23 September 1926
Image From Three Little Birds blog
Pianist McCoy Tyner tells the story of how between sets while performing in San Francisco, Coltrane would walk for blocks to a less crowded area where with binoculars he could look into the night sky.
Posted in Coltrane
@Its_Susanne: want to see Obama hitting the AIG execs w/a sock full of quarters shouting Here’s change we can believe in you bastards!
(just checked and turns out she’s quoting Craig Ferguson, so credit where it’s due.)
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Adding a few family images here:
Dan, Charlie and Cliff
Herself in Pink
Dan, Sun, and Water
Posted in Family Photos, Tweet
This is THE most wonderful site for hundreds of oop vinyl records. Wise critical opinions and great images of time-travel cover art.
Posted in Vinyl jazz
From The BBC 20 Sept. 2009
Havana is hosting the biggest open-air concert since the 1959 revolution, featuring some 15 top Latin American, Spanish and Cuban performers.
Hundreds of thousands of people – many wearing white – are attending the event in Revolution Square, Havana.
Colombian singer Juanes, who organised the “Peace without Borders” concert, has received death threats from Miami-based critics of the Cuban regime. But he has won support from 20 high-profile jailed dissidents inside Cuba.
The BBC’s Michael Voss at the concert says there is a mood of excitement, as many residents of the isolated, music-loving island have never seen anything like it before. He says people have travelled from across the island to attend. Organisers said some 500,000 people were expected. But our reporter says heat is a problem. He has seen a lot of people being carried away on stretchers.
Reconciliation
“Together, we are going to make history,” said Puerto Rican singer Olga Tanon, as she opened the concert with the love song, Es Mentiroso Ese Hombre (That Man is a Liar). “We’ve been here since 0300 waiting for everyone, waiting for Juanes and for Olga Tanon,” Luisa Maria Canales, an 18-year-old engineering student, told the AP news agency. “I’m a little tired, but I am more excited.”
While critics have complained that Juanes is endorsing the island’s communist system, the dissidents say the concert is an opportunity for reconciliation. Juanes said the show was about peace and tolerance, not politics.”It’s a message of peace, not only for Cuba. It’s for the entire region,” he said. He added that preparations for the concert had not been easy, but “we have all got over our fears”.
Our reporter notes that the location of the free concert is highly symbolic.The headquarters of the communist party is in Revolution Square, along with a giant metal sculpture of Che Guevara’s head.The square was used by Fidel Castro to give five-hour speeches, and is also where Pope John Paul II held a historic open air mass in 1998.
Among the artists taking part on Sunday are Spain’s Miguel Bose, Olga Tanon from Puerto Rico, the Cuban performers Silvio Rodriguez and Los Van Van.
Posted in Cuba
In an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, former Democratic President Jimmy Carter attributed much of the conservative opposition that President Obama is receiving to the issue of race.
“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man,” Carter said. “I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that share the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans.”
Carter continued, “And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”
It is amazing that in the face of posters depicting the President of the United States as a Gorilla, or as Hitler, in the face of endless debates about his birth and his religion, moderate commentators argue against racist motives behind such sentiments. Are they afraid that they and other decent people will have to look inward if they acknowledge the truth?
Carter knows whereof he speaks and is not saying anything other than what is obvious.
Posted in Jimmy Carter
by Marion Maneker
From: Art Market Monitor 9/14/09
Not to beat a dead deaccessioning horse. But Christopher Knight raises again the issue of the Barnes Foundation move on the occasion of the premiere at the Toronto Film Festival of “The Art of the Steal,” a documentary on the case. At the risk of seeming to promote one side of the Barnes issue or another, there remains a fundamental conflict between the emphasis on art as being held in the public trust and honoring donor intent.
A cinematic primer on how to seize control of billions of dollars worth of post-Impressionist and early Modern art all for a modest investment of $150 million has its world premiere Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The much-anticipated documentary “The Art of the Steal: The Untold Story of the Barnes Foundation” looks at the shrewdly engineered takeover of arguably the nation’s greatest early 20th century cultural monument. Dubbed by critics a “legal theft,” the disastrous plan is to dismantle the Barnes and move it from its historic home in suburban Philadelphia to a tourist location close to downtown.
Indeed the condescending tone of “tourist location” does not sit comfortably next to the concept of pubic trust (even if the Barnes Foundation is not/was not a public institution.) But then again, maybe we’re just being argumentative. Don Argott, the movie’s director, explains that the Barnes did not make much of an effort to explain their side of the story.
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The Barnes Foundation is an educational art institution in Lower Merion Township, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvaniain the United States. It was founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, who collected art after making a fortune by co-developing an early antimicrobial drug marketed as Argyrol.
Today, the Foundation possesses more than 2500 objects, including 800 paintings estimated to be worth more than $6 billion. Among its collection are 181 paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 69 by Paul Cézanne, and 59 by Henri Matisse, as well as numerous other masters, including George de Chirico, Paul Gauguin, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Edouard Manet, Amedeo Modigliani, Jean Hugo, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Maurice Utrillo, Vincent Van Gogh, Maurice Prendergast, and a variety of African artworks.
The Foundation became embroiled in controversy due to a financial crisis in the 1990s, partially related to longstanding restrictions related to its location in a residential neighborhood. It decided to relocate the gallery from Lower Merion to a site in Philadelphia, on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, for enhanced public access.
The Barnes Foundation and Lincoln University
Lincoln University is the United States’ first degree-granting historically black university. It is located near the town of Oxford in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania. The university also hosts a Center for Graduate Studies in the City of Philadelphia. Lincoln University provides undergraduate and graduate coursework to approximately 2,500 students.
As president of Lincoln University (1945-1957), Dr. Horace Mann Bond formed a friendship with Albert Barnes, philanthropist and art collector who established the Barnes Foundation. Barnes took a special interest in the institution and built a relationship with its students. In his will Barnes gave Lincoln University the privilege of naming four of the five directors originally defined as the number for the governing board of the Barnes Foundation. The number of directors has since increased in efforts to correct the collection’s protracted financial difficulties. This has diluted Lincoln’s influence over the valuable collection.
Albert C. Barnes had an interest in helping underserved youth and populations. Barnes intended his collection be used primarily as a teaching resource. He limited the number of people who could view it, and for years even the kinds of people, with a preference for students and working class.
In 2002, the Barnes Foundation contested Albert C. Barnes’ will, arguing that the Merion location of the collection and small number of Board members limited the Foundation’s ability to sustain itself financially. Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell brokered a settlement in 2005 of the contentious, racially nuanced dispute between the Barnes Foundation and Lincoln University.
UPDATE:
Sideshow: Barnes saga finds a buyer
By John Timpane
Inquirer Staff Writer
Nine days after debuting to acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival, the documentary The Art of the Steal has been acquired for North American distribution by Rainbow Media (which owns IFC Films) for its new theatrical and video-on-demand label, Sundance Selects. The film, by Reading resident and director Don Argott and wife/producer Sheena Joyce, depicts the history of the Barnes art collection and the long, hard battle over moving it – despite founder Albert C. Barnes’ express wishes in his will – to Center City.
We’re thinking, based on that title, that the filmmakers aren’t happy about the whole move thing. Another clue: Jonathan Sehring of IFC Films said, “This is an exquisitely made, thrilling film that encompasses everything from backroom politics, claims of a major art heist, and a rags-to-riches American Dream tale crushed by the powers that be.” Crushed again! Steal is scheduled for 2010 release.
Posted in Barnes Foundation
A poem for Jamaica with a Long Title Recognizing that Not Everyone Would Make This Choice in the Same Way; It’s Just Us; But on the Other Hand . . . Anyway, Here’s the Poem. Love, Marilyn and Charlie.
We think we’d like that trip through time
Back to the days we keep enshrined
In amber. All we’ve left behind
By choice or chance. We lose; we find.
But truth and memory seldom rhyme.
Still, if the Wizard made us choose
A moment when our hearts held news
Of Hope and Choice
We would contrive
To stride the world at twenty-five.
Posted in Jamaica Kelley birthday poem
VARIETY . SPICE . LIFE 