78s, Photos, Even Sweat

Another fragment of Louis Armstrong’s legacy is back where it belongs. The Armstrong museum and archive in Queens has received a treasure-trove of rare 78-r.p.m. records, bootleg tapes, five personal letters, candid photographs, European posters, news clippings, discographies, even weight-loss tips — 192 cubic feet in all — from the estate of a Swedish man known as the world’s second-largest private collector of Satchmoiana.

Satchmoiana, now there is a word.


There is also a sweat-stained handkerchief that belonged to Armstrong, who was famous for theatrically wiping his brow between the trumpet solos he blew better than almost anyone else. “We’re excited about it because there might be some valuable DNA in it, what with cloning and all,” joked Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona.

One never knows.

The Armstrong Museum's archivist is named Ricky Riccardi; what a hoot.

[Library director] Mr. Cogswell, 58, is a Virginian who played saxophone gigs for a time, did graduate work in both jazz history and library science, and considers his current position his dream job. He shepherded visitors through Armstrong’s house last week, telling them how Armstrong, while on tour, asked his wife to buy them a home, which she did, picking one out in a working-class quarter and paying about $3,500. When Armstrong showed up by taxi from the airport at 3 a.m., he was dazzled by what he thought of as its grandeur, given the stark poverty he had been raised in. “Quit kidding me,” he told the cabdriver. “Take me to the address I gave you.”

317 East 32nd

Listening to WKCR on Sunday 20 March, a Jazz Profile of Lennie Tristano. One of the selections played was 317 East 32nd Street, which was Tristano address in NYC.

Uncertain coda for mansion with a musical heritage

Karly Domb Sadof for The New York Times - The Steinway mansion in Astoria, Queens, is up for sale after the death of its owner, Michael Halberian

Robert Moses, the musical?

Where a Bird Played Sax,

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times - Judy Rhodes in her East Village row house, once the home of the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker.




There are two signs in front of 151 Avenue B, a row house in the East Village facing Tompkins Square Park.  One is a bronze plaque identifying the building as a former home of the jazz legend Charlie Parker, who lived in the ground-floor apartment from 1950 to 1954.cThe other is a handwritten slip of paper taped to the window of that same apartment, warning, “Please Don’t Knock Before 2 P.M.” Both signs were put up by the building’s owner, Judy Rhodes, who worked hard to get the building declared a city landmark in 1999.

Bravo to her.

As for the “Don’t Knock” sign, Ms. Rhodes said she still favored the “jazz hours” she kept when she was a jazz producer, photographer and hard-core fan. “Nighttime is still the only time I can settle in and take care of my projects,” said Ms. Rhodes, 74, who since 1979 has lived in the apartment Parker inhabited with Chan Richardson and their children. In the life of the saxophonist nicknamed Bird, it was an atypically stable period. Here in this cozy apartment, Parker became a family man. He ate regular meals with the children, pushed them in swings out back and walked them to school. It was Bird’s sanctuary — he once practiced in the large walk-in closet. There is still plenty of bird song in the apartment. Ms. Rhodes has two pet parrots and she takes in injured pigeons she finds nearby and nurses them back to health. She releases the recuperated ones in Central Park or at a bird sanctuary upstate.

She took an interest in the jazz loft scene, befriending avant-garde musicians like Butch Morris, Mal Waldron and Bill Dixon, and producing concerts and booking musicians for jazz festivals and gigs at clubs like the Village Vanguard and Sweet Basil’s. At one point, she brought a Steinway piano into her front room and opened it as a rehearsal space, attracting artists like Art Blakey, Dewey Redman and Don Cherry. “They all thought it was hip to be in Bird’s house. Dewey used to stand in the closet, praying or something. Once when Don was here, he said he had a vision of Bird heading out in a tuxedo.”

There are constant visits from fans of Parker, a pioneer of the bebop style who died in 1955, his body ravaged by drug abuse and alcoholism. “One time,” she said, “a group of Japanese people came in and one of them fell to his knees, crying and kissing the floor.”

Bird lives.

She recalled learning in 1979 that the building was on the market, and the real estate agent who showed her the place pointed out Parker’s 'practice closet.' “I went into the closet and closed the door and I said to myself, ‘I have to have this house,’ ” she said. “I just really liked the idea of living in the place where Bird lived.” She paid $90,000 for the four-story row house, she said, and over the years invested much more in improvements to the Gothic Revival building, which is between Ninth and 10th Streets and was built in 1849.

The place has a Bohemian, jazzy feel, with plenty of African art, and walls covered with jazz photographs taken by Ms. Rhodes. There is still the faded birdcage-themed wallpaper Parker selected as a humorous nod to his nickname, and the same heavy cast-iron tub where Parker — and then Ms. Rhodes — bathed their children.

"Can you believe I had to play Bach with a gun?"

Ben Lando for The Wall Street Journal - Llewellyn Kingman Sanchez-Werner rehearses with his Iraqi hosts on the Rasheed Hotel's baby grand.

BAGHDAD—Karim Wasfi, director and conductor of the Iraqi National Symphony, was waiting in the lounge of the Rasheed Hotel one recent afternoon for two things: the arrival of a 13-year-old American pianist scheduled to headline a rare concert here; and the Steinway grand he was supposed to play.
The prodigy, Llewellyn Kingman Sanchez-Werner, was coming from New York. The piano was coming from the symphony's rehearsal space, just five miles away from the hotel. Mr. Wasfi was more worried about the piano.

 Mr. Wasfi's orchestra has faced many such obstacles. Its predecessor, the Baghdad Symphony Orchestra, started in 1944 and was shut down again and again over the decades by the strains of war, economics or politics. After Saddam Hussein was deposed, in the postinvasion chaos, Mr. Wasfi recalls, instruments were broken, music sheets ripped, a concert hall burned. "It was a grotesque scene," he says.

In the following years, the orchestra often waited until the last minute to reveal concert times to avoid an attack on such a large, high-profile gathering. Mr. Wasfi says he once took to carrying a sidearm for protection. "Can you believe I had to play Bach with a gun?"

Mr. Sanchez-Werner, the young pianist, is also a musician with a mission: "to fulfill my passion of doing things for the world…at a humanitarian level." A Juilliard student, he plans to play in Rwanda this summer, for the second time, and says he will perform at the Kennedy Center next year for the 50th anniversary celebration of the United Farm Workers. He performed at the White House in December.

 Thirteen years old? Quite impressive.

Mr. Wasfi wore coattails for the concert. After closing with Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade," he and Mr. Sanchez-Werner embraced on stage.

Iraq is "a nation that is so wonderful," the pianist says, "but struggled so much it needs to have something like that in which they can participate."

His Writers' Workshop? A Prison Cell

The life of William Sydney Porter came with a twist at the end. The man who achieved fame under the pen name "O. Henry" had spent more than three years in federal prison on embezzlement charges—a secret that he carried to his grave when he died on June 5, 1910. Not even his daughter knew. It took the investigations of a professor, C. Alphonso Smith of the University of Virginia, to unearth the startling truth. Shrewd observers might have guessed that Porter was hiding something. During his decade-long run as one of America's best-loved writers, which included authorship of "The Gift of the Magi," he avoided conversations about his past. He turned down requests for interviews. He dodged cameras. Yet when Smith announced his discovery in 1916, the effect was the opposite of what Porter had feared. Rather than shunning him as a criminal, the public became fascinated by a personal history that might have been lifted from one of his own tales.

I know the name, but not his work. And I seem to remember there is a bar near Union Square, below Gramercy Park, that is named O'Henry. I've been there, maybe when I worked at MetLife. So I went searching on the Web, and found it via Google maps.

Pete's Tavern, on 18th Street and Irving Place, that's the place. Here is the banner from its website. Also, a picture from Panoramio.

That's what I remember.

Pete's Tavern first opened its doors in 1864. From that date to today it has remained open. This achievement makes Pete's Tavern both an official historical landmark and the longest continuously operating bar and restaurant in New York City. It even stayed open during Prohibition: disguised as a flower shop. Pete's Tavern is proud of its history and steadfastly maintains its traditions. It still looks as exactly as it did when its most celebrated regular O. Henry wrote the classic Gift of The Magi here at his favorite booth by the front doors, in 1902.

From its website, some of its history.

One hundred years after his death, Porter's legacy as a master of the short story appears secure. In his hometown of Greensboro, N.C., the local historical museum plans to reopen next month after extensive renovations. It will include a new section on O. Henry. In Texas, where Porter spent his early adulthood, there are museums devoted to him in Austin and San Antonio. In New York, his final home, the book industry selects a set of O. Henry Prize Stories each year and publishes them in a special volume.

Which is curious, based on this next paragraph: Lots of high-school students still receive a taste of O. Henry, but college professors rarely put his work on their syllabi. To be sure, the bulk of Porter's output was middling. He specialized in pleasant diversions whose main purpose was to entertain. The tales can feel contrived. Even the best bear the marks of hasty composition. Several legends surround the writing of "The Gift of the Magi," but all agree that Porter cranked it out under deadline pressure in just two or three hours. Despite the story's popular appeal, it's easy to believe that "The Gift of the Magi" would have benefited from a second draft.


If so, if his work is middling, why did O.Henry become so well regarded?

Hispanic Society

We went to the Hispanic Society yesterday, Sunday. Quite impressive, and, gladly, not at all crowded. Hamilton Heights is not a popular destination for many; they don't know what they're missing (let's keep it that way).

Most impressive was the art work of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida. Aside from three canvases in the main room, there is a series in its own large room.


The 14 paintings that make up Sorolla's ambitious and overwhelming "Visions of Spain" (1913-1919), which were originally commissioned by Mr. Huntington for the Hispanic Society, are newly installed in their own large gallery after returning from a tour of six Spanish museums. Both a tour de force and a tour of Spain, the paintings are especially persuasive thanks to extensive conservation work that has restored their brilliance. The sailors, fishermen and fish in the post-Impressionist "Ayamonte" (1919) are all in tones of white, yet poles apart from those of the gauchos and cattle in "Andalucía, The Round-Up" (1914)—reflecting the variations in light in different parts of Spain. It's easy to be put-off by clichéd images of local color and ceremonies, folk costumes and dances, but Sorolla manages to draw you into these settings, conveying an authenticity that also speaks to a moment in time, because the scenes were developed from the artist's travel sketches.

The paintings are very large, and it is only because the room is so large that one can get enough perspective to see them properly. Ayamonte is one of them. 

http://museosorolla.mcu.es/

Upper Broadway's buried treasures

Standing on what was once the estate of the bird painter John James Audubon, known today as Audubon Terrace, at Broadway and 155th Street, is an assemblage of elegant Beaux-Arts structures built during the first three decades of the 20th century. Some of the original tenants—including the American Indian-Heye Foundation, the American Geographical Society and the American Numismatic Society—have moved out, but fortunately the Hispanic Society of America remains firmly planted.
In fact, it is taking over some of the vacated spaces. Now that the Hispanic Society has completed the first phase, at a cost of about $5.5 million, of its continuing renovation under the direction of architect Maria C. Romañach and with the aid of Spain's Ministry of Culture, New Yorkers no longer have any excuse to disregard its jaw-dropping collections.

One of our walking tours a few years back covered exactly this area; I remember Trinity cemetery across 155th Street. We walked around the area.

Upon entering the Society's elegant courtyard, the first work one encounters is the magnificent and commanding portrait by Francisco Goya of "The Duchess of Alba" (1797). Several other Goyas are on the balcony above, which serves as a venue for a quick survey in Spanish painting from the late Renaissance to the late 19th century.

 I don't think of a Goya anywhere outside a museum.

 The Hispanic Society of America
Joaquín Sorolla's 'Ayamonte'

 The Hispanic Society of America
Diego Velázquez's 'Portrait of a Little Girl'

Many fences

This article is from the Wall Street Journal. An accompanying photo in the print version is not online. I have my own photos of the Central Park installation, February 2005.

When artists working outside gallery and museum walls in the 1960s and 1970s put down their tools, they often had only a handful of black-and-white photographs or a grainy video as evidence of their labor. Like postcards sent from a place that no longer exists, these images were meant to underscore the "purity" of the art—an ephemeral event or a construction not designed for the ages—and might also serve to attract funding for the next project or as the paltry things their dealers were supposed to sell.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose signature style became the wrapping or marking of a structure or area with fabrics, had a more ingenious approach. They funded their dreamy, supersize, transient creations—realized most recently in 2005's "The Gates" in Central Park—with the sale of preliminary drawings and models, leaving the documenting of the results to the acclaimed filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, and to the German photographer Wolfgang Volz. The Maysleses co-produced and co-directed five sumptuous color films about large-scale projects by the Bulgarian-born sculptor and his Moroccan-born artistic partner and wife, beginning with "Valley Curtain" in 1974 and ending with "Umbrellas" in 1990, while Mr. Volz has been their official photographer since 1972.

Christo And Jeanne-Claude: Remembering The Running Fence
Smithsonian American Art Museum Through Sept. 26

A remarkable example of this long, fruitful relationship can be seen at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence" is devoted to one of the couple's most ambitious and evocative works of art: the 18-foot-high white nylon fence that ran for 24½ miles across two rolling northern California counties and into the Pacific Ocean. It stood for two weeks in September 1976.

Along with nearly 50 drawings, a 58-foot-long scale model, and 250 photographs by Mr. Volz that recall the planning of the work and the miraculous result, the show features continuous screenings of the 1978 film "Running Fence," directed by the Maysleses and Charlotte Zwerin, as well as "The 'Running Fence' Revisited," a new film directed by Wolfram Hissen. Both documentaries convey, better than any set of objects could, the utopianism, nerve, luck, grass-roots organization, horse-trading and lawlessness that led to one of the few successful and popular works of American environment art.

Whether "Running Fence" would be impossible to accomplish in today's America is hard to gauge. Even in the mid-1970s, long before the age of terrorism, the odds were slim that a pair of New York artists with foreign accents could persuade 59 sheep ranchers and dairy farmers to allow an enormous fabric fence to snake across their property. As it was, convincing them and getting permits took four years. "You're a stranger here," one rancher tells Christo in the Maysles film. "You have to overcome that."

The intensity of the opposition is captured in an early scene in which a man shouts, "That's art? Some lousy curtain coming through here. Hell with it. I'm against it. I think it's stupid." And it wasn't only amateur art critics who initially hated the idea. Environmental groups also objected, especially to the component that called for the fence to spill down a cliff on the beach and disappear into the ocean. Some Sonoma and Marin county commissioners voted against its going up, too.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude never discuss on camera why they settled on this site. But the largely treeless contours of the golden hills are undeniably sensual. The mutations of the piece as it reacts to wind, fog, sun and ocean are captured beautifully in the Maysles film, which dwells more on the hour-by-hour construction—highlighted by the suspense of a last-minute injunction from the California Coastal Commission—than on the arduous process that eventually won over the doubters.

This is oddly modest of the Maysleses, who were instrumental in changing the minds of landowners. The artists had shown their honorable intentions by screening in local homes their previous collaborative film, "Valley Curtain," in which a 1,300-foot-long orange curtain was strung across a gap in the Colorado Rockies for 28 hours.

Mr. Hissen's film is better at revealing the uniquely American circumstances that allowed the project to succeed. As important as the $2,500 or $3,000 offered to each landowner was the promise by the artists to donate the construction materials when the piece was disassembled. Several recipients cut up the tall metal pipes that had supported the ad hoc fence, recycling them as permanent fence posts. "You give a farmer something free and they think they got the world by the tail," one local says.

County officials' disapproval also gave the project unexpected cachet. The government's telling the owners they couldn't do with their land as they wished angered a number of them, causing them to look more favorably on the outsiders. "Looking back, if the supervisors hadn't said no, Christo would have had a hard time getting this done," says another resident.

Most of all, the tenacity of the couple and their unshakable faith in their unusual ideas seem to have earned respect, trust and affection from people who had never heard of site-specific art. In a pivotal scene filmed by the Maysleses at one of 20 public meetings in which the project was argued about, Christo tells the crowd: "The art project is right now here. Everybody here is part of my work."

He wasn't kidding. Overcoming hostility and working within bureaucracies has been as integral to Christo's art as the structures he sketched and built. Early on, he and Jeanne-Claude (his invaluable and highly intelligible mediator) realized that the post office in Valley Ford was a hub for the sparsely populated area, and so they went about courting the support of the postmaster.

The lasting impact of "Running Fence" on this still-rural community is the focus of Mr. Hissen's documentary. He filmed a reunion last year between Christo and Jeanne-Claude (two months before she died) and the surviving participants and observers of the project. "There's no Rembrandts hanging in people's houses out here," says one man. And yet "Running Fence," then and now, ignited serious conversations about "what is art" among citizens who had never thought it was a question.

It is fitting that the Smithsonian American Art Museum bought the project archive for "Running Fence" in 2008. But to gain a deeper sense of its emotional scope, watch the Maysles-Zwerin film. The putting together of the artwork seems not unlike a barn-raising, demanding the same cooperation and, when the fence is secure and rippling in the breeze, evoking the same giddiness and pride. I can't be alone in feeling patriotic about a country that allowed such an unlikely and lovely thing to exist.

Mr. Woodward is an arts writer living in New York.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D9


* ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
* APRIL 6, 2010

A California Dream Come True. By RICHARD B. WOODWARD

Songs for Kellys and Cohens

Aside from the teaming-up of Jews and Irish to write music, in this article in today's Journal I learned about musical instrument.

Last Wednesday on NBC's "Today" show, guest Mick Moloney sat calm, cool and collected. The pre-eminent authority on Irish music in America was there to amplify the correct answers to a "How 'Irish' Are You?" trivia contest conducted by co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. "I was quite impressed at the integrity of their little pop quiz," the professor of Irish studies and music at New York University told me later on the phone. "Besides, why pass up the chance to inform and entertain at the same time?"

Informing and entertaining are the hallmarks of Mr. Moloney's teaching, writing and music-making. His introductory course in Celtic music is consistently oversubscribed by NYU undergraduates; he wrote the widely praised book "Far From the Shamrock Shore: The Story of Irish-American Immigration Through Song"; and he appears on more than 60 albums that showcase his compelling singing and virtuosity on guitar, mandolin, tenor banjo and octave mandolin.

Tenor banjo? Didn't know there  is such an instrument. This is an Antoria SB54 4 sting tenor banjo sold by an UK company I found on the web.

from Wiki: The banjo is a stringed instrument developed by enslavedAfricans in Colonial America, adapted from several African instruments. The name banjo is commonly thought to be derived from the Kimbundu term mbanza. Some etymologists derive it from a dialectal pronunciation of "bandore" or from an early anglicisation of the Spanish word "bandurria", though other research suggests that it may come from a Senegambian term for a bamboo stick formerly used for the instrument's neck. The article continues to differentiate the tenor from the plectrum banjo, it being shorter than the latter. There are alsofive and six string instruments (the plectrum and tenor have four), among others.

The octave mandolin is one of the mandolin instrument family.


But on two recent albums, "McNally's Row of Flats" and "If It Wasn't for the Irish and the Jews" (both on Compass Records), Mr. Moloney took a diverting detour. "I first became aware of the late-19th-century songs of Ned Harrigan, whose grandfather was from Cork, in the home library of Kenny Goldstein," he said, referring to his late dissertation adviser at Penn. "As I learned more about those songs, I had a feeling similar to the one I had when I first encountered Irish traditional music. It was an emotional attachment that became part of me, and it became only stronger after I moved full time in 2004 from Philadelphia to Manhattan, where Harrigan and other songwriters did most of their work."

The title song of "McNally's Row of Flats," an album comprising 14 compositions by the theatrical songwriting team of Irish-American Harrigan and Jewish-American David Braham (his ancestral surname was Abraham), describes densely multiethnic tenement life on Manhattan's Lower East Side: "And it's Ireland and Italy, Jerusalem and Germany, / Chinese and Africans and a paradise for rats. / All jumbled up together in the snow and rainy weather / They constitute the tenants in McNally's row of flats." Written in 1882, the song uses lyricist Harrigan's gimlet-eyed, comic sensibility and Braham's catchy melody to give a sobering glimpse into a struggling stratum of New York at that time.

A name mentioned is Billy McComiskey. I know the name Comiskey, the Chicago White Sox player and owner, but had never heard the name with the Mc prefix.

Other terms that caught my eye were Uilleann pipes, and euphony ("Composers and performers often changed their names for euphony, to fit the musical fashion, or to avoid stereotyping.").

Hudson River Homecoming

The majestic paintings of the 19th-century Hudson River School enjoy tremendous popularity today because of their Romantic and often highly dramatic depiction of nature. America's first national school of landscape painting, it was essentially founded by the English-born Thomas Cole (1801-1848), who regarded America as "the new Eden" and painted it as such. Cole produced many of his visionary, panoramic landscapes and architectural fantasies as allegories of human experience, often imbuing them with religious overtones in tune with the public spirit of his time.

Thomas Cole, 'Scene From "The Last of the Mohicans"' (1827).

His mantle was worn with increased sophistication by his pupil Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), by the Düsseldorf-trained Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), and by such contemporaries as Asher Durand (1796-1886), Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880) and John Frederick Kensett (1816-72). Moreover, the school's Romantic urge to glorify the serene wonders of nature—with its mountains veiled in mist and scenery often bathed in the glowing light of dawn or sunset—influenced the somewhat younger group of landscape painters known as the Luminists and served as a springboard for a later generation of artists including George Inness, Albert Pinkham Ryder and, of course, Winslow Homer.

 Surprisingly, one of the finest and earliest collections of the Hudson River School is maintained not along the Hudson, but on the banks of the Connecticut River at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. Founded in 1842, and housed partly in its original castellated building designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, the Wadsworth Atheneum is the nation's oldest public art museum. Its riches include important old masters, a magisterial representation of 19th- and 20th-century masterpieces and a vast collection of important decorative arts.


Hudson River school : masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

Q 758.1 K 

Jeanne-Claude: 1935-2009

* REMEMBRANCES
* NOVEMBER 20, 2009

Part of a Creative Powerhouse Behind Ephemeral Artworks

By STEPHEN MILLER and KELLY CROW

With her husband, Christo, Jeanne-Claude was part of an inseparable artistic duo that produced some of the world's most well-known and monumental works of art.

Jeanne-Claude, who died Nov. 18 in New York City at age 74 after suffering a brain aneurysm, created landmark public displays using textiles, including the 18-foot-high, 24-mile-long "Running Fence" in California and "Surrounded Islands" in which the couple installed giant lily pad-like structures in Florida's Biscayne Bay with 6.4 million square feet of bright-pink fabric. Their 2005 creation, "The Gates," a series of 7,503 orange nylon panels erected for 16 days in New York's Central Park, drew crowds in the middle of winter.

One of their most notable works was the 1995 wrapping of the Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament in Berlin, in silvery fabric, a project the couple had contemplated for more than two decades. The logistical headaches were so large, Jeanne-Claude once said, that it turned her husband's hair gray and hers red.

Forceful and outspoken, Jeanne-Claude was fond of telling interviewers that there were only three things the couple never did together: fly in an airplane (they took separate flights); make sketches (Christo's job); and manage their taxes (Jeanne-Claude's job). Adding to the vision of two artists merging their creativity was the fact they shared the same birthday.

Jeanne-Claude took the lead in raising funds for projects through the sale of Christo's sketches and other materials to collectors and museums. Such self-financing of large projects is rare in the art world, but the couple said they feared relying on sponsors would compromise their artistic freedom, said their longtime lawyer, Scott Hodes.

Jeanne-Claude avoided galleries, selling directly to collectors. When funds were scarce, she would offer prospective buyers a discount for cash upfront.

To finance a project, Jeanne-Claude told The Wall Street Journal in 1984, "I'll sell almost anything but our son."

Christo often said Jeanne-Claude's contributions to their work went beyond finance and logistics; the basic conception of "Surrounded Islands," he insisted, was hers.

Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon was born June 13, 1935, in Casablanca, Morocco, where her father was stationed as a general in the French military. She attended schools in France, Switzerland and Tunisia before moving to Paris. In 1958, she met Christo when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Jeanne-Claude's mother. According to the couple's Web site, "By the time Christo had done an impressionist portrait, a classical portrait and a Cubist portrait of the mother, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were in love."

Soon, she was collaborating on works such as installations of large stacks of oil barrels in Cologne, Germany, and Paris. She personally took charge of wrapping a fountain and medieval tower in Spoleto, Italy, in 1968, at the same moment Christo wrapped an art museum in Bern, Switzerland.

Two years ago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum bought a trove of drawings and photographs documenting the "Running Fence" project that will be exhibited next spring as "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence."

George Gurney, the museum's deputy chief curator, said, "She couldn't draw, but she collaborated aesthetically on every other decision. It was always a joint endeavor."

The couple never flew together so that in the event of a crash the surviving partner could complete their projects, according to Mr. Hodes. Christo is determined to go ahead with "Over the River," a fabric roof over a six-mile stretch of a river in Colorado, Mr. Hodes said.

Self-assigned stories

Slideshow









Roy DeCarava, a retrospective Q 779 DeCarava
Roy DeCarava, photographs Q 779 DeCarava


Interesting tie-in to jazz musicians, including Coltrane.


Photographer Roy DeCarava is pictured in his Brooklyn home in 1991.

For most New Yorkers today, the name Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) means the gilded bronze equestrian monument to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street: Victory, crowned with laurel and clutching a palm frond, strides ahead of the bearded general, with his fierce gaze and windblown cape, erect on his snorting horse. A century ago, Saint-Gaudens would have also been widely known for his Diana—a tall, athletic nude, stepping forward as she releases an arrow from her bow—a landmark sculpture that once dominated the New York skyline from the tower of the original Madison Square Garden. (Removed when the building was razed in 1925, Diana is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.) In 1908, not long after the sculptor's death, the Metropolitan Museum installed a memorial exhibition of 154 of Saint-Gaudens's works in the Great Hall—what was then the Sculpture Court. Now we can broaden our acquaintance with the artist at the far more modest "Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," a finely tuned exhibition, on view through Nov. 15, that showcases the Met's considerable holdings of the sculptor's works and provides a context for his celebrated monuments. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bronze cast of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, 1910. That the Sherman Monument largely defines Saint-Gaudens for many of us is entirely appropriate. The sculpture exemplifies his distinctive refined, vigorous style, a synthesis of acutely observed naturalism and classical idealism, informed by the legacy of the Renaissance. The Sherman Monument shares the assured forms and the tense equilibrium between powerful warhorse and powerful rider first announced by those quintessential mounted warriors of the Renaissance, Donatello's Gattamelata, in Padua, and Verrocchio's Colleoni, in Venice. There are even echoes of the iconic Roman bronze that inspired both Donatello and Verrocchio, the equestrian portrait of Marcus Aurelius, once the centerpiece of the Campidoglio, in Rome.


Verrocchio's Colleoni



















Donatello's Gattamelata

Joyful Noise Amid the Greenery

www.verdisquarefestival.com