LOUD Wisconsin

⚽🏆 Rumbo al mundial de fútbol 2026, el artista Manuel Tenedor nos recuerda que 🇲🇽 es historia, naturaleza, tradición y comunidad.
Aquí 👇representa algunos elementos que hacen único a nuestro país: sus paisajes, sus ciudades, sus tradiciones y la pasión futbolera

🇲🇽⚽🇲🇽 They Didn't Call a Corporation. They Called the Wixárika People.

Before the first whistle of the 2026 FIFA World Cup blows in Mexico, one image is already traveling the globe — not a stadium, not a jersey, not a sponsor logo.

It's a towering, bead-covered soccer ball, handcrafted by Indigenous Wixárika artisans from Nayarit, Mexico. And it may be the most powerful symbol of what Mexico is bringing to the world this summer.

The Balón Wixárika 26 stands over three meters tall — covered in thousands of hand-placed chaquiras (tiny glass beads), arranged in sacred Wixárika patterns that carry generations of meaning. Every color, every spiral, every burst of light reflects a cosmovision that the Wixárika people have carried for centuries through the Sierra Madre mountains of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango, and Zacatecas.

This was not one project — it was two.

One monumental ball was created by a team of Wixárika artisans from Nayarit, unveiled at Mexico's Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores. A second was built by 25 artisans from the community of San Andrés Cohamiata in Jalisco — presented at Estadio Guadalajara, one of Mexico's World Cup host venues.

The artists behind this work: Cristian Agustín Mendoza Reyes, Castro Hernández, Eliseo Castro, Celina Carrillo, Antonio Montes, Galindo Carrillo, Pedro Carrillo, Olegario Carrillo, and Eric Cisneros Prieto — alongside many others.

And then something even more remarkable happened.

When President Claudia Sheinbaum traveled to Canada for the G7 Summit, she didn't arrive with a corporate gift. She brought a handcrafted Wixárika soccer ball — and presented it to Prime Minister Mark Carney as a symbol of friendship between two World Cup co-hosts. Carney called the gesture "fantastic."

Images of that moment spread across the world in hours.

"The World Cup only lasts 39 days," said the federal official overseeing Mexico's 2026 Culture & Legacy program. "But a country's identity remains forever."

The Wixárika people are known worldwide for their intricate yarn paintings, bead art, and sacred ceremonies. Their work already hangs in museums across the globe. But this summer, their tradition will greet billions of people on one of the biggest stages in human history.

This is what Mexico is bringing to the world in 2026.

Not just soccer. Culture. Identity. Living tradition.

The Wixárika people didn't need the World Cup to validate their art.

The World Cup needed them.

💚🤍❤️

An incredible evening at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History celebrating creative vision and community.

Surrounded by exceptional company with art collector Keny Rosa, artist Eugene Rodriguez, and legendary Los Angeles photographer Louis Jacinto, whose decades of work capturing the vibrant LA punk rock scene and vital cultural movements continue to inspire.

Behind us is my art installation, The Starborn Fragments, which remains on view in the Moore Family Trust gallery through August 30, 2026.

Photograph by Robert Benitez.

3 colors from Mexico 🇲🇽Color here carries knowledge, tradition, and identity shaped over generations.
🔵 Maya Blue was created over a
thousand years ago using indigo and clay and is known for its durability, still visible on murals in places like Bonampak, Chiapas.
🩷 Mexican Pink,
popularized in the 20th century, is a vibrant tone seen in textiles, clothing, crafts, and architecture, representing energy and cultural
🔴Cochineal Red comes from the cochineal insect that
lives on nopal cactus and has been used since pre-Columbian times to produce deep reds in textiles and art, continuing today as the natural pigment carmine.

Mark your calendars and support these young Latina artists.

JAZZ STRINGS ALUMNA RECEIVES FELLOWSHIP: Alexa Torres Skillicorn, (MM ’22 Jazz Strings), a third-year Ph.D. student in Music and Performing Arts Professions in the jazz program at New York University, has been awarded a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship. The program is, "designed to support emerging scholars as they pursue bold and innovative research in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.” The program is made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation and makes awards to, "doctoral students who show promise of leading their fields in important new directions.” Fifty-five fellows were selected from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants.

Read more at https://www.acls.org/programs/mellon-acls-dissertation-innovation-fellowships/

https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/in-your-community/milwaukee-county/bob-uecker-mural-takes-shape-in-downtown-milwaukee-as-artist-reaches-the-most-difficult-stretch

A new exhibition in Chicago, “Paris in Black: Internationalism and the Black Renaissance,” celebrates the painters, writers, and performers who sought freedom in the city of light and left an indelible mark on its history.

“When I first learned of the exhibition…my initial reaction was, ‘What a dream come true!,’” says writer Daria Simone Harper. “As much as I’d like to reflect on my favorite Black artists and writers expatriating to Paris and living their best lives, though, their efforts to escape racism in America were not without troubling experiences, too. I wondered how the show would deal with this tension.”
Image: William McBride, “Robert S. Abbott Founds the Chicago Defender” (1963)

We were delighted to welcome our new BFI Fellow Guillermo del Toro to the BFI National Archive this week for a tour of the Conservation Centre hosted by Arike Oke, Executive Director of Knowledge and Collections.

The celebrated director had a chance to explore the collections with our archivists and curators, engaging with scripts and production and costume designs from our Screencraft collection as well as taking a closer look at some of our rare nitrate and master prints.

Photos: Tim Whitby