And we're back...

It was comforting and reassuring to have had a few people reach out to me over the past couple of months asking, rather exuberantly, "Why aren't you blogging?!" I guess I did leave people hanging with London, implying more was coming. Admittedly, when I was in London that week, I had every intention of sharing more about that trip. But then the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan at work and it knocked some of my plans out of whack. Some of you will understand right away what I'm talking about, but for others who don't, you can read about it here ... or here ... or ... you get the picture. (No update on the whole thing, I'm afraid. I imagine I'm still unofficially-officially unable to comment.)

But since then, life has continued rather well. I turned 46 (egads!). We had a very fun house re-warming party (because since my arrival in AA's abode, I have re-warmed it!). We went to Florida to visit family, then we had an amazing vacation to Mexico City, and I recently went to Portland (Maine) for work. The job itself, of course, has continued with numerous things taking place, aside from the above-mentioned drama. And I've been writing.

I admit I contemplated whether I should blog anymore. With over 500 posts covering almost 7 years, what more could bklynbiblio possibly say? (Please...you KNOW I always have something to say!) It is true that the "old" days of blogging in general have dissipated. The first "weblog" dates from 1997, so it's now 19 years in. But do people actively read blogs anymore? I actually do still read a few, and you can see the links on this blog, but in general I have a tendency to binge-read them, not read their posts regularly. I don't think, however, that most people active read blogs as they used to. What seems to have happened is that as a plethora of information on the Internet has exploded over the past few years, no one can process anything more than a simple paragraph of "facts" (quotation marks intentional) in one quick read. Reading, let alone writing, an essay online is simply beyond what most people can process or even want to process anymore.

All this made me question if writing new blog posts merited anything. As I said in the beginning, it was absolutely delightful to know that some people missed the posts. (Thank you, AA, PR, JAM, PC, and others.) But does blogging on its own provide the same important outlet for news and general information as it once did? Social media has exploded in creating a multiple-platform means in which to convey "facts" (quotation marks still intentional). In other words, if we have YouTube, apps, notifications, and so on, do we actually need full-text information at all? Curiously, this isn't a situation faced only by bloggers. Newspapers are facing it too, as demonstrated by the fact that they continue to lay off full-time reporters because no one wants to read, or has the time to read, actual reporting anymore.

But this blog isn't really about news like our conflicts with the Islamic State, Zika, terrorists, or the Presidential campaign. This blog has been about the arts in its broadest context, filled with personal reviews and original works of art, interviews and travelogues, and "best of" annual recaps. So it does still serve a purpose. What has changed, however, is me in that I now utilize social media more than this blog to disseminate information. My Instagram and Twitter accounts are both bklynbiblio, for instance. Therefore, if one really wants to keep up with bklynbiblio, apparently one has to follow not just this blog but all my social media outlets!! And if the very idea of doing that infuriates, upsets, or even disheartens you, then you're not alone. I feel the same way! It is, quite frankly, exhausting. Seriously.

Perhaps part of the problem is that we are inundated by the insane drama of Trump-Clinton-Sanders-Rubio-Cruz-whothehellcaresanymore...non-stop, 24/7. Perhaps it is because innocent people are being slaughtered by unbalanced individuals who, instead of being encouraged to get mental health therapy, are allowed to buy assault rifles and take our their anger by shooting whomever they like, and we also hear about it 24/7. Perhaps it is something simpler, that I'm now post-45 and my eyes tire more easily from staring at computer screens, but I can't help checking Facebook one more time. My new, longer commute from NJ means I read many more print books each day, which is great, as I'm reminded how much more enjoyable that active form of reading is for me than ever reading online (even if I have to prop a book on someone's head in the subway to read it!). Worth mentioning at this precise juncture, then, is one of those books I have read on the subway: Jonathan Crary's 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. This erudite, short text outright warns us that we need to stop letting corporations control our lives through these online gadgets and media. Their ever-growing capitalist intent fools us into thinking we need the latest technology in order to stay in touch, and that if we aren't online all the time we will miss something important. Hence, the end of sleep, and the utter exhaustion that we are all feeling more and more every single day. (Read the book. It's worth it.)

What I have discovered about myself (and I'm sure others feel this way) is that I struggle between my constant use of various media platforms (as both a browser and a poster), and my desire to pull away from all of them because I can tell how much these various media outlets are exhausting me. And I hope that the latter part of that struggle is winning out. I consciously now try to live "in the moment." I realize that is incredibly cliche, and the quotation marks here are also intentional, but this time not for a negative reason. I really do mean "in the moment." I find myself more and more actually looking at people, admiring who they are and wondering about the lives they live. I look around at buildings and bushes and bodies of water and try to notice what makes each element in life unique or the same. I touch textiles and woods and metals to try to understand what they feel like. I listen for birds singing in trees. I gaze at paintings and walk around sculptures, simply to take in the beauty of what artistic creation. And I actually have grinned when I realize that I have stopped to smell lilacs, jasmine, and, yes, roses. And they smell divine.

Of course writing this blog post right now may seem contradictory to everything I've just written. But not really, because ultimately I've always perceived myself as a writer, and for me this is how I communicate my thoughts and feelings about all these things. So, yes, we are back on the blog! I can't promise how often I will be posting, or whether I will be posting things like I have in the past. But you can be sure: "writing" in some format or another is taking place, simply because living is happening off-line.

500 Posts and Happy 2015!

January 1, 2015...HAPPY NEW YEAR! I start off each year with the proper greeting. Sometimes I modify the layout of the blog, but I've decided to leave it as is for now. However, I have added a link to the bklynbiblio Instagram account, so check it out and follow me there, as well as on Twitter (where we now have reached 515 tweets). The big news, however, is that this New Year's Day post also coincides with the 500th post on this blog. The image above is from the Fortune 500 list from 2014; the bold, gold numbers seemed appropriate for a New Year's association. (It is strangely coincidental that two years ago we reached the 400th post on New Year's Day.)

When I first started this blog back in August 2008, I envisioned it as a space where I could write and see the results of my writing. I was still taking courses in my doctoral program, and I lamented that I could not spend more time writing my own work. A blog seemed to be the most logical way to do this. People claim that blogs today are dead, and arguably social media products like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the preferred way of maintaining communication. But I still find this blog an effective place for me to write. It is a virtual zone where I can be creative or critical, analytical or entertaining. It is an aesthetic arena in which I can share images of works of art so they can be admired and contemplated as objects of beauty and constructs of social engagement. What I never imagined was, more than 6 years later, that I would still be writing this blog and that I would reach my 500th post. It is a milestone, and I am admittedly proud of this accomplishment.

As always, I find these centenary markers an opportunity to share some interesting statistics about bklynbiblio. Since August 2008, there have been 91,565 page views. That works out to be approximately 1189 page views per month. More than half of the traffic coming to the blog is from U.S. Internet addresses, but after that the traffic comes from, in order, the United Kingdom, France, Ukraine, and Germany. (This is an interesting contrast to the top countries when we had hit 400 posts: UK, Germany, Canada, and Russia.) About 40% of readers use Internet Explorer to read my blog posts, followed by 26% on Firefox and 19% on Chrome (note: I use Chrome for all my blogging). Most interesting, of course, are the blog posts that rank as the highest viewed. Amazingly, #s 1 and 2 have retained their top most popular posts, while #3 moves up one from its former position. The next two are new entries and I'm pleased to see at #5 one of my Monthly Works of Art. Here are the official ranks:
#1. Male Enhancement [Jul. 5, 2010; 2090 views]
#2. Review: Yinka Shonibare MBE [Sep. 6, 2009; 1038 views]
#3. Is It Baroque, and Do We Fix It? [Aug. 7, 2011; 513 views]
#4. Post-Queer Art History [Oct. 13, 2009; 445 views]
#5. MWA II: Vatican Shepherd [Apr. 7, 2012; 438 views]
Among the ranks for #6 through #10 are my obituary of art historian Lionel Lambourne and my post about the sale of Simeon Solomon's signed copy of his 1871 prose poem A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep dedicated to Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Although this blog is a way for me to express myself, my writing only has perpetual value because there are readers out there who appreciate, agree, disagree, comment, "like," and respond to these words over time, if not on this blog directly, then in emails, on social media, and in person. Thank you, readers, for helping bklynbiblio reach its 500th post. Here's to reaching 600!

Public Sculpture II: Columbia University

Following up on the post I just wrote about Storm King Art Center, another public sculpture-themed post is in order. My interest in public sculpture has taken another step forward, in that part of my job as Curator of Art Properties is to oversee the care of the public outdoor sculpture at Columbia University. (You may recall I went to a seminar recently on the care of metal outdoor sculpture!) We have a number of works that date from the late 1890s through the 2000s, and some are by major sculptors known to most people (can you say Rodin?). I'm pleased to announce that today we released the first iteration of what will be a growing collection of webpages or a blog about the public outdoor sculpture collection at Columbia. You can read the first webpage here, which was publicized today on Twitter and Facebook by TG. The image you see above is the subject of our first webpage: George Grey Barnard's The Great God Pan. I won't repeat all the information here about the sculpture, because that's on the webpage I just referenced. But I'm very pleased about this webpage, as it is a major step forward in helping to promote just one component of the art collections at Columbia, a task which is monumental in its scope, but something which I am eagerly challenged to take on. Stay tuned for more about the public outdoor sculpture collection at Columbia!

400 Posts and Happy 2013!

bklynbiblio has reached its 400th post! We made it to 300 back in May 2011, so it has taken a while to get to this one, but I think you'll agree that this is still quite a milestone. It also conveniently times well with our annual New Year's Day post, so what better way to kick off 2013 and celebrate 400 posts then with a lovely champagne toast!

Each new year I modify the look of bklynbiblio, but I'm leaving it alone this time as I actually like the look. And now for some statistics. Blogger software has been keeping stats since our little blog was launched in August 2008, so here are a few I thought you might find of interest. We have had 42,301 page views, which works out to be about 830 page views per month. Almost half of those views have come from US Internet addresses, with the UK, Germany, Canada, and Russia (!) next on the list. 76% have been Windows users, with Mac users only at 14%. Here's my favorite part--the most frequently visited posts--and the top 2 and #5 remain the same! (#1 certainly isn't much of a surprise, but what is going on with #3?)
#1. Male Enhancement [July 5, 2010; 1391 views]
#2. Review: Yinka Shonibare MBE [Sep 6, 2009; 881 views]
#3. Happy 3rd Birthday! [Aug 29, 2011; 420 views]
#4. Is It Baroque, and Do We Fix It? [Aug 7, 2011; 368 views]
#5. 50 UK Days: Week 2.5 [Oct 28, 2010; 317 views]
Among #s 6-10 are my posts on Downton Abbey and my review of the Cindy Sherman exhibition.

My thanks as always to all of my readers for your continued support and encouragement. Here's to the next 100 posts!

Random Musings 9

This morning I received an email from Sladmore Gallery announcing the current exhibition at their Jermyn Street location in London, and I so wish I could go see this in person before it closes next month. The picture you see here should give you a clue. Yes, they’re doing The Dog Show. Now, in the world of art history, animals have never been taken too seriously. Think “dog” and “art” and the first think that comes to mind is the ridiculous picture of dogs playing poker. To some extent, Victorians like Edwin Landseer perhaps did make animals in art seem trite with paintings like Trial by Jury where dogs hold court, but Landseer also was enormously famous for Monarch of the Glen, a beautiful picture of a stag in the highlands which came to be seen as an icon of national pride. Dogs, however, have been faithful companions for centuries and frequently appear in art, such as in just some of these important paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Anthony van Dyke and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The exhibition at Sladmore Gallery focuses on 19th- and 20th-century paintings and sculptures, which is another reason to see the show since combining these two media in one show is so infrequently done. And if you’re wondering why I chose this particular image of a West Highland Terrier by the British artist Lilian Cheviot, it is an homage to the memory of my own adorable little Westie named Duchess, who died in 2003.

Speaking of the Met, the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia opened to the public on Tuesday. I had an opportunity to preview them the week beforehand, and they are simply magnificent. The image you see here is of the restored Damascus Room, which is but one of the many galleries that have been reinstalled after an 8-year renovation. The room showcasing a number of exquisite carpets is just stunning, but my personal favorite sections showcase objects from the Ottoman Empire and India. Considering that cultural relations between the U.S. and various Islamic nations and peoples have been precarious to say the least, these galleries can only help in educating about the fascinating culture of Islam and its exquisite works of art from so many parts of its world for over a millennium. You can read from The New York Times a full review and description of the galleries by Holland Carter, who describes them as being “beyond fabulous,” which they are.

In case you haven’t heard the news, the world population is now at over 7 billion. That number alone is staggering to say the least, but the rate of growth is even more disturbing. At the current rate of population growth, it is estimated that by the year 2080 we will have 10 billion people on the planet. Whatever happened to those futuristic modules of living in underwater colonies or outer space? Someone needs to start working fast to accommodate our ever-increasing population. But did you ever wonder what number you were at your birth? Turns out, I was person number 3,678,956,784. I’m also the 77,803,200,647th person who’s ever lived on the planet. Go to the BBC population calculator app to find out your numbers and learn more about population growth around the world. You may be surprised by what you find out.

Finally, whenever I report on the British royal family, I always get scolded by a number of my friends for being a royal follower. Whatever...it’s part of history, and I love it. (Besides, I recently made a lovely visit to Hampton Court Palace, and without the royal family, that place probably wouldn't exist right now.) Parliament made history this week by reforming the rules for the royal family’s line of succession. It has always been that daughters are passed over in favor of sons, even when they are born first. Henry VIII had two daughters before he got his son, who became Edward VI. Only because Edward died young and childless did Mary and Elizabeth subsequently become rulers. This change means that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Will & Kate) have a daughter, she will automatically be the heir to the throne regardless if a son is born afterwards. Interestingly, this law now automatically changes the current line of succession. It had been Charles, William, Harry, Andrew (Charles’s brother) and his daughters Beatrice and Eugenia, then brother Edward, then Anne and her children. But with this change, Princess Anne now has moved to 4th and her son and daughter are higher in the line of succession now too. The Guardian had an interesting report on all this, and they pointed out a few important historical turns that could have made British history very different if this law had been changes ages ago. One of the more interesting possibilities from modern history relates to Queen Victoria’s first-born, Princess Vicky (1840-1901), whom you see here. She was married to the Crown Prince of Prussia and eventually became Empress of Germany when that country was united. Her son eventually rose to power and took over the imperial throne as Emperor Wilhelm II, ruling Germany during World War I. But technically speaking Vicky would still have been heir to the throne of England, so upon the death of her mother she would have been named Queen Victoria II but remained Dowager Empress of Germany. When she died 7 months after her mother, her son Kaiser Wilhelm II then would have become King of England and thus united England and Germany into one imperial nation. Can you imagine if that had happened? World War I may never have happened...or we all would be speaking German right now.

The Joy of Travel

Those of you who follow the adventures of bklynbiblio know travel comes into play a lot for me, and you know how much I enjoy writing about it. In that spirit, I just caught this inspiring travel-related video on another blog and thought I'd share it too. It's called Move and it's by Rick Mereki, an independent filmmaker in Australia (hence the Sydney Opera House; image: Paul Banwart). Mereki's 1-minute film captures his (adorable!) friend Andrew Lees simply "moving" around the world. Once I went to Mereki's Vimeo site, I discovered he has made 2 other short films that are fantastic as well: Eat and Learn. Mereki writes about the films: "3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage...all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food....into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films." Beautiful and compelling they definitely are. If you love to travel, they'll remind you why. If you're afraid to travel, then hopefully this will convince you to Move.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Library Bytes: LibraryThing

I haven't written anything library-oriented in quite a while, so I thought a post on LibraryThing would be fun, especially since I finished cataloging today my entire book collection. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I have 1100 books in my apartment. I have no idea how they're all fitting in here, but somehow there's still plenty of room to walk around. If you read bklynbiblio on the actual site itself rather than through an RSS feeder, you may have noticed I have a widget that shows a rotating group of random book covers from my collection. It's sometimes fun to see what will show up.

LibraryThing (LT) is actually an amazing website. Here is my profile. You catalog your book collection, searching by title, author, ISBN, whatever. But rather than just a static database of your holdings, it connects your library with everyone else's library in there to become a social networking site where you can see how many other people own the same book as you, and what people have the similar libraries to you. Not surprisingly, my friends SC and PR both turn out to have a number of similar books as me. That said, if you think my 1100 is big, you should see theirs: PR has 3433 books and SC has 4872 books! I joined LT 2 years ago after hearing about it from one of them. SC blogs about it frequently on Shermania, but since he's an expert cataloger in the library profession, it's not surprising that he would be so into it. The social networking component goes even further though, incorporating chat rooms, book store events, and so on. I don't actually utilize all those features in it, but I do like what it comes up with at times.

Once you catalog your books, you also assign multiple subject headings or tags. Using these recurring tags, you can then determine how many books you have in that particular subject. Are you surprised to discover that my top 3 tags are "British" (454 books), "art" (431), and "19th-century" (313)? "Fiction" (306) and "Victorian" (211) come next. Cataloging your collection also allows you to discover the authors whose books you own the most. Some of this doesn't really surprise me. Agatha Christie comes in high for me at 80 books (almost all paperbacks). I put the book cover image of What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! above as part of this post because I still think this was probably one of her most clever plots. (A woman on a train watches another train pass on a parallel track, and she suddenly witnesses a murder in the window of one of the cars. When she reports it afterwards, there's no trace of a murder ever taking place.) After Christie, my top fiction authors are Anne Rice (28), Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine (27), and A.S. Byatt (16). Among my art history books, Elizabeth Prettejohn came in with 6 titles, Beauty and Art: 1750-2000 being but one of her works. I was surprised who came next: Renaissance scholar Keith Christiansen and photography historian Larry Schaaf, tied with 5 books each, followed by the work of 19th-century art historian Robert Rosenblum. If you have a book collection and you've been wanting to get it organized, give LT a try. And if you do, "friend" my library!

Art Websites of Interest

I've been visiting a few brand new art-related websites that I thought I would share. For instance, I was thrilled to hear that the Yale Center for British Art has relaunched their website and included, for the first time, a database with digital images for all public domain paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, etc. in their collection. The image you see here of Leighton's charming portrait of Mrs. James Guthrie (1864-5) comes from the new database. Almost every museum is now working toward this goal (e.g. see the collection databases for the Met and the V&A), as it can only increase exposure to a museum's collection. In the case of specialized museums like the YCBA, an online collection database is even more important because it allows people to discover works that people might not have ever known they had. The database launch coincides with an in-house special exhibition highlighting works from their collection. I'll be able to see that show and (finally!) the Thomas Lawrence exhibition when I'm there next weekend. Yale also recently released the incredible news that they are the first university to make available digital images from their museum, archival, and library collections free of charge for all purposes, including publication. From Yale's press release: "In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use. The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching and inspiration." Works still protected by copyright will require permissions from the copyright holder of course, but this is an incredible advancement in the sharing of intellectual property, and it sets a challenging precedence for other universities to follow.

The newly launched website Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951 is a database that highlights the lives and working practices of British sculptors from the period of the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the Festival of Britain in 1951. Information on artists such as Hamo Thornycroft (1850-1925) includes things like exhibition history, chief works, associated studio assistants and pupils, etc., helping to create an integrated understanding of how sculptors were not individuals working in isolation but part of a large production of individuals who interacted with in one capacity or another.

My friend and fellow Solomon colleague CC is once again tapping into her creative juices, this time returning to her former career as a practicing artist. She has launched a site where she is selling prints and collages of her work. She has some beautiful work there, so check it out.

And my friend and fellow PhD Candidate PR has joined the world of bloggers (something I've been telling him to do for years now!) with his new blog Architecture/Cosmopolis. Specializing in Beaux-Arts and classical architecture in America and Europe, he has already written some great posts on things like the recent cleaning of the facade of the New York Public Library and Art Nouveau architecture in Brussels (which bklynbiblio readers will recall is very recently near and dear to my own heart).

300 Posts!

It took 6 months to reach 100 posts, and then 13 more months to reach 200 posts. Since then, it's taken 14 months to reach where we are now: 300 bklynbiblio posts! Huzzah! Fireworks definitely still are in order. The image you see here is a hand-colored etching of fireworks outside Whitehall Palace on the River Thames on 15 May 1749, an event for which the composer George Frideric Handel composed his famous Music for the Royal Fireworks (image: Wikipedia).

Over the past 2 years, Blogger has been keeping statistics on their blogs, and I thought you might find some of the stats about bklynbiblio to be of interest. In the past 2 years, I have had 10,321 page views. Nearly 5,000 of these views have been from US Internet addresses, followed by about 1,000 coming from the UK. Germany, Canada, and Italy make up the next 3. Very interesting to me are the top 5 most frequently visited posts over the past 2 years. I can't tell if #1 is a surprise or not, but here you go: #1. Male Enhancement [July 5, 2010; 397 views]; #2. Review: Yinka Shonibare MBE [Sep 6, 2009; 311 views]; #3. Books of 2010 [Nov 28, 2010; 178 views]; #4. The Passing of Lionel Lambourne [Feb 28, 2010; 169 views]; and #5. 50 UK Days: Week 2.5 [Oct 28, 2010; 157 views]. Among #s 6-10 are my posts on the movie Little Ashes and my thoughts on Anthropomorphizing Canines.

Thanks to my readers for your ongoing encouragement and support! Here's to the next 100 posts!

Random Musings 6

The Royal Academy in London has been in existence since 1768, its first President being Sir Joshua Reynolds and including among its famous members J.M.W. Turner and Frederic, Lord Leighton. It has had the cachet of being the leading institution for British art since its foundation, although naturally over its history there have been groups who challenged its principles and teachings, such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. In spite this paradigmatic position, to be elected a Royal Academician, one of the 80 "eminent practising artists" active in the United Kingdom, is an incredible honor and says much about your position in the world and history of British art. So you can imagine there was some surprise when news broke that Grayson Perry, the 2003 Turner Prize winner (the first transvestite to win that prestigious award), was elected to the RA. The image you see here shows Perry as his transvestite persona Claire in a gallery beside one of his vases (image: London Evening Standard). I'm a relative newbie to the career of Perry, only having begun following his work last fall when I was in the UK (and I must credit CC with pointing his ceramics out to me and thus leading me on my journey to know more about him). Since then I've been fascinated. His vases are beautiful amphora-like objects, but the images on them reveal very personal childlike sketches that frequently depict graphic scenes on subjects such as war and sexual violence. There's something about the images that make me think of Edward Gorey, but with less wit, more visceral realism. His work has helped reinvigorate an interest in ceramics for many, in part because of the subjectivity that appears on works that historically have been decorative or functional objects. The RA, however, doesn't elect decorative artists, so what is interesting with this story too is that they elected him as a printmaker. I'm less familiar with his prints, but the implication from the article in The Art Newspaper is that his work in printmaking was a veiled attempt to acknowledge his achievements without having to bend the rules of election to the RA. The best bit in the article has to do with Perry himself: "On 22 March he was the guest speaker at the RA Schools annual dinner, and although it was a black tie event, Perry added some colour to the night and came as his usual female altar-ego 'Claire', rather than hire a tired Moss Bros suit."

On this side of the Atlantic in NYC, I've been raving about the Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand photography exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you haven't seen it yet, you've got one week before it closes. Opening this week is Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century exhibition, which promises to be a delightful show. Inspired by Lorenz Eitner's insightful article "The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism" published in The Art Bulletin (December 1955), this exhibition showcases a number of jewel-like pictures by mostly German, Austrian, and Danish artists from the early 1800s who were infatuated with photorealistic interiors and views outside their windows.

In non-art news, The New York Times has done another incredible job using Internet technology with its latest interactive tool (thanks to PR for sending this to me). Using census data, "Mapping America: Every City, Every Block" allows you to type in a zip code or a city name, and you can see the ethnic/racial population breakdown for neighborhoods, as well as information about incomes, education, and family structures. When I did a search for my own largely Italian-American Brooklyn neighborhood, I wasn't surprised to discover it's 61-66% White, but I was surprised to discover that the Asian population was 11-12%. I was actually more surprised to discover that 3-4% of the population in my neighborhood define themselves as same-sex couples, because I was convinced until now I was the only gay in the village. (Definitely click on that link if you've never seen the hilarious BBC comedy Little Britain.)

The new season of Torchwood is set to premiere on July 8th. While I'm glad that John Barrowman and Eve Myles will be part of it, at least for some of the episodes, I'm still annoyed that it's going to be on Starz Network, which I don't think anyone I know actually gets as part of their cable system. I guess we'll have to wait for the DVD.

Speaking of DVDs, if you didn't catch Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as prison lovers in I Love You Philip Morris during its limited-run release, you absolutely must see it on DVD, which is being released in the US this week. It is a fabulous dark comedy that will make you squirm, jeer, cry, and laugh out loud. Ewan as a naive blond Southern boy...you just wanna eat him up!

And, last but certainly not least, remember that April is Prevention of Cruelty to Animals month, sponsored by the ASPCA. This year is the 145th anniversary of their charter, which was signed here in NYC in 1866. Click here for my past post about the group's history. Go orange and remember We Are Their Voice!

Relaunch of the SSRA

My colleague and friend Carolyn Conroy in England and I have relaunched the Simeon Solomon Research Archive that I started 10 years ago. I must give Carolyn full credit for the current look of the site, which looks spectacular. bklynbiblio readers may remember some of my Solomon posts, including one on the passing of art historian Lionel Lambourne earlier this year, and a celebration of Solomon's birthday. The image you see here is one of his more beautiful works, a watercolor entitled Portrait of an Italian Youth from 1869, when he was in Rome on his third trip (image courtesy of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth). Below is the official release we issued to colleagues and collectors around the world.

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RELAUNCH OF THE SIMEON SOLOMON RESEARCH ARCHIVE
Ten years ago this week, I announced the first version of the Simeon Solomon Research Archive which I published on the Internet. From the feedback I have received through the years, it has been a significant resource for scholars and students interested in the life and work of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905), the gay, Anglo-Jewish, Pre-Raphaelite/Aesthetic artist. A debt of gratitude goes out to Julia Kerr of ArtMagick.com, who has assisted me with the hosting of the SSRA over the past few years.

Today, I am pleased to announce with my Solomon colleague Dr. Carolyn Conroy (PhD, University of York, 2010) the relaunching of the Simeon Solomon Research Archive with a new URL (http://www.simeonsolomon.com/), a new look, and more features than ever before. As you will see from the "About Us" page on the site, Conroy recently completed her dissertation on Solomon's life and career after his 1873 arrest for attempted sodomy. Her dissertation rewrites the past false assumption that Solomon essentially disappeared after his arrest, reconstructing his life based on heretofore unpublished information and demonstrating his surprisingly active level of artistic production for the next 32 years until his death. I have been actively engaged in research and publications on both Simeon and his sister Rebecca Solomon since the 1990s. Although my PhD dissertation is on a topic other than the Solomons, I am continuing to work on their extant correspondence and other Solomon-related projects.

Highlights of this latest version of the SSRA include:
** a complete redesign of the site by Conroy, including a site-search to assist in the finding of information
** a fully updated bibliography of about 300 secondary sources about Solomon from 1858 to 2010, with many of the early sources available in full text
** an image database of selected works of art by Solomon
** an exhibition history of works by Solomon
** a section devoted to the life and work of his artist sister Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886), including a biography, lifetime exhibition history, list of secondary sources, and beginning of an image database
** a planned section devoted to the life and work of his artist brother Abraham Solomon (1824-1862), including a biography, lifetime exhibition history, list of secondary sources, and beginning of an image database
** planned future enhancements including a page on Solomon's contributions to the Dalziels' Bible Gallery (1881)

Update your bookmarks to point to the new Simeon Solomon Research Archive at http://www.simeonsolomon.com/, and continue to check back for updates to the site as we continue to enhance it even more. Comments and suggestions are welcome, as are contributions from scholars who may have discovered a source of which we may not be aware.

My Neighborhood Is #4

To quote Nate Silver of Brooklyn Heights in the current issue of New York magazine: "I've been happy here, but like most New Yorkers, I suffer from a bit of grass-is-greener syndrome. Would I be better off living in Astoria? Prospect Heights? Chelsea?" Nate & Co. of the magazine conducted a recent quantitative assessment of neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. Among their criteria were things like housing costs, transit, shopping, diversity, green space, etc. Each of these areas were assigned point values and prioritized in some mathematical manner which I don't understand and...voilà!...they've determined that the best NYC neighborhood is Park Slope (Brooklyn), followed by the Lower East Side, and Sunnyside (Queens). My neighborhood, Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill, comes in at #4.

Now my initial response to this was to be somewhat excited, because it would seem that I would agree with the results. I actually love my neighborhood. I've lived here since 2005. I rent a floor of a brownstone built in 1895 (alas, the building has lost all its Victorian charm over time), giving me a lot more space than most other New Yorkers. I have everything I need within a few blocks: laundromat, grocery store, at least 3 cafes (one of which is also a decent bagel place, which is an absolute necessity in NYC), and some great restaurants just a few blocks away. On the downside, the closest subway is an 8-minute walk, which in the rain or in blustery winter conditions pretty much sucks. Oh, yes, and we have way too many hipster couples with children (please tell me why I have to compete with strollers and crying babies in a small cafe when I just want to read a book with a cup of coffee and a bagel???).

As for the other neighborhoods on the list, the LES has never really impressed me, but admittedly I haven't spent enough time there, and I've never been to Sunnyside so I can't say anything about that place. Park Slope is pretty great, but truthfully it seems very gentrified and expensive as a result. That, of course, is rather ironic, because according to this article, Park Slope is supposed to be one of the best deals for apartments (2 bedroom for $2275/month), but who are they kidding? All of the rents they're citing in this article are actually lower than what people typically pay. Nate & Co. are forgetting about things like rent stabilization and control; when it exists, it drastically changes the scope of rents.

There is a Livability Calculator which accompanies the article. It allows you to rank your own priorities and thus generate the perfect neighborhood for you. The problem is that apparently some decent places don't make it on the list at all. If you browse the pages of comments left by readers, you'll discover, for instance, many who lament that Forest Hills (Queens) is missing, and apparently this area has some of the great deals in terms of rent, etc. (I've been to Forest Hills a few times, and it seems all right; I'm just not a big fan of Queens in general). There are other concerns with this general article and the study's results. Nate & Co. recognize this, but they don't seem to clarify all the issues. In fact, to me, it seems most strange that a quantitative survey is being used to assess quality of life? How do you measure desire and taste? Isn't what you like about your neighborhood related to what you get out of it? You could live in a neighborhood with the best school system and fabulous restaurants, but if you don't have children and you never eat out, then what good is it for you to be living in that neighborhood?

The best part of the article is the comment section online. Leave it to New Yorkers to express qualitative thoughts to the article and study. LMR925, for instance, writes: "Something that was not mentioned regarding Tribeca is that everyone who lives there is a nouveau riche turd and hanging out in the playground with them (or their nannies) and their bratty kids is the PITS! I live in the West Village. It is better there though we have plenty of jackasses too." I think another commenter, FHOEBE, aptly points out a problem with how they're defining diversity and how that relates to the magazine's readership: "Diversity really need to be defined more realistically because it's absurd to call many of these neighborhoods 'diverse.' Be aware that on this spectrum, diversity means white with either a light dusting of everyone else to slight sprinkle. It's ridiculous to write an article of this sort that went to certain lengths to be comprehensive, without interrogating the fact that readership dictates its truth. ... It may not be so pretty for your readers to confront, but it's a white-centric, rich-centric article (and dare I say publication)."

All that said, it's still somewhat fun to discover my neighborhood is #4 on the list, and none of the commenters seem to be squabbling that. Going back to the Livability Calculator, I adjusted it to my own personal interests to discover my "perfect" neighborhood. #1 is the East Village and #2 is Tribeca. Now, while it would be great to live in those neighborhoods, I don't know how they're figuring those results because there is no way I could ever afford to live in either place, as they have some of the most expensive real estate in the City. What is funny, however, is what ranks as #s 3, 4, and 5 for me: Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, and...you guessed it!...Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill. Imagine that: bklynbiblio favors Brooklyn neighborhoods! Apparently I'm exactly where I'm meant to be right now.

200 Posts!

This marks the 200th post on bklynbiblio! Fireworks continue to be in order...just as they were when we celebrated the 100th post last February (image courtesy of Wikipedia). We've been up and running for over a year and a half now. Thanks to all my readers for your interest, comments, and support. Here's to the next 100 posts!

1920s London in Living Color

Thanks to PR who first forwarded this to me, one of my new favorite blogs/websites is How to be a Retronaut, with its tagline "If the past is a foreign country, then this is your passport." With an Anglo-centric focus, this site has an incredible array of old photographs and videos documenting historic aspects of the world and its visual culture. Among the most recent posts, for instance, are autochromes (some of the earliest color photographs) from 1910 taken by a women of her daughters. It's fascinating to see the recreation of everyday things and everyday lives like this. The genealogist in me loves this, and the art historian drawn to the 19th century in me is fascinated by how it brings us closer to actually seeing and understanding who these people were and how they lived. The video below is a rare silent film in color of London from 1927. It is currently one of the most popular posts on Retronaut's site. Since it's also on YouTube, however, I'm pulling the video from there. You have to be grateful that the British Film Institute is preserving these films. When you watch the video, keep in mind that you only have seen this in black-and-white before. Color versions have been recreations from Hollywood movies. To see it like this--live--truly makes you feel like you can reach out through time and identify with these people. As an Anglophile and frequent visitor to London, I'm amazed also to see people in the same places I have visited, like the Greenwich Observatory and Kensington Gardens. Fashions may have changed, but sightseeing has not.

Library Bytes: www.ilovelibraries.org

I confess that I have not renewed my membership in ALA (American Library Association) for a few years now. It's not that I don't support the organization, but that I already belong to other library and academic organizations, and all those memberships take money which I don't have right now. The best I can do on occasion is help promote libraries, and I thought a post today on ALA and libraries might be an interesting way to do so. Did you know, for instance, that the ALA Store sells posters with celebrities holding books as part of their READ campaign? The image you see here is one of them, showing off my fantasy boyfriend Ewan McGregor with a book of tales by Beatrix Potter, which presumably was released about the time he co-starred in Miss Potter with Renée Zellweger (which, by the way, is a surprisingly fantastic movie that I highly recommend). While reading a news story on The New York Times online, I followed an ad for another of ALA's campaigns, ilovelibraries.org. The site advertises itself as a way to keep people informed about the state of libraries and to promote what libraries can do for Americans of every race, ethnicity, religion, class, and gender/sexual orientation. According to the site's Get Informed page, "If you’re looking for the heart of any community, look no further than the local library. It’s the one place in America where the doors are open to everyone ... providing everyone the same access to information and opportunities for success." (Note that for some of the webpages, there's a weird design flaw where you have to scroll down past the white emptiness to read the text.) The website even has a special feature right now called "Nominate Your Librarian," with monetary prizes for some of the best librarians in the country.

So there's no doubt about it. Libraries rock, as I've commented about before on this blog. Not all types of libraries are the same. They are usually divided into four broad categories: public, school, academic, and special. Public is self-explanatory, but can range from small-town establishments like the adorable Provincetown Public Library to large city systems like the Brooklyn Public Library. School refers to elementary through high school, while academic is colleges and universities. Special Libraries encompass everything from corporate to museum environments. From this breakdown then, you can see that the types of environments are very different, and you can imagine that the types of services and clientele are worlds apart in many ways.

I admit that I've always enjoyed what I've seen as the luxury of working in academic and museum libraries. I would never work in an elementary school (my migraines couldn't handle the screaming children). I would probably also quit working in a public library within the first week. When I answer a reference question, I need them to be intellectually stimulating questions, not smelly homeless people demanding the newspaper or crazy people masturbating in public (these are actual incidents I've heard about). I know I'm being judgmental, but I'm being completely honest as it applies to my idea of work satisfaction. That said, I have an incredible amount of respect for my friends and colleagues who do work in public libraries and can handle this type of clientele with such aplomb. They have to take on the role of social workers and psychologists without any professional training, and as my friend SVH has pointed out, the instances in which one genuinely helps an individual desperate for real information, like health news on a medical condition, legal information to fight a corrupt landlord, or simply useful books on Martin Luther King, Jr. for a high school research project, makes being a librarian in this environment one of the most rewarding careers ever.

So get online and nominate your librarian for the I Love My Librarian Award to thank him or her for everything they've done for you, and remember to support your libraries!

100 Posts!

This post marks the 100th post on bklynbiblio! Fireworks are definitely in order (image courtesy of Wikipedia). My blog has been up and running since August 29, 2008. Thanks to all my readers for their interest, comments, and support. Here's to another 100 posts!

Library Bytes: LIFE & Google Images

About two weeks ago, Google announced the release of a new feature: digitized images from the archives of LIFE magazine, many of which have never been published before. (Here's an article with more details about the project from Computerworld magazine.) Apparently some of the images date back to 1750, although since they claim they were shot by photographers at LIFE I'm still not sure how they preserved photographs taken before 1840 (someone got their explanation screwed up). Google estimates the digital image package to come to nearly 10 million images, which is an incredible number when you consider that even the largest museums in the world may have only about half that number of objects in their collections. The first group are up already on Google Images, and they look great. There are images from World War II, Academy Award winners, NASA-related events, and so on. My favorites are, of course, the ones from the 19th century. I was quite excited to see so many pictures of Queen Victoria like this one. I wonder if she would declare, "We are amused!"

Library Bytes: Europeana Down!

Well, thanks for my friends CC and PR, I've now discovered why Europeana wasn't allowing active searching. Apparently the system crashed from the number of people who attempted to get into the site when it was released! It's going to be a few weeks before they are up and running again. We await the new release... To read more, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/technology/internet/22digital.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink, where The New York Times has reported on the outage.

Library Bytes: Europeana

Today in an article entitled "France Dominates Europe's Digital Library" in The New York Times, I read about Europeana, Europe's brand new digital library, museum and archive. The image you see here is their logo in English for the site. According to their information webpage, Europeana is "a prototype website giving users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers." In short, it is going to be an incredible boon for people interested in European history and culture. Apparently even the Musée du Louvre has contributed digital images of works from their collection, so it will certainly be a fascinating resource for art historians as well. Europeana plans to increase its number of objects to some 6 million by 2010. It officially releases to the public today, but so far I've been unable to actually search or browse any of the collections, so I'm not sure if there's a delay with the release or what is happening. I guess I'll have to report back in the near future after seeing what goodies are revealed. In the meantime, you should definitely go to their website, http://dev.europeana.eu/, just to click on "The Boots" video. Pairing Nancy Sinatra with Vincent van Gogh's shoes has certainly altered my experience of both forever.

TinEye: Image Searching

I don't often write about technology on this blog, but TinEye seemed like something both important and fun to talk about since it's related to images, and by extension libraries and art. As we all know, searching for images on the Internet can either be easy or challenging. It depends on how you describe something and, more importantly, how it's been described by the host. Almost all of us use Google Images for most of our image searching. You type in a few words and a page of thumbnails appear. The likelihood is that some of the images are relevant; however, not every work always is an accurate hit. The reason why this happens is because search engines are looking for keywords near the actual image on a website. They're not actually searching the image itself. Admittedly, Google is doing an excellent job of enhancing their image search capabilities by incorporating the Google Image Labeler project, which invites people to participate in tagging digital images for better searching. But, TinEye just may be the future of image searching. It doesn't use text to search, but actual images. You upload an image to TinEye or point it to a particular website with images. The program "reads" the image using an algorithm. It then searches using this algorithm for other images on websites they have indexed. Any matches--including derivative versions of the image--are generated in a list that allows you to click to the website to see its context.

It's pretty neat, but what are the implications for its use? In other words, if you're looking for an image of something, TinEye probably isn't going to help. But if you already have an image and want to find better quality versions, other places where the same image has been used on the Internet, or derivative versions of an image, then TinEye is the way to go. I can see it eventually becoming integrated with Google Images, where you do a basic text search, and if you find an image, you could click on the TinEye link that will allow you to "Search for more images like this one" to generate the type of results you really want. Someone at work suggested to me that it could also be integrated with digitized books. TinEye would then allow one to track everywhere an image has appeared in print. For artworks protected by copyright, it would assist artists and estates in ensuring proper use of an artist's works.

If you want to learn more, check out its functionality by going directly to http://tineye.com/ and registering for free to try it. They also have some fun widgets like the one above, Michelangelo's Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Just click on it and you'll see a random sampling of other websites where this iconic image has appeared in many fun-filled ways.