tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139435762024-03-14T06:42:47.471-07:00loveitallaboveloveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.comBlogger623125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-11554239665180475862020-12-29T15:41:00.000-08:002020-12-29T15:41:02.592-08:00A Year-end Letter Update from James and Family<p><img height="145" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/bTm86MQPWoyo9_RMXbJvFx6heXcUsCIX8KUWDZVKB8f4Xub3ovH5DLBOFkCfP-nXnmgXrwLF0v3Dbiu5AZoHUAa8-jZ4xvimnXj07fSv65l0RpZRhHBLHN5xQmbo3EiFoa7Z_tPr" style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;" width="677" /></p><p><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dear Friends and Family,</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-cb58a7b1-7fff-5523-0c86-a5837fc95789"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the brink of the new year on December 31, 2019 we stood at the foot of Kehinde Wiley's brand new monumental equestrian sculpture in downtown Richmond at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. There were a bunch of </span><a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/S5YRi1F6CC33jAGw6" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">families gathered</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> around taking pictures together. Emblematic of this entire year and entitled “</span><a href="https://www.vmfa.museum/about/rumors-of-war/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rumors of War</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” the monument depicts an unarmed Black man in heroic pose atop a horse. The man’s sneakers are in the stirrups, looking back over their shoulder </span><a href="https://smarthistory.org/jacques-louis-david-napoleon-crossing-the-alps/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like Napoleon as they ride forward up a ridge</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It was a strange harbinger of the year that was, and how it’s going. Kamala Harris will be named our vice president in a few weeks. In between, the apocalyptic has been commonplace; I mean, what a year.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Emil started </span><a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/fALiDZYGaWH1i6Mu5" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">high school</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this fall. Graduation this past spring from Mark Day School was likely the year’s highlight. Karen is still at Mark Day. This fall they've been doing hybrid learning. It’s the first time Karen and Emil have not been going to school together since Emil was in kindergarten. Karen has been eBiking to work, weather permitting. Emil goes to Albany High School from his bedroom. Ryan’s pretty much worked throughout all this as an essential worker at a local wine warehouse, and he’s been doing college online. We are all lucky to have weathered the pandemic, so far.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feeling like museums are not where my fundraising energies can be best spent right now, I am now Director of Institutional Advancement for Congregation Rodef Sholom in Marin, working on a new building campaign. It has been nourishing to be connected to a purposeful and progressive synagogue during these crazy times.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I worked on a bunch of projects this year. The essential power of Black photography was definitely a key theme. We heard Dawoud Bey speak right before things really shut down, as well as Kwame Brathwaite, Jr., Tyler Mitchell and Dr. Deborah Willis. The exhibition of Bey’s work </span><a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/dawoud-bey-an-american-project/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An American Project</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at SFMOMA was breathtaking, exhilarating and efficerating. I helped to conceive and organize San Francisco Cameraworks </span><a href="https://sfcamerawork.org/auction" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Annual Benefit Auction </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See How Beautiful I Am</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Radical inclusion was the main theme and it was one of the most successful benefit auctions in Cameraworks’ recent history. With the largest direct payout to artists by far, the auction included works by </span><a href="https://sfcamerawork.org/auction-2020-dawoud-bey" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dawoud Bey</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="https://sfcamerawork.org/auction-2020-binh-danh" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a tribute to Dr. Deborah Willis by Binh Danh</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I was jazzed to see Isaac Julian’s installation </span><a href="https://www.isaacjulien.com/projects/37/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lessons of the Hour</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, maybe one of the finest art experiences of my life. Legacy Russell's </span><a href="https://legacyrussell.com/BLACK-MEME" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Black Meme</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was the best online 2020 talk to which I listened “live.” She reined in anthropology, hauntology, dancing babies, deep-seated racism, fear, hope, humor and the ineffable.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Right now it’s feeling like smaller is better and local art matters most. The Oakland murals in response to the George Floyd execution were extraordinary, echoed in town squares across the country. I joined the program committee of the Berkeley Arts Center. For a brief window of time, the Art Center was open by appointment and </span><a href="https://www.berkeleyartcenter.org/we-have-teeth-too-virtual-exhibition" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We Have Teeth Too</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, was such an incredible installation. And I have filled so many journal pages over this year, it just might force me to come up with a strategy for the decades of accumulated drawings and writings.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In terms of books, I wanted to find wisdom in words and I did. The strongest likely was Octavia Butler’s Earthseed mantra: “Change is God.” I have been feeling radicalized by reading </span><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-revolution-will-not-be-funded" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Revolution Will Not Be Funded</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to which was recently added </span><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691170732/the-american-jewish-philanthropic-complex" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The new Romare Bearden biography </span><a href="https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-an-american-odyssey-mary-schmidt-campbell-on-artist-romare-bearden/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An American Odyssey</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (2019) by Mary Schmidt Campbell was really, really good.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Curious to see how great writers dealt with themes of plague or totalitarianism, I decided to try and convene a book group, based on important books or authors I’d yet to read. We read Christopher Ishherwood’s </span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Berlin Stories</span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, (1946); George Orwell, </span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Coming up for Air</span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1939); Octavia Butler’s </span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Parable of the Talents</span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1998); Albert Camus </span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Plague</span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1947); and Ursula Le Guin </span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dispossessed</span><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1974). I found solace and inspiration in how shared this moment is with history. Thanks, everyone, for playing along; especially Andrea Daniel and Kathrin Randall, from Berlin.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were all kinds of amazing things that happened that would have been more remarkable any given year. Right before lock down Karen and I went to go see </span><a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/Gp22k2QM7QT1uvTu7" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wyclef Jean in a club in downtown Berkeley</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I am not sure how it was that he was playing in such a small joint. His performance was out of this world. It felt like we were kids again, together now for thirty-one years, and solidly in midlife.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In mid August the California wildfires led to lightning ripping and dancing through the evening sky like the end of days. The next day Emil picked up paperwork from Albany high. I’ve heard it debated whether “May you live in interesting times” is an “Irish toast” or a “Chinese curse.” I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, but I’m going to keep thinking of it as the former.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">May this email find you doing well. I’m a little sad to report that the days of young Emil designing our year-end message are likely past us.We tried to make a card for this year and never got around to sending it. Perhaps we have finally become middle-aged yearly update letter people? We would love to hear from you. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peace & Love,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">James</span></p><br /><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">P.S. Here is a small selection of pictures: </span><a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/UEJNf7Fixtm3j527A" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://photos.app.goo.gl/UEJNf7Fixtm3j527A</span></a><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Please feel free to comment and add yours pix, too, for us and others to share.</span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-81991519097454438232020-12-29T15:39:00.001-08:002020-12-29T15:39:10.315-08:00Isherwood, wish you would<div class="g-group l-lg-mar-bot-6 l-md-mar-bot-4" style="background-color: white; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><div class="g-cell g-cell-10-12 g-cell-md-1-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 15px; vertical-align: top; width: 560px;"><div class="has-user-generated-content js-d-read-more read-more js-read-more read-more--medium-down read-more--expanded" data-xd-wired="read-more" dorsal-guid="15ea159f-49e7-2364-8a1b-bee96caae13a" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="js-xd-read-more-toggle-view read-more__toggle-view" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="color: #39364f; font-family: "Neue Plak", -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.933333rem; letter-spacing: 0.5px; line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #6f7287; font-size: 16px;">Thank you to the few close friends and family who joined the first discussion about</span><span style="color: #6f7287; font-size: 16px;"> </span><em style="color: #6f7287; font-size: 16px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/isherwoods-the-berlin-stories-in-2020-tickets-104706650410#" target="_blank">The Berlin Stories</a></em><span style="color: #6f7287; font-size: 16px;">. My hope is to create a sense of community and cohesion for folks, to read more books, and books that speak to this particular age in which we are enmired.</span></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="color: #39364f; font-family: "Neue Plak", -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.933333rem; letter-spacing: 0.5px; line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #6f7287; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">It feels like both a constructive and arcane activity during this time and an important way to understand that we have been here before, that art as literature lingers. It's indulgent and speaks to the dichotomy of introvert and extrovert. Wondering if it's the introvert who is really seeking the reassurance or the extrovert; in this case, I know I will be compelled to finish a novel if I have others relying on me. And Isherwood.</span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><br /></span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">I have always wanted to read Isherwood's <i>The Berlin Stories</i>. Made up of two novellas about ex-pat life in Germany, these works are distilled into what becomes the first movie that scared me out of my wits Cabaret. I can't imagine it was in a theater and why would it have been on TV in those days, but somehow I saw Cabaret at an impressionable age. I did not understand it at all but the Emcee was a visceral and lasting memory of evil incarnate. I did not understand why. Trauma stuff. When I learned later about Nazis, I remember that Joel Grey image like a totem evoked in my mind through association. I did not understand why. My older brother was in Cabaret in high school. Seven years older than me, I must have been ten or eleven. By then, I understood the Nazi part, however much a ten year old understands Nazis or anyone does. But I saw the swastika surface in that sinking sensation the play produces and vividly remember the ape suit scene. Later in life as a somewhat louche man in New York my someday-to-be-and-still-is wife and I saw the Studio 54 performance of Cabaret starring Alan Cumming. I hated Broadway or Broadway-adjacent theater at the time, but this felt like Brecht. And you were immersed in it. Someday I'd read Isherwood.</span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><br /></span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">But I wanted to be sure that whenever I read The Berlin Stories, I had the time space to think liberally about them and allow them to sauté, onioned and oily. I was worried they'd have a priggish demure and be too societal. I was worried that they would be flaccid. They were, and the two novellas bore little to no relationship to the horrific musical that carried that little ur-devil character that was coming in the night for my Jewish soul. I was not sure how to fathom the question of the authorial voice Isherwood takes on. I want to learn more. But this was just the time for me to Isherwood finally.</span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><br /></span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">My mom's folks were two pretty extraordinary humans. She was English born in India. Her dad was part of running a brewery and a lot of family was there. We have a painting that won a prize from like a Viceroy or something, real Raj stuff. Horrible, if mundane. They were bureaucrats and ran small businesses as part of one of the most extraordinary assertions of empire in history with the British occupation of India. As a little girl my grandmother saw a lot fo sanskrit and would study some as well at Oxford. I have this fantasy that it is one of the things over which she and Christopher bonded, I imagine.</span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><br /></span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; letter-spacing: 0.5px; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPl1ADxyMqMZxvgEE60yKTTjbKnHVcGcsljfApEFqMPH-s8G2bm8SXsvr4jCKIlyxZir46nqz1EsWR_ipTuu4-cAlxOehN4kv6ETDRLKdVdBPWhmwSEdZt7pxFoltc51sxvcZF8A/s2048/DWwguZDU8AAlsPw.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPl1ADxyMqMZxvgEE60yKTTjbKnHVcGcsljfApEFqMPH-s8G2bm8SXsvr4jCKIlyxZir46nqz1EsWR_ipTuu4-cAlxOehN4kv6ETDRLKdVdBPWhmwSEdZt7pxFoltc51sxvcZF8A/w320-h320/DWwguZDU8AAlsPw.jpeg" title="David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (detail), 1968. Private collection. Artwork © David Hockney" width="320" /></a></div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">Like the Emcee evinces goblins for me, I have this strange implanted memory of Isherwood and my grandmother. It is unsubstantiated. And the sad thing is that it is one of those things that maybe no one alive could attest to; not even anyone in my family because when I said on a group video call during pandemic, "Hey, what was Granny's relationship with Christopher Isherwood?" All I saw in the little boxes was blank expressions.</span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;"><br /></span></font></div><div class="js-xd-read-more-contents text-body-medium" data-automation="listing-event-description" style="line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font color="#6f7287" face="Neue Plak, -apple-system, system-ui, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">Alas, this must have been a story shared on my one young trip to California I took. Granny must have told me about Isherwood. She had this way of speaking up to you, or well, at least to me. I felt a bond evoked in this typing that exceeds my own understanding. It's complicated and there's more due for other stories. She and her husband moved in interesting circles. Yes, he had drinks in Rome with Elizabeth Taylor, because he was working on a film. She was dear friends with the late filmmaker Jean Renoir's widow Dido Renoir. And a very close friend of my grandmother's in the circle of </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">sanskrit </i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">was a Dr. Evelyn Hooker. I met Dr. Hooker twice. She was big and impressive, wide wristed and horselike head that held a face of such compassion as to seem to be a sorceress. She made homosexuality no longer a disease in the science books. She did that work through spending time with, studying and learning form Christopher Isherwood and others. Isherwood helped to usher in a thread of the hippy era that had a veneration for the pure teaching of Buddha and </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;">sanskrit</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.5px;"> texts. And I think he stayed with my grandmother at some point as he was settling in Santa Monica. I wanted to some day be great like my grandmother and I wanted to understand why Isherwood matters.</span></font></div></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-7464987798077885712020-05-05T10:28:00.003-07:002020-05-05T11:24:06.095-07:00Art, Galleries & Museums during the Plague (Backyard Musings): Thank you, Badir<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYgttifSymREcetT4yJYVyv3MVcQGDnhgmjP8ECBiCEZ1BzyG4pNqGEi_R8X1BiUWoiSa3mojY58sZqxEs52qpJAypN7q49lxBGeQGOLNCmUsv3AMIGiHEWwWcHq-Hd2IxabAC4A/s1600/20181206_124402_20200505095530663.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYgttifSymREcetT4yJYVyv3MVcQGDnhgmjP8ECBiCEZ1BzyG4pNqGEi_R8X1BiUWoiSa3mojY58sZqxEs52qpJAypN7q49lxBGeQGOLNCmUsv3AMIGiHEWwWcHq-Hd2IxabAC4A/s200/20181206_124402_20200505095530663.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week I did an <a href="https://youtu.be/MkEMnQ8qXjY" target="_blank">Instagram Live session</a> with Badir McCleary the founder of <a href="http://www.artabovereality.com/about/" target="_blank">Art Above Reality</a>. Badir and I met first at a session he participated in around an exhibition at the <a href="https://www.moadsf.org/" target="_blank">Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD)</a> entitled <a href="https://www.moadsf.org/exhibition/digitalia-art-the-economy-of-ideas/" target="_blank">Digitalia: Art & the Economy of Ideas</a> (2018), curated by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/yesladypheonix/" target="_blank">Lady Phoenix</a>. Badir and I met again later that year at Miami Beach in the UNTITLED tents.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">In the video here below we talk about a lot of subjects, including my going on a bit about Michael Eric Dyson's writing about Jay Z; and I get *really* excited about Paula Cooper.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I got my copy of <i><a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/12/02/784063211/dysons-book-argues-jay-zs-lyrics-deserve-serious-study" target="_blank">Jay Z: Made in America</a></i> at Marcus Books, an independent, Black-owned bookstore in Oakland. You can support their Go Fund Me campaign <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/marcus-books-anniversary-fundraiser/" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">A link to the Paula Cooper article "</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">‘I’ve always been wary of big business" is</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/i-ve-always-been-wary-of-big-business-paula-cooper" style="white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">; as well as one to the Magda Sawon article "</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">This Is the Toughest Challenge My Business Has Ever Faced. But Here's Why Small Galleries Like Mine Will Come Out Alive," linked <a href="https://news.artnet.com/opinion/magda-sawon-postmasters-op-ed-1845471" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Badir posted the entire video of us in conversation <a href="https://youtu.be/MkEMnQ8qXjY" target="_blank">here</a>. I am in my backyard, holding the phone. Maybe for the next one I should formalize my Zoom set up?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">I'd love to hear your further comments and thoughts. I will post more links and thoughts later this week about museums and COVID-19. 'Til then, stay focused on </span><a href="https://superhelpful.substack.com/p/intentional-practice-during-a-crisis" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Intentional Practice</a><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://youtu.be/MkEMnQ8qXjY" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXwekTRv14OM9U27ePf_OIpAzK82vwq4xokxNzuD00iQz_6BD4_rm95HEG058ifAFseJWiyuIp8UxNCnlsoEDtDFazjFz5R4MOJOUQ6xnR5Oz75Uf9adoVIU9oaHZL7eV00f_KqQ/s400/Screenshot_20200505-091158.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://youtu.be/MkEMnQ8qXjY" target="_blank">View video here: <span id="docs-internal-guid-9dc3e3d2-7fff-67c3-f7d3-97ac08bf3ee6"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://youtu.be/MkEMnQ8qXjY</span></span></a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Peace & Love.</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-84200608083476620732020-04-10T13:25:00.000-07:002020-04-11T10:35:15.298-07:00Looking Back and Paying Forward: Wiley and Verrocchio<i>Indulge me here, please: so much of my professional writing has been about structured, often grant-oriented work and epistolary pieces intended to persuade; and more often than not written to be said, sent or published under someone else's name.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I do want to post a few blog posts to exercise my own voice, which is more typically conversational and about wending threads that come together at the end. This is my second post. You can find the first one <a href="http://loveitallabove.blogspot.com/2020/01/i-and-i-survive-man-of-conciliation.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</i><br />
<br />
These are extraordinary times. We are living history, right? It’s odd, because so much of my upbringing I have felt a sense of the ahistorical: that we are beyond history; that polemics about socialism vs. capitalism were passé; and the future was so uncertain that we could no longer see ourselves as part of a continuum, but instead near the end game.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why prepare for the future? A lot of this is what defined Gen X, I think, inspired by Richard Hell and the idea of The Blank Generation. Now, we are in the midst of an unprecedented global calamity. We couldn’t shake history if we wanted to: it surrounds us now.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhViog0cLRu45-OVg5rfZ6uKXoPysn_0SR5tU8IQWFNVGkwJ3oQXCX2pN2cCzBx12fSJBq-wiadytUDd_CPcHZHofJ0y51pbsLPsgAfaT_HyaxPA0MnciPpDii7liDIqP_vTne2BQ/s1600/181108-camp-fire-ew-922p_87a7fed8d3072f66530328cbaca817ec.fit-2000w.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhViog0cLRu45-OVg5rfZ6uKXoPysn_0SR5tU8IQWFNVGkwJ3oQXCX2pN2cCzBx12fSJBq-wiadytUDd_CPcHZHofJ0y51pbsLPsgAfaT_HyaxPA0MnciPpDii7liDIqP_vTne2BQ/s200/181108-camp-fire-ew-922p_87a7fed8d3072f66530328cbaca817ec.fit-2000w.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
<br />
There have been so many folds and wrinkles of apocalyptic news. A global pandemic? Just a month or so ago Australia appeared to be burning into near oblivion. Sonoma and Napa Valleys have seen fire year after year now. And, yes, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/western-wildfires/wildfire-chars-more-5-000-acres-rural-northern-california-n934086">we lost Paradise</a>.<br />
<br />
How can we as humans continue here on Earth with some semblance of similarity to the humanity that we've held to for millennia? Teach the future. Believe it into existence. Share what you know now.<br />
<br />
Clinging to art and culture has been important to my entire life. I am an advocate, a generalist, and enthusiast. This past December, which seems like years go now, I flew back with my wife and son to Washington DC, to visit family. We had arranged for a few days in a VRBO in the Outer Banks, North Carolina: an off-season chill-out. In mid December it was pretty much 65 degrees throughout. We walked barefoot on the beach in midwinter warmth that settled in like a wet blanket over the kitchen fire of 21st century humanity.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAPa0yv7y8t4M5Y2rB3_QuTbx8g0LN3rkpOH150SiHnfwzE9sfRB_CeaCSOerXfn8O-A5afHFM7Lk9hiNNhecW2fY-KqfWElfnoVKG-cU9fsOBvEn9BnysvaWTW6QqN3PVh5Q8hg/s1600/1586545871333897-0.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
<img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAPa0yv7y8t4M5Y2rB3_QuTbx8g0LN3rkpOH150SiHnfwzE9sfRB_CeaCSOerXfn8O-A5afHFM7Lk9hiNNhecW2fY-KqfWElfnoVKG-cU9fsOBvEn9BnysvaWTW6QqN3PVh5Q8hg/s200/1586545871333897-0.png" width="185" />
</a>
</div>
A highlight of the trip was being able to swing through Richmond on the drive back to see the newly installed Kehinde Wiley bronze, commissioned <i>Rumors of War</i> (2019). A lot has been written about this important piece that was <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/536619/kehinde-wiley-wangechi-mutu-and-kara-walker-upstage-the-monuments-debate/">initially unveiled in NYC</a> before being shipped down to Richmond.<br />
<br />
One of the things that really struck me was the connection to the history of commissioned equestrian statues, essential to any initial lecture series in European art history. A defining element of the Renaissance was the successful return to epic, equestrian statuary. Grand statuary are representative of the collective aspect of art making. No one person can make a large cast bronze sculpture alone. It requires a studio system: the forge, and all kinds of engineering mastery that is typically not embodied by the artist themselves.<br />
<br />
Wiley understands well the timeless tradition of collective art making and the importance of the studio. In that process one comes to appreciate the significance of training others. It was also so magical to see the families surrounding the sculpture in its long-term home outside the <a href="https://www.vmfa.museum/" target="_blank">Virginia Museum of Fine Arts</a>, making memories.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU96WKrlPniFcaizUUPEd2UnQAtjRKCc2h-54jgVkgYm5k3GLxVE9PsyMn_M1BX9eJhNRLU1JGz8z3RkWLekTdvWs-I6MYnkO54ulBvAskjfs4K9jT6ll0isEJT1NF49HPWcnfNg/s1600/main-image.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="996" data-original-width="1200" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU96WKrlPniFcaizUUPEd2UnQAtjRKCc2h-54jgVkgYm5k3GLxVE9PsyMn_M1BX9eJhNRLU1JGz8z3RkWLekTdvWs-I6MYnkO54ulBvAskjfs4K9jT6ll0isEJT1NF49HPWcnfNg/s320/main-image.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Verrocchio </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Measured Drawing of a Horse Facing Left </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(c. 1481/1483) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Frederick C. Hewitt Fund</span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee">
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee">
</span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee"><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">...may be [one of} those once owned by Giorgio Vasari, who mentions them in his life of Verrocchio as marked with measurements for accurate enlarge ment. Bearing Verrocchio's handwriting as recognized from his 1481 tax declaration, the drawings may be part of the design process for the monumental bronze equestrian statue of military leader Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice (c. 1480-1496), completed after Verrocchio's death. Verrocchio superimposed a system of proportions with the length of one head as the basic unit of measure, following a scheme described by the ancient Roman author Vitruvius and taken up by the fifteenth-century art theorist Leon Battista Alberti.</span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee">
</span>
<br />
<div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-283b4392-7fff-bb01-ca83-5022e16cdfee">
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Two other exhibitions were on display during my time in D.C. with my father, siblings and nephews, namely <a href="https://asia.si.edu/exhibition/hokusai-mad-about-painting/">Hokusai: Mad about Painting</a> at the now-called Smithsonian’s <a href="https://asia.si.edu/" target="_blank">National Museum of Asian Art, the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery</a>; and a terrific, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the National Gallery of Art on Andrea del Verrocchio <a href="https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/verrocchio-sculptor-and-painter-of-renaissance-florence.html">Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence</a>. Both exhibitions were extraordinary.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8DNpOGre6WSoreYvjS7S8zXRhhARaF91_rq5IyxLpSi4eUoQEBEYDOInAsYptX_feesC7GU4kxvrSNxn-ZxKgGoRTB5qEzpw4d34edGT1e7gd2znxWKtTwm05NoofrbSPPcdZig/s1600/IMG_20200102_134515_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1572" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8DNpOGre6WSoreYvjS7S8zXRhhARaF91_rq5IyxLpSi4eUoQEBEYDOInAsYptX_feesC7GU4kxvrSNxn-ZxKgGoRTB5qEzpw4d34edGT1e7gd2znxWKtTwm05NoofrbSPPcdZig/s200/IMG_20200102_134515_2.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
The thing that struck me was how focused both Hokusai and Verrocchio were on their role as teachers, as having gifts that are essential, transferable and equally valuable in the teaching process as in their innate value of rich beauty and deep human focus. As great and impactful as both artists were in their own practice, they had an equally if not greater influence in their legacy.<br />
<br />
From the teaching books that Hokusai left behind, we see the growth and development of an entire modern visual language, namely in the advent of Manga. The popularization of Japanese prints in Paris and across the United States also helped to give advent to a new visual language of tonalism, through Whistler and I would love to explore whether Inness was under his influence or not. Tonalism informs early photographic aesthetic practice, especially in California. Maybe more than Baudelaire or Benjamin, Hokusai could "own" the idea of the modern as one of its great progenitors, in so many ways. With Verrocchio, while being an amazing technician, he may be better known by his pupils Da Vinci and Botticelli: the future informed by its past.<br />
<br />
Not only is Kehinde Wiley dedicated to the studio system, he is also dedicated to teaching the future. He recently launched <a href="https://blackrocksenegal.org/home/">Black Rock Senegal</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Black Rock Senegal is a multi-disciplinary residency program developed by artist Kehinde Wiley that brings together an international group of visual artists, writers, and filmmakers to join him at his studio on the westernmost point of the coast of Africa. Residents will be invited to Dakar for between one and three months to live and create works at Black Rock. During their stay, residents will be introduced to local artists, artisans, and arts organizations in and around Dakar as well as in other regions of Senegal. Black Rock seeks to support new artistic creation by promoting conversations and collaborations that are multigenerational, cross-cultural, international, and cross-disciplinary. Black Rock takes its physical location as a point of departure to incite change in the global discourse around Africa in the context of creative evolution.</i></blockquote>
Perhaps we can take some inspiration for thinking about the future, as we live out history now? Can we take some solace by looking back and considering how Verocchio’s (c. 1435-1488) dedication to art and teaching allowed him to vision the future, even in desperate times? His part of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-03-29/coronavirus-bubonic-plague-millard-meiss-black-death" target="_blank">the world had known the Black Death only 100 years earlier </a>(1350’s) or so. Titian would die in Venice of the plague 100 years later (1575). Does that give you a warm fuzzy “we are not alone” type feeling?<br />
<br />
And I mean, think about it, Florence was being run by a multi-generational banking family who controlled both civic and religious politics, right? And one of Verrocchio's finest pupils Botticelli was won over by the crazy religious zealot Savonarola who came to dominate Florentine politics in 1495 until he was burned in the public square in 1498.<br />
<br />
What about other leading artists of our times? Is Jeff Koons thinking about his legacy? David Hockney is sharing bucolic images online for the nation of Britain, but what about the future? San Francisco’s Art Institute is <a href="https://www.kqed.org/arts/13877340/san-francisco-art-institute-to-close-at-end-of-spring-semester" target="_blank">threatened with closure</a>. Wiley studied there, but the city of San Francisco is lacking the kind of multi-generational wealth of Medici's or other cities and the oldest art school in town is at risk of shuttering.<br />
<br />
Here’s hoping the <a href="https://blackrocksenegal.org/the-residency/">Black Rock Residency</a> can continue post-Plague, and that we all can again soon begin to embrace the future, with gifted artists working collectively in the lead, as history has proven. Yesterday I listened to a terrific shared event with <a href="https://www.pamm.org/" target="_blank">Pérez Art Museum Miami </a>director Franklin Sirmans and New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, which was inspiring. Saltz has been writing beautifully about where we are right now, including a good, long, recent piece in New York Magazine entitled <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2020/04/how-the-coronavirus-will-transform-the-art-world.html?fbclid=IwAR0Icf98y7evVoDgRnghHElALGT9dGgkIvL5LfI38bKxmGrjRudP62JOnr0">"The Last Days of the Art World … and Perhaps the First Days of a New One Life after the coronavirus will be very different,"</a> in which he proclaims:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Now art is being made in smaller spaces, on kitchen tables, out of things at hand, with kids nearby, cooking happening in the background, Nana washing clothes, life going on all around. This is how our species made most things over the last 50,000 years. Creativity was with us in the caves; it’s in every bone in our bodies.</i></blockquote>
And it is lovely.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-82620767416545740572020-01-05T21:06:00.000-08:002020-01-06T10:17:03.913-08:00I and I Survive: Man of Conciliation<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0ZU0F5Jgrb77mP7196v42KfODH7yIU_RrkrEbR6HM4d-pQm69pYiS6W2dICWW7dR80_ZyU7beHA_aZTMQ-rj8edrI_dwyJtl03CGh9DNRq2EpSmtrjR92wL2lF0ELhEBzZXPHw/s1600/BlogToni.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1315" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0ZU0F5Jgrb77mP7196v42KfODH7yIU_RrkrEbR6HM4d-pQm69pYiS6W2dICWW7dR80_ZyU7beHA_aZTMQ-rj8edrI_dwyJtl03CGh9DNRq2EpSmtrjR92wL2lF0ELhEBzZXPHw/s320/BlogToni.jpg" width="249" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c7ca7f1a-7fff-2810-751b-23e4d11de4cb"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Toni Morrison (1931 - 2019)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 2019 the living earth lost a giant. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison-dead.html">Toni Morrison died</a>. The week she died I had just watched the new documentary about her life <i>The Pieces I Am</i> (2019). It is an artful, art-filled documentary, complemented by artist works, from Mickalene Thomas to Hank Willis Thomas to Jacob Lawrence. Mickalene Thomas did the opening credits. Please check it out. In the film, at one point, Morrison starts to talk about the use of the idiom of the “American Melting Pot.” Morrison makes a gesture with her hands as if to caress the vessel, adding that “Black people are the pot.”<br />
<br />
Well, at least that's the way I remembered it right after the film. Morrison further amplifies and qualifies the idea, adding that it is how everyone else relates to African-Americans by which being American is truly defined. It felt like a light going on; not unlike the first time I heard that the melting pot metaphor itself is in fact a concept used to suppress labor: namely, if you do not allow the Irish to be Irish then they cannot organize as Irish labor. Identity politics is complicated and serious.<br />
<br />
Morrison’s point was further driven home by the release in 2019 of <i>The New York Times</i>' epic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/column/1619-project"><i>1619 Project</i></a>, and even more so then by the recent <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/new-york-times-1619-project-distorts-history-of-slavery/">academic responses</a> to the 1619 Project, implying there is still much work to be done. This is all worth continued examination right now. We neither understand our history well enough, nor have processed its daemons. It sounds too simplistic, pandering even, to say Morrison was right. The truth is self-evident; an angelic veracity worth wrestling with, like Jacob becoming Israel.<br />
<br />
Identity politics is everywhere in art right now, even in a white male reviewer about a white male artist. In a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/nc-wyeth-painted-the-world-full-of-beauty-resilience-and-adventure-and-it-was-white-people/2019/07/02/685ea6f4-9c3e-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html?noredirect=on">recent <i>Washington Post </i>review</a> of the work of N.C. Wyeth, Philip Kennicott described Wyeth as “a painter who worked contentedly and productively in communities that took easy, unapologetic pride in their white Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage.” And Kennicott goes on to say:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>like many white men of his generation, interested in and sympathetic to eugenics, the supposed science of race that infected American culture, politics and jurisprudence, and fueled worldwide abominations including colonialism, genocide and the atrocities of Adolf Hitler;</i></blockquote>
adding,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Whiteness, in this sense, is defined by absence, the missing faces of people of color, with the exception of Native Americans, who are seen as allegorical types, melancholy embodiments of a prelapsarian America...As the country grows more diverse and more authentically aware of how deeply racism is embedded in its history, no one can take whiteness for granted.</i></blockquote>
As noted in a recent <a href="https://time.com/5628283/trump-tweets-racist-white-america/?fbclid=IwAR14KyNxOHHuOZE4qjY0Rfqeq9s4FPbiJYHAaNLKS8TZgA1a_jvwL8pcN0A"><i>Time </i>magazine article</a> entitled “Republicans Want a White Republic. They'll Destroy America to Get It,” written by Carol Anderson, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/white-rage-9781632864130/"><i>White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy</i></a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The GOP’s membership is nearly 90 percent white and can only envision carnage and extinction as it looks upon a rights-based, religious, racial and ideologically diverse America</i></blockquote>
further quoting Lindsey Graham as saying in 2012, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term,” suggesting the work needs to be done to shore up the resources of resentment. <br />
<br />
From a Paris cafe this summer I read <a href="https://nyti.ms/2OiCv7F"><i>The New York Times</i> op-ed</a> by Representative Ilhan Omar where she wrote, “It was in the diverse community of Minneapolis — the very community that welcomed me home with open arms after Mr. Trump’s attacks against me last week — where I learned the true value of democracy. I started attending political caucuses with my grandfather, who cherished democracy as only someone who has experienced its absence could.” It was that line that made me cry. I started balling, really heaving public crying.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQgsCLC2Y2e0iaosBbdYaWzbGUqNYEMkXry1oeTSTlHqlojoty36-tDyeOExMFRoiAuappCWFLIfLKvEyZOHLvGlKXHzph8sVkAfDZO4K6LtQ5Z4Ppg1hN-E5jKtVwOQ3G2XtQA/s1600/BlogCummings.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQgsCLC2Y2e0iaosBbdYaWzbGUqNYEMkXry1oeTSTlHqlojoty36-tDyeOExMFRoiAuappCWFLIfLKvEyZOHLvGlKXHzph8sVkAfDZO4K6LtQ5Z4Ppg1hN-E5jKtVwOQ3G2XtQA/s320/BlogCummings.jpg" /></a><br />
Elijah Cummings (1951 - 2019) <br />
<br />
Before I could even recover emotionally, on my phone I got a Twitter notification that the President of the United States had tweeted attacks on Representative Elijah Cummings and all of Baltimore, a city where I spent four highly formative years of high school. Later the same year Cummings, near sainthood to most, passed away. History, as it will be, will look back on his life punctuated by his strong stance against the 45th President. Baltimore is so important to me. Babe Ruth’s birthplace. Where I had my first of too many beers. The Jewish tradition that led me to The Park School, specifically created to counter the Jewish quotas of other Baltimore private high schools Macdonogh and Gilman. <i>Diner </i>(1982) and Mickey Rourke as the Jewish guy who created <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1996/02/03/merry-go-out-of-business/ce35432b-432c-488b-8e91-b20203ce3d42/">Merry Go ‘Round</a>. That was my life, a white life informed by and adjacent to a beautiful Black world. Shoot, I was even an extra in <i>Hairspray </i>(1988); and I know the places Ta-Nehisi Coates elucidates eloquently in his brilliant and inspiring <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105588797"><i>The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood</i></a>.<br />
<br />
My family lived in Columbia, MD. The same town that acclaimed American author Michael Chabon grew up in. Columbia was founded by commercial developer James Rouse in the 1960’s. As described in <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/james-w-rouses-legacy-better-living-through-design-180951187/">Smithsonian Magazine</a>, “In Rouse’s view, we're at our best in smaller communities where there is a sense of responsibility to one's city and to one's neighbor,” and inclusion was a major part of his vision. That was an important part of my growing up.<br />
<br />
The other night, and for the first time in a long time, I read my son to sleep, reading an essay from Chabon’s <i>POPS: Fatherhood in Pieces</i>. Chabon writes about his experience as a resident of Berkeley. Still virtual neighbors, I now live in the adjacent town of Albany, CA. In one of the essays, “The Bubble People,” Chabon writes about identity and the universality of a sense of shared weirdness that unifies Americans, connecting his Columbia origins and present Berzerkely address altogether: “We were woven, in different patterns, of the same materials of language, economics, politics, and culture.” It is what we share that makes us human. We are all mirrors of each other, same in our differences.<br />
<br />
I have worked my entire professional life in the arts and mostly in museums. I arrived in NYC in the mid-to-late 80s. At NYU I had the good fortune to study with <a href="https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/roselee-goldberg">RoseLee Goldberg</a> and <a href="https://arthistory.yale.edu/people/robert-thompson">Robert Farris Thompson</a>, then visiting from Yale. I started working in art galleries amidst a major groundswell in identity-based politics of display, much of which is captured so well in Jeff Chang’s <i><a href="http://www.whowebe.net/" target="_blank">Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America</a></i> (2016). Now I am the Deputy Director and CDO for the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in California. On the same trip this summer, my family and I also spent some time in London, where I had a terrific conversation with a cabbie that helped me to feel like the work I was doing made a difference.<br />
<br />
Our driver was African, from Eritrea. He was not happy to be a Lyft driver it seemed. He had a Master’s Degree in education, and was unable to find work in London in his trained profession. He worried that the forthcoming Brexit would make it even worse. Trying to help make a connection and add a little positivity to our exchange, I mentioned to him that we had recently had an <a href="https://www.moadsf.org/exhibition/ficre-ghebreyesus-city-with-a-river-running-through/">exhibition at MoAD of the work of Eritrean-born artist Ficre Ghebreyesus</a> (1962-2012). When we were presenting the exhibition at MoAD, as a museum team, we reached out the the large Eritrean population in Oakland. Our London cabbie knew all about it, thanks to that outreach. We had reached him. He had seen Ficre’s work through the internet, on Facebook and in Oakland Eritrean affinity groups. Because of the Museum’s exhibition our conversation turned to shared understanding, global movements and museum work. It ends up that one of the more satisfying parts of his recent employment history in London was being engaged as an educator at the Victoria & Albert. All of a sudden I was, to use a term I am not that fond of: an ally.<br />
<br />
The problem with the “ally” term for me is that it implies a war-like metaphor, and wars always feel to me unwinnable. Thanks to a local scholar and curator I admire <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/asharaekundayo/">Ashara Ekundayo</a>, if there’s a word I like now as a non-Black person working in what needs to be a more Black world, I like the term “accomplice;” like it’s all crime or something informed by a system but working in direct opposition to achieve a shared, intended sometimes more positive outcome. The word accomplice also implies a less visible status; or as photographer and curator <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/509063/when-white-allies-go-wrong/">M. Charlene Stevens puts it</a>, "An authentic ally knows when to take a seat and listen and does not wave his hands in the air, screaming, “What about me?” All this helps me understand why I am still in it, despite persistent trends to move away from identity politics. Is there a timeliness to identity politics of display? As Stevens observes, "My advisor told me that identity politics were currently out of style and that I should not focus on race. This was in the Netherlands, a nation where blackface is still a holiday tradition."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjePKyzJ-VN3YlF_8IPOFXNQQ_2rwWMNctDQeBXkcOjmcCxGwwwb4jPsVHqPPKnmRA7BtUpUOi47IYYIDpUpq6N1QzwFnk0Rl3On5n0uG1v-uhqakt5JMG-9ovK-skoDstYe2fWQ/s1600/BlogAmin.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjePKyzJ-VN3YlF_8IPOFXNQQ_2rwWMNctDQeBXkcOjmcCxGwwwb4jPsVHqPPKnmRA7BtUpUOi47IYYIDpUpq6N1QzwFnk0Rl3On5n0uG1v-uhqakt5JMG-9ovK-skoDstYe2fWQ/s320/BlogAmin.jpg" /></a><br />
Amin Maalouf (1949 - )<br />
<br />
<br />
Now as I post this at the onset of 2020 the United States sits on the brink of war with Iran, and maybe everybody. As Lebanese-born French author and scholar <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2002/nov/16/classicalmusicandopera.fiction">Amin Maalouf</a> writes, "You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its beginnings as you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and colonization and then you'll understand it quite a lot."<br />
<br />
The quote above is from Maalouf's book <i>On Identity </i>(1998) that I picked up this summer in London. The book was originally published in French with the title <i>Les Identités meurtrières</i> or “murderous identities,” <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/20/amin-maalouf-identity/">suggesting that all this identity politics will kill us</a>. The author articulates his dream toward the end of the book:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>When an author reaches the last page of a book his fondest wish is usually that his work should still be read 100 or 200 years hence...May my grandson...look through the pages...shrugging his shoulders and marveling that in his grandfather's day such things still needed to be said.</i></blockquote>
I see my own identity as Zelig-like, able to move quickly through various worlds often thanks to privilege and a certain malleable quality to how I see the world, informed further by the Jewish principles of constant critique and inquiry. There is a terrifically interesting book that explores the manifestations of Jewish identity entitled <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691127606/the-jewish-century"><i>The Jewish Century</i></a> by Yuri Slezkin, embracing technology and constantly moving and adapting: to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.<br />
<br />
The sentiment is echoed in a quote from Black artist David Hammons:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I like being from nowhere; it’s a beautiful place. That means I can look at anyone who’s from somewhere and see how really caught they are.</i></blockquote>
More also, and as echoed in Morrison’s reflection on all Americans being defined by their relationship to Africa and those enslaved folks brought to the Americas. Maalouf asks, "Can anyone in the United States even today assess his place in society without reference to his earlier connections, whether they be African, Hispanic, Irish, Jewish, Italian, Polish or other?" We are multiplicities we are legions. Malouf adds, "Life is a creator of differences. No "reproduction " is ever identical. Every individual without exception possesses a composite identity. He need only ask himself a few questions to uncover forgotten divergences and unsuspected ramifications..." <br />
<br />
This echoing of multiple chosen and forced identities is also reflected in Facebook’s recent advertising push for Groups. Given Facebook's predilection for taking over the world and launching new currencies, it would give the sense that Facebook has decided that this will be an important part of their overarching plan for ongoing global dominance. perhaps these self-made groups are slowly becoming one of our more defining elements, crossing international lines. Please let us pray that this commercial work leads to more celebration of difference and less hate crimes. Still, as Malouf points out, "...we find between two brothers who have lived in the same environment, apparently small differences which make them act in diametrically opposite ways and matters relating to politics, religion and everyday life. These differences may even turn one of the brothers into a killer, and the other one into a man of dialogue and conciliation."<br />
<br />
I work hard to be a man of conciliation. I just love this idea and had never even thought of the term “conciliation,” before reading Malouf’s book. I am more accustomed to the word reconciliation. But how about simply "conciling" from the onset? I mean, what is conciliation? It is connecting. It is empathy. It is the core religious concept. It is “The Way” of Islam. It is the "empty" of Zen, or making room for others. It is the grace of Christianity; and the <i>chesed</i> or “loving kindness” of Judaism. It is making room for the understanding of our shared existence. In a sense, it is belief. We must be confident in this. Malouf posits that "Societies that are sure of themselves are mirrored by a religion that is confident, serene and open; uncertain societies are reflected in a religion that is hypersensitive, sanctimonious and aloof."<br />
<br />
We suffer from an innate sense of temporal chauvinism, thinking our present time and how we got here has something worth clinging to when, as Malouf notes, "It would be terrible for any country to have more reverence for its past than its future." Still enamored with quotes from Malouf, I’d add one more:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>At the same time as we fight for the universality of values it is imperative that we fight against the empowerment of standardization; against hegemony, whether ideological, political, economic operating in the media; against foolish conformism; against everything that stifles the full variety of linguistics, artistic and intellectual expression.</i></blockquote>
It is this to which I am dedicated, inspired further by Malouf’s question: "why should we take the diversity of human cultures less seriously than the diversity of animal or plant species?" This is the work of museums. This is the work of us all, our lives; and I am here for it.<br />
<br />
<br />
James G. Leventhal<br />
Albany, CA<br />
2020<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Sources:</b><br />
<br />
Michael Chabon, <i>POPS: Fatherhood in Pieces</i> (2018) Harper Collins, NY. pp. 60-61<br />
<br />
Elena Filipovic, <i>David Hammons: Bliz-aard Ball Sale</i> (2019) Afterall Books, London. p.34<br />
<br />
Philip Kennicott, “N.C. Wyeth painted the world full of beauty, resilience and adventure. And full of white people.” July 3, 2019 Washington Post Accessed August 18, 2019: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/nc-wyeth-painted-the-world-full-of-beauty-resilience-and-adventure-and-it-was-white-people/2019/07/02/685ea6f4-9c3e-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html?noredirect=on">https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/nc-wyeth-painted-the-world-full-of-beauty-resilience-and-adventure-and-it-was-white-people/2019/07/02/685ea6f4-9c3e-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html?noredirect=on</a> <br />
<br />
Ilhan Omar “It Is Not Enough to Condemn Trump’s Racism” July 25, 2019 Accessed August 18, 2019: <a href="https://nyti.ms/2OiCv7F">https://nyti.ms/2OiCv7F</a><br />
<br />
Amin Maalouf, <i>On Identity</i> (2000) The Harvill Press, London, 2000.<br />
<br />
M. Charlene Stevens, “When White ‘Allies’ Go Wrong” July 15, 2019 Hyperallergic, accessed January 5, 2020: <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/509063/when-white-allies-go-wrong/">https://hyperallergic.com/509063/when-white-allies-go-wrong/</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-77084424250293493832017-07-12T22:47:00.001-07:002017-07-12T22:47:50.241-07:00Review: Men Without Women
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33652490" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1483232988m/33652490.jpg" border="0" alt="Men Without Women" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33652490">Men Without Women</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3354">Haruki Murakami</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2045706092">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
While not quite as fantastic as some of the other works, this small smart collection of stories is precious and succinct. I continue to be amazed at how Murakami draws you forward as a reader, wanting to read the next and the next page, even when seemingly so little is happening. The details are little little lamps along the road of shared humanity, familiar and encouraging, faulty and reassuring.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2045706092">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-8439642529581692502017-07-10T22:02:00.001-07:002017-07-10T22:02:30.718-07:00Review: King Henry VI, Part 2
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/424919" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1425430229m/424919.jpg" border="0" alt="King Henry VI, Part 2" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/424919">King Henry VI, Part 2</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/947">William Shakespeare</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2055972221">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I have just now gotten to part 2 of the Henry VI plays. the first had amazing speeches and frickin' Joan of Arc and I thought it couldn't get any better. THAN this one's got conjurors who evoke prophetic specters, multiple beheadings, and a mad rebel named Cade who just starts to try to take over the whole country, no Empire for like no good reason then gets killed after hiding ten days without food in a hedgegrove. The language is extraordinary from the get go where pious Henry says, "O Lord, that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!" I am going to make that my motto!
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2055972221">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-35266207991979452912017-02-23T17:02:00.000-08:002017-02-23T17:02:09.822-08:00The importance of government funding to SJMA and you<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="mso-cellspacing: 1.5pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 614px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<img id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://52102.blackbaudhosting.com/52102/view.image?id=777" /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Dear members of SJMA’s community,</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Community and advocacy are
at the heart of the Museum’s work. With that in mind, I wanted to write with
a few updates and to keep you apprised of the Museum’s accomplishments,
especially at this time of change in our nation.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Government support is so
important to the San Jose Museum of Art. The Museum has received critical
support from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Artworks program for
several of our recent major exhibitions—including </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://sjmusart.org/exhibition/border-cantos" target="_blank"><em>Border Cantos: Richard Misrach|
Guillermo Galindo</em></a><em><span style="color: #212121;"> </span></em><span style="color: #212121;">(2016) and </span><a href="http://sjmusart.org/exhibition/postdate-photography-and-inherited-history-india" target="_blank"><em>Postdate:
Photography and Inherited History from India</em></a><span style="color: #212121;"> (2015). </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">These competitive NEA
grants support opportunities for the public to engage with “diverse and
excellent art” across the country. They play an instrumental role in enabling
mid-sized, community-based institutions like SJMA to develop and present
ambitious original projects. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">It is similarly thanks to a
2015 generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services—the
primary source of federal support for the nation’s museums and libraries––that
SJMA has been able to take its STEAM-education program, <em>Sowing Creativity </em>program
to the next level. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">We are thrilled to announce
that <em>Sowing
Creativity</em> just received a </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://www.calmuseums.org/superintendentsawards" target="_blank" title="http://www.calmuseums.org/superintendentsawards
Cmd+Click or tap to follow the link">2017
Superintendent's Award for Excellence in Museum Education</a>. <span style="color: #212121;">The program
currently serves one thousand students per year, the vast majority of whom
are based in low-income Title One schools. We anticipate enrollment to more
than triple in the next school year to some three thousand students). This
high-impact program includes in-school teaching, family passes, and on-site
visits.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">To further amplify the
importance of government support, I am pleased to inform you that the Museum
is the grateful recipient of another incredibly generous grant from the IMLS
in 2016. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Your SJMA received IMLS
support to </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">design, research, produce, and launch an online collections catalog
to be released in conjunction with the Museum’s fiftieth anniversary in 2019.
Interactive and multimedia content will highlight a core set of fifty
artists. </span><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">This form of federal funding — along with your support and
participation —is so essential to the Museum’s success,.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">What can you do to help?
You may have seen recent </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://t.congressweb.com/l/?VHINLYYZACDIXJH" target="_blank">news
reports</a><span style="color: #212121;"> that suggest what we
anticipated </span><a href="http://t.congressweb.com/l/?VHINLYYZACIYKEB" target="_blank" title="http://t.congressweb.com/l/?VHINLYYZACIYKEB
Cmd+Click or tap to follow the link">following
the 2016 election</a><span style="color: #212121;">: the National Endowment for
the Humanities (NEH) and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) could face
potential elimination. IMLS is also up for renewal. The Trump administration
is reportedly working from a blueprint</span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">from a Heritage Foundation </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://t.congressweb.com/l/?VHINLYYZACAVBZG" target="_blank">report</a><span style="color: #212121;"> that calls for drastic cuts and consolidations of
federal programs and agencies, including the elimination of NEA and NEH.<br />
<br />
Laura L. Lott, president and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM),
notes, “We are extremely concerned by these reports, and the museum field
will stand strongly against any effort to gut the important work of NEA and
NEH, or any other federal agency supporting the work of museums. These
agencies play a uniquely valuable role in helping make the arts and
humanities accessible to every American.” </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Here’s how you can help
right away:</span><span style="color: #212121; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #212121; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Go
on record in support of NEA and NEH. Make sure your members of
Congress know how important these funds are to your museum. Use
AAM’s </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://t.congressweb.com/l/?VHINLYYZACZSTWL" target="_blank">template letter</a></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"> and personalize it with
information about how the NEA-sponsored exhibitions and programs at SJMA
have affected you.</span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #212121; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">AAM
has other tools and templates to help you advocate, such as its </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://t.congressweb.com/l/?VHINLYYZACICYNW" target="_blank" title="http://t.congressweb.com/l/?VHINLYYZACICYNW
Cmd+Click or tap to follow the link">op-ed
templates</a></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">.</span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #212121; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://www.congressweb.com/AAM/Legislators/Main">Find out who
represents you</a> in Congress and in your state legislature and
get ready to lend your voice when we’ll ask you to “Advocate from
Anywhere” on Museums Advocacy Day, February 28.</span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">You are at the heart of
what we do. Thanks to the success of the exhibition </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://sjmusart.org/exhibition/beauty-cooper-hewitt-design-triennial" target="_blank"><em>Beauty—Cooper
Hewitt Design Triennial</em></a><span style="color: #212121;"> (on
view through February 19, 2017), the Museum has seen a 39% increase in
attendance over last year. Our Lunar New Year Community Day on January 28 set
a new attendance record with just over 3,500 visitors.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<strong><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">THANK YOU</span></strong><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"> for
all you do to help SJMA connect, inspire, and delight!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Warm regards,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Susan Sayre Batton</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Interim Director</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;">
<img border="0" id="_x0000_i1026" src="https://52102.blackbaudhosting.com/52102/view.image?id=820" /><br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">San
Jose Museum of Art, 110 S Market St, San Jose, CA 95113 <a href="http://www.sanjosemuseumofart.org/">www.SanJoseMuseumofArt.org</a></span></div>
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://52102.blackbaudhosting.com/52102/Page.aspx?pid=199&efndnum=&cstg=7f177e4d-bba1-45b7-be7a-6159aa37c895&email=" title="Unsubscribe"><span style="color: #758188; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Unsubscribe</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #758188; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> | </span><a href="http://www.sanjosemuseumofart.org/about" title="About Us"><span style="color: #758188; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">About
Us</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #758188; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> | </span><a href="http://www.sanjosemuseumofart.org/contact-us" title="Contact Us"><span style="color: #758188; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Contact
Us</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #758188; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> | </span><a href="http://52102.blackbaudhosting.com/52102/Page.aspx?pid=198&efndnum=&cstg=7f177e4d-bba1-45b7-be7a-6159aa37c895&email=" title="Private Policy"><span style="color: #758188; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Privacy Policy</span></a> </div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-47991454320725448302016-12-05T22:48:00.001-08:002016-12-05T22:48:43.065-08:00Review: Silas Marner
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54539" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347323528m/54539.jpg" border="0" alt="Silas Marner" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54539">Silas Marner</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/173">George Eliot</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1828201376">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
The language and psychology of this classic were extraordinary, felt like Joyce at its best; but at the same time it was pure treacle. Still, I am proud to say I've "read" George Eliot: maybe someday Middlemarch.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1828201376">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-62126715880234317252016-09-02T23:04:00.001-07:002016-09-02T23:04:10.666-07:00Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37415" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1368072803m/37415.jpg" border="0" alt="Their Eyes Were Watching God" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37415">Their Eyes Were Watching God</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15151">Zora Neale Hurston</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1740570206">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Performed by Michele-Denise Woods, this classic work flows so smoothly read aloud, like it was meant to be. Strangely the last disk broke, so I had to read the last portion from the novel itself: a perfect mixture of how to take in this book like true nourishment. There is so much truth to Hurston's observations about men and women, primal like old testament source material and wielding metaphors new and timeless. Kind of amazing to think how many ships this books set to sail, as short and simple as it is.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1740570206">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-83984550094945318942016-08-29T12:01:00.001-07:002016-08-29T12:01:33.723-07:00Review: Buddha, Vol. 8: Jetavana
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/160070" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1392333657m/160070.jpg" border="0" alt="Buddha, Vol. 8: Jetavana" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/160070">Buddha, Vol. 8: Jetavana</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29482">Osamu Tezuka</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1742511943">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
...and I'm done! Buddha, too. The lesson (no spoiler, really...): it's about us, y'all; the divine is in each and everyone of us. So proud to have done this Tezuka Saga.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1742511943">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-88888941706613050132016-08-29T11:59:00.001-07:002016-08-29T11:59:27.258-07:00Review: Buddha, Vol. 7: Prince Ajatasattu
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/160068" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1320556637m/160068.jpg" border="0" alt="Buddha, Vol. 7: Prince Ajatasattu" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/160068">Buddha, Vol. 7: Prince Ajatasattu</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29482">Osamu Tezuka</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1742510629">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
The trials of middle age and bureaucracy.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1742510629">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-91307223080819764052016-08-24T19:06:00.001-07:002016-08-24T19:06:17.842-07:00Review: Ayako
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7631912" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1358020666m/7631912.jpg" border="0" alt="Ayako" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7631912">Ayako</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29482">Osamu Tezuka</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1734880863">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I was reading one of the <em>Buddha</em> books when waiting at the DMV and a Japanese man younger than me, got really excited saying "TezuKAH, he is the greatest. Very great. You must read more." He described <em>Ayako</em> as one of the artist's best, a classic that deals frankly with great problems for Japan after the war. His enthusiasm and intensity was so sincere and well received by me. I went right out to Kinokuniya and bought it. After page 200 or so I could not keep myself form reading the rest of the book in one sitting. When Tezuka does his adult works, there are illustrations that are so exquisite. His pacing is extraordinary, and his storycraft completes with great literature. Concurrent with this I am listening to Gogol's <em>Dead Souls</em>. There are parallels in the change from agrarian to modernist society, the pitfalls and tragi-comic themes.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1734880863">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-61653174384756235822016-08-20T09:39:00.001-07:002016-08-20T09:39:35.815-07:00Review: Buddha, Vol. 6: Ananda
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/160067" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1320556633m/160067.jpg" border="0" alt="Buddha, Vol. 6: Ananda" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/160067">Buddha, Vol. 6: Ananda</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29482">Osamu Tezuka</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1733797567">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Each book more more Buddha: in this one he's magic! Two more to go!!
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1733797567">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-81827282330887112382016-08-14T19:28:00.001-07:002016-08-14T19:28:54.620-07:00Review: Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34072" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327962921m/34072.jpg" border="0" alt="Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34072">Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5112">Chris Ware</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1638115074">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Ware's whole approach is pretty intense: extraordinarily ordinary, told with an unforgettable storytelling strategy. While this feels like a classic, I have a hard time adoring this as I might like.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1638115074">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-61227268279885772582016-08-13T21:39:00.001-07:002016-08-13T21:39:29.617-07:00Review: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10374" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399844477m/10374.jpg" border="0" alt="Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10374">Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3354">Haruki Murakami</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1723797260">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I just love reading Murakami, even if this wasn't my favorite so far. This book begins in the first person, for two characters; from which I never quite recovered. I enjoy better how he creates characters slowly, and at a near distance. On the other hand, the author puts it best when he writes,"I love Maugham. I’ve read <em>The Razor’s Edge</em> three times. Maybe it’s not a spectacular novel, but it’s very readable. Better that than the other way around."
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1723797260">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-58551753012758826912016-08-13T21:29:00.001-07:002016-08-13T21:29:19.847-07:00Review: But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27068734" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1454284600m/27068734.jpg" border="0" alt="But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27068734">But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/375">Chuck Klosterman</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1723803874">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Maybe the most ambitious Klosterman book yet? But not sure if I liked it. I read it in pretty much one sitting, on the plane to Iceland. Early on I thought it sucked. A high point, a conversation about dreams with Richard Linklater Buddha-like: "...I sense he's sweeping the floor of a very large room as we chat - his sentences are periodically punctuated by the dulcet swoosh of a broom. 'Dreams used to have a much larger role in the popular culture..."
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1723803874">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-21341037291066213432016-07-19T13:46:00.001-07:002016-07-19T13:46:22.017-07:00Review: The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56912" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1441521513m/56912.jpg" border="0" alt="The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56912">The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26293">Ross King</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1700932622">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This is a terrific representation of the story of the Salon of mid-to-late 19th c. Paris, starring Messonier, Manet, Baudelaire, Nadar, Napolean III, Pissaro, et al. King interweaves remarkable overarching observations about culture, society and aesthetics with fascinating factoids about the artists and other cultural innovations. It's a strong audiobook presentation, a smooth listen. To be honest, I did not know that one of Manet's great, technical innovations was the white ground for oil paintings, rather than the darker grounds used since the Renaissance. I also did not quite realize the central role Pissaro played as an organizer of collective exhibitions and more than Monet. Saxophone invented in 1840?!
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1700932622">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-72625172298133381952016-05-25T14:17:00.001-07:002016-05-25T14:17:54.729-07:00Review: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4953" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327714834m/4953.jpg" border="0" alt="A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4953">A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3371">Dave Eggers</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1648117115">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Another great audiobook that I had a tough time getting through as a real book. Dion Graham hit it out of the park...and good on Eggers to have a gifted African American actor be him, I guess. The work is very self indulgent and self aware of that. Early parts of the novel cut a little too close to home being so near to my own mother at her terminal stages of the cancer, then it was sweet to hear him tooling around the Bay Area. For Eggers's writing, I am more a fan of other later works, and I am glad my commute facilitated getting through his strong, lengthy, freshman opus.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1648117115">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-82456314081948717752016-05-02T17:10:00.001-07:002016-05-02T17:10:48.176-07:00Review: Siddhartha
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52036" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1428715580m/52036.jpg" border="0" alt="Siddhartha" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52036">Siddhartha</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1113469">Hermann Hesse</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/406149382">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I just "read" this for the second time, now as an audiobook. It was so satisfying to explore life's rich pageant; and to see one's life made up of changeable moments: chapters, moving from void to void. And in the end one of your oldest and dearest friends can lean forward to kiss you on the head, and you are Nirvana when you least expect it.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/406149382">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-81759588305676325312016-04-08T09:02:00.001-07:002016-04-08T09:02:03.497-07:00Review: Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/209577" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1424473595m/209577.jpg" border="0" alt="Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/209577">Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29482">Osamu Tezuka</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1581745105">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Enjoying my forays into Manga, especially with a master of the medium ;), and digging in alongside my son. Though this one, on completion, I kicked out to my dear, old friend in Wisconsin. My boy's still on the Dragon Ball Z, One Piece and lighter fare. Hoping maybe to get through the following volumes. In this one, From my ignorance, i am still not even sure whose gonna be Buddha ;)
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1581745105">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-31303973417611105632016-03-16T14:44:00.001-07:002016-03-16T14:44:25.613-07:00Review: East of Eden
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4406" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1441547516m/4406.jpg" border="0" alt="East of Eden" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4406">East of Eden</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/585">John Steinbeck</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1565128888">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Like a second degree in literature, I have been doing a great number of classic works on audiobooks as part of my commute. East of Eden was just about as epically intimate as intended. It felt so satisfying to touch a classic work like this in auditory format, listening is different than reading. In fact, it can be trusted better, right?
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1565128888">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-49824237888969228802016-03-16T14:41:00.001-07:002016-03-16T14:41:38.159-07:00Review: Introducing Derrida
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/603677" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1176214096m/603677.jpg" border="0" alt="Introducing Derrida" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/603677">Introducing Derrida</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/97496">Jeff Collins</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1575173960">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This précis was a good read, and helped my thinking around Derrida who I have read a decent amount of, but outside of any academic context that might have framed his thinking more broadly for my benefit. This work did not really do that but I enjoyed a few of the anecdotes it draws out, like Derrida's interpretation of the story of Pharmakon and the development of park outside Paris with Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1575173960">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-15867730176507906842016-02-24T17:36:00.001-08:002016-02-24T17:36:07.513-08:00Review: Hunting Badger
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48116" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1342077536m/48116.jpg" border="0" alt="Hunting Badger" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48116">Hunting Badger</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26917">Tony Hillerman</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1559603912">0 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Fun to read/hear really good detective fiction on the ride. Makes me think of my mom <3
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1559603912">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13943576.post-78773719577665804522016-02-05T22:36:00.001-08:002016-02-05T22:36:21.909-08:00Review: Out of Africa
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/781787" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1178296503m/781787.jpg" border="0" alt="Out of Africa" /></a>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/781787">Out of Africa</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8147">Karen Blixen</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1537558572">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This is a beautifully crafted story, but it's hard to read at the same time as The Song of Dewey Beard. Dinesen writes so evocatively about her colonial role in Africa as a benevolent force, but it's tough to stomach concurrent with stories from the perspective of a 90 year old Lakota. I do want to see the movie again now, and Julie Harris reading was clear and evocative.
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1537558572">View all my reviews</a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">James G Leventhal Blog Loveitallabove</div>loveitallabovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07077130656271275582noreply@blogger.com0