Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2009

Upside Down Jelly Fish

There's some kind of lesson here...

Long, Good Day

What a great day! It started early, with lil E time and making challah french toast, then i took lil E out to his grandparents, so Karen and I could spend the day in SF, invited to cultural stuff -- a Tehiyah Day School Leadership event at the new Cal Academy of Sciences and a MAGNES lecture at the CCA campus in SF . At the Academy we were toured around by Tehiyah Day School parent Kang Kiang . it was a great tour. And it was my first visit to the Academy, though Lil E's been several times already with his grandparents and mom. We got a little lost making our way to CCA. I almost always get lost looking for that campus, and never remember to take the directions. We had to ask for help at the Slow Club . And they were VERY helpful -- GREAT place! The MAGNES/CCA program included: Alla Efimova , PhD, MAGNES Acting Director and Chief Curator Dora Apel , PhD, Wayne State University, Author of “Memory Effects: Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing” Naomie Kremer , Artist,

shhhhh...

Quiet night in Marin. There's a minyan in Mill Valley. Another soul sleeps quiet now. The City plays off on the horizon like Whistler's fireworks.

sad irony?

OpEd KCRW - Ed. Goldman Art Talk

I must confess, I did not know this portrait existed. Click the pic to hear the Slavic mellifluous ramblings of an Art Talk on KCRW. Obama as a champion of the arts. John Fitzgerald Kennedy/ Elaine de Kooning,1963/ Oil on canvas/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/ © Elaine de Kooning Trust for more info go to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery blog on it.

Magnes Web Life Giving

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: Magnes Web Life Giving View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: museums social ) This was a presentation I gave up in Anchorage last fall -- having fun with SlideShare. I joined SlideShare because of an upcoming WebCast, then got advertised for more info. on LinkedIn, posted an old presentation, got sent to SlideShare home to set up an account then was asked if I wanted to Blogger the Event, too. Neat.

Better Late than Never...

So after a quick trip to the Mac store to get the ol'Mac checked out before coming into the stretch for my MBA, whereat I got a new battery, the Jacguar and external drive for back ups through Time Machine...the baddest thing is we FINALLY got iChat!! Thanks to twitter buddy @TomCee we hooked up the external camera last night and this morning -- magic. Ah, thanks for waiting for us...

Friday Was...

...a magical end to a wonderful week! There were acrobats in the morning. And work at MAGNES went well. There was a lot of good news this week -- kinda rained as it poured... After work we went to the Downtown Berkeley Central Library . And as we exited the Library, MAGNES Atheon lit up the night...it felt like magic, really.

Jews of the Fillmore

Peter Stein, now Director of the SF Jewish Film Festival did a documentary called The Fillmore in 2001. The documentary will be part of the MAGNES installation with the working title Jews of the Fillmore due to open in late spring 2009 at the Jazz Heritage Center . "Because the neighborhood in its prime was primarily African American and working class, it was often ignored or dropped from mainstream city history and photo records," says Peter L. Stein, the program's producer and writer. "On top of it, the Fillmore was largely bulldozed in the 1960s -- so in many senses we are telling the story of a lost world. But I've come to believe it is one of the great object lessons in American urban life." The film's web site does a nice job giving an overview of the history of the Fillmore: The Fillmore chronicles key chapters in the neighborhood's history, starting with the great earthquake and fire of 1906. The Western Addition (as the neighborhood is

Jewish Fillmore: A Walking Tour

More on this VERY SOON, gotta bluethooth some pix to the laptop back home an' nab some more shots from friends, and write a bit...but had to mobile blog in the moment - what a GREAT day!! I do love the tenor of the shot from my Palm Treo, they have this fuzzy seventies feel -- instant nostalgia. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* O.K., so earlier this week, together with other staff and friends from the MAGNES we did a walking tour of the Fillmore. The tour was lead by Dr. Lara Michels, Head Archivist and Librarian at the MAGNES. We did it as part of the development of the forthcoming exhibition at the Jazz Heritage Center with the working title Jews of the Fillmore. The lead funding right now on the project comes from the Koret Foundation. Koret Program Officer Adam Hirschfelder joined us on the walk. Adam's been one of the driving forces behind this cool project. After the 1906 fire San Francisco moved into the Fillmore. The area around Fillmore Street become the c

Go, John, Go

As some of you read here in the past, my friend John Maccabee 's been developing ARGs for a while through his company City Mystery . His most recent project Ghosts of a Chance , just got a FANTASTIC mention in a piece last night on NPR . The NPR piece also covered Wikipedia Loves Art , which was all the twitter on twitter last week in museumish spheres. Here's a sampling from one of the institutional instructions for Wikipedia Loves Art: Guidelines for Shooting at the Brooklyn Museum : Shots must be taken in existing light only (no flash) and tripods cannot be used. We ask that you shoot each work twice. First time shoot the object with an index card in the frame that displays the object's accession number, your team name, and category name so we can assign points. Second time shoot the object again, but this time without the card. Submit both shots to this group. Brooklyn Museum staff will use the information on the index card to properly caption the image with the correc

Happy Birthday, Rabbi

Facebook profile for Abraham Joshua Heschel. And status updates below, including a comment by Moses Maimonides, also known as Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Hebrew: משה בן מימון‎), the Rambam, and Musa ibn Maymun (Arabic: موسي ابن ميمون‎), was born in Cordova, Spain on March 30, 1135, and died in Egypt on December 13, 1204.[6][7]. One of the greatest Torah scholars of all time, he was a rabbi, physician, and philosopher in Spain, Morocco and Egypt during the Middle Ages. He was the preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambam) Happy Birthday, Reb Heschel. If there's one thing better than having you here with us, through the wonders of Facebook, it's RAMBAM chiming in a " Yom Huledet Sameach ." May there be more peace for us and all Israel now..........now.

Letter to The New York Times

Dear Mr. Cotter http://tinyurl.com/8a76lk you GOTSA give @brooklynmuseum props http://tinyurl.com/5kf48s Dear Holland Cotter, Above is the twitter message I sent to Shelley Bernstein and all the myriad intertwined museum professionals dedicated to delivering meaningful engagement and educational content on-line. The Brooklyn Museum has taken the lead in this effort. The initiative is in-line with all that you put forward so eloquently in the article I read in my morning's New York Times . It's just a little too bad that you did not call out all the work that Brooklyn has cultivated to this end on-line -- one of the first all on-line membership groups "1stfans," a show curated through flickr and member driven YouTube content/advertising competitions. This is museum new; and it speaks to Brooklyn's environs on so many levels and reaches a greater audience than could have ever been dreamt of at the Museum's creation. With Newark, you invoke the spirit of John

Sweaty Palm

I've been using Palm since I first needed to strategized about moving to California. Then Palm had the best wireless handheld device. I could keep up with wrapping-up work back at the Met in nyc while meeting with folks at the de Young or the Stanford Museum. I vividly recall a train ride to Palo Alto doing metmuseum mail en route . It was kinda of new then for a pda, eight years ago. It served me well. I looked like a hero back in nyc and got the job at the de Young...eventually. So I have an emotional bond to the O/S. In my tiny universe I was an early proponent of Windows in the handheld world, having purchased one of the bulky HP things that ran Windows CE. But as I was getting ready to travel the i705 provided the most elegant solution. I even got the external keyboard. Now I like Palm, because my device does not need to plug into the wireless web to really work, so my phone stays a phone. I am not bound to data charges by RIM or the ATT signup for the iPhone. It'

Twitter Wins Best Startup Founder

Bringing People Together

I just love that the "tools" of today's world have bestowed new meanings to relationships. I saw this on my facebook screen today. These two "friends" -- Peter and Simone -- come from such different ends of my life. But it is so beautiful to see them united in facebook. Fifty years ago this kind of thing could have only happened in a dream and I would have woke up saying, "Wow. Peter and Simone were together on Bush's last day. And there was this ominous cloud of destruction hovering behind the President." Now it's in my waking dream. Neat.

Extreme Work

The phrase "extreme work" was introduced to me through a class at JFKU where I am wrapping up my MBA (with a minor in Museum Studies). I may be part of a panel or roundtable at the Western Museums Association that will be focused on the 24/7 work week and sustainable work. Or I might just help pull the roundtable discussion together. I do see pros and cons here. Below is a clip from a 2007 article in USA Today . (Second USA quote on blog in a month, hmmm??...) Hi, I’m Joan, and I’m a workaholic: Technology enables rise of extreme workers, on job 60 hours or more By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY "...Extreme work is real. The technological age has exacerbated this problem beyond belief," says Ken Siegel, of Beverly Hills, Calif., president of The Impact Group, a group of psychologists who consult with the management of leading global companies. "You can take work into the shower or the bath. There's no escape. (Extreme workers) often feel like if they don&#

MAGNES Tweeter for the Week

Two Women in Today's NYTimes Art in Review

Farida Batool, NAI REESAN SHEHR LAHORE DIYAN (2006) Lenticular print, 34 x 48 in. Edition 5/7 SOLD In Farida Batool’s photographs, lenticular prints (the image changes with the viewing angle) become a metaphor for complex political realities. In “Nai Reesan Shehr Lahore Diyan (There Is No Match of the City Lahore)” a girl skips rope in front of burned-out buildings — the aftermath of arsons committed by religious extremists. And in “Line of Control” the torsos of a naked man and woman press together to form a border as controversial as the one that runs through Kashmir. - KAREN ROSENBERG Farida Batool, LINE OF CONTROL (2004) Lenticular print 34 x 62 in. Edition 3/7 Keltie Ferris (b. 1977, Louisville, KY) lives and works in Brooklyn. She received a MFA from Yale University in New Haven, CT and a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD). She has been included in exhibitions at Artspace, New Haven, CT; Jack Tilton, New York; Markus Winter, Berlin; and numerous exhibitions o

One OH-8 Blog Thing I Regret...

I always meant to write something (in)significant about our visit to the British Museum; something that'd've been at home here; something that'd've been better than Museum News, which can often be a drag; something that'd've...oh, I dunno, made me happy? 'Til then I just leave the pix below, and consider this a Delicious moment, to be bookmarked and returned to. I'll do more on all this soon. The trip was great, really great. A highlight of 'o8.

OH-8 Things for Which to Be Thankful Part V

GRANDPA'S HEALTH

OH-8 Things for Which to Be Thankful Part IV

FAMILY

OH-8 Things for Which to Be Thankful Part III

US 3