Projects of 2019

Here's my annual list of professional "projects" that I was involved in and overseeing during 2019. (You can read previous lists here and here.) As I've mentioned in the past, it's good to take stock of these accomplishments because it helps remind me how busy things have been, particularly as I have a tendency to always move on to the next project and forget what I've already done. The photo you see here is of me giving the introductory remarks at an event I coordinated in April, an "Evening at Avery: British Portraiture", to coincide with the exhibition I co-curated (more on that below; no idea whose head that is in the photo!). The event had a surprisingly good turn-out, and our two speakers were Mateusz Mayer, PhD student in art history, who co-curated the exhibition with me, and Dr. Meredith Gamer, assistant professor of art history at Columbia who gave a riveting talk about alternative concepts of 18th-century British portraiture for those who are often forgotten by history and society.

Here is the 2019 list...

• I published two book reviews, which I mentioned about in my Books of 2019 post as well. The first was a short review on Beyond the Face: New Perspectives on Portraiture, about which I posted even more. The second was a review essay in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide on Anthea Callen's new book Looking at Men: Art, Anatomy and the Modern Male Body.
• I curated at work a summer exhibition entitled Animalia: The Essence of Animals in Art, with artwork from the permanent collection dating from 3rd-century Mexican dog sculptures to contemporary Inuit sculptures. During the winter/spring, I co-curated the exhibition Hoppner, Beechey, Fisher, Lavery: Researching Columbia's Portraits with M. Mayer, and we published online a catalogue of the exhibition with essays by both of us, which you can download and read here. My staff and colleagues at work deserve lots of credit for all their help in making these exhibitions possible.
• I acted as curatorial project manager with Dr. Frederique Baumgartner on the "MA in Art History Presents" exhibition at Columbia entitled Clodion (1738-1814) and "Clodion Mania" in Nineteenth-Century France, which has a fantastic online exhibition component you can see here.
• Tomas Macsotay and I co-chaired a panel session entitled "Transnationalism and Sculpture in the Long Nineteenth Century (ca. 1785-1915)" at the annual conference of the College Art Association in February in NYC.
• I served on the selection committee & jury for the 16th annual graduate student symposium co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art and the Dahesh Museum of Art in March in NYC.
• I was the guest speaker at a Columbia Alumni Association of New Mexico event, where I spoke about the collections and our educational programs to alumni. This took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico in September.
• Columbia's Department of Art History and Archaeology had received a small grant to coordinate an international project called Parallel Heritages, with some of their students and students at The Sorbonne, Univ. Paris I, for an international research project on archaeological objects in both collections. I gave presentations at both components, in NYC in March, and in Paris at The Sorbonne in November.
• I also gave a paper entitled "British Portraits at Columbia University: Opportunities for Object-Centered Learning" at the annual Understanding British Portraits seminar, held at the National Portrait Gallery in London in November.
• I participated in the annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries in June in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Totally not work-related, but worth documenting... in February AA & I took a fantastic wine-tasting class that was incredibly informative (we are doing a repeat, focused version on Italian wines later this month), as well as a fun cocktail making class in December. We also went to go see the opera The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera and Moulin Rouge on Broadway.

All in all, another incredibly productive and fulfilling year!

Projects of 2018

Here is my last "highlights" list from 2018...a little late, perhaps, but not by much... (Here is the 2017 list.) I've discovered it's beneficial for me to record these events because it helps me take stock of the activities I've been involved with and what I've accomplished. I have a tendency to forget things and move on, and reflecting on these things annually makes me realize that I am doing quite a lot professionally and that I need to stop being so self-critical about what it is that I am not doing.

The picture you see here commemorates one of the more memorable events. In early October, I joined my fellow Solomaniac friend & colleague Carolyn Conroy and numerous descendants of the Solomon/Salaman family for the rededication of the Salaman family graves and a visit to the recently rededicated grave of Simeon Solomon, all at Willesden Jewish Cemetery in London. It was a special and humbling moment to be there.

In addition to all our travels (professional and vacation), here is the 2018 list of projects...

• Published two articles on the sculptor John Gibson: the first, co-authored with M.G. Sullivan, was on Gibson's portraiture practice, and was published in Tate Papers this past June 2018; the second was on Gibson's portrait statue of the Countess Beauchamp, and was published in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide in October 2018. I am very pleased with both of these and they will help advance awareness about his work to those interested in sculpture studies.
• bklynbiblio celebrated its 10th birthday!
• I curated an exhibition entitled Wisdom of the East: Buddhist Art from the J. G. Phelps Stokes Collection which was on view during the summer months at Columbia University.
• I acted as curatorial project manager with Dr. Frederique Baumgartner on two "MA in Art History Presents" exhibitions at Columbia: Art in Life: Engravings by Robert Nanteuil (c. 1623-1678) from the Frederick Paul Keppel Collection (Spring 2018) and Looking East: James Justinian Morier and Nineteenth-Century Persia (Fall 2018), supplementing the latter show with a curated installation of Iranian ceramics from the 10th-19th centuries.
• Co-chaired a panel session with Petra Chu entitled "Born-digital and Other E-journals in Art History: Crossing Boundaries among Art Historians, Editors, and Librarians" at the Art Libraries Society of North America conference in February in NYC.
• Served on the selection committee & jury for the Graduate Student Symposium co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art and the Dahesh Museum of Art in March in NYC.
• Co-chaired an all-day panel session with Tomas Macsotay entitled "The National in Discourses of Sculpture in the Long Modern Period (c. 1750-1950)" at the Association for Art History conference in April in London.
• Gave a 30-minute talk on Gibson's Tinted Venus at the Met Breuer in NYC in April for a curatorial study day in conjunction with the exhibition Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body.
• Attended the conference The Afterlife of Sculptures: Posthumous Casts in Scholarship, the Market, and the Law at the Dedalus Foundation in NYC in May.
• Attended the conference Multiple Modernities in American Art at Sotheby's in NYC in May.
• Co-presented a paper with Melanie Wacker entitled "From Curatorial Files to Linked Open Data: Cataloging the Art Collection at Columbia University" at the 8th International Conference of Art Libraries at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in October.
• Organized a half-day symposium entitled Global Art History and Nineteenth-Century Art at Columbia in November.
• Gave an hour-long presentation on the Columbia art collection and object-centered learning at Fairfield University Art Museum in Connecticut in November.
• Took a bread baking class with AA in January that was incredible fun, and took a stone carving sculpture class in September that I'm actually still doing (more on that in another blog post!).
• Not that it's professional but worth documenting...went to see the following theatrical performances: John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons (February); Desperate Measures (June); Ballet Folklorico de Mexico (November); and La Traviata at The Met (December).

Birthday No. 44

In Italian, when you wish someone "Happy Birthday," you say "Buon Compleanno"--essentially "good completion of the year." It is meant as high praise, that you survived another year, and although I do not know this for certain I do suspect it has its origins in days of yore when mortality rates from disease, pestilence, hunger, etc., were more rampant in the Western world. This is a philosophical preamble for me to write about the recent completion of my 44th year. This past weekend turned out to be one of the more memorable birthdays I've ever had. There is some steep competition for this. On this blog, readers may remember past birthday-related events like when I went to Brussels with SVH in 2011, or my 40th celebration as a "Gay Boys Weekend." Other birthday posts referenced the ASPCA; my birthday falls on the anniversary date of its foundation. And I have had quite a few other historical birthday memories, such as my 30th, which was a week-long trip to Disney World and my first tattoo. I'm already starting to plan something travel-oriented for no. 45...

But this weekend was rather fantastic, and I owe it all to my dear AA. On Wednesday, we had dinner at Sangria for Spanish tapas, and then we went to go see Bullets Over Broadway at the St. James Theater. It was the last night of previews, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It was funny, the women were especially talented in their singing, some of the dance numbers were great, and the 1920s music was very entertaining. The critics aren't as thrilled with it, as The New York Times has already reported (image above showing a scene from the show: Sara Krulwich/NYT). Woody Allen's reputation just isn't what it used to be, with more accusations and mud-slinging going on. But we went to see something different; we really couldn't care less about all that. And we enjoyed ourselves. Even better, as we left, we had a great celebrity sighting: Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were looking like everyday people hanging out in the sidelines. AA & I were a bit starstruck.

On Thursday, my actual birthday, I worked from home writing an essay for an exhibition catalogue, plus got my free Starbucks mocha. I admit I checked Facebook a few times all day and it made me smile to receive birthday greetings from so many of my "friends" (many of whom are genuinely my friends). That evening I headed out to Jersey City for a yummy home-cooked meal and baked cake courtesy of AA, and I was delighted by a very cool gift of an Apple TV hook-up! Now I can easily stream my iTunes music, Netflix movies, etc., all to my TV. On Friday, I received a very nice book in the mail as a birthday gift from the PR-AMs: Friendship and Loss in the Victorian Portrait: "May Sartoris" by Frederic Leighton by Malcolm Warner. That night, I headed to Hoboken for a dinner for someone else's birthday at Zylo steakhouse at the W Hotel (who knew there was a W Hotel in Hoboken?!), and found myself rather startled to discover I was being feted with birthday wishes as well.

If all that wasn't enough, AA had coordinated birthday drinks and then dinner at Le Zie, a fantastic Italian place in Chelsea we've eaten at numerous times and enjoy very much. My friend RL has been staying with me for a conference in town, so he met up with us, as did nine others, making us a group of 12! I was startled to receive actual presents: a gorgeous Paul Stuart silk handkerchief for my blazers from RL; a bottle of Tito's vodka from the AG-GHs; a lovely floral arrangement made by JM; and from AR and DM an enormous, beautifully illustrated art book entitled The History of Florence in Painting by Antonella Fenech Kroke. And then AA treated everyone to dinner, which pretty much made my heart burst in appreciation and love. I am so touched by everyone's kindness, friendship, and generosity, as this all followed up on generous gifts from a few relatives that arrived during the week. It all has made this an incredibly memorable birthday. I ended the lovely weekend with something I have blogged about and shared more than once on this blog: AA and I headed to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to see the cherry blossoms. They were only just starting to bloom, but we saw numerous daffodils, magnolia trees (such as the one below), and the bonsai. Partaking of nature in this relaxing way with my very special guy helped make this entire birthday weekend a smashing success.

Aida at the Met

I felt quite privileged on Wednesday night to go to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. I was the guest of a friend (who for his own political reasons wishes to remain unidentified), who had been given amazing Grand Tier tickets for free. We went to see Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, which had its premiere in Cairo on December 24, 1871. The opera was fantastic. I had seen Aida in the past on television, but this was the first time I had seen it live. Although I'm not an active opera buff, I do enjoy going when I can, and Italian operas are of course the best (yes, I'm biased). I've seen live both Tosca (my favorite libretto) and La Traviata (possibly my favorite musical score) a number of times. Aida is the story of the pseudonymous Ethiopian princess enslaved to the Egyptian princess Amneris, both of whom are in love with the Egyptian general Radamès, although he is in love only with Aida. Of course there love is doomed and there's a tragic ending. For our performance, Aida was performed by soprano Liudmyla Monasyrska, and she did a truly magnificent job. She sang beautifully, and I was entranced by two of her arias. The other performers were quite good, although none of them stood out for me as well as the soprano. The orchestra was aptly conducted by Fabio Luisi, but I found the tuba player a bit too loud at times, to the point that he overpowered the singers. The famous triumphal march scene was spectacular, however, and the ballet sequences well choreographed. I realized that the triumphal march was scored by Verdi so that it could be repeated again and again to accommodate the size of the actual parade on stage. In some performances, an entire retinue of animals including elephants and giraffes have been included, extending the musical sequence a great deal, but in this performance they kept it to a minimum. It's a shame actually because it is such beautiful music, and believe me when I tell you that you know this music and love it as well. (Here's a YouTube video of the scene as performed in the past at the Met Opera.) I did find it strange to realize afterwards that all the main singers in the performance were from former Soviet countries (Ukraine, Russia, Georgia), which I think says much about the globalism of the arts in the new millennium.

On a personal note, it was interesting to go back to the Met Opera the other night (image at right was the view from our seats!), because I had not been to that theater since my very first live opera experience...30 years ago! Zio PL had gotten free tickets, and since Zia FL couldn't go, he took me. I remember my parents driving me into the City where we met him at Lincoln Center. We saw Rigoletto from one of the tiers...and I actually sat next to Mia Farrow and Woody Allen (they left during intermission). It was an amazing experience overall, but one I could hardly share with classmates the next day as they all thought it was weird that I would even want to go to an opera. In retrospect, it was definitely one of those rewarding experiences that I have cherished my whole life. I just hope it's not another 30 years before I go back there again!

Review: Wishful Drinking

All you have to do is look at the image of the book cover on the right and see the ridiculous twisty-bun hairdo to recognize Princess Leia from Star Wars...but wait, are those pills and an empty martini glass in her hand? The actress and writer Carrie Fisher has released this book and is now starring in a one-woman show at Studio 54 (yes, the former historic dance club, now owned by the Roundabout Theatre Company) just off Broadway. My friend NV from Miami Beach was back in town with friends for his birthday, so last night we had a lovely dinner at Maison and then went to see the show. It is hilarious. Fisher breaks down all the drama of her life into a two-hour monologue (well, really, a dialogue because there are audience-participation moments) that covers issues from being the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher to her own failed marriages and bouts with alcoholism and drug addiction. When her daughter started dating Elizabeth Taylor's grandson (or something like that), Fisher realized that they might be related, hence her genealogy-history lesson "Hollywood Inbreeding 101" in which she goes through all the marriages and divorces of her parents and their ex-spouses. As she so aptly put it, when Taylor's husband died, Fisher's father offered first his shoulder for her to cry on and then he comforted her with his penis. Fisher is best identified with Princess Leia, and she spends a fair amount of time recounting how this impacted her life. Not only has she been marketed as a sex doll, but she's a Pez dispenser too (which she claims is her favorite self-image of all). This segment proves that Hollywood is less about art and more about merchandising, especially when you see these all the ways her image has been appropriated.

The crux of the show, however, is about Fisher's bouts with addiction and bipolar disease, and her electro-shock therapy treatments. You could sense at times that the audience gets uncomfortable when she talks about these things because much of what she's describing seems like something you shouldn't laugh at, or just sounds so emotionally painful on her part. But her humor about it all makes you realize that it has been her way of coping with life. She makes no apologies for anything she says, and she certainly isn't looking for sympathy. At one point, she gives the audience a "mental health" quiz, and it's not surprising to discover that just about everyone in the theater has had bouts of depression and to some extent is mentally ill. The main difference for her, however, is her chemical imbalance and how she abused alcohol and drugs to cope with her illness and with her emotional insecurities. For anyone who has had exposure to any of these things, this show does give some insight, but more importantly it offers a much-needed cathartic release from the tension society still holds around mental illness and addiction.

In doing a Google search before I wrote this, I came across an interesting blog post called "Star Wars, Stigma, and Carrie Fisher" by Simone Hoermann, a psychologist and professor at Columbia University, who saw the show a few weeks ago. She also enjoyed it and, from a professional perspective, found herself appreciating Fisher's candid take on mental illness. She ends by writing: "My hope is that there can be a growing dialogue about these questions [on mental illness]. My hope is also that, in talking about mental illness, celebrities like Carrie Fisher can help fight the stigma. And it wouldn't have to be in a galaxy far, far away. This one would do just fine."

Here is a link to the official website for Wishful Drinking, where Fisher has a short video about the show. If you're in the City and have a chance to see it, definitely go.

NYC Moments (1)

We've all had those moments where we've entered a room and we hear someone say something like, "My God, he's huge!", and we stand there befuddled for a moment wondering who they're talking about and whether they're making reference to his career or to a certain appendage. This "walking into the middle of a conversation" syndrome can be embarrassing or startling, but you have to admit it's worth the experience if for no other reason then the story that comes out of it. This thought occurred to me earlier today after two classic New York City experiences. But I didn't exactly walk into conversations. Rather, I walked into classic NYC Moments.

The first one happened yesterday morning as I was on my way to work. I have about a 15-minute walk from my house to the 4 subway in Brooklyn Heights, so anything (or nothing) can happen on that walk. As I got closer, I realized there were enormous trucks and trailers everywhere, some with lighting equipment, others with cables and cameras. I kept walking and watched a gaggle of teenaged-like people snacking on breakfast foods at the catering truck, and I realized I had walked onto a film set. Television and movie crews film regularly in NYC, and they love Brooklyn for its brownstones and residential feel. My own neighborhood has been featured in Moonstruck and the Spiderman movies. Now, if I watched more television, I might have been tickled pink to be able to identify the stars of Gossip Girl, for that was what was filming, but alas I cannot tell you who I saw. The show films regularly at Packer Collegiate Institute, usually during periods when they're closed (they're on spring break right now). It's a private school whose Tudor architecture suits the snooty rich kid soap opera environment perfectly. I couldn't care less about the show, but it was fun to think I had very briefly stumbled onto a television production set.

The second experience was a little less fun. I was leaving work on the Upper East Side and decided to walk a different route to the subway. As I turned from Park Avenue onto 77th Street, I was taken aback by all the news crews. I followed their cameras, and I realized I was standing outside Lenox Hill Hospital. This is where the actress Natasha Richardson had been brought after she fell unconscious from her skiing accident. I stopped for a moment, looking at the newscasters. I didn't recognize anyone, and so I started to go on my way. But then something made me stop again, and I looked back at the hospital. I realized that at that very moment her husband Liam Neeson, her children, and probably her mother and aunt, the Redgrave sisters, were in there, hoping and praying for her recovery. It was another NYC moment, the realization that while I knew she had been brought here and had heard about it on the television news that morning, to actually walk by the hospital and realize this was happening then and there gave me a completely different sense about the reality of what had happened to her. (As I've been writing this, I've checked online again, and Natasha Richardson has died. Click here to read her obituary in The New York Times. She was only 45 years old.)

Anything can happen in NYC, and it usually does. These two very different experiences both made me feel like I had walked into the middle of something, and I had. It's called life. We forget so easily that while we go about our own business, going to work and meetings, eating lunch, shopping, whatever, other people everywhere around us are living their own lives. Some are working hard as actors on a television shoot. Others are ringing up sales at a cash register. Others are booking vacations. And then others are praying over their sick loved one while news crews wait outside to know if their mother/wife/daughter has died. It is disturbing to realize that the world that exists in our own head is not the center of the universe. It is only one of over eight billion parts of the same universe, and they are all moving, all acting, all living, at the very same time, in the very same city. I find that synchronicity unnerving, mind-boggling, and comforting all at the same time.

A wise woman reminded me earlier this evening that life is about the journey and not the destiny. So can there be a better place to live an exciting journey than in New York City? I think not.

UPDATE (3/20): Just to show you how frequently film crews are in NYC shooting, by total coincidence my friend TF over at the New York Portraits blog posted an entry talking about the same thing: "We Prefer The Term 'Background Actor."

Review: Gypsy

This weekend, my friends NV, MT, CB, & CM from Miami came to the Big Apple to celebrate NV's birthday. We had lots of fun, with dinners, shopping, and dancing, but the highlight for all of us was going to see Gypsy on Broadway at the St. James Theatre. The show was spectacular. Gypsy is taken from the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee (1911-1970), the burlesque stripper and actress. But the main protagonist of the show is Rose, her mother, who manages (and dominates) her two daughters' careers across the country during the waning days of Vaudeville. It has some easily recognizable tunes, like "Let Me Entertain You," "Everything's Coming Up Roses," and "Together Wherever We Go." This Broadway revival won the 2008 Tony Awards for Best Actress (Patti LuPone as Rose), Best Featured Actor (Boyd Gaines as Herbie), and Best Featured Actress (Laura Benanti as Louise/Gypsy Rose Lee). During our performance, Benanti apparently was replaced by her understudy Jessica Rush, so I can't assess what we missed there. However, I can say for certain that I would have been grossly disappointed if I had missed LuPone. If ever a role was written for a singer-actress, Rose was written for Patti LuPone. This woman is a musical knock-out. LuPone has such an incredible stage presence that she dominates every scene she is in, simply by sauntering on stage. Her voice brings down the house. The minute she showed up on stage, the audience gave her a round of applause, and she got a standing ovation at the end of the night. It's not easy to sing a Stephen Sondheim song. His lyrics can become tongue-twisters, and paired with Jule Styne's music, the person who plays Rose needs to make leaps of faith in harmony and tone. Rose has such a pushy stage presence that you expect her to be an exaggeration, but LuPone makes the hyperbolic believable and human. Even more impressive was her control of syncopation and the complexity of the lyrics, all while the orchestra masterfully played catch-up. What can I say but that it was simply astounding. Everything was definitely coming up roses last night.

Review: 2 Boys...

While we were in Provincetown, JM & I went to see James Edwin Parker's play 2 Boys in a Bed on a Cold Winter's Night at the Art House. It starred Scott Douglas Cunningham as Daryl and Spencer Keasey (former gay porn star Spencer Quest) as Peter, two New Yorkers who spend an hour doing that one thing so few men ever do after sex: talking. The writing was fine, the acting was fine, and their naked bodies were even more fine. But what could easily have become a farcical take on a one night stand instead became moody and philosophical. This might normally work in a coffee house theater in the Village, but if you're vacationing in Provincetown (and potentially partaking of the frequent possibility of one night stands), this was not the play for you. Following their sexual encounter, Daryl is desperate for love and Peter is desperate for sleep. They are complete opposites, yet every gay man can understand from where each of them is coming. The one-hour play worked as a character sketch, but ultimately failed as a story. Like all theater, it invited the audience to act as the voyeur into their world. In this case it even went so far as to provide the all gay male audience with two hunky men parading in the buff for nearly twenty minutes (never a bad thing in gay theater). But the sullen tone that the play took ultimately stripped the audience of its participation, and in that sense left this theatergoer gratified, but unsatisfied.