Homicide - David Mamet (1991)

"Homicide is an American neo-noir crime film written and directed by David Mamet, and released in 1991. The film's cast includes Joe Mantegna, William H. Macy, and Ving Rhames. It was entered in the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. Bobby Gold is a homicide detective on the trail of Robert Randolph, a drug-dealer and cop-killer on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. En route to nab an accomplice of Randolph, Gold and his partner Tim Sullivan happen upon a murder scene: the elderly Jewish owner of a candy store in a ghetto has been gunned down, reportedly for a fortune hidden in her basement. The deceased woman's son, a doctor, uses his clout to have Gold assigned to the case in the belief that Gold, himself Jewish, might be empathetic to his plight. ..."
Wikipedia
‘Homicide’: David Mamet’s Soul-Searching Thriller as a Modern-Day Classic (Video)
NY Times: 'Homicide': The Victims Abound
amazon
YouTube: Homicide - Trailer

Sounds and Pressure: The Enduring Power of Jamaican Street Art

Mural by Ricky Soul, in Cockburn Pen, Kingston
"... Five more minutes and a lanky character, nonchalantly sporting the mandatory and distinctive fresh white towel on his right shoulder, appears on the street corner. 44-year-old 'Bones' Williams is one of Kingston’s best mural artists. He’s known to sign his pieces with a stylized tibia bone scratching its head, in honor of the nickname that his lengthy figure earned him at a young age. What Bones does is important to the community. What they all do is. Often self-taught (Bones being one of the exceptions), a whole scene of mural artists share similar techniques – brushes and paint over expensive spray cans– and a love for realistic and figurative portraiture. Among the flock, some, like Bones, have gained respect and prominence, including Danny Coxson, Lyndon 'Balla' Johnson, Ricky Culture, Captain Irie, Trenchtown’s own Michael Robinson, Errol 'Gideon' Reid and a few more abstract artists such as Deon 'Sand' Palmer and Matthew McCarthy. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily

Deejay Reggie Stepper in front of the Small World studio, downtown Kingston. Murals by Errol Reid AKA Errol Alphanso.

Stream Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, a BBC Production Featuring Derek Jacobi

"A nice tip from Metafilter: 'BBC Radio 4 is airing Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 10 episodes running to about nine hours in total. With a starry cast headed by Derek Jacobi as the Narrator, the adaptation is written by U.S.-born, UK-based playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker.' The entire audio collection will remain streamable for the next 28 days. Here are the individual episodes: Episodes 1 and 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, Episode 7, Episode 8, Episode 9, Episode 10."
Open Culture (Audio)
Got a Spare 153 Hours? Listen to Proust’s Masterpiece, Unabridged

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles, 2013 October: On Reading Proust, 2015 September: "Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes, 2015 September: In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way: A Graphic Novel, 2016 January: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), 2016 February: Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator, 2016 May: The Guermantes Way (1920-21), 2016 August: Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time — Patrick Alexander, 2016 October: My Strange Friend Marcel Proust, 2017 March: Sodom and Gomorrah (1921-1922), 2017 August: Letters To His Neighbor by Marcel Proust; translated by Lydia Davis, October: Proust's À la recherche – a novel big enough for the world, 2017 October: Proust Fans Eagerly Await Trove of Letters Going Online, 2017 December: The Prisoner / The Fugitive (1923-1925), 2018 May: Time Regained (1927), 2018 September: Céleste Albaret, 2018 November: In the Footsteps of Marcel Proust, 2019 February: On the Anxiety and Vanity of Marcel Proust, Debut Novelist

067° .TEMPERO BRASILEIRO "A Hora e a Vez do Samba" - selected by Edson Carvalho.

"If you’re following us, you can only remember of São Paulo’s master digger Edson Carvalho and the portrait we made of him! That portrait came along with a selection of 7 inches named 'Tempero Brasileiro'. Well, good news, Edson is back with another 'Tempero Brasileiro' extensive selection of 30 rare tracks, this time focusing on the different Samba’s style and once more made out of 'Compactos' only! 90% of them are coming out from that – now legendary – basement in downtown São Paulo that has been Edson’s second home for a while! Samba Jazz, Sambalanço, Bossa Nova, Samba Soul and Afro Sambas bliss on menu for this 80 minutes delight to please your ears and make your day! ..."
les mains noires (Audio)
mixcloud (Audio)

Painters of the East End - Mary Ann Caws

Jane Wilson, Four Paper Palettes, 1973
"Many of the European avant-garde artists who arrived in New York during World War II found themselves reaching out for a less expensive kind of living, and discovered larger studios in a rural landscape and waterscape on Long Island’s South Fork. In the mid-twentieth century, a group of women painters developed there a collaborative community sharing a culture mingling bohemian instincts and creative inspiration. This kind of art colony thrived on their interwoven affinities, gossip, affection, envies, and dislikes. Gathered there were Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, whose painting on board of 1949 has the side-sway of Lyonel Feininger’s oddly European buildings, and also Jane Freilicher with her gorgeous landscapes, as well as Joan Mitchell, whose paintings instantly stand out anywhere, as happens with the most striking figures of various groups and periods, reminding me of how, for instance, Charles Olson’s being and writing stood out in Black Mountain College times. ..."
Brooklyn Rail

Helen Frankenthaler, White Flight, 1979

2019 April: Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (2018), 2019 June: The Irrepressible Emotion of Lee Krasner, 2014 February: Jane Freilicher, 2015 June:Jane Freilicher (1924-2014), 2014 February: Jane Freilicher

Good Morning Brooklyn

"If you’re wondering what kind of grocery store develops a cult following, residents of Bushwick and Bedford–Stuyvesant would be the best people to ask. Culture Trip takes a peek into the beloved and mysterious Mr. Kiwi’s 24-hour grocery store at the intersection of Myrtle Broadway in Brooklyn. Myrtle Broadway marks the border between Bushwick and Bed-Stuy, two of Brooklyn’s most culturally diverse neighborhoods on either side of the above-ground JMZ subway route that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn. The area is known for being the birthplace of The Notorious B.I.G. (on the Bed-Stuy side) and Jay-Z. While the latter’s stage name is derived from the childhood nickname 'Jazzy,' an urban myth claims that the moniker was gleaned from the JZ trains which are so central to local residents. ..."
culture trip (Video)

Nu Yorica 2! Further Adventures in Latin Music: Chango in the New World

"The second installment of Soul Jazz Records' investigation into Afro-Cuban funk and tribal consists of recordings perhaps a bit too close to the present to compare to the previous installment. Consisting of recordings from the late '70s to the mid-'80s, Nu Yorica 2! certainly doesn't skimp as to the uniform brilliance of its included artists. Included are thick, funky, drum-heavy stews of salsa, Latin jazz, and funk by the heaviest of heavy-hitters: Mongo Santamaria, Eddie Palmieri, Patato, Irakere, Cachao, Candido, Fania All Stars. Stranded halfway between fusion, salsa, and disco, however, quite a few of these tracks lack the rawness and brassy flavor of classic Latin music recorded during the '60s and early '70s. ..."
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Nu Yorica 2! Further Adventures in Latin Music: Chango in the New World

The Chelsea Affect - Arthur Miller

"I decided to move to the Chelsea in 1960 for the privacy I was promised. It seemed a wonderfully out-of-the-way place, nearly a slum, where nobody would be likely to be looking for me. It was soon after Marilyn and I parted, and some of the press were still occasionally tracking me, looking for the dirt in a half-hearted way. A friend who I would later marry had done photos for a book on Venice by Mary McCarthy and Mary had recommended the Chelsea as a cheap but decent hotel. (Mary of course hated my work, but that’s neither here nor there.) My friend, Inge Morath, who normally lived in Paris, had stayed there for short periods of work in America, and found it shabby but, to say the least, informal. ‘Nobody will bother you there,’ she assured me. The owner, Mr Bard, showed me a newly redecorated sixth-floor apartment overlooking the parking lot (since covered by an apartment house) behind the hotel. The parking lot is important. ..."
Granta
Guardian: The 10 best Chelsea hotel moments

2010 October: Hotel Chelsea, 2014 January: Arena Hotel Chelsea
2011 April: The Misfits (1961), 2012 June: Before Air-Conditioning (1998), 2014 December: The Crucible (1953), 2015 December: A View from the Bridge (1955), 2016 January: Arthur Miller’s Brooklyn, 2017 October: Death of a Salesman (1949)

Miles Davis Iconic 1959 Album Kind of Blue Turns 60: Revisit the Album That Changed American Music

"No amount of continuous repeats in coffeeshops around the world can dull the crystalline brilliance of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue one bit. The album turned 60 three days ago, and it still stands as one of the most influential albums, jazz or otherwise, of all time… indeed, as 'one of the single greatest achievements in American music.' So says one of several critics praising the album in the introduction to an interview with Ashley Kahn, author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. Kind of Blue is a 'cornerstone record, not only for jazz. It's a cornerstone record for music,' another voice comments. It 'captures the essence of jazz.' It’s 'sort of like the Bible, in a way. You know, you just have one in your house.' This would make Davis not only the composer of a new jazz Bible, but also a Bible salesman. He had no doubt his product would sell. ..."
Open Culture (Video)
Open Culture: Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue at 60: A New Video Essay Celebrates the 60th Anniversary of the Iconic Album (Video)
W - Kind of Blue
Slate
Guardian - 50 great moments in jazz: Miles Davis and Kind of Blue (Video)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Kind of Blue 50th Anniversary
YouTube: Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue (Full Album) 55:25

In Stereo: Tobias Freund & Max Loderbauer

"The release notes for their recent collaborative album, A.R.T, perhaps unfairly characterises Tobias Freund and Max Loderbauer's foray into dark ambient as "genre tourism." The heady experimentalism of concept-driven recorded work from the duo's inception in the early 2000s has seen them tackle reductionist technoid minimalism for Cadenza, craft an album of pieces composed solely with drum machines, and produce the longplayer NSI. Plays Non Standards which featured minimalist drones at the intersection of modern acoustic piano (played by Loderbauer) and electronic abstraction (as manipulated by Freund). Their acclaimed, yet infrequent, live sets have regularly skewed towards the organic and tonal qualities of the ambient aesthetic, functioning as a counterweight to the defined parameters of their celebrated output for Sähkö Recordings and Freund's own Non Standard Productions. The relative rarity of their live performances can be attributed to the sheer amount of analog gear required to realise the specificity of their sound design, as witnessed in this live capture: a fascinating mind trip through layers of deep submersion, simmering otherworldly eeriness and industrial pulses."
Boiler Room (Video)
YouTube: Tobias Freund & Max Loderbauer - Boiler Room 1:18:00

The Subtle Politics of Graphic Design

"In 2008, Barack Obama’s Chicago headquarters housed engineers from Facebook and coders from Google. Everything was optimized for the web, from the talking points to the logo—the simple, minimal, now iconic Obama 'O.' The candidate’s graphic designers even made use of a new typeface, Gotham, which was so well suited to social media that the Discovery Networks and SNL later folded it into their own branding. A decade later, the minimalist, startup-y aesthetic Obama pioneered during his first campaign is omnipresent, both in politics and in Silicon Valley, where apps from Tinder to Facebook have taken to using the style in their marketing materials. Partly because of its simplicity and adaptability across platforms, half of the 2020 Democratic field has embraced good, responsible, rather vacuous 2010s design, as well. ..."
New Republic

Habibi Funk: Tales from digging in North Africa

"'I don’t have a blueprint, really,' says Jannis Stürtz when asked how he discovers records to release on Habibi Funk, his reissue label for ’60s – ’80s funk and soul music from the Arab world. Alonsgide running his other label, Jakarta Records (with releases from artists like Mura Masa and Kaytranada), and DJing around the world, Stürtz still finds the time to dig for records in 'most [Arab] countries that you can currently go to' outside of the Arabic Peninsula. Sturtz also snuck in some much needed time researching a forthcoming Habibi Funk issue, during a trip to Lebanon for the country’s first Boiler Room. ..."
VF (Audio)
Phonica (Audio)
Pitchfork
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection of Music from the Arab World (Habibi Funk 007) 16 videos

‘The public has a right to art’: the radical joy of Keith Haring

Keith Haring at work on his mural Tuttomondo on the wall of the Church of Sant’Antonio, Pisa, in 1989.
"Though he died in 1990, in many ways Keith Haring is still alive. His art is everywhere. There are Haring T-shirts, Haring shoes, Haring chairs. You can buy Haring baseball hats and badges and baby-carriers and playing cards and stickers and keyrings. Keith Haring’s work pops up all over the place – his radiant baby, the barking dog, the dancer, the three-eyed smiling face. Simple, cheerful, upbeat, instantly recognisable. They make you smile and they work like graffiti tags, small signifiers that say 'Keith woz here'. But Haring did much more than provide cute cartoons. He was publicly minded. His art faced outwards. He wanted to inform, to start a conversation, to question authority and convention, to represent the oppressed. Those cute figures are political. ..."
Guardian
Keith Haring exhibition at Tate Liverpool (Video)

Ignorance = Fear, 1989.

2009 April: Keith Haring

I Fidanzati - Ermanno Olmi (1962)

"First the glimmering white and black images of Ermanno Olmi’s I Fidanzati light up the screen and warm your heart. Then they abruptly flicker out—like imagined fleeting glances of a love affair you can’t forget but couldn’t hold onto. In seventy-some minutes, I Fidanzati teaches – no, simply lets you learn – about distance, time and the uncontrollable, bittersweet ways in which romances wax and wane. Olmi introduces the fiancés’ plight in images of the pair sitting still across an empty table. They are in a dance hall suffused with the nervous longings of wallflowers stuck in anticipation. From the first to last, the scenes and sequences of I Fidanzati are as affecting as the quiet looks on the fiancés’ faces at this moment: she, hands in lap, looking away from him with the gentlest irritation; he, staring past her, slightly bemused and frustrated. ..."
NotComing
Pop Matters
W - I Fidanzati
amazon
YouTube: I Fidanzati Trailer, Under the Influence: Mike Mills on Ermanno Olmi, I Fidanzati opening scene

Inspired by Chatsworth: A Selling Exhibition

"Inspired by Chatsworth: A Selling Exhibition will present a carefully curated group of artworks and objects of exceptional quality that draw inspiration from the country-house aesthetic, as exemplified by the magnificent collection assembled by the Dukes of Devonshire over centuries at Chatsworth. On view alongside Treasures from Chatsworth: The Exhibition, the private selling exhibition will be on display in the newly expanded and reimagined galleries at Sotheby's New York. The exhibitions will be open simultaneously and their visual parallel will provide the opportunity to celebrate collecting and collectors, of which Chatsworth and the Cavendish family are amongst the greatest examples in history. ..."
Sotheby's
Sotheby's - Treasures from Chatsworth: The Exhibition (Video)
W - Chatsworth House

Find the Hidden Cameo in A Magnificent Early Canaletto - Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto, ARCHITECTURAL CAPRICCIO WITH CLASSICAL RUINS, 1723.

Niney The Observer ‎– Microphone Attack 1974-78

"'Blood & Fire has done it again. The best reggae label out there has put together another crucial selection of 70's DJ tracks. Classic works by U Roy, Big Youth and Dillinger, with a cut from one of my personal faves Trinity. However, the star of the show is the late great I Roy. I was a big fan of his work before, but he is simply dazzling on every track here. It helps that he's toasting over some Niney's greatest riddims and mind-bending dubs of the era ('Wolves & Leopards' by Dennis Brown, 'Paymaster' by Gregory Isaacs, 'Weeping' by Jr. Byles), but I Roy's versatility is unmatched and really shines through. From Rasta themes to early slackness stylee, he is head and shoulders above the rest. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Big Youth - Four Seasons, Wild Goose Chase- Big Youth & Dennis Brown, Flat Foot Hustling · Dillinger, Wolf and leopards - No conscience - Sister maggie breast: Dennis Brown, I Roy, Observer All Stars

Henry Wiggen's Last Pitch - Mark Harris (April 24 1979)

"Opening Day was fair and clear and dry with some what of a nip in the air. It was Spring and Dutch Schnell was dead. New York in the Spring meant clear days after rain and a nip in the air, and Dutch above every body else. I kept thinking I heard him shouting in the park. Where was the center of the park now that Dutch was dead, for in the past you listened for him and you looked for him, and where ever he was the center was. I sat in the Owners Box. Often in the past, Dutch walked down from the dugout to the box and shook hands and talked a little with some body there. Sometimes he kissed a lady for the camera, or a crippled child. When I was a young ball player I wondered why you done such things. When I was a more experienced ball player I thought you done it because the owner told you to. ..."
Esquire
SI: BANG THE DRUM LOUDLY FOR SOUTHPAW HENRY WIGGEN, BACK NOW IN A TRILOGY
Winning and Staying Honest in America’s Game
It Looked Like For Ever: the End of the Road for Henry Wiggen and Alex Rodriguez
Nebraska Press

2016 April: Henry Wiggen - fictional baseball player, 1954-1979

The Naturalism of Gustave Caillebotte 1

The Seine at Argenteuil c. 1892 The Clark
"Of the painters normally associated with the French Impressionists, two appear to be rather different: Edgar Degas, about whom I wrote at length last autumn, and Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894). With the recent ‘rediscovery’ of Naturalism, or social realism, Caillebotte is now being associated with accepted Naturalist artists such as Jules Bastien-Lepage, in many respects more strongly than with the core French Impressionists such as Monet and Pissarro. In this and the next article, I am going to look at a small selection of Caillebotte’s paintings across the breadth of his career, considering how Naturalist they might be, and how that fits in with their appreciation. ..."
The Naturalism of Gustave Caillebotte 1, The Naturalism of Gustave Caillebotte 2

2014 April: Gustave Caillebotte

David Behrman - Leapday Night (1991)

"A series of three pieces/suites; 'Leapday Night', 'A Traveler's Dream Journal', and 'Interspecies Smalltalk' involving Rhys Chatham/Ben Neill (on trumpet/mutantrumpet), Fluxus mainstay Takehisa Kosugi (violin), and Behrman himself on electronics. Behrman creates thickly layered liquid sounds utilizing this complex computer music system which absorbs, actually hears, the sounds of instrumentalists, then plays off their improvisations with its own synthesized reactions. The system consists of pitch sensors ('ears' with which it listens to the performing musicians), various music synthesizers (some homemade), a computer graphics color video display and a personal computer. 'Heavy period-synth float with bare accompaniment, thankfully just-pre DX-7.'"
Lovely
Lovely: Album Notes
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Leapday Night (Full Album)


2010 October: Roulette TV: David Behrman, 2012 January: The Siren Orchestra, 2014 May: On the Other Ocean/Figure in a Clearing (1977). 2015 June: Wave Train, 2018 January: Music With Memory (2018)

From Cuba

BarrioHabana Community Project
"As the Photography collection specialist my primary role is caring for photographic works in the Museum’s collection. However, I’m also always interested to learn how institutions and artists in varied situations and with different resources care for their collections and archives. I recently spent a week in Havana, Cuba, exploring photography collections, taking in architectural sites, and speaking with artists and curators. I had been curious about practices in Cuba because of the unique storage challenges the tropical climate presents. In an area where materials are not readily available, Cuban people have a legacy of creative and innovative strategies. Below are highlights from my trip. ..."
MoMA

Glenda León. Listening to the Autumn. 2011.

Beyond game day

Football field in Casablanca, Morocco.
"Ultras or fanatical football fans’ activities have always overlapped between football, social and political demands. Such groups have often shown their ability to mobilize and politicize stadiums. Whether they are aware of it or not, joining a group of ultras allows fans to appropriate a new social identity (an identity opposed to rival groups, public authorities, companies, and so on), a new way of life, and a sense of belonging. Ultra-fans’ hostility is directed towards all symbols of authority. They oppose rival fan-groups but also law enforcement, governments, the rich who exploit the poor and the country. As one fan of Raja Casablanca, a Moroccan club says. ..."
Africa Is a Country

Chefchaouen, Morocco 2018.

2019 July: Yes We Can—Football and Nationalism, 2019 July: Sport, history and politics at the African Cup of Nations

Night Dreamer - Wayne Shorter (1964)

Wikipedia - "Night Dreamer is the fourth album by American jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. It was released in November 1964 by Blue Note Records. With a quintet that includes trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Elvin Jones, Shorter performed six of his originals on this April 29 session. At this point of his career, Shorter felt his writing was changing. While the previous compositions had a 'lot of detail', this new approach had a simplistic quality to it. 'I used to use a lot of chord changes, for instance, but now I can separate the wheat from the chaff.' ... 'Night Dreamer' has mostly a minor feel, often perceived by Shorter as 'evening or night', hence the 'Night' in the title. It is a 3/4 'floating' piece, yet, 'although the beat does float, it also is set in a heavy groove. It's a paradox, in a way, like you'd have in a dream'. ..."
Wikipedia
Wayne Shorter: Night Dreamer (1964) Blue Note MM33 (mono update added) (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Night Dreamer 6 videos

Three Letters from Switzerland By Zelda Fitzgerald

"Between June 1930 and August 1931, after a series of mental health episodes had whittled away at her career, her marriage, and her overall well-being, Zelda Fitzgerald was a patient at Les Rives de Prangins, a clinic in Nyon, Switzerland, where she wasn’t allowed visitors until her treatment had been established. The experience, as one could imagine, was tremendously isolating: once at the center of a lively and glamorous scene, she now found herself utterly alone with her thoughts. Her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, sent short notes and flowers every other day. She wrote long letters in reply, tracing the contours of her mind, expressing both love for and frustration with Scott, and detailing, in luscious, iridescent prose, the nonevents of her days. Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda collects more than three hundred of the couple’s letters to each other. Three of Zelda’s letters from Les Rives de Prangins—carefully transcribed with an eye for accuracy, misspellings and all—appear below. ..."
The Paris Review

2014 January: View the Passport Photos of F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf & Other Cultural Icons, 2014 August: Gatsby to Garp: Modern Masterpieces from the Carter Burden Collection, 2014 November: Lost Generation, 2015 November: The Crack-Up (1945), 2017 December: Living Well Is the Best Revenge By Calvin Tomkins

Strata-East Records

"Next to the absence of Sun Ra, one of the most glaring omissions in Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary was the radical black music collectives that came out of America in the ‘70s. Burns saw the end of the 1960s as a break in the creative line of the art form. But rather than being the museum piece that Burns seemed to suggest, jazz in the new decade would make some of its most progressive statements. And it was in the creative freedom of independent ventures like New York’s Strata-East that the future would be mapped out. Alongside similar outfits like Tribe in Detroit, Black Artists Group in St. Louis, and The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago, Strata-East consolidated the previous advancements from all corners of jazz with a hard-edged militancy and community ethos that suited the times. Inspired by the empowering ideology of the Black Power movement, these collectives were fiercely independent. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily: A Guide to Strata-East (Video)
An introduction to Strata-East in 10 records (Video)
W - Strata-East Records
Soundcloud: Strata East Mix Part 1, Strata East Mix Part 2

Is El Museo del Barrio Forsaking Its Roots, or Expanding Them?

"The exhibition “Culture and the People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019” is a golden anniversary survey of wonderful art from the collection of a New York museum that is in the process of being torn apart. El Museo was founded half a century ago, in a politically agitated time, in Puerto Rican East Harlem, the Barrio. It identified itself as a community art space. Its first shows were in a public school classroom on East 123rd Street and it stayed within the immediate neighborhood until 1977, when it moved to its present address, a city-owned building on Fifth Avenue at 104th Street. ..."
NY Times (Video)
Culture and The People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019
Whose museum is it anyway? The story of El Museo del Barrio has always been about representation
As El Museo del Barrio Celebrates 50 Years, Critics Say It’s Straying From Its Mission
GothamToGo

Nicolás Dumit Estévez’s “The Flag,” 2003-6, a mixed-media installation at El Museo del Barrio in Manhattan that blends artistry, artisanship and activism. His handmade flag represents Dominican New York — an act of unity.

The 1619 Project

"The Fourth of July in 1776 is regarded by most Americans as the country’s birthday. But what if we were to tell you that the country’s true birth date, the moment that its defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August 1619? That was when a ship arrived at Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia, bearing a cargo of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years and form the basis for almost every aspect of American life. The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times memorializing that event on its 400th anniversary. The goal of the project is to deepen understanding of American history (and the American present) by proposing a new point of origin for our national story. In the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery. ..."
NY Times - Watch: The Times Presents the #1619Project
NY Times - The 1619 Project

What Contraception Meant to a Century of Women Writers

"In 1926, the year that the painter Alice Neel got married in Pennsylvania, effective contraception for women was still only a distant rumor emanating from New York City. Even if she could have obtained a diaphragm—but it was illegal then to send them, or even information about them, through the US mail—she went to live with her parents-in-law, where she lacked the privacy to use it. Neel once said, 'In the beginning I didn’t want children. I just got them.' In France, where Ursula K. Le Guin got married in 1953, all forms of contraception were illegal. The new couple’s most valued wedding gift was a gross of US military-issue condoms, sent by a friend in the armed forces in Germany, with suggestive comments written all over the box. When Doris Lessing had a tubal ligation in 1948, securing for herself the sexual freedom she celebrated in The Golden Notebook, she was undergoing a new and controversial procedure. ... The great 20th-century mother-writers and -artists whose work towers above us now—Lessing, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, Susan Sontag, the list goes on—all owe their careers and lives to the right to reproductive health care. ...""
Lithub
The Atlantic: The Suffragists Who Opposed Birth Control (Video)
The Atlantic: Votes for Women