Copyright 2009 The New York Sun Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:19:14 -0500 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about webmaster@nysun.com en-us Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/photos-from-the-american-folk-art-museum.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/photos-from-the-american-folk-art-museum.html Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:57:00 EST Click here for photos. We were in luck at the Folk Art Museum gala last night when the first person we laid eyes on was its president, Laura Parsons (wife of Citigroup chairman Richard Parsons). Ms. Parsons was sitting with Raffaella Cribiore, a curator of papyri at Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscripts Library. We learned about two works in Ms. Parsons's personal collection: A self-portrait by Clementine Hunter and Hale Woodruff's "Cotton Pickers," which hangs in her living room. Over by the Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/the-place-to-be-tonight-supporting-priso.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/the-place-to-be-tonight-supporting-priso.html Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:12:36 EST “I hope only to stretch myself to some how reach the light.” —David J. Lista “I chuff my way into another day/as ice glints on the razor wire.” —Jorge Antonio Renaud “Today I ate BBQ chicken with a plastic spoon. Sound impossible? Well, eighteen hundred inmates did it. Usually we eat with a spork.” —John Yarbrough WNYC and the PEN America Center present a showcase of work written by participants in the PEN Prison Writing Program. The event, titled “Breakout: Voices from the Inside,” is a Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/new-at-the-new-york-public-library.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/new-at-the-new-york-public-library.html Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:04:00 EST Patience and fortitude are still keeping watch at the New York Public Library’s flagship Fifth Avenue entrance, but the world is changing around them, and so, in a fashion, are they. The Library has a new logo developed in-house and based on its iconic lion statues. It is a bold graphic inspired by the design of stained glass, complete with a circular frame. The former logo was also a lion, but with finer detail that apparently made it difficult to read in contexts like Twitter. The logo isn’t Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/the-place-to-be-tonight-art-new-york-cit.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/the-place-to-be-tonight-art-new-york-cit.html Fri, 6 Nov 2009 10:05:00 EST Good morning! A great event to get to tonight is the free, public opening of the contemporary art installations presented by New York City Opera in its renovated house. The setting is the very, very special Promenade, with its Elie Nadelman sculptures. And since there's no performance tonight, it is your prerogative to dwell luxuriously here instead of worrying about getting back to your seat. What you'll see: In addition to E.V. Day's manipulations of City Opera costumes, suspended in air Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/benefit-preview-a-pen-america-program-te.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/benefit-preview-a-pen-america-program-te.html Thu, 5 Nov 2009 10:07:00 EST “I hope only to stretch myself to some how reach the light.” —David J. Lista “I chuff my way into another day/as ice glints on the razor wire.” —Jorge Antonio Renaud “Today I ate BBQ chicken with a plastic spoon. Sound impossible? Well, eighteen hundred inmates did it. Usually we eat with a spork.” —John Yarbrough At WNYC’s Greene Space this coming Monday night, the PEN America Center has organized a showcase of work written by participants in the PEN Prison Writing Program. The event, titled Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/living-landmarks.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/living-landmarks.html Wed, 4 Nov 2009 21:35:00 EST The New York Landmarks Conservancy has a way of making the business of galas -- gathering people to eat smoked salmon and filet and cheer for some "honorees" -- fun. In fact, after sixteen years, the organization has it down to an art and science, as it proved tonight in the 16th edition of the "Living Landmarks" gala, held at Cipriani 42nd Street. The method relies on the queen of entertainment writing, Liz Smith, who knows a thing or two about entertaining. She is a gracious, intelligent Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/emma-bloombergs-election-day-itinerary.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/11/emma-bloombergs-election-day-itinerary.html Tue, 3 Nov 2009 02:22:19 EST When we saw Mayor Bloomberg's eldest daughter, Emma Bloomberg, last night at the New York Public Library's gala, we naturally asked her when and for whom she planned to vote today, Election Day. Ms. Bloomberg told the Sun she'd be up early to vote for her dad, the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who is running for his third term. "I'm voting early because then I'm working subway stops to make sure everyone else does," Ms. Bloomberg said, specifying her territory as between Tribeca Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/performa-09s-creation-a-family-affair.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/performa-09s-creation-a-family-affair.html Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:09:00 EST Jennifer Rubell pulled off her grand, biblical gastronomic art event on Friday night, galvanizing more than 500 guests to shell their own peanuts, choose their own glasses, mix their own drinks, and put together their own plates of ribs complete with honey dripping from a contraption hanging from the ceiling. For dessert, they got to pick apples (from felled trees) and take a hammer to seven chocolate bunnies constructed by Jacques Torres in the form of Jeff Koons's 'Rabbit' sculpture. Good Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/art-escape-an-eye-for-nature.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/art-escape-an-eye-for-nature.html Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:40:00 EST Alan Gussow's "Surf/Monhegan" (1986) shows how the painter, born and raised in New York City, found a sense of the city's frenetic energy in the violent surf of the Atlantic Ocean, off the Maine coast. Gussow spent time on Monhegan, an artist's retreat where there are no cars and barely even roads. Instead, painters plant their feet and their canvases and get to work. It all seems perfectly natural. Perhaps it is only when these canvases, capturing nature, are imported into a midtown gallery Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/new-york-opens-arms-for-broken-embraces.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/new-york-opens-arms-for-broken-embraces.html Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:13:00 EST "Good evening, fellow elitists," Richard Pena, program director of the New York Film Festival, said tonight in Alice Tully Hall, addressing some of the criticism of this year's festival with good humor. The audience approved, and it was on to the highlight of the festival: Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces." Mr. Pena recalled that 22 years ago, the festival opened with the Spanish director's "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." "That was the film that brought him to a much larger Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/what-makes-new-york-new-york-nonsense.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/what-makes-new-york-new-york-nonsense.html Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:55:00 EST This Saturday night, at 3rd Ward in East Williamsburg, we attended "a one-night physical manifestation of the Nonsense NYC email list, celebrating 10 years of weird art and culture coverage in New York City." Nonsense is a weekly e-mail round-up of novel events, so novel, in fact, that it makes for entertaining reading in and of itself, and so novel, in fact, you find yourself compelled to go out. "Weird art and culture" is may be how the newsletter defines itself, but the key word is fun. We Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/citys-royalty-toast-shiny-new-castle-at-.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/citys-royalty-toast-shiny-new-castle-at-.html Fri, 9 Oct 2009 15:50:00 EST Last night the American Museum of Natural History held a ribbon cutting and dinner to celebrate the restoration, dramatic new night lighting, and new landscaping of its 77th Street facade and grounds. Those holding the ribbon during the cutting included Liz Krueger, Alfred Ross, George J.Gillespie III, Adrian Ross, Janet Ross, the museum’s chairman, Lewis Bernard, the museum's president, Ellen Futter, Kate Levin, Christine C. Quinn, Scott Stringer, Linda Rosenthal, Robert Tierney, Helen Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/bloomberg-weill-to-receive-2009-carnegie.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/bloomberg-weill-to-receive-2009-carnegie.html Fri, 9 Oct 2009 06:20:00 EST Well, there's no surprise winner like President Obama, who has just won the Nobel Prize for Peace, but New Yorkers can be proud that two of the four recipients of this year's Andrew Carnegie Medlas of Philanthropy are New Yorkers Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sanford and Joan Weill. Gordon and Betty Moore and the Koç family of Turkey have also been named winners.. The awards -- consisting of a bust of Andrew Carnegie and a bronze medal -- will be given on October 15 as part of a Medals of Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/street-life-hula-hoops-in-herald-square.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/street-life-hula-hoops-in-herald-square.html Thu, 8 Oct 2009 22:55:32 EST Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/rubin-museum-of-art-parties-higher.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/rubin-museum-of-art-parties-higher.html Thu, 8 Oct 2009 15:21:00 EST "I'm going to float up to the top," Jeff Wallman said as he ascended the staircase of the Rubin Museum of Art Tuesday night. The Accidentals, a choral group, had just finished performing and 350 guests, dressed in black tie and "Himalayan Haute," were making their way to dinner at the museum's annual gala. That staircase used to lead customers to the upper floors of Barneys department store, but in the five years the museum has occupied the space on West 17th Street, things have taken a Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/sandy-weillls-opening-night-cheer-carneg.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/10/sandy-weillls-opening-night-cheer-carneg.html Sat, 3 Oct 2009 08:22:00 EST Speeches at galas are often barely heard, but not so at Carnegie Hall's opening night: The executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall, Clive Gillinson, and its chairman, Sandy Weill, commanded a captive audience and they made the most of it. Mr. Weill, a pace setter in philanthropy in tough times, knows how to get the fund-raising job done, and it isn't with platitudes. The gala raised $3 million, a record, he said. Well, that used to be typical gala-speech fare but these days, mentions Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/09/bill-murray-kay-ryan-open-poets-house.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/09/bill-murray-kay-ryan-open-poets-house.html Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:27:00 EST At last night's private party to open Poets House -- the public celebrations begin today (with bagels at 11) and continue Saturday (with readings from 3-5 p.m. outdoors featuring Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Philip Levine and many others) -- the program included poet laureate Kay Ryan and actor and longtime supporter of Poet's House Bill Murray. A lot of poetry was read at this brand-new poetry paradise located in Battery Park City. Bill Murray read: "Halley's Comet" by Stanley Kunitz and Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/09/street-intelligence-bryant-park-fall-fes.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/09/street-intelligence-bryant-park-fall-fes.html Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:57:00 EST We love finding out about great New York events just by walking down the street. This morning we found a sidewalk billboard telling us we could experience 10 nights of New York's most prestigious music makers and presenters for free in Bryant Park. The design of the sidewalk billboard itself is worthy of comment. It arrived late last month housing an official Fashion Week announcement. St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble kicks off the series with music from two upcoming programs, "Divine Spark" and Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/09/pasta-not-caviar-at-met-operas-opening-n.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/09/pasta-not-caviar-at-met-operas-opening-n.html Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:03:00 EST "It's a difficult time. That's why Mercedes is not serving caviar tonight," the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, Peter Gelb, said at the opening night supper last night, referring to one of the Met's board members and big donors, Mercedes Bass. Indeed, the meal -- catered by Restaurant Associates -- did not include caviar. And no one seemed to mind. (The new production of "Tosca," now that's another story.) Here is the Met Opera's gala menu: ANTIPASTI Artichoke hearts, roasted red and Amanda Gordon http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/09/kicking-off-book-season.html http://www.nysun.com/blogs/out-and-about/2009/09/kicking-off-book-season.html Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:40:34 EST As Dan Brown’s book party got underway at Gotham Hall -- a fancy affair befitting that rare thing in publishing these days, an instant blockbuster -- International Creative Management agent Jennifer Joel was at Norwood for the first party of a literary patrons group she co-chairs, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions. The mood was upbeat at both Monday events. “Especially coming off of nine months when people have been timid and there’s been a general air of low confidence and pessimism