George and Dora in Philadelphia

Great Aunt Dora was one of the most gracious ladies that I knew in my childhood. She was the longtime Dean of Women at Alfred University when that role also included playing hostess to esteemed guests of the university. Her first husband was George C.R. Degen, a stockbroker, and they lived in Philadelphia for most of the first couple decades of the twentieth century. They also lived for a while in New York City; I have seen a photo of their NYC apartment which shows a bit of the cherry dining table that became part of my furnishings for much of my adult life. That table came back to the family house in Alfred, New York, in 1995 when I moved from Texas to my studio apartment in New York City.

Aunt Dora came back to the family house in Alfred, New York, after the death of her husband in the early 1920s. She married J. Nelson Norwood, also widowed, in 1954 and they lived upstairs in the family house. Uncle Nelson had been president of Alfred University. This picture shows Aunt Dora and Uncle Nelson in 1936, both officers of the university and probably part of the centennial celebrations that year. They were not yet married but are standing in front of the family house.

The reason I have been thinking about all this history is a coincidence in the most recent book I finished reading. The book was French Braid by Anne Tyler. Most of the characters and action are set in Baltimore. The mother of the family, Mercy Garrett, mentions at one point that she went to visit her friends George and Dora in Philadelphia. Nothing about the two, no relevant twist of the plot, nothing. Just George and Dora in Philadelphia.

Connecticuters in LCDGT

I am a bit skeptical about the value of the Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms vocabulary (LCDGT). While there are demographic terms like Nebraskans and Californians that are widely used to describe people from those places, some of the terms being proposed for the vocabulary seem like a stretch, for example, Albanians (New York State) for the residents of Albany, New York. And then I saw an article in today's New York Times about Connecticut doing a rebranding. The governor and others are worried that people see Connecticut as a somewhat boring waystation between New York City and Boston. The author of the article opines that residents do not even know what to call themselves. Are they Connecticuters? Connecticutians? Connecticutites? So I checked LCDGT and the preferred term is Connecticut residents. The LCDGT record has references from Connecticuters, Connecticotians, and Connecticutensians, as well as from Nutmeggers, from the state nickname, The Nutmeg State.

Photo taken in Albany, N.Y., by an Alfredian

the subject of the Artle work

Marie Harriman, 1903-1970, gallerist and second wife of W. Averill Harriman, is the subject of the portrait in today's Artle. The portrait, in the National Gallery of Art, does not seem to me like a predictable work by the artist. Joe Biden borrowed the painting to hang in his Vice Presidential office in the Old Executive Office Building from 2009-2015, according to the NGA exhibition information on the page for the painting.

Marie Harriman's Wikipedia page is a master lesson in name dropping: Averill Harriman, Peter Duchin, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney (son of Harry Payne Whitney and Gertrude Vanderbilt), Hall Roosevelt (brother of Eleanor), Babe Paley, Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward, Randolph Churchill (son of Winston), Leland Hayward, and Miss Spence's School. I guess this is what happens when you are in the New York upper crust.

 

perusing the paper & architecture and politics

(NPS photo)

My nephew asked me about the obituary for Dr Lloyd Watson, a bee scientist who had been a major influence on my father as he was growing up. Enough that I was named after his son. The obituary appeared in The New York Times for February 27, 1948. I looked at the obituary on the TimesMachine so I was looking at the content as a newspaper page.

An obituary in a neighboring column was for a Dr William Maxon, a botanist and expert on ferns. Probably not a relative but I am related to Maxsons, a variant spelling of the surname. LCSH uses Maxson family with a reference from Maxon family and a couple other variants.

I couldn't help myself. I turned the newspaper back a page or two, noting book reviews, letters to the editor, opinion pieces, and other items that now seem less integrated in today's Times. Next to the main book review was an article entitled "Decision to stand on Jefferson Arch: prize-winning design for huge parabola is opposed here as similar to Mussolini's." The arch, designed by Eero Saarinen, is now known as the Gateway Arch and is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

The Jefferson Arch was criticized by Gilmore D. Clarke, the chairman of the National Commission on Fine Arts, as similar to a Mussolini arch. Mussolini had approved a parabolic arch for the international exposition in Rome in 1942 celebrating twenty years of fascism. The president of the Jefferson Memorial Association argued that the similarity of the designs was "purely coincidental." Saarinen described the parabola shape as a basic form and said he had never seen the Rome design. The connection of fascism to modern architecture, particularly in Italy, is troubling to me (and others).

As an aside, Gilmore Clarke is mentioned three or four times in the article and his "Clarke" is misspelled as "Clark" in the first instance.

 

housing inequality

The National Edition of the Sunday New York Times includes two or three pages of real estate and metropolitan content at the back of the business section. These days, when stock prices and currency exchange rates are readily available on the web, the business section has more content about business people or firms and socioeconomic context. The two real estate articles this past week, on facing pages, were titled "A name brand as an amenity" and "In Detroit, an eviction rattles a housing plan." While not explicitly about housing inequality, the amenity article addresses apartment buildings in Miami and elsewhere with condos selling for as much as 59 million dollars. The Detroit eviction article addresses the eviction of a homeowner for not living full time in her tiny house. Her name appears on the lease of her boyfriend's riverfront condo. She says that she works for her boyfriend's firm which is based in the apartment. The tiny houses are owned and operated by Cass Community Social Services and the rent is $1 per square foot on the lease-to-own basis.

(Photo by Michelle and Chris Gerard on Curbed Detroit)

Neither article is simply about high-priced or low-priced housing but I cannot help thinking about how many decent living spaces could be created with 59 million dollars. Not just tiny houses but living spaces from abandoned industrial buildings, rehabilitated houses, accessory dwelling units, as well as new buildings. Rehabilitation also can go a good distance on greenhouse gas mitigation.

I just finished reading Solomon's Crown by Natasha Siegel. When I went to the shelf to pick my next book, I selected The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask. I guess I will be thinking more about the socioeconomics of housing.

Jane Lapotaire

Every once in a while, there's a scene in some film or other program where an actor just shines. Jane Lapotaire is the actress that just knocked me off my chair. She plays Princess Alice (Battenberg), the mother of HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in The Crown. She has been staying at Buckingham Palace after a coup made the situation in Greece precarious. Her brother, Lord Mountbatten, has just gotten a dressing down from Queen Elizabeth for conspiring (QE II's word) with others against Harold Wilson's government.

Lord Mountbatten goes to see Princess Alice in her room and their conversation resonated for me as I think about what to do about more Trump presidency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT6yUlDzkfs 

As I was watching that scene in The Crown, I realized that Jane Lapotaire also played Princess Kuragin in Downton Abbey.

I was wearing my t-shirt yesterday with a quote from Moira Rose of Schitt's Creek. "When one of us shines, all of us shine."

the Napier line

Lady Sarah Lennox by Sir Joshua Reynolds

(Art Institute of Chicago)

Lady Sarah Lennox was a favorite of King George III of Great Britain. I learned this while watching an interview with India Amarteifio and Corey Mylchreest who play Charlotte and George in the Shonda Rhimes and Netflix series "Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story." Lady Sarah married Charles Bunbury and later George Napier. She and Napier had eight children. One wonders if Evelyn Napier, a friend of Lady Mary in "Downton Abbey," was perhaps a grandson or great-grandson of Lady Sarah.

The Heart's Invisible Furies

I have been getting toward the end of The heart's invisible furies by John Boyne. A compelling read and some portions have been just a little too close to things that are happening or have happened in my life. This morning as I was reading, someone asked what I was reading. I handed the book to him and said something like "it's the story of an Irish man from the 1940s and I'm in the '80s now." I rarely recommend a book to someone. Enjoying a particular book is such a personal thing. Again, more resonance in Furies when I read the following passage just now.

And I quote ....

"No, you're all right. I believe you," she said, waving my offer away. "Cyril then, if you prefer. What's that you're reading?"

I turned the book over to reveal a copy of Colm Toibín's The Story of the Night. I'd owned it for years but had never got around to reading it until now.

"Now, I haven't read that one," she said, picking it up and reading the back. "Is it any good?"

"It is," I said.

"Should I read it?"

"Well, that's up to you, really."

.... end quote

As it happens, I think The story of the night is my favorite book by Tóibín.

ARLIS/NA @ CDMX

I just got back from the Art Libraries Society of North America conference in Mexico City, our first conference in Mexico although we have been proudly North American all of our collective lives. We have already met a few times in Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Banff). Mexico City is a gritty city, like I like 'em. Gritty, busy, noisy, diverse, full of architectural treasures, good and interesting art, food (fancy and plain).

On our last afternoon, after the business meeting, Bill and I walked over to see the murals in the Secretariat of Public Education building. Diego Rivera, Jean Charlot, and others. We meandered on the way back, partly on the Calle de la República de Cuba. In addition to bridal shops and gay bars, we saw this building that could use some attention and maintenance. I think a third-floor deck would be just fine through those open arches.

That evening, we went to the Palacio de Bellas Artes for a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. The program included an overture by Louise Farrenc (Opus 23), a double bass concerto by Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf (KR 172), and the Third ("Organ") Symphony by Camille Saint-Saëns. The music was lovely. The conductor was a joy to watch. The hall has a Tiffany dome as well as a Tiffany (glass) stage curtain. The first and third works were played on the full stage. The Ditters von Dittersdorf only uses a chamber orchestra so they put some chairs on the front of the proscenium and lowered the Tiffany glass curtain for that portion of the concert. We were physically as well as musically in heaven. Bill had purposely chosen seats in the top of the house (más alta, por favor) so we were close to the Tiffany dome.

Now back home and last night was the dance showing by choreography students at Alfred University. Pretty glorious too. Stendhal much?

(view from exhibit hall at the conference, Hilton Reforma)

(my CDMX picture album on Flickr)

Radio Girls, before and after their time

There are all sorts of reasons why you buy and/or read a book. Sometimes it's the stack of books on the new releases table in the bookstore. Sometimes it's a review. Sometimes a friend recommends the book. Maybe the book is just in the social air. And sometimes the daughter of a friend and colleague is the author. It was this last circumstance that put Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford on my to-read shelf.

(image from Penguin-Random House webpage for the book)

Sarah-Jane Stratford is the daughter of my longtime art cataloging colleague Nancy Norris, now retired from UCLA. It took me a little while to get into the story but I'm awfully glad I got past that. The story is set in London, between the wars, as the fascist threat grows and people become more and more aware of the seriousness of the threat. The "radio girls" are working at BBC which is in its infancy.

The first printing of the New American Library paperback edition was in June 2016. It is amazing and terrifying how the story resonates with the situation in the United States from 2016 when Trump was running and then serving as president. Suppression of news. Officious bosses. Male date assumptions. Stratford must have had her fore-seeing glasses on.

Always looking for parallels, I was amused that one of the bad guys was a Mr Grigson. Not quite the same name as Michael Gregson, from Downton Abbey, but our heroine Maisie Musgrave's fiancé Simon does go to Germany on family business and get involved with Grigson on some corporate shenanigans related to making deals with the Nazi government. By the way, librarians are mentioned a couple times as being good with facts.

teardowns

I have been watching the 1981 version of Brideshead Revisited. Lady Marchmain has died and the London house has been sold by Lord Marchmain. Bridey has asked Charles to paint some views of the house before it is torn down, to be replaced by flats. But don't worry. The house will be saved and the flats will not be built. Charles will find his painting career with the success of the paintings. I know the house will be saved because it is also Grantham House, the London residence of the Crawleys from Downton Abbey.

This photo of the actual Bridgewater House, earlier Cleveland House, is on Flickr, taken by jupiter1953.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/b1953/7616519714

I first watched the 1981 Brideshead at Judith Holliday's apartment in the Dewitt Mall Apartments in Ithaca. My then boyfriend Randy and I went over every Sunday night while it was on Great Performances on PBS. I had not had a television and bought a modest black-and-white television so we could watch the series. Randy also did not have a television. Judith had a color TV and it beat out my B&W model. I took along my copy of the book and it was amazing (and surprising) how much of the dialogue in the book made it into the telescript.

meta credits

So you may know that I watch film credits pretty voraciously. I love the loopy rhyme of Loop Group as well as the name of such a post-production sound group that I have seen credited a number of times: Sync or Swim. Sometimes, the folks responsible are called Crowd ADR or just ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement). I just watched Going Down in LA-LA Land and was amused by the credit for Expendables. Those responsible for expendables were Studio Depot, The Expendables Recycler, Bulbtronics, and Expendable. I glanced over the YouTube comments and someone noted that they really enjoyed watching the credits because "The ADR then is hilarious." Here's the two leads getting to know each other:

P.S. Emma Kantor also reads the end credits: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/magazine/closing-credits-movies.html

at hand, just six feet away

I occasionally think that I should find an institution that could use the books on art and architecture that I've been buying for decades. I used to worry about the appraisal for tax deduction purposes and decided that was just an impediment. Still, it is satisfying to have my book collection when I am at an Unboxed Lunch sponsored by the Archives of American Art. Josh Franco talked today about new accessions to the Lucy Lippard archive. He happened to pick out the folder on her book Overlay. It was glorious to stand up, take a couple steps, and take Overlay off the shelf and look at it as he spoke.

separated at birth: BIG

VIA 57 West

New York City

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), architect

https://big.dk/

BIBFRAME Implementation Group (BIG)

photo above:

David.Clay.Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

stops along the way on my southern road trip

It may be mostly for my own memory aid, but I thought I would do a post with the overnight and other significant stops along my southern road trip loop from Alfred down to Orlando and then over to Biloxi before heading back North.

• Washington, D.C.: Sargent & Spain exhibition at the National Gallery (including chat with curator Sarah Cash and talking with NGA catalogers), This Present Moment at the Renwick, Giuseppe de Nittis at the Phillips, MASS Design Group at the National Building Museum, plus SAAM, NPG, Hirshhorn
• Richmond, Va.: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Branch Museum of Architecture and Design, Valentine Museum, VCU Institute of Contemporary Art (the building designed by Steven Holl, the museum was closed on New Year's Eve)
• Durham, N.C.: drop off some magazines for USModernist, shop for Sunday Times at The Streets at Southpoint (a new mall pretending to be a good old Main Street and doing a decent job of it)
• Florence, S.C.: Florence County Museum (art and history), visit Jeanette and Wanda
• Charleston, S.C.: Gibbes Museum of Art (including Bo Bartlett show on the top floor)
• Beaufort, S.C.
• Savannah, Ga.: Telfair Academy (with plaster casts of Laocoön and other classical works)
• St Augustine, Fla.: the old fortifications (17th century)
• Orlando, Fla.: visit Elizabeth G, Florida Polytechnic University (new building by Santiago Calatrava), Florida Southern College (buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright including a Usonian house), Orlando Museum of Art (exhibition Don't Ask Me Where I'm From and good selection of older and newer works from their American collections), Mennello  Museum of American Art (exhibition In Conversation: Will Wilson & Edward S. Curtis)
• Fanning Springs, Fla.: ARLIS/NA Cataloging Advisory Committee meeting via Zoom
• Apalachicola, Fla.: overnight spot, just love saying the word
• Lillian, Ala.: Johnny B's Front Porch for Taco Tuesdays
• Foley, Ala.: Book Exchange (the clerk very nicely helped me with the $100 bill that came out of the ATM without sufficient warning)
• Biloxi, Miss.: Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art (one of the major impetuses for this road trip and totally met expectations, museum designed by Frank Gehry)
• Meridian, Miss.: mostly overnight stop but now I wish I'd checked it out a little more
• Montgomery, Ala.: drove around Selma on my way to Montgomery (the tornado struck a few hours later), Lowndes County Interpretive Center of the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail between the two cities, National Memorial to Peace and Justice (designed by MASS Design Group), Legacy Museum, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald House Museum
• Tuskegee, Ala.: Tuskegee University with a chapel by Paul Rudolph and other buildings either by Rudolph or showing his strong influence (Fry and Welch, former Tuskegee architecture professors, collaborated on the chapel)
  

From Tuskegee, I started taking mostly interstate highways and was seriously headed toward home in Alfred, New York. I whizzed past Atlanta, Charlotte, Roanoke, Staunton, Harrisburg, and Corning. A couple days of driving most of the daylight hours. Not my favorite way to go from one place to another but when it's time to head home, the interstates do a pretty good (if jarring) job of it.

A couple miscellaneous observations: raptors love to fly over the interstates (must be the road kill), lightly traveled U.S. highways are generally in better shape than the heavily traveled interstates (well, duh).

My Flickr photostream has a picture album from the road. Here's a picture of the trailhead parking area where I attended the CAC meeting in Fanning Springs, Florida.

stormy weather

I was in Meridian, Mississippi, last night, on my southern road trip. The hotel was on a rise so, in the morning, I had a nice view of downtown. I probably would have preferred being downtown but El Norte Authentic Mexican Restaurant was a short (if not particularly pleasant) walk from the hotel. Today's goal was heading to Montgomery so I read a bit of Meridian history and took off for Alabama. I stopped at the Alabama Welcome Center and got the official state map, a brochure on Montgomery with map, and a brochure on the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail (National Park Service).

Map reading had indicated that U.S. 80 goes across Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma. The map seemed to have both a through-town and a bypass route for 80. Somehow I missed the through-town route and found myself on the eastern side of Selma. I carried on.

Midway between Selma and Montgomery is the Lowndes Interpretive Center which has various materials on the Trail as well as a shop and restrooms. As I was leaving, a local storm alert came across the wires to the various rangers at the site. What I heard is that the local tornado watch was for the next hour and would be lifted at 12:30. I got my book and tried to read but got restless after a while, especially after hearing that the state alerts would last until 5 pm. Another couple folks had decided to keep pressing on to Montgomery and a young woman headed out toward Selma. One of the other rangers suggested we were still pretty well ahead of the storm so I took off for Montgomery.

When I got to Montgomery, I was having trouble finding the National Memorial for Peace and Justice so I parked to check the map and online, just as it started to rain ... and hail and blow and lightning and a bit of thunder. Not much hail (or maybe it was twigs) but the rain was pelting. The car was shaking in the wind. When it seemed to let up a bit, I drove the few blocks to the memorial. When I got there, they had closed the memorial until the storm passed but the nearby Equal Justice Institute interpretive center was open.

I have now seen pictures of the tornado damage in Selma. A little too close for comfort. I think I had heard of the Selma tornado by the time they reopened the memorial. The still stormy sky and the wet ground added drama to the visit. The memorial is familiarly known as "the lynching museum." There are weathering steel (aka COR-TEN) blocks hanging from the ceiling of the open-air structure. The blocks have a county name and a list of the persons who were lynched in that county. Along the side walls are plaques that have short narratives on the cause of a person's lynching. I don't mean to sound too matter-of-fact about this description. The memorial is powerful and provoking, another of the compelling designs of MASS Design Group. There are also plaques describing truth and reconciliation measures by various jurisdictions.

Pictures from when they reopened the memorial after the storm had mostly passed and later as I left the memorial and the skies had cleared in the west.

Southern road trip dream

For years, ever since I heard about it, I have wanted to visit the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi. It finally came together when I got excited about seeing the "Sargent and Spain" show at the National Gallery of Art, curated by Sarah Cash, erstwhile colleague at the Amon Carter, and collaborators. I realized these were a couple push pins in the map of a road trip in the southern United States. As I started to formulate the trip and talk to friends about it, they'd squirm at the thought of traveling in the Deep South. What about homophobia? What about Trumpism? What about ...?

Now two weeks into the trip, I have been to a wonderful selection of museums, some for the first time ever, some for the first time in years, others oft visited. I started in Washington with the National Gallery where I got a chance to talk with Sarah for a half hour or so and several NGA Library colleagues and friends for about an hour. There was a wonderful craft show at the Renwick. The Obama portraits were back at the National Portrait Gallery after a tour. The National Building Museum had an overview show of the work of MASS Design Group whose National Memorial for Peace and Justice is still coming up (tomorrow) in Montgomery, Alabama. I got to the Smithsonian American Art Museum which is always a delight. The Giuseppe de Nittis show at the Phillips was really interesting and enlightening.

Amusingly, I got to valet park my own car at the hotel I was staying at (Normandy Hotel, near Connecticut Avenue and the Washington Hilton). The clerk on duty couldn't manage a stick shift. After not driving for several days, I couldn't either, as I tried to get out of the garage under the building with a steep driveway where you had to stop after tripping the device that opened the garage door. I only stalled twice.

I started this post to describe how much I was enjoying the Alabama and Mississippi portions of the road trip and, so far, have gotten distracted by the bigger narrative. More on all that later.

My first view of Alabama was the bright blue waters of Perdido Bay from the bridge/causeway between Florida and Alabama. I was about ready for lunch and there was The Front Porch. There's a bit of a name authority issue: the sign said Lillian's Front Porch, the menu said Johnny B's Front Porch. Lillian is the town. The sign out front said it was Taco Tuesdays. The tacos were fine, the setting was comfortable as you can see from this picture. The waitress was pleasant and teased me about doing my homework as I wrote in my journal.

I made it to Moss Point, Mississippi (about 25 miles from Biloxi) for my overnight hotel. Darkness was descending and there was a discussion group Zoom to get ready for. Next morning, I got off toward Biloxi with some compensation for the museum not opening until 10 am. That is, I dawdled over Artle and Wordle and went into Ocean Springs to check out the Walter Anderson Museum of Art which didn't open until 11 am and didn't call to me. It was foggy and lovely over the Gulf of Mexico as I drove along the beach highway.

And, then, there was the Ohr-O'Keefe. It was a few minutes before 10 am and I walked around to get a sense of the exterior. The museum was designed by Frank Gehry. It consists of several buildings and some of the buildings are pods. One of the pods is not finished inside and the museum is now using it as a display space with its raw guts showing. George Ohr called himself "The Mad Potter of Biloxi." His work is pretty rich and complex. There were plenty of his pots on display but not so many that you were ready to scream "Enough!"

My expectations of the museum were very high but the museum and collection (and even the lunch at the museum café) were fulfilling and deeply satisfying.

There are more pictures in my Flickr album:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/56294332@N00/albums/72177720304864649