Yearly Archives: 2012

Spielberg in Gettysburg; Lincoln at Lincoln Center

09 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography

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Update: The New York Film Festival, celebrating its 50th year, is always a tough ticket. Never was this truer than last night when a sold out audience at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall enjoyed a secret screening of Lincoln. The film opens nationwide on November 9th.

We have been looking forward to Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln biopic in our house for some time, not least because the Hayfoot has a thing for both Abe and Daniel Day-Lewis. Apparently the film has been sitting in the can for some time, since spring. From what I understand the director waited for a late November release because he did not want the film to influence the presidential election in any way. At first I though this was silly, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Intentionally or not–and it is too good a marketing angle to think it was not a factor the decision of when to release–a November opening also means that the film coincides with the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. This year Spielberg will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Dedication Day ceremony on November 19th.

(image/Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln)

A museum Monday

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in Monuments and Statuary, Museums

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Young Husband: First Marketing, Lilly Martin Spencer (1854)

I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today for Holiday Monday. I had the museum almost entirely to myself, in part I suspect because many folks worked today and those who didn’t were outdoors enjoying the cool weather. The Holiday Mondays on which the Met tends to get the most traffic are Martin Luther King Jr and Presidents Days, when more people are off and everyone is trying to find something to do indoors because it is so cold out. Someone at the museum told me that next year the museum is going to be open every Monday, as I believe if once used to be. I cannot get enough of the New American Wing. I love the confluence of art and history, especially in the antebellum period before photography when realism was more important for our understanding of society.

I was at a public function last Wednesday where someone mentioned the beautiful Augustus Saint-Gaudens Farragut statue in Madison Square Park. She had recently read David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris and was especially moved by McCullough’s take on the sculptor’s efforts to bring the artwork to reality. (The short version is here.) This led to a discussion of how much thought, tim, and effort artists expend on and for their work. That conversation was going through my mind when I checked out Gauden’s mock-up for the larger piece:

Admiral David Glasgow Farragut
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1879-1880)

Speaking of museums, in late spring I mentioned a trip a friend and I took to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The clip below is from an exhibit that opened this week at the New-York Historical Society about New York City during World War 2. I have always been entranced by this time period, partially because of my love for Woody Allen movies and Pete Hamill’s stories and non-fiction. Both saw the war and the city through the prism of young boys’ eyes. I have this one penciled in for Black Friday. It is hard to believe Thanksgiving is just six weeks away.

(images courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, painting (top) promised gift)

Open House New York, 2012

07 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in New York City

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This weekend was Open House New York. OHNY is an annual event in which cultural institutions across the five boroughs open up a portion of their facility that is normally closed to the public. It is a chance to see something you ordinarily would not. Many New Yorkers build a weekend around it, coordinating their plans to see as much as they can. Because it was rainy day and a long week I did not feel like venturing too far from the house today. So,  I headed to Greenwood Cemetery to see what could.

This is the Schermerhorn’s tomb and dates to 1847. One intriguing about Greenwood is that a huge chunk of the city’s history is on display for you right there. Around every corner you see a name familiar to you from a building, street, or avenue somewhere in Gotham.

The cemetery received  permission from descendants’ families to open the tombs to the public for this one-weekend-a-year event. About eight to ten crypts were open Saturday and Sunday, with different ones accessible each day.

I myself did not do the trolley, but for those with tickets there was transportation between stops.

Whether it’s at a cemetery or a Civil War battlefield, it’s when you get off the beaten path that you find those moments of peace.

 

Even with the rain there was a sizable turnout. One had to wait a few minutes at each stop to get in and out of the tombs. Here is the view from inside one. Many are surprisingly big, with the capacity to hold several dozen or even hundreds of extended family.

The rain added to the ambiance. I was glad I made it today and not yesterday when it was clear and sunny.

I made sure to visit the soldiers and sailors monument to Civil War veterans. I don’t always make it to this side of the cemetery during my regular constitutionals.

There are approximately 4,000 Civil War veterans resting in Greenwood.

It’s autumn in New York.

Spielberg in Gettysburg

04 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, Uncategorized

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We have been looking forward to Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln biopic in our house for some time, not least because the Hayfoot has a thing for both Abe and Daniel Day-Lewis. Apparently the film has been sitting in the can for some time, since spring. From what I understand the director waited for a late November release because he did not want the film to influence the presidential election in any way. At first I though this was silly, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Intentionally or not–and it is too good a marketing angle to think it was not a factor the decision of when to release–a November opening also means that the film coincides with the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. This year Spielberg will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Dedication Day ceremony on November 19th.

(image/Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln)

 

 

Remembering Harriet Tubman

01 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in Memory

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I have always been captivated by the lives and stories of the descendants of historical figures. For one thing, it is a reminder that those we read about were real people, not figures who existed for our entertainment and edification. They lived lives, had families, and struggled just like the rest of us. The phenomenon was captured well in this USA Today piece that appeared last year. What is intriguing, among other things, is the way descendants either embrace or shun the situation. Avoiding the shame of having an infamous ancestor is one thing. To pick a drastic example, we don’t see Hitler’s extended clan drawing attention to themselves, do we? Still, reflected glory can be just as big a burden for the children, grandchildren, etc. of those known for great deeds, perhaps even more so. How do you live up to the legacy of being the kid of a Martin Luther King, Jr, Abraham Lincoln, or Frederick Douglass? Some eschew the situation and avoid the limelight entirely. Go too far in the other direction, embracing the name and privilege it allegedly bestows a little too much, and you get accused of being a professional widow. An individual who has played it about right is Ulysses Grant Dietz, the great-great grandson of the general/president who lives primarily out of the limelight but involves himself just enough to defend Ulysses S. Grant’s legacy. Most famously he threatened to move Grant’s remains to Illinois in the 1990s if the government did not improve the grounds at the tomb in upper Manhattan. It is a difficult balancing act that is more difficult than the rest of us can imagine. This past weekend descendants of Harriet Tubman met in Baltimore to prepare for the 2013 Centennial of her death.

The last rodeo of the season

29 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in Governors Island

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Today was my final day of the season at Governors Island. After tomorrow the park will not be open to the public again until next May. It was a fun and rewarding summer. The staff there is very hardworking and knowledgeable without taking themselves too seriously. It is really a privilege to work with them and with the public at one of our country’s great historical sites. Here are some photos from the final two Saturdays.

Remembering the Emancipation Proclamation

23 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Libraries

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Today was a special day. The wife and I went to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to see President Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten draft of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln released the document 150 years ago yesterday, 22 September 1862, five days after the fighting ended at Antietam.

The Schomburg, part of the New York Public Library, is located between 135th/136th Streets and Lenox Avenue. The weather today could not be beat and there many people out enjoying the day.

After a short film narrated by Morgan Freeman one enters the library’s museum space on the second floor.

The exhibit was just the right size, small with a focus on the proclamation itself. There was some signage such as this that put emancipation into context, before the war, during Reconstruction, through the Civil Rights Movement, and today. A nice touch were portions of a draft of a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr. to the New York Civil War Centennial Commission’s Emancipation Proclamation Observance on September 12, 1962. It is not a coincidence, as some have made it out to be, that the Civil War centennial and Civil Rights movement overlapped. Less than a year after commemorating the president’s proclamation, King spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln donated the above document to the U.S. Sanitary Commission in 1864 to be raffled off for the Union war effort. It is now owned by the New York State Library. Thankfully it was not lost in the Great Capitol Fire in Albany in 1911.

Also on display was this is an original copy of the proclamation, owned by the National Archives. Because flash photography was not permitted some of the images from our cellphones are grainy. The Emancipation Proclamation was written by Lincoln the Lawyer and does not contain the literary flourishes one finds in the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural.

The security guards told us they were getting big crowds for the four day event held at the uptown library. It is always good seeing parents bringing children to such events. The proclamation will travel to seven other New York cities this fall. I cannot tell you how special it was to witness this.

When in Harlem, go to Sylvia’s