're only now starting to better understand the benefits of musical training and they seem to range beyond simply playing music."
Simon Landry, Ph.D. student at the University of Montreal


Each participant was seated in a quiet room and asked to keep one hand on a computer mouse and the other on a small box that occasionally vibrated silently. The participants were instructed to click on the mouse when the box vibrated, when they heard a sound from the speakers in front of them or when both things happened at once. The stimulations were done 180 times each.


As hypothesized, the musicians had significantly faster reaction times to non-musical auditory, tactile and multisensory stimuli than the non-musicians. 


Landry says this is likely because playing music involves multiple senses. With touch, for instance, a violin player has to feel the string on her finger, but she also needs to listen for the right sound to be produced when she’s pressing on the string. 


“This long-term training of the sense in the context of producing exactly what is desired musically leads to a strengthening of sensory neural pathways,” Landry told The Huffington Post. “Additionally, using the senses in synchronicity for long periods of time ― musicians practice for years ― enhances how they work together. All this would lead to the faster multisensory reaction time.” 



Previously, Landry also investigated how musicians’ brains process sensory illusions. Together with their previous findings, the results suggest that musicians are better at integrating input from various senses, the study’s authors noted. More studies are needed, however, to determine whether and how musical training might slow the natural cognitive decline that occurs as we age. 


“Playing a musical instrument has an effect on abilities beyond music,” Landry concluded. “We’re only now starting to better understand the benefits of musical training and they seem to range beyond simply playing music.”



If you needed any more reason to pick up an instrument, check out this TEDEd video on how playing music benefits your brain: 




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Read The Women's March On Washington's Beautifully Intersectional Policy Platform

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The organizers of the Women’s March on Washington just released a four-page document outlining the principles and goals of the protest, and it’s the definition of intersectional feminism. 


The Women’s March will take place on Saturday, Jan. 21 in DC with sister marches all over the country (and world) to “affirm our shared humanity and pronounce our bold message of resistance and self-determination,” according to the official platform. After a rocky start, the organizers have put together an inclusive and intersectional policy platform. 


The document lays out the march’s purpose, values and principles, and gives an important nod to movements that came before them: the suffragists and abolitionists, the America Indian Movement, the Civil Rights era, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and the fight for LGBTQ rights. 


“Our liberation is bound in each other’s,” the platform states. “The Women’s March on Washington includes leaders of organizations and communities that have been building the foundation for social progress for generations. We welcome vibrant collaboration and honor the legacy of the movements before us.”


The platform also recognizes feminist activists and thought leaders who paved the way for present-day activism: abolitionist Harriet Tubman, civil rights activists Ella Baker and Angela Davis, Honduran environmental activist and indigenous leader Berta Cáceres, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation Wilma Mankiller, LGBTQ activist Sylvia Rivera, and iconic women’s rights leaders including bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Audre Lorde and Malala Yousafzai.



The values the platform stands for include those areas most people might think of when someone says “feminist issues,” including the wage gap, reproductive freedom, ending violence against women and paid family leave.


Along with these, the organizers included other progressive issues that are integral to the feminist movement but are often left out of the conversation: ending policy brutality, racial profiling and our country’s mass incarceration; recognizing that LGBTQIA rights are human rights; calling for the work and rights of caregivers to be seen “as work, and that the burden of care falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women, particularly women of color;” recognizing that unions are “critical” to a “healthy and thriving economy for all,” adding that protection of sex workers is imperative; standing in solidarity with immigrant and refugee rights; and calling for the protection of our environment and climate, along with access to clean water for everyone in the wake of the Flint Water Crisis


In an important note, the organizers recognized that women of color so often bear the heaviest burden in our society.


“We believe Gender Justice is Racial Justice is Economic Justice,” the document states. “We must create a society in which women, in particular women ― in particular Black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, Muslim women, and queer and trans women ― are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments.” 


Read the full document for the Women’s March on Washington here.


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William Peter Blatty, Author Of 'The Exorcist,' Dies At 89

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William Peter Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist and won an Oscar for the screenplay adaptation of the horror story, has died. He was 89. 


William Friedkin, who directed the film version of “The Exorcist” in 1973, announced the author’s death on Twitter Friday.






Blatty died Thursday in a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, from a form of blood cancer, his wife, Julia Alice Blatty, told The Associated Press.


Blatty’s chilling story of a Catholic priest attempting to rid a young girl of a demonic spirit was a best-seller after his earlier novels, mostly comedic, had failed to reach a wide audience, according to The Guardian.


Set in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, “The Exorcist” captivated readers with the increasingly strange and unsettling occurrences happening around the main character, Regan MacNeil, and her family. It has sold more than 10 million copies.


In an interview with The Huffington Post in 2011 after releasing a revised version of his breakthrough work, Blatty discussed the novel’s appeal. 



“Obviously, of course, a popular novel has to be a page-turning read. Second, everyone likes a good scare, so long as we know we’re not really threatened,” Blatty said via email.” And third - and most importantly, I think - because this novel is an affirmation that there is a final justice in the universe; that man is something more than a neuron net; that there is a high degree of probability - let’s not beat around the bush – that there is an intelligence, a creator whom C.S. Lewis famously alluded to as “the love that made the worlds.”







The misperception that the events in the book, like scenes where Regan’s head spun around, were based on a true story possibly also increased sales, Blatty said to HuffPost. 


The film adaptation, starring Linda Blair as Regan, was also a smash hit and cultural phenomenon when it was released in 1973. It was so popular that fans waited in lines stretching for blocks to get tickets, and some even went to the extreme method of using battering rams to try to get into theaters.


For a mainstream movie at the time, it was graphic. In a famous sequence, Regan vomits on a priest. In another, the 12-year-old character spews a stream of profanities. 


Yet while writing the novel, Blatty never thought of its a frightening read. 


“When I was writing the novel I thought of it as a super-natural detective story, and to this day I cannot recall having a conscious intention to terrifying anybody, which you may take, I suppose, as an admission of failure on an almost stupefying scale,” Blatty said in his interview with HuffPost. 


The screenplay netted an Oscar for Blatty in 1974, and the film became the first horror movie nominated in the best picture category, according to Variety.


In 1983, Blatty published Legion as a sequel to The Exorcist. He also directed the 1980 film “The Ninth Configuration,” and 1990’s “The Exorcist III.”


He married four times and had eight children, according to The AP. He was born in New York City, where he was raised by his parents, immigrants from Lebanon. The AP reported that he was valedictorian of Brooklyn Preparatory high school and attended Georgetown University on a scholarship.


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This 12-Year-Old Toy Store Owner Will Inspire You To Act On Your Dreams

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Eric Vasquez isn’t just a dreamer, he’s a doer. 


The 12-year-old opened his toy store “Connect The Brick & more” in the Proctor District of Tacoma, Washington nearly a year and a half ago. In his 89 square foot shop he sells, buys and trades Lego minifigures.


Circa recently featured his shop in a Facebook video, and his story is nothing less than inspiring for anyone with a dream. Vasquez began selling Legos on one of his mother’s tables on the sidewalk. When he was eight, he began planning to open his own store.  


And this toy store means business. Vasquez sets prices, keeps inventory, pays rent and launched a website for his shop. 


“It’s expensive and you have to pay for all the costs, you have to be here, you have to pay for your merchandise,” he told Circa. 


The young entrepreneur also has a charitable heart. Vasquez set up a donation site to give unopened Lego toys to children undergoing cancer treatment at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital. 


The 12-year-old business owner has certainly come a long way and he has one important lesson for anyone holding on to a dream. 


“Everybody has a dream, something that they want to accomplish,” he says in the video “So sometimes people dream their dream forever and ever and ever... Sometimes I believe you have to actually live your dream. You don’t have to just dream your dream but you have to live your dream.”


Keep living the dream, Eric.

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The 20 Funniest Tweets From Women This Week

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The ladies of Twitter never fail to brighten our days with their brilliant ― but succinct ― wisdom. Each week, HuffPost Women rounds up hilarious 140-character musings. For this week’s great tweets from women, scroll through the list below. Then visit our Funniest Tweets From Women page for our past collections.       

















































































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The Story Of An Art Fair Whose Work Was Never Meant To Be Sold

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Marion Harris was, by her own account, a Connecticut housewife and antiques dealer when, in 1993, a hunt for old-fashioned treasures struck gold. She was scouring the Pier Show, a New York antiques fair, when she spotted an entire booth filled with with life-sized, porcelain doll parts surrounded by heaps of boxes.


“I didn’t even know what was in the boxes,” Harris told The Huffington Post in an interview. “But I knew viscerally it was something I wanted.” She bought the entire lot, all of which once belonged to a recently deceased man by the name of Morton Bartlett


When Harris returned to Connecticut, she began to reassemble the dolls, yielding anatomically accurate figures of young girls and boys rendered in striking detail, from their tongues to their toenails. All of their clothing was handmade for a perfect fit. The boxes were also filled to the brim with photographs of dolls posed in incredibly lifelike poses, innocent yet precocious. What verisimilitude the figures lacked in the not-quite-flesh, they gained in front Bartlett’s lens. 


Harris spent the next two years learning all she could about the man behind the dolls using the only clues she had: a Harvard yearbook and a Yankee Magazine that came with the dolls. She managed to piece together the story of a rather ordinary-seeming man ― an affluent, Boston-raised commercial photographer and graphic designer ― with an unusual, private pastime. 


How does one go about exhibiting or selling wildly realistic, life-size dolls made by an unsuspecting, Harvard-educated hermit? Harris wasn’t so sure, until she heard about an event called the Outsider Art Fair. 


The Outsider Art Fair (OAF) was founded by New York art fair magnate Sandy Smith in 1993. Smith had been in the business of launching unprecedented art fairs since he established the Fall Antiques Show in 1979. When two of his closest advisors approached him with the idea of an art show entirely comprised of self-taught work ― a genre quickly gaining momentum in the art market ― Smith decided to give it a shot. At the time, such work was commonly described as “primitive.” Smith, however, opted for different descriptor: “outsider.” 



“We named it that because of that’s what Roger Cardinal called it,” Smith said in an interview with HuffPost, referring to the art historian whose book Outsider Art was published in 1972. Cardinal used the term as an English alternative to Art Brut ― a phrase coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to mean “raw art,” art that was unmediated by education, culture, or ego. “But nobody knew what outsider art was back then,” Smith continued. “Many dealers were aghast that we called it ‘outsider.’” 


The term is still contested today. The word “outsider” is meant to denote artists working not only outside the art world, but outside of mainstream culture, whether due to physical isolation, incarceration, mental illness or other singular circumstances. In such an environment, at least ideally, the creative act is untethered by artistic precedent or market trends. The outsider artist creates not for fame, or money, or glory, but for sanity, peace of mind, and survival. 


Of course, the circumstances necessary for an artist to create truly “raw” work are hardly ever just right, as few are wholly isolated from social connections and cultural associations. Furthermore, many critics who oppose the term believe the “outsider” distinction can ghettoize artists who are already disenfranchised enough. It’s easy to imagine how quickly afflictions such as poverty, mental illness, and physical disabilities can be fetishized and exploited in the chase for “pure art.” 


But there is something powerful humming in the broad genre of outsider art that is impossible to deny. Stripped of pretension, irony, and cleverness, the best outsider artworks use a wholly individualized visual language brewed in the imagination to probe universal, unspeakable states that hit the viewer hard. 


“It has a spiritual dimension to it,” Henry Boxer, an outsider art dealer told HuffPost. “That’s what I connect with. There is a very deep space we all have; the outsiders seem to have direct contact to that.”



Boxer, who began collecting work seriously in 1975, has shown at every OAF since 1993. His first booth featured the work of Madge Gill, a mediumistic artist who began drawing obsessively after her daughter died shortly after birth in 1919. Believing that she was guided by a spirit called Myrninerest, Gill spent all hours of the night making drawings of anxiety-stricken women swallowed up by ornate fashions that spawned kaleidoscopic patterns stretching to the papers’ edges. 


“I’m a child of the ‘60s, there were lots of psychedelics,” Boxer said. “We were interested in consciousness and things like that. Outsider artists are able to express these deep parts of ourselves without the use of any substances.” Gill accounted for her mystical drawings by attesting she was merely a conduit for her spirit guide. Although she produced thousands of pieces in her lifetime, Gill never sold one, believing they never really belonged to her. 


Gill is far from the only outsider artist to live a lifetime of art without ever selling her work. In fact, Harris identified this condition as one of outsider art’s identifying factors. For him, it is often “art that is not made in order to be sold.” And yet, strangely, it was an art fair that introduced most of America to the genre.


The first OAF was held in January of 1993 in Manhattan’s Puck Building. (It was not yet, Smith noted, owned by the president-elect’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.) Around 25 galleries exhibited work, Smith estimated, and about 3,000 attendees showed up, far surpassing his expectations. “The press loved it,” Smith recalled, specifically mentioning a full-page spread by Roberta Smith in The New York Times. 


Smith ran the fair for the next 20 years, but as time went on, he found the exhibitor booths becoming more and more difficult to fill. “Dealing in outsider art, it was a small universe to pull from,” he said. “I felt like we were getting less quality in some areas.” The market crash of 2008 didn’t help, with some of the more prominent gallerists dropping out in subsequent years. 



Outsider art dealer Andrew Edlin had been keeping an eye on the fair’s recent trials. Edlin was introduced to the world of outsider art while trying to find a gallery to represent paintings made by his uncle Paul, who was deaf. “He didn’t quite have access to the contemporary art culture,” Edlin told HuffPost. He ended up finding a home for the work in the American Primitive Gallery, which exhibited at the OAF.


Edlin attended his first fair in 1995, he recalled. “I found the fair really eye-opening,” he said. “At contemporary art fairs there is always great work. But there is a little bit of this feeling, when I go to a mega-fair, that I know what to expect.” The OAF, however, was quite the opposite. Edlin remembered seeing a drawing by James Castle ― a deaf artist who used soot and saliva to chronicle the mundane details of everyday life with masterful, minimal precision ― for the very first time. “To see Castle drawing in a little booth, not even framed,” he swooned. “You can’t really replicate that feeling of excitement.” 


By 2012, Edlin had an outsider art gallery of his own, and offered to help Smith “put a little shot of energy” into the fading fair. Namely, he helped recruit prominent galleries to participate and instituted thematic panel discussions to round out the event programming. “The advice that I gave him had some level of success,” Edlin said. “I thought, why don’t I buy the fair and do that for myself?” 


So he did. Edlin’s company Wide Open Arts acquired the OAF that same year. For the first fair under Edlin’s purview, held in 2013, he relocated the site to Chelsea’s Dia Center for the Arts. By the end of the weekend, the fair’s attendance “just about tripled.” Edlin estimates there have been around 10,000 attendees each year in the time since. 


What changed? “I think it’s fair to say that Sandy is an art fair guy, and I’m more of an art world guy,” Edlin surmised. “I saw the show not as much in terms of real estate, but as an opportunity to curate the biggest show of outsider art in the world.”



One of Edlin’s major changes was instituting a strict vetting committee, an anonymous team of dealers and curators, to review all artists submitting work to the fair. Part of the task is ensuring outsider artists are truly “outsiders” ― as Edlin said, “every once and a while we’ll do some research and the artist will have an MFA.” But then again, the delineation between the inside and the outside is blurry and controversial. “Charles Steffen was schizophrenic, but he became ill when he was in the middle of his first year of art school,” Edlin said. 


The other challenge the vetting committee faced was determining the good from the bad. Because outsider art doesn’t adhere to many of the classic traditions and techniques which help critics and curators evaluate work, this was a particularly difficult task. So much of an artwork’s value, for better or worse, can become bound up with the biography of the artist. On the one hand, artist’s backstories are often dramatized to increase the mystique of their creations. More beneficially, however, the interaction between viewer and dealer can consist of genuine storytelling, empathizing, and imagination. While conversations between sellers and buyers in the larger contemporary art world can feel pretentious or just plain cold, the talks that take place at the OAF are can be like impromptu folktales. 


Another crucial shift the OAF underwent during Edlin’s ownership was a matter of context. Under Smith, outsider art’s next of kin, in terms of related art movements, was folk art ― decorative or utilitarian objects made by untrained artisans as part of a communal tradition. While folk art often resembles outsider art in style, the distinction lies in the context of their creation: was the artist participating in a traditional ritual or engaged in a solitary surge of vision? With Edlin, the conversation shifted from one between outsider art and folk art to one between outsider art and contemporary art. 


In part, this resulted from the success of the fair itself, which led more and more contemporary artists to familiarize themselves with outsider work, and sometimes pull from its aesthetic. For example, a 2015 group show called “Character Traits” featured a crop of young artists whose work, in some way, tapped into the outsider state of mind. 


In an earlier interview with HuffPost, curator Matthew Craven explained his thoughts on why contemporary artists were so drawn to the work of outsiders. “I think what artists are typically trying to do when you see that ‘outsider aesthetic ― it’s trying to tune out everything you’ve learned before, to really approach your work in a different way,” he said. “Getting rid of things you’ve learned in the past is sometimes a bigger skill than focusing on the skills you’ve learned over time.”


Edlin is well aware of just how porous the boundary separating outsider art from contemporary art can be. Rather than overzealously guarding the partition, Edlin uses the OAF to embrace the overlap. “We look at [outsider art] as part of the greater art world and less of an island unto itself,” he said. 



Much has changed since the OAF’s first edition, 25 years ago. For one, the fair is now held in Chelsea’s Metropolitan Pavilion. But more importantly, the field of outsider art has gone from near obscurity to a genre that’s exhibited at venues from the Brooklyn Museum to the Venice Biennale. As a result, the prices of some of the artists’ works have increased dramatically. “A Henry Darger, 25 years ago, that would cost $10,000,” Edlin estimated. “Now they’re $600,000.” Still, the OAF remains one of the most affordable in terms of art fairs, with plenty of works not by Henry Darger available for under $1,000. 


Another happy consequence of the fair’s growing prestige is the increase in international galleries submitting work. “It’s been easier to open up the field to new discoveries from all around the world,” OAF director Becca Hoffman told HuffPost. “With the knowledge of the fair in the furthest reaches of the world, we see new artists bringing work from Japan, Australia, Europe, and South America. The fair has really opened up those boundaries to the non-Western canon.”


Yet much has remained consistent throughout the OAF’s 25-year run, a summary of which will be featured in the curated booth “The Outsider Art Fair: 25 Years.” Curated by Edward M. Gómez, the exhibition will feature works originally shown each year of the OAF’s existence, including pieces from nine exhibitors who have been with the fair since the beginning. 


For the many who treasure the spirit of the OAF, which Hoffman described as “a breath of fresh air” amongst the sea of contemporary art fairs, that too remains intact, perhaps now more than ever. “There is a warmth,” Harris said when describing the OAF’s magic. “I think it balances out the huge rise in technology, with everything a little bit sanitized now. This is real.” 


Above all else, throughout its 25 years, the OAF has retained what is perhaps its signature trait: its complex and paradoxical nature. Selling work that was never meant to be sold, the fair ushered the artists and movement it represented into the public sphere. Works made in attics, hospital beds, and other private spaces are now featured in the world’s most preeminent museums. There is a magic that pulses through the fair to be sure, and a tension as well. Because, at its core, the OAF is a fair that generously and miraculously and sometimes dangerously shows work that was never meant to be shown. 


The Outsider Art Fair runs from Jan. 19-22 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York.

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