Paul Strand, a friend of Alfred Stieglitz and his wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, visited O’Keeffe while she was away in New Mexico. Stieglitz had written O’Keeffe on June 27, 1931 from Lake George, NY, “…Strand will add to his trophies of photography. What a chance he has. He ought to do
About a hundred years ago in Los Angeles, some of its boarding houses hung signs that read, “No Jews, actors, or dogs allowed.” Movies entertained the lower classes only, and major film companies produced in Philadelphia. When Charlie Chaplin built the first big studio in Hollywood in the early twentieth
Deborah Valenze explains in Milk: A Local and Global History, how the “elixir of immortality” changed from a staple of the gods to a staple of nutrition textbooks.
Summer vacationers all over America right now are camping for a weekend, spending the afternoon at the pool, or if they are adventurous, going snorkeling. Most people probably are not embarking on a dangerous transatlantic voyage and leaving their children for a six-month tour of a foreign country, but that’s
The critics have weighed in: at the Boston Globe, at the Chronicle Review, even with a slideshow on Slate.com, and the consensus is that Peter Toohey’s Boredom: A Lively History is anything but boring! (You can imagine how it came to have such a subtitle from the “Book Bench” interview
The Goodreads giveaway for My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume One, 1915-1933 may have passed, but the story of the letters is only now beginning to unfold as we approach the June 21 publication of the volume. In just over 30 years, Stieglitz and
The Steins were not the only Jewish American family interested in collecting the strikingly profound works of the Modernist era; in fact, they were friends with Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone, who visited the expats and were captivated by the Parisian art of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The
Last weekend at SFMOMA was the opening of “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde”, an exhibition showcasing the energy, creativity, and artistic patronage of the Stein family: Gertrude, her brothers Leo, Michael and his wife Sarah. Already a hit with San Francisco Chronicle art critic, Kenneth Baker,
Dwight Garner’s Twitter account, regularly full of humorous gems, profound observations, combining books with his dogwalking, has tweeted a few lines ( 1… 2… 3…) inspired by Alfred Kazin over the past few days. This morning’s issue of the New York Times, featured Garner’s review of the “remarkable” Alfred Kazin’s
And speaking of American icons: The Yankee Clipper has had a great run so far this season, thanks in no small part to Jerome Charyn’s new biography, Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil. On Facebook, almost 1,800 fans have gathered this spring for new updates on Joe, his relationship with Marilyn,