Month: December 2012

Exhibit: Rarely Seen American and European Quilts

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An exhibition of some thirty-five exceptional American and European quilt masterpieces from the Brooklyn Museum’s renowned decorative arts holdings will examine the impact of feminist scholarship on the ways in which historical quilts have been and are currently viewed, contextualized, and interpreted.

Only one of these rare quilts has been on public display in the past thirty years. &#8220Workt by Hand&#8221: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts will be on view in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art from March 15 through September 15, 2013. Read more →

This Weeks Top New York History News

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Each Friday morning New York History compiles for our readers the previous week’s top stories about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly news round-ups here.

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This Weeks New York History Web Highlights

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Each Friday morning New York History compiles for our readers the previous week’s top web links about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly round-ups here.

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Peter Feinman: NY and The End of the World

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It is with deep regret and heavy heart that I have the onerous task to inform you that once again the world has come to an end. The passing of our beloved planet marks the third time in this still young century when we endured this ignominious ending to our long history.

First came the secular Y2K ending, then the Christian rapture in 2011, and now the Mayan recycling of 2012. The ending of the world has become as frequent as the storms of the century. We scarcely have time to catch our breath before once again the world will fall over its cliff into an abyss from which it can never recover. Read more →

Sink or Swim? Post-Sandy Waterfront Restoration

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Scape Studio. Plan for Oyster Reefs in NY Harbor

As people blow dry the mold from basement walls and vacuum Sandy from corners and carpets, city activists gathered in a forum sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and Columbia University’s Center for Urban Real Estate, called &#8220Sink or Swim: Waterfront Restoration in a Post-Sandy Era.&#8221
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The Churubusco Live-In: Clinton Countys Woodstock

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The Churubusco Live-In, planned as the 1970 sequel to the historic Woodstock concert of 1969, was in deep trouble. The town of Clinton, which included Churubusco, sought legal help to shut the event down. J. Byron O’Connell, an outstanding trial attorney, was bombastic at times, and his aggressive quotes [if long-haired people came to the village, “they’re just liable to get shot”] appeared in major newspapers in Boston, New York, and elsewhere. As Churubusco’s representative, he sought to derail the concert and preserve the hamlet’s quiet, rural life, while the promoters, Hal Abramson and Raymond Filiberti, fought back. Read more →

Photo Research and Editing: The John Brown Photos

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It was long past the eleventh hour of my publication timetable and I still needed to get one last image to illustrate the article &#8220&#8216-No Mortal Eye Can Penetrate’: Louis Ransom’s Commemoration of John Brown&#8221 which would be appearing in our Autumn issue. I turned to the Library of Congress’s website, found and saved the file along with the metadata in order to be able to cite it correctly, and sent the last of the material to our designer.

Six short weeks later, the Autumn 2012 issue of The Hudson River Valley Review was out to great acclaim, and just a few even shorter days after that I received my first correction. It was about that image, and it was from Jean Libby, who had been cited in the article as the curator and author of the John Brown Photo Chronology. It was clear that I had gotten something wrong. Read more →

Picturing Diasbility: Beggar, Freak, Citizen Photo Rhetoric

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Midget, feeble-minded, crippled, lame, and insane: these terms and the historical photographs that accompany them may seem shocking to present-day audiences. A young woman with no arms wears a sequined tutu and smiles for the camera as she smokes a cigarette with her toes- a man holds up two prosthetic legs while his own legs are bared to the knees to show his missing feet.

The photos were used as promotional material for circus sideshows, charity drives, and art galleries. They were found on begging cards and in family albums. In Picturing Disability: Beggar, Freak, Citizen, and Other Photographic Rhetoric, Bogdan and his collaborators gather over 200 historical photographs showing how people with disabilities have been presented and exploring the contexts in which they were photographed. Read more →

New Book: Reporting The Revolutionary War

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Social media is often credited with igniting and organizing the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East, yet this is not the first time that media has acted as a catalyst for large-scale political change.

Two hundred years ago during the American Revolution real-time reporting was responsible for uniting colonists looking to break free from British rule. Colonial newspaper reports kept the colonists motivated and informed, and without them, it’s possible the revolution may not have happened. Read more →