Watch Black Panther For Free in Theaters, Starting This Friday

in Film | January 30th, 2019

FYI. Ear­li­er this week, Dis­ney announced that the Acad­e­my Award-nom­i­nat­ed film Black Pan­ther “will return to the big screen to cel­e­brate Black His­to­ry Month for a one-week engage­ment, Feb­ru­ary 1–7, at 250 par­tic­i­pat­ing AMC The­atres loca­tions. To ensure that the movie is acces­si­ble to all, tick­ets are free for every­one, and there will be two show­ings per day at each par­tic­i­pat­ing the­ater.” To find a list of par­tic­i­pat­ing the­aters, just click here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal Black Pan­ther Ani­mat­ed Series Online: All Six Episodes Now Avail­able Thanks to Mar­vel

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

Every Spi­der-Man Movie and TV Show Explained By Kevin Smith

Watch the Meditative Cinepoem “H20”: A Landmark Avant-Garde Art Film from 1929

in Environment, Film, Nature | January 25th, 2019

We all stand to ben­e­fit from a bit of hydrother­a­py, but in these hec­tic, try­ing times, it’s chal­leng­ing to find the time for a bath, let alone come up with the dough for a trop­i­cal vaca­tion or sooth­ing spa expe­ri­ence.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, the near­ly hun­dred-year-old exper­i­men­tal film above may be your best option.

In 1929, pho­togra­her and film­mak­er Ralph Stein­er turned his cam­era on a num­ber of watery subjects—hydrants, water­falls, streams, rain­drops dis­turb­ing placid pud­dled sur­faces.…

The result was H20, an 11-and-a-half minute cinepo­em, con­sid­ered by film his­to­ri­ans, The New York Times not­ed in Steiner’s obit, to be “the sec­ond Amer­i­can art film.”

(Have a look at James Sib­ley Wat­son and Melville Webber’s impres­sion­is­tic 1928 adap­ta­tion of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Ush­er if you’re curi­ous about the first.)

Pho­to­play mag­a­zine bestowed its first prize for ama­teur film­mak­ing upon H20, prais­ing Steiner’s pure abstract pat­terns and aston­ish­ing tem­po, and gush­ing that “the pic­ture is bound to attract wide atten­tion and a great deal of dis­cus­sion wher­ev­er it is shown.”

He revis­it­ed the sub­ject two years lat­er with Surf and Sea­weed, above, though his fas­ci­na­tion with move­ment was not lim­it­ed to the nat­ur­al world, as evi­denced by 1930’s Mechan­i­cal Prin­ci­ples.

The hub­bub may have died down a bit in the 90 years since H20’s release, though Steiner’s spir­it lives on in a num­ber of young exper­i­men­tal filmmakers—witness Nor­bert Shieh’s award-win­ning Wash­es, Dave Krunal’s Water­bomb, and Jaden Chen’s A Cup of Water, below.

H2O has been pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty by the Library of Con­gress’ Unit­ed States Nation­al Film Reg­istry. The orig­i­nal piano score in the ver­sion fea­tured on Open Cul­ture was com­posed by William Pear­son.

Down­load a free copy of H20 from the Inter­net archive for use in future try­ing times.

Stein­er’s films will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Avant Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Watch Four Ground­break­ing Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Feb­ru­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The 1959 Project: A New Photoblog Takes a Day-By-Day Look at 1959, the Great Watershed Year in Jazz

in Jazz, Music | January 23rd, 2019

If you’ve hung around Open Cul­ture long enough, you’ve heard said that 1959 was a water­shed year for jazz—the year of modal clas­sics Giant Steps and Kind of Blue, “har­molod­ic” mas­ter­piece The Shape of Jazz to Come, and the for­ev­er cool Time Out and Min­gus Ah Um. Six­ty years lat­er in 2019, these exper­i­ments and con­fi­dent leaps for­ward con­tin­ue to mark piv­otal moments in mod­ern music—moments doc­u­ment­ed heav­i­ly by the pho­tog­ra­phers who gave the albums their inim­itable look.

To cel­e­brate that year in musi­cal break­throughs and pho­to­graph­ic near-per­fec­tion, sports­writer and jazz his­to­ry “super­fan” Natal­ie Wein­er has launched a blog called The 1959 Project. “The premise is sim­ple,” writes Tim Car­mody at Kot­tke, “every day, a snap­shot of the world of jazz six­ty years ago.” Sim­ple it may be, but its dive into jazz his­to­ry is deep and sat­is­fy­ing. The project has already occa­sion­al­ly strayed out­side the lines, post­ing mate­ri­als from 1958 and 1960. But great moments in music his­to­ry can­not be forced to fit tidi­ly inside cal­en­dar years.

In addi­tion to icon­ic pho­tos, Wein­er posts short sum­maries, news clip­pings, film and tele­vi­sion clips, and record­ings from albums like Milt Jack­son and John Coltrane’s Bags & Trane (1960). Yesterday’s post focused on Max Roach’s 1959 The Many Sides of Max (see him in the stu­dio with Book­er Lit­tle at the top). Jan­u­ary 18th brought us Jack­ie McLean’s Jackie’s Bag, record­ed 1959, released 1960, fea­tur­ing Don­ald Byrd, Son­ny Clark, Paul Cham­bers, and Philly Jones, and made for Blue Note by the great Rudy Van Gelder.

Only twen­ty-three days into the year and The 1959 Project has already cov­ered Ken­ny Dorham and Can­non­ball Adder­ley, Bill Evans, Charles Min­gus (for 1958’s live Jazz Por­traits), and singer Ani­ta O’Day, rid­ing “a wave of crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess” after her 1958 album Ani­ta O’Day at Mis­ter Kelly’s. That’s only to men­tion a hand­ful of the entries so far. “It only promis­es to get bet­ter as the year goes on,” Car­mody writes—and so does the depth of your jazz knowl­edge and appre­ci­a­tion if you check in with this ded­i­cat­ed project even once or twice a week.

via Ted Gioia/Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1959: The Year That Changed Jazz

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

The Impos­si­bly Cool Album Cov­ers of Blue Note Records: Meet the Cre­ative Team Behind These Icon­ic Designs

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

Oodles of Classic Doctor Who Episodes Streaming Free Online This Month

in Sci Fi, Television | January 18th, 2019

A quick fyi: This month, Twitch is pre­sent­ing a marathon stream­ing of clas­sic Doc­tor Who episodes. Con­tin­u­ing through Jan­u­ary 25th, they plan to broad­cast “11 to 12 hours of new episodes per day (~27 episodes), repeat­ing once so you can catch Doc­tor Who near­ly 24 hours a day, every day…” Stream the episodes right above, or here on Twitch.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Doc­tor Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Muse­um & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Stephen Fry Narrates Two Animated Videos Explaining How Fear, Loathing & Misinformation Drove the Brexit Campaign

in Current Affairs, Politics | January 16th, 2019

For mil­lions watch­ing in the UK and around the world, antic­i­pat­ing the loom­ing Brex­it dead­line over the past two years has been like watch­ing the slow­est train wreck in his­to­ry. But for those not fol­low­ing the cov­er­age dai­ly, the impend­ing UK seces­sion from the Euro­pean Union is mys­ti­fy­ing. Just how many trains are there, and where are they com­ing from, and how fast, exact­ly, are they going?

From the future of food and drug imports, to the sta­tus of the “cur­rent­ly invis­i­ble” bor­der between North­ern Ire­land and the Repub­lic of Ire­land, to all of the legal minu­ti­ae no one men­tioned dur­ing the cam­paign, the con­se­quences of the recent fail­ure of a Brex­it deal could be dis­as­trous. Were “leave” cam­paign­ers hon­est in their sale of Brex­it to the vot­ers? Did they have any idea how such a thing would work? Ample evi­dence shows the answer to both ques­tions is an unqual­i­fied No.

The Vote Leave cam­paign direc­tor now describes the ref­er­en­dum as a “dumb idea.” Wealthy UK res­i­dents, includ­ing many a Brex­it politi­cian, are fast mov­ing their assets out of the coun­try. So how did Brex­it get sold to vot­ers if it’s such a poten­tial cat­a­stro­phe? The usu­al meth­ods worked quite well, Stephen Fry explains in the video above.

By stok­ing xeno­pho­bic fears over migrants and refugees, Brex­i­teers, he says, cre­at­ed “false assump­tions about the EU, some very dark, and some com­i­cal.” They were assist­ed in con­jur­ing a “myth­i­cal EU drag­on” by tabloid jour­nal­ists who called migrants “cock­roach­es” and “fer­al humans.” Rhetoric indis­tin­guish­able from Nazi pro­pa­gan­da drove a spike in hate crimes on both sides of the Atlantic.

Despite the insis­tence of many vot­ers that their choice was not dri­ven by racial ani­mus, the Brex­it cam­paign, like the Trump cam­paign, Fry says above, unde­ni­ably was. The con­se­quences of these votes for migrant work­ers and refugees speak for them­selves. In the UK, There­sa May’s “hos­tile envi­ron­ment” poli­cies have deprived British cit­i­zens from migrant fam­i­lies of liveli­hoods and safe­ty. Some have faced threats of depor­ta­tion, a sit­u­a­tion sim­i­lar to that fac­ing the chil­dren of Viet­nam War refugees in the US.

Fry calls for iden­ti­fy­ing a “new ene­my” of the peo­ple: mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion like the false claim that the NHS would save 350 mil­lion pounds a week after Brex­it and the repeat­ed lies in the U.S. about undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, crime, and ter­ror­ism. “Per­cep­tion of crime lev­els,” he says, “has become com­plete­ly detached from real­i­ty,” espe­cial­ly since the biggest secu­ri­ty threats come from hate crimes and right-wing vio­lence, a sit­u­a­tion report­ed on, warned about, and ignored, for sev­er­al years.

As in the US, so in the UK: relent­less­ly repeat­ed claims about “inva­sions” has cre­at­ed a very hos­tile envi­ron­ment for mil­lions of peo­ple. Are the facts like­ly to sway those vot­ers who were car­ried away by excess­es of hate and fear? Prob­a­bly not. But those who care about the truth should pay atten­tion to Fry’s debunk­ing. The facts about immi­gra­tion and oth­er issues used to sell far right poli­cies and politi­cians, as he out­lines in these videos, are entire­ly dif­fer­ent than what Brex­it lead­ers and their coun­ter­parts in the US want the pub­lic to believe.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brex­it 101: The UK’s Stun­ning Vote Explained in 4 Min­utes

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies 3 Essen­tial Fea­tures of Fas­cism: Invok­ing a Myth­ic Past, Sow­ing Divi­sion & Attack­ing Truth

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Main Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

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

Making Sense of White Paintings: A Short Art History Lesson on Minimalism and the All-White Painting

in Art | January 15th, 2019

“I could do that” goes the refrain of philistines at mod­ern art gal­leries, some­times fol­lowed by a “Hell, my dog/cat/baby/elephant could do that!” Sophis­ti­cates smirk know­ing smirks. Oh no, sir or madam, they most cer­tain­ly could not. But maybe every­one, at some lev­el, comes across Agnes Martin’s White Stone or Jo Baer’s Unti­tled (White Square Laven­der) and thinks it looks like some­one “just took a tube of white paint and spread it on a can­vas.”

It’s tempt­ing to imag­ine, notes Vox in the explain­er video above, but “it’s not actu­al­ly that easy.”

Oh, real­ly? Enlight­en us…. Why exact­ly did Robert Ryman’s all-white paint­ing Bridge sell for $20.6 mil­lion dol­lars? This ques­tion may be answered in anoth­er video. Here, we get a lit­tle bit of art history—on the ori­gins of the all-white paint­ing in the min­i­mal­ism of Kaz­imir Male­vich (he pre­ferred to call it “Supre­ma­tism”) and the devel­op­ment of Min­i­mal­ism, cap­i­tal “M.”

Elis­a­beth Sher­man, assis­tant cura­tor at the Whit­ney Muse­um in New York says that “white isn’t ever a pure thing, white is always tint­ed in some way.” Of course we know this, she acknowl­edges, because we’ve mar­veled at the dozens of shades of white in the paint sec­tion of the hard­ware store. Attend to the sub­tle gra­da­tions of white, from warm to cool, and the range of tex­tures, lines, pat­terns, shapes, and “sub­tle intri­ca­cies,” and the all-white paint­ing begins to reveal itself as an almost liv­ing, breath­ing thing rather than a piece of dec­o­ra­tive dry­wall.

Art his­tor­i­cal­ly, the vari­ety of white paint­ings came about prin­ci­pal­ly in the 50s as a response to Abstract Expressionism’s emo­tion­al excess­es and the out­sized ges­tur­al per­son­al­i­ties of De Koon­ing and Pol­lock. Artists like Bauhaus alum Josef Albers and Min­i­mal­ist purist Frank Stel­la pro­posed that “the art object” should “be as far removed from the author as pos­si­ble.” No greater an attack could be launched on the idea of art as per­son­al expres­sion than the all-white paint­ing.

This ten­den­cy toward total abstraction—reducing art to fields of col­or, non-col­or, and sim­ple shapes—has made a lot of peo­ple very upset. Vox includes sev­er­al clips of “men get­ting angry” at Min­i­mal­ist art. The word “pre­ten­tious” pops up a lot. The all-white paint­ing has even inspired a play, Yas­mi­na Reza’s Art, about “a group of life­long friends who are torn apart when one of them buys an all-white paint­ing for $200,000.”

As for “I could do that”… in near­ly every show she’s worked on in her career as a cura­tor, Sher­man remarks, “some­one has said that.” Well, she says, yes, maybe you could. “But you didn’t.” So there. If look­ing at an all-white paint­ing (or an all-black paint­ing) makes you feel angry, annoyed, or dis­mis­sive, maybe, she says, try and get beyond that first impres­sion and engage with the sub­tleties of the work. And maybe don’t ask how much the muse­um paid for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Puts Online a Huge Col­lec­tion of Bauhaus Art Objects

Watch At the Muse­um, MoMA’s 8‑Part Doc­u­men­tary on What it Takes to Run a World-Class Muse­um

The Tree of Mod­ern Art: Ele­gant Draw­ing Visu­al­izes the Devel­op­ment of Mod­ern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

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

An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Predator to Sofa Sidekick

in Animation, Health, History | January 11th, 2019

Dogs sees us as their mas­ters while cats sees us as their slaves. — Anony­mous

The next time your friend’s pet cat sinks its fangs into your wrist, bear in mind that the beast is prob­a­bly still labor­ing under the impres­sion that it’s guard­ing the gra­naries.

Anthro­pol­o­gist Eva-Maria Gei­gl’s ani­mat­ed Ted-Ed Les­son, The His­to­ry of the World Accord­ing to Cats, above, awards spe­cial recog­ni­tion to Unsink­able Sam, a black-and-white ship’s cat who sur­vived three WWII ship­wrecks (on both Axis and Allied sides).

It’s a cute sto­ry, but as far as direct­ing the course of his­to­ry, Felis sil­vestris lybi­ca, a sub­species of wild­cat that can be traced to the Fer­tile Cres­cent some 12,000 years ago, emerges as the true star.

In a Neolith­ic spin of “The Farmer in the Dell,” the troughs and urns in which ancient farm­ers stored sur­plus grain attract­ed mice and rats, who in turn attract­ed these mus­cu­lar, preda­to­ry cats.

They got the job done.

Human and cats’ mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial rela­tion­ship spelled bad news for the rodent pop­u­la­tion, but sur­vival for today’s 600-mil­lion-some domes­tic cats, whose DNA is shock­ing­ly sim­i­lar to that of its pre­his­toric ances­tors.

Hav­ing proved their val­ue to the human pop­u­la­tion in terms of pest con­trol, cats quick­ly found them­selves ele­vat­ed to wel­come com­pan­ions of sol­diers and sailors, cel­e­brat­ed for their abil­i­ty to knock out rope-destroy­ing ver­min, as well as dan­ger­ous ani­mals on the order of snakes and scor­pi­ons.

Thus­ly did cats’ influ­ence spread.

Bastet, the Egypt­ian god­dess of domes­tic­i­ty, wom­en’s secrets, fer­til­i­ty, and child­birth is unmis­tak­ably feline.

Cats draw the char­i­ot of Freya, the Norse god­dess of love.

Their pop­u­lar­i­ty dipped briefly in the Late Mid­dle Ages, when humankind mis­tak­en­ly cred­it­ed cats as the source of the plague. In truth, that scourge was spread by rodents, who ran unchecked after men round­ed up their feline preda­tors for a grue­some slaugh­ter.

Nowa­days, a quick glimpse at Insta­gram is proof enough that cats are back on top.

(Yes, you can haz cheezburg­er with that.)

Dogs may see our ser­vice to them as proof that we are gods, buts cats sure­ly inter­pret the feed­ing and upkeep they receive at human hands as evi­dence they are the ones to be wor­shipped.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

What Hap­pens When a Cat Watch­es Hitchcock’s Psy­cho

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City Jan­u­ary 14 as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Bill Gates, Book Critic, Names His Top 5 Books of 2018

in Books | January 7th, 2019

Before we get too far into 2019, let’s quick­ly recap the five books that made it to the top of Bill Gates’ read­ing list in 2018. Over on his blog, Gates Notes, the Microsoft co-founder offers up these picks. He writes:

Edu­cat­ed, by Tara West­over. Tara nev­er went to school or vis­it­ed a doc­tor until she left home at 17. I nev­er thought I’d relate to a sto­ry about grow­ing up in a Mor­mon sur­vival­ist house­hold, but she’s such a good writer that she got me to reflect on my own life while read­ing about her extreme child­hood. Melin­da and I loved this mem­oir of a young woman whose thirst for learn­ing was so strong that she end­ed up get­ting a Ph.D. from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. [More here.]

Army of None, by Paul Scharre. Autonomous weapons aren’t exact­ly top of mind for most around the hol­i­days, but this thought-pro­vok­ing look at A.I. in war­fare is hard to put down. It’s an immense­ly com­pli­cat­ed top­ic, but Scharre offers clear expla­na­tions and presents both the pros and cons of machine-dri­ven war­fare. His flu­en­cy with the sub­ject should come as no sur­prise: he’s a vet­er­an who helped draft the U.S. government’s pol­i­cy on autonomous weapons. [More here.]

Bad Blood, by John Car­rey­rou. A bunch of my friends rec­om­mend­ed this one to me. Car­rey­rou gives you the defin­i­tive insider’s look at the rise and fall of Ther­a­nos. The sto­ry is even cra­zier than I expect­ed, and I found myself unable to put it down once I start­ed. This book has every­thing: elab­o­rate scams, cor­po­rate intrigue, mag­a­zine cov­er sto­ries, ruined fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, and the demise of a com­pa­ny once val­ued at near­ly $10 bil­lion. [More here.]

21 Lessons for the 21^st Cen­tu­ry, by Yuval Noah Harari. I’m a big fan of every­thing Harari has writ­ten, and his lat­est is no excep­tion. While Sapi­ens and Homo Deus cov­ered the past and future respec­tive­ly, this one is all about the present. If 2018 has left you over­whelmed by the state of the world, 21 Lessons offers a help­ful frame­work for pro­cess­ing the news and think­ing about the chal­lenges we face. [More here.]

The Head­space Guide to Med­i­ta­tion and Mind­ful­ness, by Andy Pud­di­combe. I’m sure 25-year-old me would scoff at this one, but Melin­da and I have got­ten real­ly into med­i­ta­tion late­ly. The book starts with Puddicombe’s per­son­al jour­ney from a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent to a Bud­dhist monk and then becomes an enter­tain­ing explain­er on how to med­i­tate. If you’re think­ing about try­ing mind­ful­ness, this is the per­fect intro­duc­tion. [More here.]

Find oth­er Gates picks from pre­vi­ous sea­sons in the Relat­eds below.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Gates Names 5 Books You Should Read This Sum­mer

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer (2016)

Bill Gates, Book Crit­ic, Names His Top 5 Books of 2015

Sum­mer 2014

11,000 Digitized Books From 1923 Are Now Available Online at the Internet Archive

in Archives, Books | January 4th, 2019

Whether your inter­est is in win­ning argu­ments online or con­sid­er­ably deep­en­ing your knowl­edge of world cul­tur­al and intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry, you will be very well-served by at least one gov­ern­ment agency from now into the fore­see­able future. Thanks to the expi­ra­tion of the so-called “Micky Mouse Pro­tec­tion Act,” the U.S. Copy­right Office will release a year’s worth of art, lit­er­a­ture, schol­ar­ship, pho­tog­ra­phy, film, etc. into the pub­lic domain, start­ing with 1923 this year then mov­ing through the 20th cen­tu­ry each sub­se­quent year.

And thanks to the ven­er­a­ble online insti­tu­tion the Inter­net Archive, we already have almost 11,000 texts from 1923 in mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal for­mats, just a click or two away.

A cur­so­ry sur­vey pro­duced Wm. A. Haussmann’s trans­la­tion of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, Arthur Stan­ley Eddington’s The Math­e­mat­i­cal The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, Wal­do Lincoln’s His­to­ry of the Lin­coln Fam­i­ly, cov­er­ing the President’s ances­tors and descen­dants from 1637 to 1920…

…Lynn Thorndike’s A His­to­ry of Mag­ic and Exper­i­men­tal Sci­ence, Vol­ume I, Chan­dra Chakraberty’s An Inter­pre­ta­tion of Ancient Hin­du Med­i­cine, Edward McCurdy’s trans­la­tions of Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books, Nan­dal Sinha’s trans­la­tion of The Vais­esi­ka Sutras of Kana­da, Win­ston Churchill’s The World Cri­sis, Hen­ry Adams Bel­lows’ trans­la­tion of The Poet­ic Edda, a col­lec­tion of Mussolini’s polit­i­cal speech­es from 1914–1923, and Thom’s Irish Who’s Who, which cat­a­logues “promi­nent men and women in Irish life at home and abroad,” but telling­ly leaves out James Joyce, who had just pub­lished Ulysses, to some infamy, the pre­vi­ous year. (It does include William But­ler Yeats.)

1923 turns out to have been a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich lit­er­ary year itself, with many of the 20th century’s finest writ­ers pub­lish­ing major and less­er-known works (see here and here, for exam­ple). Brows­ing and focused search­ing through the archive—by top­ic, col­lec­tion, cre­ator, and language—will net many a lit­er­ary clas­sic or over­looked gem by some famous author. But you’ll also find much in this enor­mous col­lec­tion of dig­i­tized books that you would nev­er think to look for, like brows­ing the shelves of a Bor­ge­sian uni­ver­si­ty library with an entire wing devot­ed to the year 1923.

The Inter­net Archive home­page looks as mod­est as it does ded­i­cat­ed, list­ing all of its top col­lec­tions rather than fore­ground­ing the huge tranche of new­ly-avail­able mate­r­i­al (and count­ing) on the 1923 shelves. But founder Brew­ster Kahle does not mince words in describ­ing its incred­i­ble impor­tance. “We have short­changed a gen­er­a­tion,” he says, “The 20th cen­tu­ry is large­ly miss­ing from the inter­net” (in legal­ly avail­able form, that is). Now and in the com­ing years, thou­sands of its sto­ries can be told by teach­ers, schol­ars, artists, and film­mak­ers with ever-broad­en­ing access to doc­u­men­tary his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:   

An Avalanche of Nov­els, Films and Oth­er Works of Art Will Soon Enter the Pub­lic Domain: Vir­ginia Woolf, Char­lie Chap­lin, William Car­los Williams, Buster Keaton & More

The Library of Con­gress Makes Thou­sands of Fab­u­lous Pho­tos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

The Pub­lic Domain Project Makes 10,000 Film Clips, 64,000 Images & 100s of Audio Files Free to Use

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

Watch the Painstaking and Nerve-Racking Process of Restoring a Drawing by Michelangelo

in Architecture, Art, Museums | January 4th, 2019

We live in a dis­pos­able cul­ture, but cer­tain things war­rant the time and effort of mend­ing—good shoes, hearts, Michelan­ge­lo draw­ings…

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s paper con­ser­va­tor Mar­jorie Shel­ley, above, had the nerve-wrack­ing task of tack­ling the lat­ter, in prepa­ra­tion for last year’s Michelan­ge­lo: Divine Drafts­man and Design­er exhi­bi­tion.

The work in ques­tion, a two-sided sketch fea­tur­ing designs for a mon­u­men­tal altar or facade, thought to be San Sil­ve­stro in Capite, Rome, arrived in sad con­di­tion.

The 16th-cen­tu­ry linen and flax paper on which the pre­cious ren­der­ings were made was stained with mold, and bad­ly creased due to a poor­ly repaired tear and two long-ago attempts to mount it for eas­i­er view­ing, one by the artist’s blind nephew and anoth­er by col­lec­tor and biog­ra­ph­er Fil­ip­po Bald­in­uc­ci.

Like many restora­tion experts, Shel­ley exhibits extra­or­di­nary patience and nerves of steel. Iden­ti­fy­ing the dam­age and its cause is just the begin­ning. The hands-on por­tion of her work involves intro­duc­ing sol­vents and mois­ture, both of which have the poten­tial to fur­ther dam­age the del­i­cate draw­ing. Even though she choos­es the least inva­sive of tools—a tiny brush—to loosen the 500-year-old adhe­sive, one slip could spell dis­as­ter. It’s not just the draw­ing that’s of his­tor­i­cal import. The well-intend­ed mount­ings are also part of the nar­ra­tive, and must be pre­served as such.

As she explains above, a bedaz­zling Sis­tine Chapel-like makeover was nei­ther pos­si­ble nor prefer­able.

One won­ders how many of the 702,516 vis­i­tors who attend­ed the exhi­bi­tion dur­ing its 3 month run noticed Shelley’s hand­i­work (or even the draw­ing itself, giv­en the large num­ber of oth­er, sex­i­er works on dis­play).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Art Con­ser­va­tor Bring Clas­sic Paint­ings Back to Life in Intrigu­ing­ly Nar­rat­ed Videos

How an Art Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Short, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­men­tary

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece, The Night Watch, Will Get Restored and You Can Watch It Hap­pen Live, Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City this Jan­u­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.