The Names of 1.8 Million Emancipated Slaves Are Now Searchable in the World’s Largest Genealogical Database, Helping African Americans Find Lost Ancestors

in Archives, History, Museums | January 3rd, 2020

The suc­cess­es of the Freedman’s Bureau, ini­ti­at­ed by Abra­ham Lin­coln in 1865 and first admin­is­tered under Oliv­er Howard’s War Depart­ment, are all the more remark­able con­sid­er­ing the intense pop­u­lar and polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion to the agency. Under Lincoln’s suc­ces­sor, impeached South­ern Demo­c­rat Andrew John­son, the Bureau at times became a hos­tile enti­ty to the very peo­ple it was meant to aid and protect—the for­mer­ly enslaved, espe­cial­ly, but also poor whites dev­as­tat­ed by the war. After years of defund­ing, under­staffing, and vio­lent insur­gency the Freedman’s Bureau was offi­cial­ly dis­solved in 1872.

In those first few years after eman­ci­pa­tion, how­ev­er, the Bureau built sev­er­al hos­pi­tals and over a thou­sand rur­al schools in the South, estab­lished the His­tor­i­cal­ly Black Col­lege and Uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem, and “cre­at­ed mil­lions of records,” notes the Nation­al Muse­um of African Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Cul­ture (NMAAHC), “that con­tain the names of hun­dreds of thou­sands of for­mer­ly enslaved indi­vid­u­als and South­ern white refugees.” Those records have enabled his­to­ri­ans to recon­struct the lives of peo­ple who might oth­er­wise have dis­ap­peared from the record and helped geneal­o­gists trace fam­i­ly con­nec­tions that might have been irrev­o­ca­bly bro­ken.

As we not­ed back in 2015, those records have become part of a dig­i­ti­za­tion project named for the Bureau and spear­head­ed by the Smith­son­ian, the Nation­al Archives, the Afro-Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal and Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints, whose Fam­il­y­Search is the largest geneal­o­gy orga­ni­za­tion in the world. “Using mod­ern, dig­i­tal and web-based tech­nol­o­gy and the pow­er of [over 25,000!] vol­un­teers,” says Hol­lis Gen­try, a genealog­i­cal spe­cial­ist at the NMAAHC, the Freedman’s Bureau Project “is unlock­ing infor­ma­tion from a trans­for­ma­tive era in the his­to­ry of African Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and the Amer­i­can nation.”

That infor­ma­tion is now avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic, “glob­al­ly via the web” here, as of June 20th, 2016, allow­ing “all of us to enlarge our under­stand­ing of the past.” More specif­i­cal­ly, the Freedman’s Bureau Project and Fam­il­y­Search allows African Amer­i­cans to recov­er their fam­i­ly his­to­ry in a data­base that now includes “the names of near­ly 1.8 mil­lion men, women and chil­dren” record­ed by Freedman’s Bureau work­ers and entered by Freedman’s Bureau Project vol­un­teers 150 years lat­er. This incred­i­ble data­base will give mil­lions of peo­ple descend­ed from both for­mer slaves and white Civ­il War refugees the abil­i­ty to find their ances­tors.

There’s still more work to be done. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the NMAAHC, the Smith­son­ian Tran­scrip­tion Cen­ter is cur­rent­ly rely­ing on vol­un­teers to tran­scribe all of the dig­i­tal scans pro­vid­ed by Fam­il­y­Search. “When com­plet­ed, the papers will be key­word search­able. This joint effort will help increase access to the Freedmen’s Bureau col­lec­tion and help the pub­lic learn more about the Unit­ed States in the Recon­struc­tion Era,” a crit­i­cal time in U.S. his­to­ry that is woe­ful­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed or delib­er­ate­ly white­washed in text­books and cur­ric­u­la.

“The records left by the Freed­men’s Bureau through its work between 1865 and 1872 con­sti­tute the rich­est and most exten­sive doc­u­men­tary source avail­able for inves­ti­gat­ing the African Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the post-Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion eras,” writes the Nation­al Archives. Soon, all of those doc­u­ments will be pub­licly avail­able for every­one to read. For now, those with roots in the U.S. South can search the Freedman’s Bureau Project data­base to dis­cov­er more about their fam­i­ly her­itage and his­to­ry.

And while the Smithsonian’s tran­scrip­tion project is under­way, those who want to learn more can vis­it the Freedman’s Bureau Online, which has tran­scribed hun­dreds of doc­u­ments, includ­ing labor records, nar­ra­tives of “out­rages com­mit­ted on freed­men,” and mar­riage reg­is­ters.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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You Can Sleep in an Edward Hopper Painting at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: Is This the Next New Museum Trend?

in Art, Design, Life, Museums, Travel | December 2nd, 2019

Let’s pre­tend our Fairy Art Moth­er is grant­i­ng one wish—to spend the night inside the paint­ing of your choice.

What paint­ing will we each choose, and why?

Will you sleep out in the open, undis­turbed by lions, a la Rousseau’s The Sleep­ing Gyp­sy?

Or expe­ri­ence the volup­tuous dreams of Fred­er­ic Leighton’s Flam­ing June?

Paul Gauguin’s por­trait of his son, Clo­vis presents a tan­ta­liz­ing prospect for those of us who haven’t slept like a baby in decades…

The Night­mare by Herny Fuseli should chime with Goth­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties…

And it’s a fair­ly safe bet that some of us will select Edward Hop­per’s West­ern Motel, at the top of this post, if only because we heard the Vir­ginia Muse­um of Fine Arts was accept­ing dou­ble occu­pan­cy book­ings for an extreme­ly faith­ful fac­sim­i­le, as part of its Edward Hop­per and the Amer­i­can Hotel exhi­bi­tion.

Alas, if unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Hop­per Hotel Expe­ri­ence, with mini golf and a curat­ed tour, sold out quick­ly, with prices rang­ing from $150 to $500 for an off-hours stay.

Tick­et-hold­ing vis­i­tors can still peer in at the room any time the exhib­it is open to the pub­lic, but it’s after hours when the Insta­gram­ming kicks into high gear.

What guest could resist the temp­ta­tion to strike a pose amid the vin­tage lug­gage and (blue­tooth-enabled) wood pan­eled radio, fill­ing in for the 1957 painting’s lone fig­ure, an icon­ic Hop­per woman in a bur­gundy dress?

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go notes that she is sin­gu­lar among Hopper’s sub­jects, in that she appears to be gaz­ing direct­ly at the view­er.

But as per the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Art Gallery, from which West­ern Motel is on loan:

The woman star­ing across the room does not seem to see us; the pen­sive­ness of her stare and her tense pos­ture accen­tu­ate the sense of some impend­ing event. She appears to be wait­ing: the lug­gage is packed, the room is devoid of per­son­al objects, the bed is made, and a car is parked out­side the win­dow.

Hope­ful­ly, those lucky enough to have secured a book­ing will have per­fect­ed the pose in the mir­ror at home pri­or to arrival. This “motel” is a bit of a stage set, in that guests must leave the paint­ing to access the pub­lic bath­room that con­sti­tutes the facil­i­ties.

(No word on whether the theme extends to a paper “san­i­tized for your pro­tec­tion” band across the toi­let, but there’s no show­er and a secu­ri­ty offi­cer is sta­tioned out­side the room for the dura­tion of each stay.)

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of this once-in-a-life­time exhib­it tie-in may spark oth­er muse­ums to fol­low suit.

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go start­ed the trend in 2016 with a painstak­ing recre­ation of Vin­cent Van Gogh’s room at Arles, which it list­ed on Air BnB for $10/night.

Think of all the fun we could have if the bed­rooms of art his­to­ry opened to us…

Dog lovers could get cozy in Andrew Wyeth’s Mas­ter Bed­room.

Delacroix’s The Death of Sar­dana­palus (1827) would require some­thing more than dou­ble occu­pan­cy for prop­er Insta­gram­ming.

Piero del­la Francesca’s The Dream of Con­stan­tine might elic­it impres­sive mes­sages from the sub-con­science…

Tuber­cu­lo­sis noth­with­stand­ing, Aubrey Beardsley’s Self Por­trait in Bed is rife with pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Or skip the cul­tur­al fore­play and head straight for the NSFW plea­sures of The French Bed, a la Rembrandt’s etch­ing.

Edward Hop­per and the Amer­i­can Hotel will be trav­el­ing to the Indi­anapo­lis Muse­um of Art at New­fields in June 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Jour­ney Inside Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Paint­ings with a New Dig­i­tal Exhi­bi­tion

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

60-Sec­ond Intro­duc­tions to 12 Ground­break­ing Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hop­per, Pol­lock, Rothko & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Download Stunning 3D Scans of the Bust of Nefertiti, Now Released by Berlin’s Neues Museum

in Art, Current Affairs, Museums | November 18th, 2019

Two years ago, a scan­dalous “art heist” at the Neues Muse­um in Berlin—involving ille­gal­ly made 3D scans of the bust of Nefer­ti­ti—turned out to be a dif­fer­ent kind of crime. The two Egypt­ian artists who released the scans claimed they had made the images with a hid­den “hacked Kinect Sen­sor,” reports Annalee Newitz at Ars Tech­ni­ca. But dig­i­tal artist and design­er Cos­mo Wen­man dis­cov­ered these were scans made by the Neues Muse­um itself, which had been stolen by the artists or per­haps a muse­um employ­ee.

The ini­tial con­tro­ver­sy stemmed from the fact that the muse­um strict­ly con­trols images of the art­work, and had refused to release any of their Nefer­ti­ti scans to the pub­lic. The prac­tice, Wen­man point­ed out, is con­sis­tent across dozens of insti­tu­tions around the world. “There are many influ­en­tial muse­ums, uni­ver­si­ties, and pri­vate col­lec­tions that have extreme­ly high-qual­i­ty 3D data of impor­tant works, but they are not shar­ing that data with the pub­lic.” He lists many promi­nent exam­ples in a recent Rea­son arti­cle; the long list includes the Venus de Milo, Rodin’s Thinker, and works by Donatel­lo, Berni­ni, and Michelan­ge­lo.

What­ev­er their rea­sons, the aggres­sive­ly pro­pri­etary atti­tude adopt­ed by the Neues seems strange con­sid­er­ing the con­tro­ver­sial prove­nance of the Nefer­ti­ti bust. Ger­many has long claimed that it acquired the bust legal­ly in 1912. But at the time, the British con­trolled Egypt, and Egyp­tians them­selves had lit­tle say over the fate of their nation­al trea­sures. Fur­ther­more, the chain of cus­tody seems to include at least a few doc­u­ment­ed instances of fraud. Egypt has been demand­ing that the arti­fact be repa­tri­at­ed “ever since it first went on dis­play.”

This crit­i­cal his­tor­i­cal con­text notwith­stand­ing, the bust is already “one of the most copied works of ancient Egypt­ian art,” and one of the most famous. “Muse­ums should not be repos­i­to­ries of secret knowl­edge,” Wen­man argued in his blog post. Pres­ti­gious cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions “are in the best posi­tion to pro­duce and pub­lish 3D data of their works and pro­vide author­i­ta­tive con­text and com­men­tary.”

Wen­man waged a “3‑year-long free­dom of infor­ma­tion effort” to lib­er­ate the scans. His request was ini­tial­ly met with “the gift shop defense”—the muse­um claimed releas­ing the images would threat­en sales of Nefer­ti­ti mer­chan­dise. When the appeal to com­merce failed to dis­suade Wen­man, the muse­um let him exam­ine the scans “in a con­trolled set­ting”; they were essen­tial­ly treat­ing the images, he writes, “like a state secret.” Final­ly, they relent­ed, allow­ing Wen­man to pub­lish the scans, with­out any insti­tu­tion­al sup­port.

He has done so, and urged oth­ers to share his Rea­son arti­cle on social media to get word out about the files, now avail­able to down­load and use under a CC BY-NC-SA license. He has also tak­en his own lib­er­ties with the scans, col­oriz­ing and adding the blue 3D map­ping lines him­self to the image at the top, for exam­ple, drawn from his own inter­ac­tive 3D mod­el, which you can view and down­load here. These are exam­ples of his vision for high-qual­i­ty 3D scans of art­works, which can and should “be adapt­ed, mul­ti­plied, and remixed.”

“The best place to cel­e­brate great art,” says Wen­man, “is in a vibrant, live­ly, and anar­chic pop­u­lar cul­ture. The world’s back cat­a­log of art should be set free to run wild in our visu­al and tac­tile land­scape.” Orga­ni­za­tions like Scan the World have been releas­ing unof­fi­cial 3D scans to the pub­lic for the past cou­ple years, but these can­not guar­an­tee the accu­ra­cy of mod­els ren­dered by the insti­tu­tions them­selves.

Whether the actu­al bust of Nefer­ti­ti should be returned to Egypt is a some­what more com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion, since the 3,000-year old arti­fact may be too frag­ile to move and too cul­tur­al­ly impor­tant to risk dam­ag­ing in tran­sit. But whether or not its vir­tu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions should be giv­en to every­one who wants them seems more straight­for­ward.

The images already belong to the pub­lic, in a sense, Wen­man sug­gests. With­hold­ing them for the sake of pro­tect­ing sales seems like a vio­la­tion of the spir­it in which most cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions were found­ed. Down­load the Nefer­ti­ti scans at Thin­gi­verse, see Wen­man’s own 3D mod­els at Sketch­fab, and read all of his cor­re­spon­dence with the muse­um through­out the free­dom of infor­ma­tion process here. Next, he writes, he’s lob­by­ing for the release of offi­cial 3D Rodin scans. Watch this space. 

via Rea­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artists Put Online 3D, High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of 3,000-Year-Old Nefer­ti­ti Bust (and Con­tro­ver­sy Ensues)

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Art Class Instead Of Jail: New Program Lets Young Offenders Take Free Art Classes Rather Than Spend Time in the Criminal System

in Art, Life, Museums | November 4th, 2019

Art saves lives, and art can also save an indi­vid­ual from the stig­ma of an arrest record, pro­vid­ed that the arrest is for one of 15 non-vio­lent mis­de­meanors.

Project Reset, a muse­um-based ear­ly diver­sion pro­gram in three of New York City’s five bor­oughs, aims to reframe the way youth­ful (and not so youth­ful) offend­ers see them­selves, by con­sid­er­ing an art­work via a col­lec­tive inter­pre­tive process, before using it as the inspi­ra­tion for a col­lage or oil pas­tel-based project of their own.

The stakes are high­er and far more per­son­al than they are on the aver­age pub­lic school field trip. Upon com­ple­tion of a class rang­ing from 2.5 to 4 hours, the participant’s record is wiped clean and their assigned court date is ren­dered moot.

Rather than being herd­ed through a num­ber of gal­leries, par­tic­i­pants zero in on a sin­gle work.

At the Brook­lyn Muse­um, par­tic­i­pants in the under-25 age range get a crash course in Shift­ing the Gaze, Titus Kaphar’s inten­tion­al palimpsest, in which all the fig­ures in a repli­ca of Frans Hals’ Fam­i­ly Group in a Land­scape are whit­ed out so view­ers may focus in on the only char­ac­ter of col­or, a young boy who appears to be a fam­i­ly ser­vant.

Old­er par­tic­i­pants under­take a sim­i­lar­ly deep dive on The Judge­ment by Bob Thomp­son, an African Amer­i­can artist who was inspired by the con­stant inter­play between good and evil.

While this may strike some as a cushy pun­ish­ment, it’s a legit­i­mate attempt to acquaint par­tic­i­pants with the very real impact their actions could have on future plans—including col­lege admis­sions and job appli­ca­tions.

Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attor­ney, Cyrus Vance Jr., one of Project Reset’s archi­tects, shared a non-par­ti­san fis­cal take with City Lab’s Rebec­ca Bel­lan that may per­suade naysay­ers who feel the pro­gram rewards bud­ding crim­i­nals by giv­ing them an easy out:

If you jump sub­way turn­stiles in Man­hat­tan, you nev­er go to jail. You can do it 100 times and no court is ever going to send you to jail. So we spend about $2,200 to process a theft of ser­vices arrest for a $2.75 fare. Our jus­tice sys­tem falls most heav­i­ly on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, and we real­ly need to rethink how we approach these cas­es, both to get bet­ter out­comes, but also to reduce the impact which is very often viewed as tar­get­ed and unfair on par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ties.

Above is a list of the non-vio­lent mis­de­meanors that can chan­nel first timers toward the apt­ly named Project Reset.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Med Schools Are Requir­ing Stu­dents to Take Art Class­es, and How It Makes Med Stu­dents Bet­ter Doc­tors

Won­der­ful­ly Off­beat Assign­ments That Artist John Baldessari Gave to His Art Stu­dents (1970)

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC for her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Explore 1400 Paintings & Drawings by Vincent van Gogh–and Much More–at the Van Gogh Museum’s Online Collection

in Art, Museums | October 28th, 2019

Read­ers will receive no prizes for guess­ing what they’ll find, broad­ly speak­ing, at the Van Gogh Muse­um. But they may well be sur­prised by the full scope of the Van Gogh and Van Gogh-relat­ed work and infor­ma­tion on offer for their free perusal at the Van Gogh Muse­um’s online col­lec­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly, you can view and learn about all of the paint­ings and draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh in the col­lec­tion, includ­ing some of his best-known pieces like The Pota­to Eaters, a scene of “the harsh real­i­ty of coun­try life” the artist delib­er­ate­ly chose for its dif­fi­cul­ty; The Bed­room (or Bed­room in Arles), with its bright col­ors “meant to express absolute ‘repose’ or ‘sleep’”; and, paint­ed between 1886 and 1889, no few­er than 21 self-por­traits, includ­ing Self-Por­trait with Ban­daged Ear, the face we think of when we think of van Gogh him­self.

For van Gogh’s most famous series of flo­ral still-life paint­ings the Van Gogh Muse­um’s online col­lec­tion goes much deep­er, offer­ing an entire sec­tion of its site ded­i­cat­ed to “every­thing about Sun­flowers.”

Among its sub­sec­tions you’ll find the sto­ry of how van Gogh “paint­ed sun­flow­ers as no one before him had ever done,” a look into the con­ser­va­tion of one of the most frag­ile of the artist’s mas­ter­pieces, and even a for-the-young-and-young-at-heart Sun­flow­ers col­or­ing-book page. If you get through all that and still feel your appetite for post-impres­sion­ist ren­der­ings of Helianthus not ful­ly sati­at­ed, the col­lec­tion’s cura­tors also offer a link to van Gogh’s oth­er depic­tions of sun­flow­ers, from Shed with Sun­flow­ers to Sun­flow­ers Gone to Seed.

Online or off, col­lec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the work of a sin­gle artist some­times suf­fer tun­nel vision, pro­vid­ing a wealth of detail about the life and the mas­ter­pieces, but lit­tle in the way of con­text. The Van Gogh Muse­um does­n’t, hav­ing put on view not just van Gogh’s work, but also that of the Japan­ese wood­block mak­ers from whom he drew inspi­ra­tion (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) as well as that of more recent artists who have drawn their own inspi­ra­tion from van Gogh: Britain’s Jason Brooks, Chi­na’s Zeng Fanzhi, and the Nether­lands’ own Pieter Lau­rens Mol, to say noth­ing of the likes of Edvard Munch and Fran­cis Bacon. Else­where you can even explore “the Parisian print world of the 19th cen­tu­ry,” a “peri­od of artis­tic inno­va­tion and deca­dence” that did more than its part to shape van Gogh’s sen­si­bil­i­ty. As the Van Gogh Muse­um clear­ly under­stands, to know an artist requires immers­ing your­self not just in their work, but in their world as well. Enter the van Gogh online col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

13 of Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

A Com­plete Archive of Vin­cent van Gogh’s Let­ters: Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed and Ful­ly Anno­tat­ed

Van Gogh’s Ugli­est Mas­ter­piece: A Break Down of His Late, Great Paint­ing, The Night Café (1888)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Treasures in the Trash: A Secret Museum Inside a New York City Department of Sanitation Garage

in Environment, Museums | October 14th, 2019

Like many New York­ers, retired san­i­ta­tion work­er Nel­son Moli­na has a keen inter­est in his fel­low cit­i­zens’ dis­cards.

But where­as oth­ers risk bed­bugs for the occa­sion­al curb­side score or dump­ster dive as an envi­ro-polit­i­cal act, Molina’s inter­est is couched in the cura­to­r­i­al.

The bulk of his col­lec­tion was amassed between 1981 and 2015, while he was on active duty in Carnegie Hill and East Harlem, col­lect­ing garbage in an area bor­dered by 96th Street, Fifth Avenue, 106th Street, and First Avenue.

At the end of every shift, he stashed the day’s finds at the garage. With the sup­port of his cowork­ers and high­er ups, his hob­by crept beyond the con­fines of his per­son­al area, fill­ing the lock­er room, and even­tu­al­ly expand­ing across the mas­sive sec­ond floor of Man­hat­tan East San­i­ta­tion Garage Num­ber 11, at which point it was declared an unof­fi­cial muse­um with the uncon­ven­tion­al name of Trea­sures in the Trash.

Because the muse­um is sit­u­at­ed inside a work­ing garage, vis­i­tors can only access the col­lec­tion dur­ing infre­quent, spe­cial­ly arranged tours. Hunter College’s East Harlem gallery and the City Reli­quary have host­ed trav­el­ing exhibits.

The Foun­da­tion for New York’s Strongest (a nick­name orig­i­nal­ly con­ferred on the Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion’s foot­ball team) is rais­ing funds for an off­site muse­um to show­case Molina’s 45,000+ trea­sures, along with exhibits ded­i­cat­ed to “DSNY’s rich his­to­ry.”

Molina’s for­mer cowork­ers mar­vel at his unerr­ing instinct for know­ing when an undis­tin­guished-look­ing bag of refuse con­tains an object worth sav­ing, from auto­graphed base­balls and books to keep­sakes of a deeply per­son­al nature, like pho­to albums, engraved watch­es, and wed­ding sam­plers.

There’s also a fair amount of seem­ing­ly dis­pos­able junk—obsolete con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy, fast food toys, and “col­lectibles” that in ret­ro­spect were mere fad. Moli­na dis­plays them en masse, their sheer num­bers becom­ing a source of won­der. That’s a lot of Pez dis­pensers, Tam­agotchis, and plas­tic Furbees that could be clut­ter­ing up a land­fill (or Ebay).

Some of the items Moli­na sin­gles out for show and tell in Nico­las Heller’s doc­u­men­tary short, at the top, seem like they could have con­sid­er­able resell val­ue. One man’s trash, you know…

But city san­i­ta­tion work­ers are pro­hib­it­ed from tak­ing their finds home, which may explain why Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion employ­ees (and Molina’s wife) have embraced the muse­um so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.

Even though Moli­na retired after rais­ing his six kids, he con­tin­ues to pre­side over the muse­um, review­ing trea­sures that oth­er san­i­ta­tion work­ers have sal­vaged for his approval, and decid­ing which mer­it inclu­sion in the col­lec­tion.

Preser­va­tion is in his blood, hav­ing been raised to repair rather than dis­card, a prac­tice he used to put into play at Christ­mas, when he would present his sib­lings with toys he’d res­cued and res­ur­rect­ed.

This thrifty ethos accounts for a large part of the plea­sure he takes in his col­lec­tion.

As to why or how his more sen­ti­men­tal or his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant arti­facts wound up bagged for curb­side pick­up, he leaves the spec­u­la­tion to vis­i­tors of a more nar­ra­tive bent.

Sign up for updates or make a dona­tion to the Foun­da­tion for New York’s Strongest’s cam­paign to rehouse the col­lec­tion in an open-to-the-pub­lic space here.

To inquire about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of upcom­ing tours, email the NYC Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion at to***@******yc.gov.

Pho­tos of Trea­sures in the Trash by Ayun Hal­l­i­day, © 2018

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed Exclu­sive­ly to Poster Art Opens Its Doors in the U.S.: Enter the Poster House

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A Liv­ing Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Oth­er Epic Cor­po­rate Fails

The Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um Curates 80 of the World’s Most Repul­sive Dish­es: Mag­got-Infest­ed Cheese, Putrid Shark & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Although she lives and works inside Nel­son Molina’s for­mer pick up zone, she has yet to see any of her dis­cards on dis­play. Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A New Kurt Vonnegut Museum Opens in Indianapolis … Right in Time for Banned Books Week

in Literature, Museums | September 26th, 2019

“All my jokes are Indi­anapo­lis,” Kurt Von­negut once said. “All my atti­tudes are Indi­anapo­lis. My ade­noids are Indi­anapo­lis. If I ever sev­ered myself from Indi­anapo­lis, I would be out of busi­ness. What peo­ple like about me is Indi­anapo­lis.” He deliv­ered those words to a high-school audi­ence in his home­town of Indi­anapo­lis in 1986, and a decade lat­er he made his feel­ings even clear­er in a com­mence­ment speech at But­ler Uni­ver­si­ty: “If I had to do it all over, I would choose to be born again in a hos­pi­tal in Indi­anapo­lis. I would choose to spend my child­hood again at 4365 North Illi­nois Street, about 10 blocks from here, and to again be a prod­uct of that city’s pub­lic schools.” Now, at 543 Indi­ana Avenue, we can expe­ri­ence the lega­cy of the man who wrote Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Cat’s Cra­dle, and Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons at the new­ly per­ma­nent Kurt Von­negut Muse­um and Library.

The muse­um’s founder and CEO Julia White­head “con­ceived the idea for a Von­negut muse­um in Novem­ber of 2008, a year and a half after the author’s death, writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Susan Salaz. “The phys­i­cal muse­um opened in a donat­ed store­front in 2011, dis­play­ing items donat­ed by friends or on loan from the Von­negut fam­i­ly” — his Pall Malls, his draw­ings, a repli­ca of his type­writer, his Pur­ple Heart.

But the col­lec­tion “has been home­less since Jan­u­ary 2019.” A fundrais­ing cam­paign this past spring raised $1.5 mil­lion in dona­tions, putting the muse­um in a posi­tion to pur­chase the Indi­ana Avenue build­ing, one capa­cious enough for vis­i­tors to, accord­ing to the muse­um’s about page, “view pho­tos from fam­i­ly, friends, and fans that reveal Von­negut as he lived; “pon­der rejec­tion let­ters Von­negut received from edi­tors”; and “rest a spell and lis­ten to what friends and col­leagues have to say about Von­negut and his work.”

The new­ly re-opened Kurt Von­negut Muse­um and Library will also pay trib­ute to the jazz-lov­ing, cen­sor­ship-loathing vet­er­an of the Sec­ond World War with an out­door tun­nel play­ing the music of Wes Mont­gomery and oth­er Indi­anapo­lis jazz greats, a “free­dom of expres­sion exhi­bi­tion” that Salaz describes as fea­tur­ing “the 100 books most fre­quent­ly banned in libraries and schools across the nation,” and vet­er­an-ori­ent­ed book clubs, writ­ing work­shops, and art exhi­bi­tions. In the muse­um’s peri­od of absence, Von­negut pil­grims in Indi­anapo­lis had no place to go (apart from the town land­marks designed by the writer’s archi­tect father and grand­fa­ther), but the 38-foot-tall mur­al on Mass­a­chu­setts Avenue by artist Pamela Bliss. Hav­ing known noth­ing of Von­negut’s work before, she fell in love with it after first vis­it­ing the muse­um her­self, she’ll soon use its Indi­ana Avenue build­ing as a can­vas on which to triple the city’s num­ber of Von­negut murals.

You can see more of the new Kurt Von­negut Muse­um and Library, which opened its doors for a sneak pre­view this past Banned Books Week, in the video at the top of the post, as well as in this four-part local news report. Though Von­negut expressed appre­ci­a­tion for Indi­anapo­lis all through­out his life, he also left the place for­ev­er when he head­ed east to Cor­nell. He also satir­i­cal­ly repur­posed it as Mid­land City, the sur­re­al­ly flat and pro­sa­ic Mid­west­ern set­ting of Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons whose cit­i­zens only speak seri­ous­ly of “mon­ey or struc­tures or trav­el or machin­ery,” their imag­i­na­tions “fly­wheels on the ram­shackle machin­ery of awful truth.” I hap­pen to be plan­ning a great Amer­i­can road trip that will take me through Indi­anapo­lis, and what with the pres­ence of an insti­tu­tion like the Kurt Von­negut Muse­um and Library — as well as all the cul­tur­al spots revealed by the Indi­anapo­lis-based The Art Assign­ment — it has become one of the cities I’m most excit­ed to vis­it. Von­negut, of all Indi­anapoli­tans, would sure­ly appre­ci­ate the irony.

via Smithsonian.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Should We Read Kurt Von­negut? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Kurt Von­negut Cre­ates a Report Card for His Nov­els, Rank­ing Them From A+ to D

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Behold Kurt Vonnegut’s Draw­ings: Writ­ing is Hard. Art is Pure Plea­sure

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Imagined Medieval Comics Illuminate the Absurdities of Modern Life

in Art, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Fashion, History, Museums | September 16th, 2019

In 2005, the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture revised its famous food pyra­mid, jet­ti­son­ing the famil­iar hier­ar­chi­cal graph­ic in favor of ver­ti­cal rain­bow stripes rep­re­sent­ing the var­i­ous nutri­tion­al groups. A stick fig­ure bound­ed up a stair­case built into one side, to rein­force the idea of adding reg­u­lar phys­i­cal activ­i­ty to all those whole grains and veg­gies.

The dietary infor­ma­tion it pro­mot­ed was an improve­ment on the orig­i­nal, but nutri­tion­al sci­en­tists were skep­ti­cal that the pub­lic would be able to parse the con­fus­ing graph­ic, and by and large this proved to be the case.

Artist Tyler Gun­ther, how­ev­er, was inspired:

I start­ed think­ing about the mes­sag­ing school chil­dren in 1308 were force fed to believe was part of a heart healthy diet, only to have the rug pulled out from under them 15 years lat­er when some monk rearranged the whole thing.

In oth­er words, you’d bet­ter dig into that annu­al goose pie, kids, while you’ve still got 6 glass­es of ale to wash it down.

The imag­ined over­lap between the mod­ern and the medieval is a fer­tile vein for Gunter, whose MFA in Cos­tume Design is often put to good use in his hilar­i­ous his­tor­i­cal comics:

Mod­ern men’s fash­ion is so incred­i­bly bor­ing. A guy wears a pat­tered shirt with a suit and he gets laud­ed as though he won the super bowl of fash­ion. But back in the Mid­dle Ages men made bold, brave fash­ion choic­es and I admire them great­ly for this. It’s so excit­ing to me to think of these inven­tive, strange, fan­tas­tic cre­ations being a part of the every­day mas­cu­line aes­thet­ic.

The shapes and struc­tures of women’s head­wear in the dark ages are tru­ly inspir­ing. Where were these milliners draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from? How were they engi­neered? How com­fort­able were they to wear? How did they fit through the major­i­ty of door­ways? What was it like to sit behind a par­tic­u­lar­ly large one in church? I’m still scrolling through many an inter­net his­to­ry blog to find the answers. 

Kathryn Warner’s Edward II blog has proved a help­ful resource, as has Anne H. van Buren’s book Illu­mi­nat­ing Fash­ion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Nether­lands.

The Brook­lyn-based, Arkansas-born artist also makes peri­od­ic pil­grim­ages to the Clois­ters, where the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um hous­es a vast num­ber illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, pan­el paint­ings, altar pieces, and the famed Uni­corn Tapes­tries:

On my first trip to The Clois­ters I saw a paint­ing of St. Michael and the dev­il almost imme­di­ate­ly. I don’t think my life or art has been the same since. None of us know what the dev­il looks like. But you wouldn’t know that based on how con­fi­dent­ly this artist por­trays his like­ness. After gaz­ing at this paint­ing for an extend­ed peri­od of time I want­ed so bad­ly to under­stand the imag­i­na­tion of who­ev­er could imag­ine an alli­ga­tor arms/face crotch/dragon pony­tail com­bo. I don’t think I’ve come close to scratch­ing the sur­face.

Every time I go to that muse­um I think, “Wow it’s like I’m on Game of Thrones” and then I have to remind myself kind­ly that this was real life. Almost every­thing there was an object that peo­ple inter­act­ed with as part of their aver­age dai­ly life and that fas­ci­nates me as some­one who lives in a world filled with mass pro­duced, plas­tic objects. 

Gunther’s draw­ings and comics are cre­at­ed (and aged) on that most mod­ern of conveniences—the iPad.

The British monar­chy and the First Ladies are also sources of fas­ci­na­tion, but the mid­dle ages are his pri­ma­ry pas­sion, to the point where he recent­ly cos­tumed him­self as a page to tell the sto­ry of Piers Gave­ston, 1st Earl of Corn­wall and Edward II’s dar­ling, aid­ed by a gar­ment rack he’d retooled as a medieval pageant cart-cum-pup­pet the­ater.

See the rest of Tyler Gunther’s Medieval Comics on his web­site and don’t for­get to sur­prise your favorite hygien­ist or oral sur­geon with his Medieval Den­tist print this hol­i­day sea­son.

All images used with per­mis­sion of artist Tyler Gun­ther

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make a Medieval Man­u­script: An Intro­duc­tion in 7 Videos

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley, with a spe­cial appear­ance by Tyler Gun­ther. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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