Jean Tinguely Fragment from Homage to New
York 1960 This is one piece of what the artist called
a “self-constructing and self-destroying work of art,” composed of bicycle
wheels, motors, a piano, an addressograph, a go-cart, a bathtub, and other
cast-off objects. Twenty-three feet
long, twenty-seven feet high, and painted white, the machine was set in motion
on March 18, 1960, before an audience in the Museum’s sculpture garden. During its brief operation, a meteorological
trial balloon inflated and burst, colored smoke was discharged, paintings were
made and destroyed, and bottles crashed to the ground. A player piano, metal drums, a radio
broadcast, a recording of the artist explaining his work, and a competing
shrill voice correcting him provided the cacophonic sound track to the
machine’s self-destruction—until it was stopped short by the fire
department. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81174
A
long-time fan of Swiss-born Jean Tinguely (1925–1991), Michael Landy has been influenced by his fellow artist’s destructive tendencies,
in particular as manifested in Tinguely’s 1960 Museum of Modern Art
performance Homage to New York--a fascination echoed in his own
piece Break Down 2001, for which Landy catalogued and
destroyed all his possessions. http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/homage-destruction
Shadows from
the Walls of Death, printed in
1874 and measuring about 22 by 30 inches, is a noteworthy book for two
reasons: its rarity, and the fact that,
if you touch it, it might kill you. It
contains just under a hundred wallpaper samples, each of which is saturated
with potentially dangerous levels of arsenic.
The book is the work of Dr. Robert M. Kedzie, a Union surgeon during the
American Civil War and later professor of chemistry at Michigan State
Agricultural college (now MSU). When he
came to serve on the state’s Board of Health in the 1870s, he set out to raise
awareness about the dangers of arsenic-pigmented wallpaper. Though a lethal toxin, arsenic can be mixed
with copper and made into beautiful paints and pigments, most commonly Scheele’s Green or Paris Green. This was no fringe phenomenon: near the end of the 19th century, the
American Medical Association estimated that as much as 65 percent of all
wallpaper in the United States contained arsenic. As part of his campaign to raise awareness
about poison papers, Kedzie produced 100 copies of Shadows and
sent them out to public libraries across Michigan. Each one is a slim volume, containing few
words—just a title page, a short preface, and a note from the Board of Health
explaining the purpose of the book and advising librarians not to let children
handle it. Of the original 100 copies,
only four remain. Most libraries,
concerned about poisoning their patrons, destroyed their volumes. Two of the
surviving books remain in Michigan—one at MSU and the other at the University
of Michigan. MSU’s copy rests on an
unassuming shelf in the library’s Special Collections division, housed in an
appropriately green box. Each page is
individually encapsulated in plastic so that researchers and the curious can
handle it without fear. Alexander J.
Zawacki https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/shadows-from-the-walls-of-death-book
Thank you, Muse reader!
Philadelphia City Hall is the seat of government for the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The building was constructed from 1871 to 1901 within Penn Square, in
the middle of Center City.
John McArthur Jr. designed
the building in the Second Empire style. City Hall is a masonry building whose weight is borne by granite and brick walls up to
22 ft (6.7 m) thick. The
principal exterior materials are limestone, granite, and marble. The final construction cost was $24
million. At 548 ft (167 m),
including the statue of city founder William Penn atop its tower, City Hall
was the tallest habitable building
in the world from 1894 to 1908. It
remained the tallest in Pennsylvania until it was surpassed in 1932 by
the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh.
In 1976, City Hall was designated a National
Historic Landmark. Designed
to be the world's tallest building, it was surpassed during construction by
the Washington Monument and
the Eiffel Tower. Upon completion of its tower in 1894, it
became the world's tallest habitable building. It was also the first
secular building to have this distinction, as all previous world's tallest
buildings were religious structures, including European cathedrals and—for the
previous 3,800 years—the Great Pyramid of Giza. With almost 700 rooms, City Hall is the
world's largest municipal building. The building houses three branches of
government: the city's executive branch (the Mayor's
Office), its legislature (the Philadelphia City
Council), and a substantial portion of the judicial activity in the
city (the Civil Division and Orphan's Court of the Pennsylvania
Court of Common Pleas for the First Judicial District are
housed there, as well as chambers for some criminal judges and some judges of
the Philadelphia
Municipal Court). The
building is topped by a 37 ft (11 m) bronze statue weighing
53,348 lb (24,198 kg) of city founder William Penn, one of 250 sculptures created
by Alexander Milne
Calder that adorn the building inside and out. The statue was cast at the Tacony Iron
Works of Northeast
Philadelphia and hoisted to the top of the tower in fourteen
sections in 1894. The statue is the tallest atop any building
in the world. Calder wished the statue to face south so that its face
would be lit by the sun most of the day, the better to reveal the details of
his work. The statue actually faces
northeast, towards Penn Treaty Park in
the Fishtown section
of the city, which commemorates the site where William Penn signed a treaty
with the local Native
Americans tribe. By the terms
of a gentlemen's agreement that
forbade any structure from rising above the hat on the William Penn statue,
Philadelphia City Hall remained the tallest building in the city until it was
surpassed by One Liberty Place in
1986. The abrogation of this agreement supposedly brought a curse onto
local sports teams. See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_City_Hall
Established in 1848, by
an act of the Great
and General Court of Massachusetts, the Boston Public Library (BPL)
was the first large
free municipal library in the United States.
The Boston Public Library's first building of its
own was a former schoolhouse located on Mason Street that was opened to the
public on March 20, 1854. The library's
collections approximated 16,000 volumes, and it was obvious from the day the
doors were first opened that the quarters were inadequate. In December of that same year the library's
Commissioners were authorized to locate a new building upon a lot on Boylston
Street. The present Copley Square
location has been home to the library since 1895, when architect Charles Follen
McKim completed his "palace for the people." In the latter half of the 19th century, the
library worked vigorously to develop and expand its branch system. Viewed as a means to extend the library's
presence throughout the city, the branch system evolved from an idea in 1867 to
a reality in 1870, when the first branch library in the United States was
opened in East Boston. In 1986, the
National Park Service designated the McKim Building a National Historic
Landmark citing it as “the first outstanding example of Renaissance Beaux-Arts
Classicism in America.” Within the McKim
Building are fine murals series, fine collections of rare books and
manuscripts, maps, and prints, and splendid gallery space for displaying the
numerous treasures assembled over the past 160 years. Amenities include a restaurant and café, a
peaceful inner courtyard, several comfortable and wifi accessible inviting
reading areas. Within its collection of
23 million items, the library boasts a wealth of rare books and manuscripts,
maps, musical scores and prints. Among
its large collections, the BPL holds several first edition folios by William
Shakespeare, original music scores from Mozart to Prokofiev's "Peter and
the Wolf;" and, in its rare book collection, the personal library of John
Adams. Today, the Boston Public Library
system includes a Central Library, twenty-four branches, a map center, a business
library, and a website filled with digital content. Last year, 3.7 million people visited the
Boston Public Library system, many in pursuit of research material, others
looking for an afternoon's reading or the use of the computer or to attend a
class, still others for the magnificent and unique art and architecture of many
library locations. There were 7.9
million visits to the library's website and 3.7 million books and audiovisual
items borrowed or downloaded. http://www.bpl.org/general/history.htm
"Your article today abut literary tools reminds me of the Crosby, Stills
& Nash song, Helplessly Hoping.
I hope you can listen to it or already know it. Cleverly written. There is a “four” = “for” in there, too." Thank you, Muse reader!
Muser:
I didn't know it but I do now: Crosby,
Stills & Nash - Helplessly Hoping (With Lyrics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGtFRsCXRcc 2:48
Click on SHOW MORE to find lyrics including They are one person They are
two alone They are three together They are for each other (In addition to the title, find many other examples
of alliteration.)
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1838
February 6, 2018 On this date in1933,
long before the “76 Trombones” made famous by “The Music Man,” there were the
“76 flutes” of Henry Brant. At least
that’s what the score of his flute ensemble piece “Angels and Devils” called
for. When it received its premiere performance, a much smaller group assembled
on the stage of Carnegie Chapter Hall in New York City. Composers Datebook Word
of the Day haka noun
A group dance of New Zealand's Maori people featuring rhythmic chanting, vigorous facial and arm movements, and footstamping. Traditionally a war dance, today it is also performed
to welcome guests, as a mark of respect at occasions such as commemorations and funerals, as a challenge to opposing teams at sports events, and for artistic purposes.
February 6 is Waitangi Day, the national day of New Zealand. Wiktionary
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