Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will present the first monographic exhibition in more than 50 years on designer and weaver Dorothy Liebes (1897–1972).  Among the most influential designers of the 20th century, Liebes shaped American tastes in areas from interiors and transportation to industrial design, fashion and film.  On view July 7, 2023 through Feb. 4, 2024, “A Dark, A Light, A Bright:  The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” will feature more than 125 works, including textiles, textile samples, fashion, furniture, documents and photographs.  Organized in five sections, “A Dark, A Light, A Bright” opens with an introduction to Liebes and important early works, including the prize-winning Schiaparelli panel for the 1937 Paris Exposition and objects related to the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition where Liebes formulated and articulated her vision for the role of handcraft in modern design.  A five-minute documentary film, along with a wall graphic that maps key projects and professional achievements, illustrates the broad range of her collaborative work.  The next section, The Modern Interior, will feature examples of the handwoven fabrics that made Liebes a sought-after collaborator by architects and interior designers.  Drapery panels such as a gold and leather design for Adrian’s famed Hollywood salon and a 1947 looped fringe panel for Duke’s Shangri-la showcase Liebes’ distinctive approach to color, texture and reflectivity.   Films that featured her glamorous textiles, like the Barbara Stanwyck nightclub noir Eastside, Westside (1947), effectively demonstrate the close interaction between textiles, movement and light.  In The Liebes Look, projects like the First Class Observation Lounge aboard the SS United States and American Airlines flagship 747 reveal her business acumen in combining handwoven and power-loomed fabrics to create dramatic—and highly visible—public spaces within budget.  The exhibition will also examine Liebes’ contributions to interiors such as the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel, the Marco Polo Club at the Waldorf Astoria and the Usonian Exhibition House, which were widely publicized at the time, but later subsumed under the names of the male architects who headlined the projects (Dreyfuss, Deskey and Wright, respectively).  Examples of her collaborations with fashion designers Clare Potter and Cashin will be featured throughout the exhibition to explore the cross-fertilization of fashion and interior design.   https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/cooper-hewitt-present-monographic-exhibition-designer-and-weaver-dorothy-liebes   

Horn & Hardart was a food services company in the United States noted for operating the first food service automats in Philadelphia, New York City, and Baltimore.   Philadelphia's Joseph Horn (1861–1941) and German-born, New Orleans-raised Frank Hardart (1850–1918) opened their first restaurant together in Philadelphia, on December 22, 1888.  The small, 11-by-17-foot (3.4 m × 5.2 m) lunchroom at 39 South Thirteenth Street had no tables, only a counter with 15 stools.  The location had housed the print shop of Dunlap & Claypoole, printers to the American Congress and George Washington.  By introducing Philadelphia to New Orleans-style coffee, which Hardart promoted as their "gilt-edge" brew, they made their tiny luncheonette a local attraction.  News of the coffee spread, and the business flourished.  They incorporated as the Horn & Hardart Baking Company in 1898.  At its peak the company operated in excess of 100 restaurants, as well as a popular chain of retail outlets.  The lack of a succession plan, changing demographics, the rapid rise of fast food chains, and poor strategic decisions from the early 1960s on were too much to overcome and the last restaurant was closed in 1991.  Concerto for Horn and Hardart is a classical music parody written by Peter Schickele, one of many which he attributes to the fictional composer P.D.Q. Bach.  The song Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend by Leo Robin and Jule Styne mentions the Automat in its lyrics.  Jack Benny held a promotional, black-tie party to launch his television show The Jack Benny Program on October 29, 1950, at the New York City Automat.  Playing on his reputation as a cheapskate, Benny greeted his guests at the door and handed each one a roll of nickels so they could get what they wanted to eat.  Films:  That Touch of Mink (1962), comedy with Cary Grant, Doris Day, and Gig Young who visit the Automat in New York City; The Automat (2021), documentary by Lisa Hurwitz about the chain featuring Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Colin Powell, Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart#Literature   

America runs on lettuce by Aaron Timms  May 2023  In Manhattan, from Chopt and Sweetgreen to fresh&co, Just Salad, and Avocaderia, the lines remain long, the add-ons plentiful.  If anything the salad appears to have emerged from the pandemic stronger than ever, a dominant culinary form for a nation freshly reminded of the shifting environmental and health risks that a leafy diet can help repel.  Despite dire warnings, the people of New York are still fiends for leaves.  Despite the bias in favor of meat, vegetables were still an important component of the early modern diet:  contemporary English observers listed leeks, melons, pumpkins, gourds, radishes, parsnips, carrots, cabbages, navews, and turnips as some of the many that were consumed.  Leaving Chopt, I pass a rival salad chain.  Written across its window are the words, EAT WITH PURPOSE.  The Chicago restaurant R.J. Grunts claims to have invented the salad bar—or at the very least, introduced it to America—in the early 1970s.  https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/everywhere-in-salad-chains-timms  Eat with purpose, and gusto.  Thank you, Muse reader!   

navew (plural navews)  noun  A kind of small turnip, a variety of Brassica campestris.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/navew   

R.J. Grunts is the original Lettuce Entertain You located in Lincoln Park just steps from the Chicago zoo.  We cater to the neurotic compensation of eating including the tastiest burgers in town and hand-spun shakes and malts.  The lifestyle of the 1970s is still exuded.  https://www.rjgruntschicago.com/   

Lincoln Park Zoo, also known as Lincoln Park Zoological Gardens, is a 35-acre (14 ha) zoo in Lincoln Park, Chicago.  The zoo was founded in 1868, making it the fourth oldest zoo in North America.  It is also one of a few free admission zoos in all of North America.  The zoo was founded in 1868, when the Lincoln Park Commissioners were given a gift of two pairs of swans by Central Park's Board of Commissioners in New York City.  See pictures of the Lincoln Park Zoo at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Park_Zoo   

No one has ever become poor by giving. - Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (12 Jun 1929-1945)   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2682  June 12, 2023