Harlem on My Mind

In January 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an exhibition dedicated to the vibrant history of Harlem—the institution’s first attempt at displaying and interpreting African American culture. “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968” came to life at the tail end of the civil rights movement and on the cusp of Black Power. [...]

Instead, “Harlem on My Mind” represented Harlem via floor-to-ceiling photomurals, archival ephemera, and street soundscapes alongside interpretive text. It was the cutting edge of immersive exhibition design; the Met had never put on an exhibition like it before (and hasn’t since). Yet from the perspective of many Black artists, critics, academics, and organizers, the show was woefully retrograde. Despite concerns raised by community representatives during the exhibition’s development, the Met had reduced the culture of Harlem to an object of sociological, or even ethnographic, inquiry. Black people were once again the subjects, rather than the authors of their representation. [...]

Today, the legacy of “Harlem on My Mind” lies in the organizing that its failures prompted. In response to the exhibition, artists formed the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and picketed the show, carrying signs that read “Harlem on Whose Mind?” and “Whose Image of Whom?” The BECC, which remained active through the 1970s, would go on to demand that the Met and other art institutions hire Black curators and administrators and display work by Black artists. It would not be an overstatement to suggest that the new Met show “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” curated by Denise Murrell, is a descendant of this activism.  Rachel Hunter Himes, The Nation

la mostra "The Harlem Renaissance" è al Met fino al 28 giugno

The Last Caravaggio

In May 1606, Caravaggio’s rackety life caught up with him. He already had a long list of misdemeanours against his name. He had been twice arrested for carrying a sword without a permit; put on trial by the Roman authorities for writing scurrilous verses about a rival, Giovanni Baglione (or “Johnny Bollocks” according to the poems); arrested for affray and assault, in one incident being injured himself (his testimony to the police survives: “I wounded myself with my own sword when I fell down these stairs. I don’t know where it was and there was no one else there”); arrested again for smashing a plate of artichokes in the face of a waiter; for throwing stones and abusing a constable (telling him he could “stick [his sword] up his arse”); and for smearing excrement on the house of the landlady who had had his belongings seized in payment of missed rent. There were more incidents, all meticulously recorded in the Roman archives. Michael Prodger, New Statesman

“The Last Caravaggio” shows at the National Gallery, London WC2, from 18 April to 21 July 2024

Edward Hopper’s New York

A lot of things go missing in the paintings of Edward Hopper. Most notably, it’s people. In the first half of the 20th century, he painted New York when it was the largest city in the world, yet his streets are often empty, or haunted by only a few isolated figures. New York was then, as it is now, a diverse city, rich with racial and ethnographic diversity, but that, too, is absent in Hopper’s imagination. Philip Kennicott, WP

Edward Hopper’s New York Through March 5 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Edward Hopper’s New York

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) was the painter of small-town America. This we know. That his small town happened to be New York City, his home for nearly sixty years, we may not know. “Edward Hopper’s New York,” now on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, tells the hometown story of an artist we thought we knew all along in a novel and illuminating way. [...] 

Hopper treated New York as his own small town. James Panero, The New Criterion

“Edward Hopper’s New York” opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on October 19, 2022, and remains on view through March 5, 2023.

e con questa mostra che si prospetta molto interessante auguro a tutti un felice 2023! 

Pictures from an Exposition

Pictures from an Exposition: Visualizing the 1893 World's Fair: una bella mostra sulla Worlds Fair del 1893, "Featuring works of art and ephemera from the Newberry’s extensive collection of exposition materials, Pictures from an Exposition explores the fair’s tremendous power of attraction, both at the time of its presentation and through history into the present, for both those who attended and those who experienced it from afar", alla Newberry Library di Chicago dal 28 settembre al 31 dicembre. 

Proust alla Morgan Library

La Morgan Library di New York celebra i 100 anni dalla pubblicazione di La strada di Swan con una mostra di taccuini, foto e altri documenti della Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Colm Tóibín coglie l'occasione per fare delle considerazioni interessanti su Marcel e sua mamma e le conseguenze che il loro rapporto hanno sulla scrittura di Marcel. "A specter haunts the exhibition of Proust’s notebooks, manuscripts, and correspondence currently running at the Morgan Library. It is the specter of Proust’s mother. As you move from left to right in the room, the photograph of maman with her two sons, which appears first, sends a shiver down your spine. ... 

The first letter sets the scene. It is written to Marcel from his mother in 1895 when he is twenty-four and in Dieppe with Reynaldo Hahn. She is concerned about what time he goes to bed and what time he rises. Her letter is a demand for precise information. So she writes Couche and leaves a blank for him to fill in and then Leve and leaves another blank. Perhaps it is too fanciful to suggest that when he did begin to explain himself in his long novel, started a few years after his mother’s death, he had the lovely idea that his mother, by dying, had left an enormous blank for him to fill in. She wanted all the details, she wanted to be spared nothing as she sat on her chair in heaven, her eyes cast down, and he would do anything to please her. nybooks.

Dr. Seuss’s many hats

Random House Children's Books and Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced today the launch of the Hats Off to Dr. Seuss! campaign at the famed 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library in New York City. Inspired by the 75th anniversary of The 500 Hats of  Bartholomew Cubbins [il primo libro del Dr. Seuss], the yearlong celebration salutes the breadth of Dr. Seuss's work, not only the remarkable library of children's books he created, but also the span of his incredible career and legacy as a man who wore many hats: as an ad man, a political cartoonist, filmmaker, and a fine artist, to name a few. To celebrate this partnership there will be a brand new exhibit featuring Dr. Seuss's personal hats which have left his legendary, secret "hat closet" for the first time. The exhibit will be on display in The New York Public Library's Children's Center at 42nd Street through February 11.

Le menorah di Maurice Sendak

Il Jewish Museum di New York ha invitato Maurice Sendak a scegliere delle menorah dalla sua collezione da esibire per Hanukkah. Nella mostra sono anche esposti due disegni originali di Sendak (uno è In Grandpa's House della foto). La mostra inizia oggi e finisce il 29 gennaio. jewishmuseum.