Contemporary Culture
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38 Contemporary Culture
Spring/Summer Issue_27
Spotlight
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SHOP-SAVVY: Paris Design Week – A dizzying, dazzling trip around the world, an interior designer’s dream scavenger’s hunt
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SHOP SAVVY: Miami Design District – From urban decay to haute couture
TRAVEL + Leisure
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REAL ESTATE: Exquisite Greek Revival – A Literary & Historic Landmark, with a Contemporary Landscape
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Getting Grounded in Guatemala
EXHIBIT: All the Sea Knows – Marine Art from the Museum of the City of New York
STYLE
Events + Gatherings
ARCHITECTURE: The New York Palazzo
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APPETITE
Parties, Art Exhibitions & Activities
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The Golden Palate by Fred Bollaci
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An Out-of-Earth Experience
FEATURE
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Va Va Vroom! The art of the vehicle
Cover story
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Looking through the lens with Howard Schatz
Indulge
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MOTORING: Formula 1 – The 2015 season outlook
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64 Contemporary Culture
Spring/Summer Issue_27 Feature
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The International SeaKeepers Society
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The Floating Hospital
PULSE
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ART: Celine McDonald paints life in New England icons
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MUSIC: Up In Smoke – The failure of the Burning Man
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Decorative Arts
THEATER: The Producing Career of Daryl Roth
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Venü Magazine’s marketplace for furniture, lighting, textiles, jewelry, art, antiques and accessories
FILM + ENTERTAINMENT
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ART + OBJECTS
“Lambert & Stamp” – Directed by James D. Cooper
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Venü Magazine’s marketplace for furniture, lighting, textiles, jewelry, art, antiques and accessories
GALLERY + MUSEUM GUIDE
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Gallery and Museum listings in Connecticut and New York
SOCIETY
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The Daisy Column: Miami society, The powerful, The chic, The unique
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President, Publication Director Tracey Thomas Features Editor Cindy Clarke Film & Entertainment Editor Peter J. Fox Decorative Arts Editor Matthew Sturtevant Florida Content Editor Daisy Olivera Copy Editors Susan Sullivan, Marc J. Miller Publisher Venü Media Company DESIGN & PRODUCTION J. Michael & Company Contributing Writers Susana Baker, Fred Bollaci, Cindy Clarke, Molly Canfield, Phillip James Dodd, Tammi Flynn, Peter Fox, Sean Granahan, David Green, Marianne Brunson Frisch, Linda Kavanagh, Janet Langsem, James McDonald, Daisy Olivera, Gwen North Reiss, William Squier, Matthew Sturtevant National Advertising Director Sabrina Sheth Business Development Shelly Harvey/Connecticut, Liz Marks/New York INTERN Gabby Gonzalez Legal Counsel Alan Neigher, Sheryle Levine (Byelas & Neigher, Westport, CT) Distribution Thomas Cossuto, Man In Motion, LLC Office 840 Reef Road, 2nd Floor, Fairfield, CT 06824 Advertising Inquiries advertising@venumagazine.com Editorial Contribution editorial@venumagazine.com Subscriptions subscribe@venumagazine.com
The small print: No responsibility can be taken for the quality and accuracy of the reproductions, as this is dependent upon the artwork and material supplied. No responsibility can be taken for typographical errors. The publishers reserve the right to refuse and edit material as presented. All prices and specifications to advertise are subject to change without notice. The opinions in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher. Copyright VENÜ Magazine. All rights reserved. The name VENÜ Magazine is copyright protected. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted without written consent from the publisher. VENÜ Magazine does not accept responsibility for unsolicited material. This is a bimonthly publication and we encourage the public, galleries, artists, designers, photographers, writers (calling all creative’s) to submit photos, features, drawings, etc., but we assume no responsibility for failure to publish submissions.
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by Noelle Newell
SPOTLIGHT / Shop-Savvy
Paris Design Week A dizzying, dazzling trip around the world, an interior designer’s dream scavenger’s hunt
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assion for Paris alone is enough to embark a trip. This time I attended Maison & Objet 2015 Parc des Expositions de Villepinte, quick spin through Paris Deco Off held in the design quarter of Paris where streets were temporarily decorated with over sized lampshades in colorful patterns and Sunday morning champagne breakfast with The Antique Diva at Marché aux Puces. This was a dizzying, dazzling trip around the world an interior designer’s dream scavenger’s hunt. Maison & Objet provides an international delight; flavors include elegance, refinement of Japan where contemporary design is executed with old world craftsmanship, renown fashion designers show off their best fashions with home collections, celebrity Artists design for luxury and celebrated historic French Art de la table (Silver, China, Crystal) companies and Venetian dreams of breathtaking Murano glass
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and from England handmade modernity with roots deep in history prevail. Reflecting on my finds I’ve dreamt up my home with wallpaper from Fromental, Folly Chinoiserie for the foyer. I would illuminate my way with Murano lighting from Seguso Gianni. I would choose from fashion designers such as Etro to dress my bed. I could dream up stunning window treatments in endless choices of fabrics such as Goudenov a bejeweled fabric by Jacob Schlaepfer. I would drink Mariage Frères tea from hand hammered and chiseled copper-ware teapot designed by Ken Okuyama at breakfast. Serve espresso in rosewood cups from Marunao. Savor a Nendo chocolate designed by Maison Objet Designer of the Year Oki Sato. My feet would never feel the chill of winter with artistic rugs from Roya Sahraï Secret de Luxe. My Objet d’art choice, Eternal crystal butterflies adoringly captured by Damien Hirst and produced by Lalique available in series of three panels Love, Hope and Beauty. I would top off this splendid interior with a crown from Christofle. My plants will be watered timely with Koubachi gardening assistant and I’ll be able to monitor my heating with Nest and get around town on my Yikebike. This is just a few flavors I savored at Maison and Objet. There’s a great world of design waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.
SPOTLIGHT / Shop-Savvy
by Susana Baker
Photo: Robin Hill
Miami Design District: From Urban Decay to Haute Couture
Photo: Robin Hill
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he most ambitious vision to date for Real Estate Developer Craig Robbins with over 1.4 billion dollar transformation creating this once abandoned neighborhood of Buena Vista aka The Design District, into a global center of luxury brands, from jewelry to innovative high fashion, with Harry Winston, Tiffany, Cartier, Bvlugari, Dior, Tom Ford, Versace to name a few. Miami native, Craig Robbins founded Dacra Realty Estate development company in 1987. Dacra has played an integral role in the making of Miami South Beach including Espanola Way and Lincoln Road. In the Mid 90’s, Craig Robbins stumbled into the Buena Vista neighborhood, Robbins was looking for Real Estate opportunities, since the square footage real estate prices for South Beach were at an all-time high, Robbins knew that it was just a matter of time that land just over the causeway into the Mainland and closest to the beach would soon be desirable. When Robbins saw the Design District it reminded him of properties he and his family owned in Espanola Way and Lincoln Road, they were historical, contained and charming.
Photo: Robin Hill
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Photo: Robin Hill
The residential area of Buena Vista has over 375 registered Historical homes, the district is small and contained with both the commercial and residential spreading from 36th street to 47th Street and its borders being the eastside of North Miami Avenue to the west side of NE 2nd Avenue. A small but power packed neighborhood with a shopping destination dedicated to top global designers, historical architecture, celebrity restaurants, art galleries and the new home for the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). Which Craig Robbins donated the lot where the ICA plans to build 37,5000 square foot across three floors. Miami has evolved into a World Class City with the cultural art scene being one of the best in the World, along with the annual contemporary fair of Art Basel, with newly opened PAMM ( Perez Art Museum Miami), and now the new and beautiful haute couture world of the Design District. With each unveiling of these ascetically new beautiful facades of the Design District, nestled are the historical gems of the past including the 1926 Buena Vista Post Office and the historical Moore Furniture Building. Bearing the founding fathers name of the Design District, Theodore Vivian Moore. Moore came down from North Carolina, seeking new frontiers and opportunities. Visiting Miami in 1922 and falling in love with the area, Moore decided to retire and make a new home for his family. He built a beautiful Spanish Meditterrian home for himself in 1924 on the corner of 45th Street and NE 1st Avenue. He became the “King
Photo: Robin Hill
of Pineapples”, making Buena Vista into a pineapple plantation and hobby of choice for Moore’s retirement days. With Flagler opening the Buena Vista Station and the railroad bringing in more residents and visitors, Moore decided to donate his land to the City of Miami and to finish the Moore Furniture building in 1926. The Moore Furniture Building which to this date is a true gem of historical architecture and beauty. Theodore Vivian Moore decided that he would venture into luxury furniture and with the invitation of New York top designer Richard Plummer, they venture into a new found business, the Moore Furniture Building for all your design needs. Soon the word spread of Flagler’s railroad, the beauty of Buena Vista and the birth of the new Miami Design District. Mr. Moore was the founding father of the Design District with his vision for a new home and metropolis, but it is the courage, patience, and determination of one Miami Native, Craig Robbins that completes the dream and vision of the new Design District. For more information on the Design District visit www.miamidesigndistrict.com, and for tours with your own private guide visit www.theartexperiences.com. Dine Design and Explore the Design District!
by Gwen North Reiss
SPOTLIGHT / Real Estate
Exquisite Greek Revival A Literary & Historic Landmark, with a Contemporary Landscape
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ometimes a modern aesthetic can be a shot of adrenaline for an exquisite old house. When Richard and Sandra Bergmann restored their 1836 Greek Revival House in the center of New Canaan, Connecticut, they reconfigured a portion of the house to give them a double-height space that serves as a working architect’s studio and a generous gallery for art. While they wanted to make the house a perfect place for a couple of modernists to work and live, they also went at the nineteenth-century details with a preservationist fervor. They removed and stripped original windows for re-use, reinforced old joists and even consulted an 1827 builder’s manual to restore the handrail for the stair. Shortly after buying the house, the Bergmanns discovered that it had belonged for about 40 years to the family of Maxwell E. Perkins, the legendary Scribner’s editor who published Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe,
and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The house now bears a plaque with Perkins’s name and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The modern double-height studio dovetails into the gracious old spaces of the 19th century first-floor rooms while it also opens out at the lower level to a side garden. As owner/architect Dick Bergmann became increasingly interested in landscape architecture (he is now both a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects), he and Sandra transformed a hidden side yard into a multi-layered landscape with a geometric plan inspired in part by LeNotre. Stepped terraces, raised planting beds, and a stone labyrinth create a coherent and serene space that in mid-summer is full of various green plantings highlighted by blue and white flowers and what Sandra calls “pocket views” of the cluster
of houses and church buildings that make up New Canaan’s historic district. The Bergmanns’ modern garden is now included in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens. The house is just 88 steps—as Max Perkins used to say—from the New Canaan Train Station. In addition to its literary history, the stately house also served from 1891 to 1902 as a home to a New Canaan shoe-factory owner, and between 1919 and 1924 as the Community School (K-8), which later became the New Canaan Country School. The Bergmanns like to point out the built-in desks now preserved as bookshelves under the bay window in a Victorian addition that has been the Perkins family dining room, a classroom, a doctor’s exam room, and now an architect’s conference room and library. Part of the historic district where the house is nestled is known to many as “God’s Acre” because of three prominent churches that face each other across a sloping triangular green. Dick Bergmann remembers a man coming to the door of his columned Greek Revival house to ask when services started. Bergmann had the wit and presence of mind to reply: “We don’t have services, but I’d be happy to pass the plate.”
63 Park Street, New Canaan, CT (www.63ParkSt.com). Offered at $3.5 million with Inger Stringfellow of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty 203.321.9361
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SPOTLIGHT / Exhibit
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“All The Sea Knows” Marine Art from the Museum of the City of New York June 5 - September 20, 2015 Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT
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efore Miss Florence helped introduce the world to American Impressionism, her father, Captain Robert Griswold, made his mark as a respected sea captain. For 25 years he sailed the Atlantic between New York and London on packet ships of the Black X Line. This summer the Museum honors Connecticut’s contributions to the history of maritime travel and trade with the exhibition, All the Sea Knows: Marine Art from the Museum of the City of New York. On view June 5 through September 20, 2015, All the Sea Knows reveals the diverse ways the sea has been depicted in American art and its connections to the Connecticut shore. A special gallery will unite, for the first time, paintings from MCNY’s collection with selections from the Museum’s collection that depict ships of the Black X Line. In addition,
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letters to Captain Griswold from his wife are being transcribed and will be the basis for an online theatrical presentation that will provide insight into the lives of sea captains and those left behind, as well as how the shipping industry affected the entire shoreline community. The exhibition takes its title from Carl Sandburg’s poem “Sea-Wash,” and juxtaposes works of art with passages from literature to convey the many and varied ways Americans have embraced the sea. Commissioned ship portraits teem with lovingly rendered details of the vessels that transported Americans up rivers and across oceans. Pleasure yachts race over churning waves, pitting human precision against nature’s power. Other artists limned coastal landmarks—the natural or manmade beacons of home—or commemorated the pageantry celebrated aboard ship at events such as the Statue of Liberty’s dedication. Taken together, these paintings reveal the genre of marine art to be as varied as landscape painting.
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by Tammi Flynn
3 4 1. Michael John Boog, Hell Gate, 1888, Oil on canvas, 19" x 35" Museum of the City of New York 2. John Tudgay, “Palestine” Black X Line, 1855, Oil on canvas, 27" x 39" Museum of the City of New York 3. James Bard, William Bayles, 1854, Oil on canvas, 31-1/2" x 50 -1/2" Museum of the City of New York 4. James Edward Buttersworth, Yacht Race off Fort Wadsworth, ca. 1870 Oil on board, 9-1/4" x 12-1/4", Museum of the City of New York 5. Edward Moran, Enlightening the World, (The Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty), 1886, Oil on canvas, 49-1/2" x 39" Museum of the City of New York
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events + gatherings
Angela Whitford
FCBuzz Celebrating Arts & Culture in Our Community
Executive Director, Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County
By David Green Director of Programs, Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County
Among the best places to see art in Fairfield County are our colleges and universities. Gallery directors use their collections to integrate art into students’ coursework, and design exhibitions to bring residents, families and visitors through the gates to enjoy world-class art. Top Ten Contemporary Art Gallery The Housatonic Museum of Art, one of “Connecticut’s Top 10 Contemporary Art Galleries,” has one of the largest permanent collections of any two-year college in the Northeast. Established in 1967 by art professor Burt Chernow (1933-1997), its more than 5,000 pieces include ancient ethnographic objects nestled among modern masterworks (by Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Warhol, Rauschenberg, and many more). Visitors can tour the college’s two buildings to explore the collection, designed as “a visual library,” giving students (in Chernow’s words) “daily unhurried contacts with works of art, in which they can see true color, size and texture in a familiar college setting.” Robbin Zella Willard Lustenader’s has directed the Enemy Sowing, included Museum and curated in Remytholgies - New Inventions of Old Stories at the Galleries since the Housatonic Museum of 1998. Spring brings Art this Spring exhibits of work by faculty (April 1-25, with the University of Bridgeport) and students (May 1-25), before the intriguing, Remythologies: New Inventions of Old Stories, curated by Stephen Kobasa (June 11-July 24). Opening September 3 is Looking Back/Looking Ahead, celebrating the Museum’s 50th Anniversary.
Castle on a Hill Fairfield University’s Bellarmine Museum of Art opened in 2010 in the renovated 1920 English manorial-style Bellarmine Hall. Collection highlights include: The Kress Collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings; plaster casts of renowned Classical works; Asian art; and a stunning set of objects from
American Classics
Craig Barber’s Eden in the Mekong will be on view in the Ghosts in the Landscape - Vietnam Revisited exhbit, opening June 6th
the Bronze Age to 17th-century Europe, from the Metropolitan Museum. Linda Wolk-Simon is the Bellarmine’s new director, an Italian Renaissance specialist and former Met curator. Exhibitions include, through May 22, the influential American Impressionist Gari Melchers (1860-1932) and, in the fall, Hair in the Classical World, featuring depictions of hair from the Bronze Age to late Antiquity. Dr. Wolk-Simon also heads the Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery, housed in the dramatic Quick Center for the Arts. Through June 6, you can view Ghosts in the Landscape: Vietnam Revisited, 46 serene and mysterious panorama platinum pinhole-camera images by ex-combat marine Craig J. Barber. This fall, a celebration of Dance features works by sculptor Marc Mellon, painter Jane Sutherland, and photographer Philip Trager.
Cutting-Edge Contemporary The University of Bridgeport’s Schelfhaudt Gallery opened in 1968 in the Arnold Bernhard Center for the Arts and Humanities, an imposing nine-floor structure next to Seaside Park (offering magnificent views of the Park, the Sound, and downtown Bridgeport). In 2012, the Gallery was renamed to honor benefactor Peter Konsterlie with Michael Sorgatz painting Peter Schelfhaudt,
Looking for something different to do? FCBuzz.org is the place to find out what’s happening in Fairfield County any day of the week—featuring theater, exhibits, music, history, science, family fun, classes and local artists. Click on FCBuzz.org. Pick a great event to attend. Then Go—bring your family, meet your friends or fly solo. FCBuzz.org™ is presented by the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County. For more information contact the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County by emailing info@CulturalAllianceFC.org, calling 203-256-2329, or visiting the Web site at www.CulturalAllianceFC.org.
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and artist/curator Peter Konsterlie was hired as director, enthusiastically pursuing its mission of showcasing mid-career and emerging professional artists - from Bridgeport, New Haven, New York and beyond. Following student and faculty shows this spring, Peter has curated an ambitious exhibit, Integral Structure (opening Oct 23): six artists exploring the geometric structures underpinning their art. Norwalk Community College’s East Campus Art Gallery presents five contemporary exhibitions/installations each year featuring emerging and midcareer artists. The Summer Show, curated by Susan Hardesty, opens June 1, with highlights from the college’s impressive art collection of more than 700 works by local and well-known artists (including Bearden, Christo, Katz, Koons, and Neel). Nicholas KrushenJoe Fucigna’s Mouse ick’s recently cleaned and Trap on view at Norwalk Community restored, “Fly Path II” will College’s Art Gallery be the focal point.
Center for Leading-Edge Content Sacred Heart University’s new Art & Design Gallery aims to be a new “Center for Content,” curated by Professor Jon Walker, featuring graphic design, illustration, studio art, digital motion and interactive graphics, documentary work, and artwork from the surrounding communities. After a series of SHU student shows this spring, see a Bridgeport Public Schools city-wide art show opening May 15.
8th Annual
JULY 3-5, 2015 Opening Night July 2 benefits Guild Hall + the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation
Private Estate, Lumber Lane Reserve, Bridgehampton, NY
arthamptons.com Media Partner
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events + gatherings
By Janet Langsam CEO, ArtsWestchester
New Work Spotlighted in Westchester ARTSEE Festival through July Top, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company performs on April 25th at Westchester Community College. Photo courtesy of the artist. Bottom, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s conductor Peter Oundijan conducts a newly commissioned work by Christopher Theofandis on June 20th at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts.
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hen we think about the concept of critical mass, we think about the amount of a substance needed to start a chain reaction. Those are the nuclear physics that ArtsWestchester was pondering when we started planning the ARTSEE festival. How can we start a chain reaction? What we were envisioning was an explosion of people going to cultural events at multiple venues throughout the county. Short of atomic energy, how could we make this happen? First, we reasoned, there had to be something new, a unique array, an experience different from the usual. Suppose we assembled a series of new works…arts happenings, never-before-seen-or-heard music and dance, performances you might want to explore in New York City, but don’t have the fare, don’t want to travel late, don’t want to spend a mint. What if we reached out to all of the arts organizations in Westchester and asked them “What’s new?” Well, there’s lots new… enough for a festival presented by 40 arts organizations with 70 events…all new work. The chain reaction we are hoping to start is one in which people tell people that there is something special going on in Westchester. Then, we hope for, plan for, and pray for
the explosion of more than 50,000 people attending events from March through July. From avant-garde original works for piano performed in ArtsWestchester’s gallery to world premieres by emerging composers at Copland House at Merestead to newly commissioned musical works at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts - - the concerts featured throughout the ARTSEE Festival are sure to inspire.
For those who prefer dance and theatre, world-class performances of new choreographic works will be presented by The Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck and by Rivertown Artists Workshop in Tarrytown. New plays and play readings will be presented by groups such as the Hudson Stage Company and Irvington Town Hall Theater. And if that’s not enough - - The ARTSEE Festival offers film premieres at places like the Jacob Burns Film Center and the TTUMC Arts Center, a Children’s Film Festival, poetry and book readings, and more than 30 art exhibitions and Open Studio Events. There’s another concept of critical mass that drove our thinking…that is, the critical mass of cultural venues visible in places such as NYC’s Museum Mile where there are nine museums within walking distance of each other. We were envious. Our cultural venues in Westchester are so spread out over our vast landscape that it’s hard to believe the critical mass that is actually in our own backyard. So we brought them together in one brochure, one festival, 40 venues and 70 events. It’s called ARTSEE. We hope to SEE you there. For your online ARTSEE Festival Brochure, visit artsw.org/artsee. You’ll find a five month festival calendar packed with dance, film, theatre, exhibitions, concerts, open studios, poetry readings and more.
ArtsWestchester is privileged to have been selected by BNY Mellon to show these works. For more information about the exhibit and ArtsWestchester, visit www.artsw.org or call (914) 428-4220. ArtsWestchester is located at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains, NY. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 12-5pm.
For more of Janet Langsam’s cultural musings, be sure to visit her blog at www.ThisandThatbyJL.com. For a full calendar of arts events visit: www.artsw.org. CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE 22 On display José Feliciano, “cuarto” guitar used to record his classic, “Feliz Navidad”
“Chip” Daniani of The Remains, who opened for the Beatles US Tour
MIAMI BEACH / MAY 12-15, 2015 MIAMI BEACH CONVENTION CENTER
READY FOR A RENDEZVOUS?
WWW.MAISON-OBJET.COM
INFO@SAFISALONS.FR SAFI AMERICAS LLC ORGANISATION, A COMPANY BELONGING TO SAFI SALONS FRANÇAIS ET INTERNATIONAUX. SAFI, A SUBSIDIARY OF ATELIERS D’ART DE FRANCE AND REED EXPOSITIONS FRANCE TRADE ONLY / IMAGE © OCEAN, CORBIS / DESIGN © BE-POLES CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE
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events + gatherings
Photos by Nicolas Bean van Vlamertynghe
Photo: Mike Lauterborn
Jens Buettner, Angelika Buettner
Lillian August and Venü Magazine celebrated Angelika Buettner and “Women” with an opening reception, March 12th at the Gallery at the Lillian August Design Center in her first show in the continental USA
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orn and raised in Germany, Angelika started her professional career in her native country and shortly thereafter moved to Paris where she made a name for herself. The artist now lives in New York and is exhibited her photographs for this first time in the continental USA with the exhibition “Women” at the gallery at Lillian August Design Center in Norwalk, CT. Angelika is known for her love of artistic challenge and variety. She carefully creates moods and atmosphere in her photography with a cinematic eye that adds dimension to these still images. The photography she has created for magazine spreads and advertisements is recognizable for its signature spice and sensuality. The artist’s body of work shows a broad range of styles, moods and subjects, yet each of Angelika’s photographs is infused with a certain ‘je ne sais quoi.’ Her approach to capturing the strong female form and sensual spirit is done with elegance, delicate depth and sensitive lighting so that her images of women always leave the viewer eager for more. The Winter 2015 issue of Venü magazine featured a cover story on Angelika. More of Angelika’s work can be seen here: www.angelikabuettner.com
Jens Buettner, John Weiss, Angelika Buettner, Dan Weiss
Media Sponsor: Venü Magazine 24
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JULY 9-13 | 2015 NOVA’S
9-13 JULY 2015 VIP PREVIEW JULY 9 ARK VIP PREVIEW
9 JULY
BENEFITING THE PARRISH ART MUSEUM & SOUTHAMPTON HOSPITAL
NEW LOCATION NOVA’S ARK 60 MILLSTONE ROAD INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY MODERN + DESIGN WWW. ART-SOUTHAMPTON .COM
Cheryl Maeder, “Hamptons Dunes”, 2012, archival photograph on plexiglas Mark Hachem, Paris
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events + gatherings
Ethical Metalsmiths hosted its first large-scale exhibit of jewelry made by its membership.
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he pieces were on display from April 7 - 11, 2015 at Linhardt Design in New York. Gardens of Gold celebrated the organization’s ten years of collective accomplishments. Jewelers from across the US and Canada had loaned and donated pieces from their socially and environmentally responsible collections, some of which were auctioned off to support Ethical Metalsmiths’ programs and outreach. “From day one we wanted Ethical Metalsmiths to be a springboard for taking sustainably made and responsibly sourced jewelry into the mainstream” says Christina Miller, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the, non-profit organization. In the organizations’ ten-year history Ethical Metalsmiths has successfully advocated for responsibly sourced jewelry via partnerships with mines abroad and US-based refiners, which represents a first in the US. Their programs are intended to both educate jewelers about ethical jewelry practices and provide access to traceable supplies of raw materials uch as gold, silver, and gemstones.
To learn more about Ethical Metalsmiths:www.ethicalmetalsmiths.org 26
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July 9–12, 2015 Fairview Farm at Mecox Bridgehampton
artmarkethamptons.com Objects made to be rejected 2014, by Linda Lopez, courtesy of Mindy Solomon Gallery CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE
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events + gatherings Gale Brewer – Manhattan Borough President
After party Vin Cipolla – Founder, CUE, and Board President, MAS
CUE - The Committee for Urban Entrpreneurship
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nitiated in September 2014, CUE works with the city’s most successful entrepreneurs and independent business owners to influence policies and development patterns to strengthen New York City’s economic resilience and livability. At a two-day event in March 2015, CUE gathered 140 entrepreneurs, artists, business owners, developers, and elected officials from across the country to develop a strategy to advance changes in land-use, zoning, the built environment, rules, and regulations to support – rather than deter – urban entrepreneurship and independent business success. CUE – the Committee for Urban Entrepreneurship - is an initiative of the Municipal Art Society of New York, stemming from its advocacy work for intentional planning around the Garment District, East Midtown, and areas surrounding Penn Station. Since 1893, The Municipal Art Society of New York has been dedicated to safeguarding the city’s past while advancing the best ideas for tomorrow. Leveraging our network of urban planners, architects, elected officials, activists, and developers, MAS has helped shape the future of New York for over 120 years.
John Rahaim – Planning Director, San Francisco Planning Department, City and County of San Francisco.
Craig Hatkoff – Co-Founder, Tribeca Film Festival Working Session – Taking the Cork of the Bottle: Liberating Land Use
CUE.MAS.ORG CUE@MAS.ORG
Michael Denton, Code/Interactive
Eric Ho – Founder, Made in the Lower East Side (miLES)
Audience watching speakers
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Media Sponsor: Venü Magazine
Photos by Vladimir Weinstein
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TRAVEL + Leisure
Photo: Katy Morris
Getting Grounded in Guatemala With the rare and beautiful quetzal, revered as a sacred Mayan symbol of goodness and light, as its national bird and the name of its currency, it’s no surprise the people I met here understand what is truly important in life. Written by Cindy Clarke Guatemala is off the radar for most travelers today, who, perhaps recalling stories about its daunting decades of civil war and corruption, have chosen to bypass this Central American gem for more popular resort-laden shores in nearby Mexico, Belize or Costa Rica. After spending an all-too-short week immersing in the cultural riches and stunning natural beauty of the lakeside villages lining volcano-ringed Lago de Atitlán and the enchanted fairy tale city that is colonial Antigua, the fact that there are fewer tourists here
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is a mixed blessing… with lucky visitors like me on the winning side and the indigenous Mayan people who truly need the economic boost that tourist dollars bring on the other. Headlining history notwithstanding, a trip to Guatemala assaults your senses. The smell of grilled corn tortillas deftly fashioned from ground maize into a mealtime staple, the flavorful aroma of freshly roasted coffee locally grown and produced on small carefully tended and terraced farms, and the artisan chocolate, chili flaked,
cardamom infused and salted to perfection, render you defenseless to resist their enticing advances. Music, piped from wooden marimbas crafted by hand, and greetings warmly offered in a song of Buenos dias, Buenos tardes and Buenos noches, touch the heart and stir the soul. Bustling street markets stun with color in brilliant hand-dyed, hand-woven textiles reflecting distinctive regional traditions, jade gently sculpted into a treasure trove of jeweled earrings, bracelets and pendants, giant tree-ripened avocados and melt-in-yourmouth mangos, and a riot of painted fantasies that play out in ceramic trays, jaguar benches and artwork that each speak volumes about a people choosing life over despondency. Staying disengaged is futile here. That the Mayan villagers we met in out of the way places like Panajachel, San Juan La Laguna and rural highland villages too small to be listed on the map, live in the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with the fourth highest rate of chronic childhood malnutrition in the world, seems not to dampen spirits. These are a proud people, once regarded as one of the world’s most advanced civilizations, who despite the litany of hardships they endure in every facet of their daily lives, are spiritually driven and gratefully grounded.
My trip to Guatemala was predicated by a long overdue visit to my daughter who works for the life-changing non-profit group Mayan Families. Their primary mission is to educate and empower the indigenous people so they can successfully thrive in the modern day world. But a fertile mind requires a nutritious diet, shelter from the elements and access to health care, much of which is out of reach for Mayan families who band together in multi-generational
one room shacks, without the basic necessities that we take for granted. So the selfless folks at Mayan Families, a majority of whom are indigenous Guatemalans, along with a staff of foreign professionals with diverse global backgrounds, educational degrees and work experience to match the depth and breadth of their passion for making a difference in people’s lives, also make it their business to feed the hungry, donate and deliver beds, vented stoves and workhorse pilas
These are a proud people, once regarded as one of the world’s most advanced civilizations, who despite the litany of hardships they endure in every facet of their daily lives, are spiritually driven and gratefully grounded.
Photo: Lindsay Morris
Photo: Lindsay Morris
(a trio of sinks for washing food, cleaning and personal hygiene), and heal the sick with medical care. Like the many donor-minded visitors we met in Guatemala, we were fortunate to lend a hand to the less fortunate during our stay. We piled into the back of a pickup truck loaded with eggs, vegetables, grains and good-for-you food to drop off at Mayan Families’ donationbuilt preschool nutritional centers, driving up and down switchback roads, one car wide, through adobe and tin-roofed towns to San Jorge La Laguna, El Barranco and Tierra Linda. We carried and delivered boxes and baskets of nutrition to feed sponsored schoolchildren, ages 3 to 5, for a week, stopping to bask in shy smiles and warm hugs from tiny doe-eyed kids who depend on Mayan Families for their only meal
Photo: Lindsay Morris
of the day, for their school building, their teachers and the opportunity for a better future. Driving along country roads that passed through lush emerald landscapes, we paused to peer down at low-lying villages posed in valleys threatened by seasonal floods and devoid of reliable government support. The serenity was palpable, but the challenges posed by natural disasters, from heavy rains to seething volcanoes, was very real. If not for the resilience of a population historically adaptable to changing fortunes, the landscapes we reveled in might have remained hidden from view like the once grand Mayan city of Tikal, resplendent in its architectural sophistication, that was reclaimed by Mother Nature in the heights of Lake Petén after its citizens mysteriously disappeared. As a point of fact, the Mayan people have long survived against the odds, from being enslaved for centuries by the Spanish to being repressed by the government, all too often corrupt. And through it all they have remained
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TRAVEL + Leisure
Photo: Lindsay Morris
But this is Guatemala and treasures lie in wait around every bend in the road. A three hour drive brought us back in time to the charming 17th-century colonial city of Antigua where we stayed inside an ancient monastery turned luxury hotel rife with ruins, gardens, archaeological finds and relics from centuries past. unfailingly polite, patient and accommodating. To walk among them is to follow in footsteps and callejones that are grounded in humility and humanity. We were invited inside homes huddled under stones and sheets of metal as we checked in on children abandoned by their parents and interviewed a soon to be displaced couple with two small children. We delivered a donated bed to a family of nine in San Antonio Palopó so they didn’t have to sleep on the dirt floor of their two-room cement “house,” and we were touched by the shrine of candles and flowers that lit up one corner of the empty room. We were told by the patriarch of the family, barefoot and skirted in traditional dress, that he prayed to God every day for help. This day, he said, God answered his prayers. At Mayan Families’ nutritional center for the elderly and kids in crisis in San Jorge, we fed and were embraced by elderly women, ancianos, who had no means to eat but who proudly dressed in meticulously woven huipils and skirts, breads plaited with textiled ribbons, and sparkling necklaces, as they sat down to their one hot meal of the day. I was moved and humbled by their grace and wondered about the magic that emanated from these lands. I discovered that the many ex-pats who found their way to “Pana” and the enclaves that
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grew up around the lake were equally enchanted by Guatemala, building new lives in homes that honored the scenery and the culture. They radiated that inherent contentment and peace that made me want to put down roots here too. As it was, we were blessed to stay 127 stone steps up in an impeccably decorated vacation rental of three beautiful mountain bungalows, fireplaces at the ready to ward off the night chill, nestled in manicured gardens of bougainvillea, bleeding hearts, roses and Mayan herbs, next to a cascading waterfall and overlooking the three volcanoes that lorded over Lake Atitlán below. The writer Aldous Huxley remarked that “the lake was too much of a good thing,” likening it to Italy’s Lake Como with “additional embellishments of volcanoes.” After spending four days admiring it on high from idyllic Casa Juana, while zip lining and butterfly watching in a nature reserve along its shores, and taking a private boat across its expanse to San Juan La Laguna for a wine and cheese lunch that defied description anywhere and a shopping excursion that rewarded with exquisitely crafted products and art and new friendships with the talented Mayan artisans, I couldn’t agree more. I knew that I would be hard pressed to replicate this experience and I found myself unexpectedly reluctant to leave.
Photo: Katy Morris
Photo: Courtesy of Myan Families
But this is Guatemala and treasures lie in wait around every bend in the road. A three hour drive brought us back in time to the charming 17th-century colonial city of Antigua where we stayed inside an ancient monastery turned luxury hotel rife with ruins, gardens, archaeological finds and relics from centuries past. Hotel Casa Santa Domingo is a destination in itself with underground museums, chapels and crypts that chronicle the history of Guatemala’s former capital city. Filled with tropical parrots by day and candlelit by night, this hotel exudes romance, giving us a glimpse of heaven once only reserved for the Dominican friars who resided here. Even the city streets, cobblestoned beauties all, were pleasantly empty, giving us license to linger longer and peek through massive carved doors of wood into fountained courtyards and flowered squares, many housing fine restaurants, wine bars, boutiques, chocolate shops and bakeries. We dined with parakeets in a garden-graced eatery renowned for organic fare. We indulged in ice cream that dared with imaginative bursts of jalapeno, lavender, cardamom and lots of chocolate, and we climbed a ladder to an intimate attic eatery for Latin dishes that delighted us with an authentic taste of Central America. Wandering outside of this World Heritage city, we made our way to a small family-owned coffee farm, part of the De La Gente co-op, located on a sloping volcano, for a hike and a visit in the field, sampling the fruits of the farmer’s labor from the tree to the table. We learned firsthand the intensive work that goes into every cup of Joe, from hand-picking, carefully selecting and husking the perfect coffee bean, to the dry-
ing process, the roasting techniques, the grinding and the brewing. Sitting down for coffee with the farmer and his wife inside their family home, amidst their bean-drying patio, husking tools and personal living space, was a highlight we’ll long remember. We took home some great memories that day along with our bags of coffee beans, a labor of love branded by a smiling, ever hospitable Eduardo Hernandez. With expectations of third-world inconveniences disrupted by heartfelt experiences from the moment we arrived in Guatemala, I came to the conclusion that the essence of this place was deeply rooted in the people, each of whom share a passion for the things that make life richly rewarding… from the founders of NGOs who make it their life’s work to change lives, to the 20 somethings who land here to lend a helping hand, to the donors who frequent here with much-needed contributions of time and money, to the ex-pats who honor lifestyles simple and serene, to talented weavers and artists like Albino who custom painted an original work of art for my daughter, traveling 5 hours from his studio across Lake Atitlán to personally deliver it to her in Antigua, family in tow, and to the Mayan families who live here under the line on less than $1.50 a day and still open their hearts and homes to those of us who serendipitously find our way inside. Muchísimas gracias Guatemala, I will be back soon. For more information about Mayan Families, visit www.mayanfamilies.org. To learn more about De La Gente fair trade coffee farming programs, visit www.dlgcoffee.org
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STYLE / ARCHITECTURE
Photographs by: Jonathan Wallen
Left, Of all the buildings in New York which have been influenced by the Italian Renaissance, The University Club (1900) probably comes closest to resembling a sixteenth-century palazzo, and remains one of the cities best buildings. Right, The Century Association (1891) was the first clubhouse in New York to be completely designed in the palazzo style. Although the street facade is said to based after the Palazzo Canossa in Verona, its resemblance is amazingly close to “Whites” - the oldest of the gentleman clubs in London.
THE NEW YORK PALAZZO
D
uring the Gilded Age, also referred to as the American Renaissance, civic pride and corporate finance were at an alltime high, and as a result a host of new buildings were erected to display this cultural, economic, political and social wealth. These buildings were effectively monuments to the new industrial age, and an appropriate language was required to evoke memories of the past while making a very specific statement about the present and the future. Thus style had its great period during this time when the primary connection between architecture and civic expression was of fundamental cultural value. It is easy to walk around New York and see the profound influence that cities such as London, Paris, and in particular Rome, have had on the development of New York City. Even the modernist architect Le Corbusier quipped that the best examples of Italian Renaissance architecture were to be found in New York and not Rome. It is also easy to understand why the robber barons and titans of industry during the American Renaissance – Astor, Morgan, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt – would find the Italian
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BY PHILLIP JAMES DODD Palazzo style so appealing. After all, were they not America’s version of the Medici’s? Historians are even able to inform us of the specific Italian palaces that were used for reference - the Palazzo Canossa in Verona as inspiration for The Century Association (7 West 43rd Street); the Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence and the Palazzo Farnese in Rome for the Metropolitan Club (1 East 60th Street); and the myriad of Tuscan palaces used to inform the composition of the University Club (1 West 54th Street) - creating an unfiltered provenance of sorts from one Renaissance period to another. And finally, it is also easy to note the role that various individuals played in shaping this great metropolitan city, whether they be visionary architects such as Stanford White and Charles McKim, or the ruling elite of the day. But other cities and other individuals, perhaps not so well known, have also left their mark. And rarely, as any architect knows, is precedent for a design taken unfiltered directly from the source. “Its streets may be irregular, and its trading inscriptions pretentious, its smoke may be dense, and its mud ultra-muddy, but not any or all of
these things can prevent the image of a great city rising before us as the very symbol of civilization, foremost in the march of improvement, and a grand incarnation of progress.” It would be easy to assume that this quote from Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal was describing the rapid growth of New York City during the Gilded Age, in say 1898 – when in fact it is describing the creation of another city some 50 years earlier during the height of the industrial revolution. That city is Manchester; and the two architects responsible for creating an architectural legacy that would later inform the style of buildings in New York City were Sir Charles Barry and Edward Walters. Sir Charles Barry (1795 – 1860) studied in Paris, Rome and Athens, before claiming his place as one of the most prominent and important architects in British history. He is perhaps best known for his design of the Houses of Parliament, as well as Highclere Castle in Hampshire – now better known as the fictional Downton Abbey set in Yorkshire (on a side note, Downton’s creator Julian Fellowes is now working on a period drama
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STYLE / ARCHITECTURE set in New York’s Gilded Age). Most importantly though, Barry was responsible for replacing the Neo-Classical and Greek Revival styles of the Regency period with that of the Italian Palazzo style. Previously London’s leading architects, Decimus Burton and Sir John Nash, had based their designs on Palladian architecture as well as English Renaissance models such as Inigo Jones’ Banqueting House in Whitehall. Barry instead chose to base his new architecture on a different Italian precedent - the sixteenth-century Palazzos of Florence, Vicenza and Verona. Although it may seem that this is merely a subtle shift from one form of Italian architecture to another, it came about as a means of avoiding what had become the unfashionable use of colonnades (as rarely will you find columns on any Renaissance Palazzo), and more importantly how to incorporate classical forms of decoration to an ordinary city street facade. Although the Travellers Club (1829) on London’s iconic Pall Mall began Barry’s architectural revolution, it is his design for the Reform Club (1837), also on Pall Mall, that is without question the greatest example of the Palazzo style in London. Inspired by the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, the Reform Club would become one of the most influential buildings of its day, and the filtered source that Stanford White and Charles McKim would turn to some 50 years later, when tasked with designing and emulating London’s aristocratic gentleman’s clubs in New York. Perhaps it was such an unabashed and conscious imitation of London’s exalted male bastions (it was an inside joke within the firm of McKim Mead & White that the great Stanford White based his design of New York’s Century Association on the London club that shared his name – White’s), that has led historians to shift the attention away from the English Victorian precedent and focus instead on the precedent from the Italian Renaissance. It may well be more romantic to think that some of New York’s greatest buildings are based upon designs from over 400 years earlier rather than ones from a mere 50 years earlier, but this does not mean that the Metropolitan Club or the University Club have any less academic rigor and gravitas than Barry’s Reform Club. In fact these two Fifth Avenue landmarks are unquestionably amongst the finest buildings ever designed – in any period. What it does show though, is that when the Palazzo style was first brought to New York, it was initially only seen as a way of emulating the clubs that the New York businessmen had visited while in London. And yet a little more than 200 miles north of London, in Manchester – the birth place of the industrial revolution - the Palazzo style was already being adapted and expanded to serve as a major and versatile architectural form. Manchester’s prosperous Victorian merchants invested in bricks and mortar, railways and the ship canal –all in the name of progress. The achievements of these Man-
cunian cotton lords are perhaps best exemplified by the distinctive shift in local architectural forms. The lack of a long architectural tradition within the City resulted in their desire to find an appropriate language to best reflect the aspirations of a new Manchester. By employing a variety of existing architectural styles, each with their own rich cultural heritage, the City was immediately able to portray its importance within the new industrial world. To achieve this they hired the best and most fashionable architects from London - including Sir Charles Barry, who fresh off his design of the Travellers Club brought the Palazzo style to Manchester
The cornice and frieze of the Metropolitan Club ((1894) were adapted from the Palazzo Farnese in Rome - with more than a nod towards Barry’s Reform Club in London. However, here they were deliberately over-sized to command the open spaces of Central Park and Grand Army Plaza opposite.
with his design for the Athenaeum (1835). Now in possession of a building with which they could feel proud – the equal of anything similar in London, and designed by no less than the architect of the new Houses of Parliament – Manchester’s merchant princes began to acquire pretentions. More importantly though, the Athenaeum now became the prototype of a new architectural style which was to form the basis of virtually all commercial buildings in Manchester, and later London, and eventually New York. A chance encounter in Constantinople between a member of the Athenaeum and a young London
architect paved the way. Richard Cobden, a prominent Manchester textile merchant and a Member of Parliament, had travelled east to the Orient to learn the secrets of producing a color known as “Turkish red”. While staying at the Ottoman Club he met architect Edward Walters (1808 – 1872) who was supervising construction of a small-arms factory for Sir John Rennie. By 1839 Walters had arrived in Manchester and started designing warehouses for Cobden. Remaining strictly within the vocabulary of the Italian Palazzo, Walters successfully modified the design of Barry’s nearby Athenaeum for commercial purposes, altering how buildings would be designed for the next 100 years - on both sides of the Atlantic. Over the ensuing decades, Manchester went on to acquire a large number of palacial warehouses, each proclaiming the virtues of individual capitalism. Massive, simple, pure, austere, they were later to be recognized for their beauty, as they represented the nature of Manchester’s trade, and thus the very reason for the City’s existence. Utilizing the ship canal that linked the city to the port of Liverpool, Manchester (also by then referred to as Cottonopolis) would have been a center of commerce that all wealthy New York businessmen were very familiar with. They would surely have recognized the similar unprecedented growth of both cities, and witnessed with envy how a single generation would transform Manchester from a medieval market town into the center of the industrial world. Although Manchester and New York did not just happen, they also did not slowly evolve and take shape in the way that many cities do. In each case, visionary patrons and pioneers, conscious of their civic responsibilities, would work within a variety of traditional architectural styles and erect buildings that would portray the affluence of their inhabitants. The cotton lords of Manchester and the robber barons of New York were each prepared to contribute towards the creation of truly great cities, towards a civic self-assurance, and towards communities that openly believed in celebrating the virtues of civic life. At the center of this civic presence was the Palazzo style, the style chosen by these new Medici Princes to represent their new found wealth and position in the world. And so, one cannot ignore the role that the Palazzo style played in the creation of New York, and in particular Clubland – the collective name for the numerous private clubs whose own stories chronicle the social life of New York’s aristocracy from the American Renaissance to the present. The opulence of these clubs, their rivalries, and the freespending ways of their members gave rise to one of the Gilded Ages most famous tales. Two actresses are dining together at Delmonico’s, “I found a pearl in an oyster the other night at Rector’s,” the first actress announces. The second responded, “That’s nothing dear. Last night I got a diamond necklace off an old lobster at the Metropolitan Club.”
Phillip James Dodd is a well regarded expert on classical architecture and interiors, whose designs can be found in Manhattan, Greenwich and Palm Beach. He is also the author of the highly acclaimed The Art of Classical Details. His latest book An Ideal Collaboration: The Art of Classical Details II will be released in Summer 2015.
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Appetite
The Golden Palate by Fred Bollaci Growing up in a traditional Italian family in New York, where food was an expression of love and was served up in delicious abundance a la “La Dolce Vita,” I was introduced to excellent cuisine both at home and in some of the best restaurants in the world at an early age. What a joy it was to feast on whatever I wanted without considering the consequences. But as I later learned, enjoying even the best foods to excess would create problems, like excessive weight and health issues. By age 30, I was 150 pounds overweight. Exercise was difficult and I found dieting not only distasteful but impossible, especially because it meant that I had to deprive myself of the one thing that gave me so much pleasure — great food! I struggled with typical diet programs for years that advocated foods I considered bland and boring. After being diagnosed with sleep apnea, a serious obesity-related condition, my doctor gave me a warning: lose over 100 pounds or risk a heart attack or worse. Once I began my quest to change my life, my way, there was no looking back. I addressed the emotional reasons I had turned to food for comfort started an exercise regime I enjoyed doing and repatterned my eating behavior to something I could live with, literally! I lost 150 pounds in one year, and have kept it off for over four years now. How did I do it? By creating a gourmet, four-phase approach I call “The Golden Palate™ Diet & Lifestyle.” My weight loss program is all about learning to enjoy quality, not quantity, when dining at home and in great restaurants. It’s about making exercise a fun and vital part of an active, healthy lifestyle, as well as dealing with the emotional components that sabotage successful diets. This column is dedicated to helping you find that healthy balance in your life…and sticking with it. Going forward you will discover how to dine gourmet, your way. You’ll read about fine restaurants that cater to your good health – and taste – and you’ll enjoy “appetizers” that are featured my new book due out in 2016, from recipes to restaurant recommendations and more. You will learn firsthand that successful, permanent weight loss is not about deprivation. It’s about enjoying “good things in moderation.” Like dinners at your favorite 5-star restaurants and recipes that send your taste buds soaring…without impacting your waist line. You’ll be the first to know the award-winning details about my Golden Palate Partner ™ establishments across America, exceptional restaurants that offer top quality cuisine utilizing the freshest, best available ingredients with healthy options, and feature dedicated, hands-on owners, chefs, and
Manchester, Vermont’s Chef Amy Chamberlain chef/owner of The Perfect Wife Restaurant and Tavern, exemplifies what it means to be a Golden Palate Partner and Charter Chef
staff who go the extra mile to ensure guest satisfaction. To date, I have named over 200 Golden Palate Partners across America. Eighty will be featured in my upcoming memoir, and eleven outstanding establishments have earned the distinction as inaugural Signature Golden Palate Partners. In addition to Greenwich, Connecticut’s Homestead Inn/Thomas Henkelmann, featured in the winter issue of Venü Magazine 2015, others include New York City’s SD26 (Tony May); Wheatleigh in Massachusetts’ beautiful Berkshires; The Perfect Wife Restaurant and Tavern, by renowned #1 Chef in Vermont, Amy Chamberlain; and Long Island favorites 75 Main and The Golden Pear Café (Southampton); Noah’s and The Frisky Oyster (Greenport); Wolffer Estate Vineyard (Sagaponack); and La Bussola and La Ginestra in Glen Cove. Manchester, Vermont’s Chef Amy Chamberlain, chef/owner of The Perfect Wife Restaurant and Tavern, exemplifies what it means to be a Golden Palate Partner: a congenial, dedicated, hands-on chef/owner who showcases the most fresh, locally sourced ingredients. Recently, The Perfect Wife Restaurant and Tavern was named the inaugural Golden Palate Partner Charter member of Fred Bollaci Enterprises. In addition to the exclusive Golden Palate Partner benefits, Charter membership includes regularly featured recipes and special event news in the new “Charter Chefs” column on my website. I am also proud to be working with many of my Golden Palate Partners to develop Fred Bollaci Enterprises Certified healthy gourmet dishes to feature on their menus. Learn more insider secrets about how to enjoy “La Dolce Vita” living, without the guilt in my next column in Venü’s summer 2015 issue, featuring some of my 75 Golden Palate Partners in Italy, including Toscana Saporita, a renowned cooking school in Tuscany! Buon appetito!
For more information please visit www.fredbollacienterprises.com CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE
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Appetite Travel + Leisure: Destination NorwaY
Photographs by: Oliver Parini
An Out- of- Earth Experience Connecticut Grown and Nationally Embraced Consumers Connect with the Hands that Feed Them Written by Linda Kavanagh “Retro dining,” is what my dinner companion and cynical chef labeled the farm-to-table restaurant we were dining at, “Really, we’re right back where we started. This was all we knew when we were spry culinary grads sweating it out behind a hot and steamy kitchen line, “he continues to reminisce and vent. “Of course the produce came from local farms. Heck, Chef would butcher livestock alongside the farm handler and bring the meats to the restaurant each week. And now there’s a name for this?” So, does today’s local food phenomenon mean we are we back to the sustainable food practices that so many chefs unknowingly applied back in the day? In dining, is what’s old new again? Call it what you will; farm-to-table and the like, because in the end, food is grown,
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raised and consumed – how we obtain it, now that’s a different story. Enter The Connecticut Farm Table Cookbook, a stunning homegrown work of art and education wrapped up in a vibrant cookbook, beautifully constructed by Tracey Medeiros and Christy Colasurdo. Its release coincides with the nurturing of the soil as fresh crops are being planted and plotted. The duo, passionate and practical, took their cues from Tracey’s successful Vermont Farm Table Cookbook, which she had published in 2013. “When I saw the Vermont book, my first thought was that there needs to be a book just like this to shine a spotlight on the farmers and food producers in Connecticut, “beams Christy, a Fairfield County based journalist and former
Special Sections Editor at New York Magazine, “ I had been involved in the local green foods movement for the past few years in Connecticut, watching the local scene explode as more and more people were waking up to the concepts of eating locally and forging personal connections with their farmers.” The Connecticut Farm Table Cookbook is more than just a recipe handbook. It digs deep
into Connecticut’s rich agricultural history and food production while engaging in conversations with the Nutmeg state’s farmers, artisans and chefs, telling the story through lively profiles and raw and engaging photos. The book forges a connection between food producers and chefs, and ultimately, consumers. While some farmers and chefs have achieved local celebrity through their support and practices of Connecti-
cut’s local food movement, the authors took this book beyond the mainstream, highlighting some of the lesser commercially known talent in the state – those who may not be in the spotlight but are equally as fervent about doing their part to cultivate their local food scene. The beauty of The Connecticut Farm Table Cookbook lies in the tractor ride on Waldingfield Farm in Washington, milky burrata cheese from 5-generations deep Liuzzi Angeloni Cheese in Hamden, CSA crusader and farmer Patti Popp of Sport Hill Farm in
Easton, Colin Ambrose’s Cioppino Verde (fish stew with green sauce) made with coastal water shellfish and herbs grown at Estia’s American in Darien, and the idea that a vine of pristine and flawless cherry tomatoes can be equally as stunning and appealing as the deep rooted carrots and beets pulled from the earth, muddy and fragrant. The collaboration between Tracey, a food writer /stylist, recipe developer and columnist for Edible Green Mountains Magazine in Vermont, and Christy, a sustainable food powerhouse in
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+ Leisure: Destination NorwaY Appetite Travel
Photo: Thomas McGovern Photography
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Photo: Ashley Caroline Photography
Photo: Christina Morse Scala
Connecticut, makes this a credible and enlightening read. There’s no preaching here. Quite simply, “dinner is only as far as your nearest farmers’ market, farm stand, fishmonger, butchery or bake shop.” Amen. Connecting to the land and also celebrating all that it has to offer is the spirited conviction of the national moveable feast phenomenon, Outstanding in the Field. Created and nurtured by renowned Chef / Sand Artist Jim Denevan in 1999 in Santa Cruz, California, Outstanding in the Field has since staged over 600 open-air culinary events in all 50 states and nine countries around the world. Two such OITF events this year will include a Connecticut destination farm, The Hickories in Ridgefield, and local chefs Scott Ostrander of Mama’s Boy and Jennifer Balin of Sugar & Olives, both featured in The Connecticut Farm Table Cookbook. Giving a whole new meaning to “pop up restaurant”, Jim and his energetic crew road trip throughout the country in their vintage red and white bus between May and November, producing elaborately long farm table set-ups
amid fields and orchards, on beaches and mountaintops, a yak farm and vineyard, and even the Brooklyn Grange Farm at the Navy Yard. The scenery is generously provided by Mother Earth and the multi-course meal is enthusiastically executed by the host farm / venue and some of the most gifted and thoughtful chefs throughout the country. Working side by side, OITF and their destination hosts create what has been tagged as a “restaurant with no walls”. The pure and honest nature of these events is slightly lavish, while more hipster in nature. To partake in an OITF event it costs upwards of $200 per person, all inclusive. For “Field Heads”, which devotees are affectionately referred to as, the high-end culinary experience is enhanced by the connection to the land and the camaraderie that is palpable among their fellow dinner companions who have all gathered around one table - and a sustainable food movement. Follow the bus! www.outstandinginthefield.com “The Connecticut Farm Table Cookbook” is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble
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FEATURE
Va Va Vroom!
The Art of The Vehicle By Marianne Brunson Frisch
T
he automobile’s status as an art form was clinched in 1951 at The Museum of Modern Art’s seminal 8 Automobiles exhibition in New York. This “First Exhibition Anywhere of Automobiles Selected for Design” spotlighted “well-designed American and European automobiles” in recognition of “their excellence as works of art and for their relevance to contemporary problems of passenger car design.” Philip Johnson, MoMA’s Director of the Department of Architecture and Design, heralded that, “An automobile is a familiar 20th-century artifact, and is no less worthy of being judged for its visual appeal than a building or a chair. Automobiles are hollow,
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rolling sculpture, and the refinements of their design are fascinating.” The Museum’s selection of cars that epitomized “serious thought” about the “esthetics of automobile design” were the 1930 MercedesBenz SS, 1949 Cisitalia 202, 1939 James Young Bentley 4 1/4 litre, 1939 Talbot-Lago T23, 1951 Willys-Overland Jeep, 1937 Cord 812, 1948 MG TC and 1941 Lincoln Continental. Henry Moore’s large-scale, bronze Family Group eyed the ground floor lineup of sculptural automobiles from the Museum’s Sculpture Garden. The Museum of Modern Art’s subsequent related exhibitions and acquisitions of cars,
motorcycles and a helicopter for their permanent collection further underscore the significance of artistry in vehicle development. Traditional constraints of artistic expression had already been unfettered by artist and writer Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades in which “an ordinary object [was] elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of the artist.” Duchamp subverted the originally intended use of an everyday object in 1913 with his first Readymade Bicycle Wheel, following his “happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.” Automobiles, motorcycles, bicycles and planes are evocative muses for fine artists who
Page left: Chris Osborne, Paul Newman and the #33 Bob Sharp Racing Datsun, 2010, Acrylic on canvas Above: Miggs Burroughs, Indian, 2015, Lenticular photograph Below: David Barnett, Airship for Lazy Bones, 2014, Mixed media construction, Photograph by Margaret Fox
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FEATURE
Left: Leon Wolf, 1947 Indian Chief, n.d., Oil on canvas, Lent by Buzz Kanter Below: Max Itin, Fins, 2014, Digital photograph
are captivated by their mystery and romance, styling and technology. Symbols of freedom and fantasy, emblems of power and beauty, these “rolling sculptures” have captured our collective imaginations. Va Va Vroom! The Art of the Vehicle, an exhibition curated by me, Marianne Brunson Frisch, with Co-Directors Arianne Faber Kolb and Eleanor Flatow at the Carriage Barn Arts Center, Waveny Park, New Canaan, Conn., celebrates this confluence of artistic endeavors. The show, featuring paintings, drawings, photographs, advertising posters, sculptures, vintage die-cast car models, vintage automobile hood ornaments and motorcycles, is on view from April 19-June 14, 2015. Information about the exhibition and related programs as well as the New Canaan Society for the Arts’ Monaco Grand Prix fundraiser on May 16 is available at www.carriagebarn.org or phone 203-972-1895. 44
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Waveny is long familiar with vehicles— horses, carriages, cars and planes—being embraced by the Lapham family who built their home on the 480-acre countryside property in 1912. Lewis Lapham, a founder of The Texas Company (now Texaco), and his family summered there, seeking reprieve from the heat of New York City. Their stylish and expensive French 1903-04 Charron, Girardot et Voight touring car was housed in the Carriage Barn along with horses and carriages. Son Jack Lapham, his wife and their four children were pilots, landing their planes on Waveny fields. Jack Lapham flew his two-seater Spartan biplane to Waveny from their Texas home in 1928, quite an impressive feat at the time. The symbiotic influence between fine art and motoring vehicles informs and inspires both avenues of creative media. Va Va Vroom! The Art of the Vehicle highlights their multifaceted interrelationship.
Max Itin iconizes the apex of 1950s American automobile design in his Fins photographic study of a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado. His works express the “spiritual” nature, the “mythology of cars” as theorized by French philosopher Roland Barthes in his 1957 Mythologies essay “The New Citroën.” Barthes viewed the automobile as “a humanized art,” expounding that “cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.” Barthes further opined about the “visual wonder” of viewing newly introduced vehicles in “exhibition halls,” when “the car on show is explored with an intense, amorous studiousness.” Miggs Burroughs invites such an experience in his lenticular photographs that merge two images that alternate as the viewer passes by. His 1948 Indian motorcycle composition expressively imparts the bike’s storied adventures. Chris Osborne’s paintings are imbued with the impassioned connection between a driver and his car. Her portrait of Paul Newman honors his track success in Bob Sharp’s #33 Datsun 240Z
in the late 1970s and early 1980s before he began competing through his own racing venture. French illustrator Géo Ham heightened the excitement for European motorcar and motorcycle competitions and aviation shows in the mid-20th century. His drawings and paintings appeared in manufacturers’ catalogs and the French pictorial magazine L’Illustration and his posters promoted car club and racing events, including the Monaco Grand Prix and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ham’s graphically charged poster for the 1955 Coupes de Paris Automobile at the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry as well as other works by him from the collection of Doug Zumbach will be on view. The advertising placard was elevated to a pictorial art form at the turn of the 20th century with the application of artistic sensibilities and improved color lithographic print techniques. Spanning the dichotomy between the utilitarian and purely aesthetic, the modern poster vitalized popular culture. Doug, owner of Zumbach’s Gourmet Coffee, New Canaan, Conn., and founder and organizer of Caffeine & Carburetors’ in-season motoring gatherings, is also lending 1964-65 Dodge and Plymouth Drag Racing Super Stocker and Funny Car 1/24 scale die-cast models that further define Va Va Vroom! Andre Junget masterfully renders the craftsmanship and styling of the vintage planes, automobiles and motorcycles he depicts in his drawings. His virtuosic attention to detail parallels the quality of design and construction inherent in his subjects. He achieved radiant luminescence and subtle tonalities in Radial Engine through 70-90 hours of drawing, building and rubbing hundreds of layers of applied pencil strokes. David Barnett’s Airship for Lazy Bones is a fantasized vessel designed to transport the elderly. Fashioned of found objects, wood, metal discs, wire, toy parts, thread and rubber treads, his passenger-propelled zeppelin is seemingly functional yet whimsically impractical. Two-wheeled sculptures take center stage with motorcycles lent by Buzz Kanter, publisher of American Iron Magazine and Motorcycle Rides & Culture. His British 1930s JAP racer showcases the alcohol-powered bikes popular for English speedway racing on closed ash- or dirt-covered oval circuits. The classic American 1947 Indian Chief sports the distinctive Indianhead ornament and features a live rear suspension and an unusual “girder” front fork suspension. Buzz and his 1966 Ducati 250 Monza café racer on display have seen competitive action at vintage motorcycle rallies. Together with a 1918 Harley-Davidson Model J F-head motor and early racing posters, these works demonstrate the inventive ingenuity of engineering and design. Art and vehicles share a wellspring of creativity that reflects Barthes’ perspective on cars as being “a transformation of life into matter” and belonging to the “realm of fairy tales.” Their spirited dialogue is kindled by a mutual vision that prompts respective artworks that are “above that of nature” and “much more magical than life.”
Left: Géo Ham, Pau Grand Prix, Formula 2, 1959, Poster, Lent by Doug Zumbach, Photograph by Julie Stauffer Below: Andre Junget, Radial Engine, 2013, Pencil on paper
Va Va Vroom! The Art of the Vehicle is generously sponsored by Bankwell, Caffeine & Carburetors, Thom Filicia, Inc., HTG Investment Advisors, Hutchinson Tree Care Specialists, Karl Chevrolet, Moffly Media, New Canaan Advertiser, NewCanaanite.com, New Canaan Preservation Alliance, New Canaan Wine Merchants, Rosie, Strawberry & Sage, William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty and Zumbach’s Gourmet Coffee. A related symposium was sponsored in part by the New Canaan Community Foundation. The Carriage Barn Arts Center, located at Waveny Park, 681 South Ave, New Canaan, Conn., organizes exhibits, lectures and educational workshops, concerts, children’s programs and other varied events. Gallery hours are Wednesday – Saturday, 10am-3pm and Sunday, 1-5pm; admission is free. Visit their website, www.carriagebarn.org, or phone 203-972-1895 for further information. The New Canaan Society for the Arts, Inc., a non-profit organization, operates the Carriage Barn Arts Center.
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Looking through the Lens with Howard Schatz by CINDY CLARKE How do you put a stunning visual journey twenty-five years in the making and more than four million amazing images strong into a two-volume anthology of just one thousand photographs? Thoughtfully, painstakingly and with the unanimous consensus of the photographer, his editor and his astute business partner and wife who together spent no less than eight months sifting, sorting and selecting a representative portfolio from some 32 personal and published works, winners all. Daunting by anyone’s standards, but to Howard Schatz, medicine man, visionary and the visual voice for a cast of thousands, it was a labor of love. CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE
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“I don’t have any favorites,” he told me as I interrupted his California dreaming on a springtime Sunday afternoon to ask him about his latest book. “Each one is special and uniquely surprising.”
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ifferent chapters represent distinct projects, distinctive people and poses he expressively portrayed as he documented his creative take on their lives over the last twenty-five years. Howard Schatz, who at age 54 reinvented his own life’s work of saving eyes to opening them through the camera lens, believes as much in the magic of the moment as the people who make the most of every moment presented. “Every picture and every person in it has meaning to me. I photograph to surprise and delight myself,” he admitted. He doesn’t take pictures, I learned, he makes them. Camera in hand, he met, interviewed and photographed countless people – athletes, dancers, prisoners, actors, gifted women, and red heads among them – who willingly bared body and soul to him as he reimagined them into works of art. Bodies knot, dancers bloom, actors act, mermaids surface, boxers bleed, couples caress and mother and child bond in intimate portraits of unconditional love. The poses that make us pause are the ones he originally imagined. >
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“With each shoot, I challenge my models to try something different and have fun with it, ” Howard told me, no doubt relaxing them with his indefatigable bedside manner, a gift he carries with him from his days as one of the preeminent retinal surgeons of our time. Then he goes to work, shooting hundreds of digital photos, erasing some, enhancing others, turning them into life-altering portraits that tell stories, poignant and personal. A 1965 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Howard Schatz hails from a highly technical medical background as a retina specialist, a calling that requires exacting skill and a delicate touch. Simply stated, the retina is the light sensitive part of the eye that gives us our ability to have sharp, detailed vision. When you think of the art of medicine and the art of photography, at first glance they seem to be two very different disciplines. One calls for in-depth study, precise planning and calculated actions. The other is characterized by spontaneity, the ability to capture a moment that comes that way only once. Howard Schatz’s work is a marriage of both, one that puts to good use his practiced, visually perceptive eye and ever-creative mind. In his role as surgeon, Howard kept abreast of all the latest research, technologies and treatments to ensure a successful outcome. All points of fact that are now playing out, not surprisingly, in the doctor’s celebratory photographs of human possibilities. He changed his career focus from doctor to documentarian gradually, fine tuning his photography techniques as carefully as he did is surgical skills when he was in the operating room of some of the nation’s most critically acclaimed hospitals. He was a weekend photog-
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rapher at first, dabbling and delighting in his visual expressions for just one day a week until the magic took a firm and lasting hold. With encouragement from his wife and business partner, Beverly Ornstein, a former executive news producer for PBS, he took a leave of absence from his medical practice to practice photography, then another and another, “reupping 5 or 6 times” before he embarked on his new career in earnest. He recalled enjoying his filmed creations so much that he and Beverly were giddy with joy, giggling with excitement over the happiness they found in his work as a camera man. Working with intricate lenses and light came naturally to him, using digital film technologies to color, morph and manipulate his images was equally familiar. His challenge was to keep raising the bar with his creativity, to master not just one style, but to reinvent many, to astonish and surprise himself, and to honor his subjects with revelations of truth and beauty, even under water. He shared with me his techniques of photographing costumed models who appeared as comfortably at home at the bottom of a swimming pool as on dry land. “It required perfect casting and a great deal of training,” he admitted, saying that these particular mermaids (my word, not his) were able to stay submerged for up to a minute at a time, posing perfectly, make up and smiles intact. It also took the set building skills and artistic and dramatic coaching of a film director who visualized the script while guiding his aquatically gifted models in the fulfillment of that vision. To achieve the look he wanted for his underwater photos, Howard had special windows and lighting built into the swimming pool at his Connecticut home. The results are
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Meet Howard Schatz and see an exhibition of his photographs at the Fairfield Museum’s IMAGES 2015 Exhibition on view May 14 through July 19, 2015. IMAGES 2015 is a two-part exhibition consisting of a Juried Photography Show celebrating the talents of regional photographers from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and a solo exhibit by Howard Schatz The opening is at the Fairfield Museum Spring Gala on Thursday, May 14, from 6-9 PM. An artist reception and Museum After Dark will be held at the Fairfield Museum on Thursday July 19 from 6-8 PM, celebrating the winners of IMAGES 2015 Juried Photography Show. Howard Schatz will be on hand personally signing his two book boxed set, SCHATZ Images: 25 Years, with 830 pages and 1083 images. For more information about Howard Schatz, please visit www.howardschatz.com The magnificent and luxurious two-book boxed set that is the collectible 25 year retrospective can be viewed and purchased at the publisher’s web site: schatzimages25years-gliterati.com
The limited edition retrospective is available exclusively for purchase at: schatzimages25years-glitterati.com
stunningly reflective of his ability to transform the human form into an unexpected aesthetic that astounds with breathtaking grace. Look closely as his botanicals and bodies emerge as people-powered petals, some requiring a thoughtful bloom of hundreds of dancers who pirouetted into stems and blossoms that mimic perfectly their flowering garden counterparts. Pretend you are watching your favorite actor create a signature character with unaltered emotion –think luminaries like Lawrence Fishbone, John Malkovich, Ricky Gervais, Whoopy Goldberg and Amy Poehler hamming it up, their way – and you’ll get a sense of the playfully candid improvisation each star in his two published Actor books performed for Schatz’s camera. Peer into the pregnancies of women who helped Schatz give birth to a real-life 20-year chronicle of babies newly born through their transition to young adulthood and you’ll feel like you watched them grow. His nudes, lithe and lovely, or living large and comfortably in their own 200+ lb. skin, speak volumes about Schatz’s appreciation of the human form in all its shapes and sizes. And of the human condition conveyed by his pictures of the homeless and the imprisoned, Schatz also portrayed them with the compassion and dignity he affords everyone who crosses his path. Meticulously researched, seamlessly orchestrated, and often years in the making, his works are testament to his passion for living and life. “I am blessed, every day with every thing,” says Schatz. “I feel lucky and fortunate to learn something and see things in ways I hadn’t seen before.” “The joy,” he said, “is in the journey, in looking for the magic and occasionally finding it.” From his first career success with his Gifted Women exhibition to the each new series of works he commits to print, photography for Howard Schatz has evolved into a specialty that has garnered him as much acclaim and professional respect as he achieved as a surgeon. To date, some 25 years into his new role, he has won virtually every award in the industry. His work has been published in 20 books and exhibited in galleries and private collections across the globe. His client list reads like a who’s who of captains of advertising and industry, including Ralph Lauren, Mercedes Benz, Vogue, and Sports Illustrated among them. His accolades from critics and contemporaries alike describe him as one of the world’s finest contemporary photographers whose work is “joyous,” “remarkably rich,” and “stunningly original.” After speaking with him about his newly published anthology, I would like to add an accolade of my own. “Howard Schatz has the unique ability to find beauty wherever he looks, to make us believe in the potential of the human spirit and to help us appreciate that no matter how rich or famous, beautiful or athletic, smart or talented a person may become in life, being a genuinely nice person, like he is, trumps it all.”
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INDULGE / MOTORING
Formula 1: The 2015 Season Outlook By James McDonald
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ith the 2015 Formula One season underway, it would be good to look at some of the major changes that are in place for the season which opened at Albert Park in Melbourne Australia on March 15. The 19th race season will end in Abu Dhabi on November 29, but it is likely that long before then the new world champion will have secured enough points for the title. In between those venues the circus will travel through exciting locations such as Monte Carlo in May, Montreal in June and Singapore in September to name a few. One surprise to the calendar is that the German Grand Prix will not be held this year due to finances. The driver musical chairs that occurred toward the end of the 2014 season brought about some significant moves that will impact 2015 in a major way. Arguably the two biggest seat changes took place when Sebastian Vettel announced he was leaving Red Bull and moving to Ferrari, and Fernando Alonso later announced in a protracted manner that he was leaving Ferrari for McLaren with its new Honda engine contract. Collectively between the two of them, Vettel and Alonso account for 6 world championships and 71 Grand Prix wins. Max Verstappen, son of 1990’s Dutch
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F1 driver Jos Verstappen was picked up by the Red Bull Jr. Team Torro Rosso, for 2015 after finishing 3rd in the 2014 European Formula 3 series with a handful of victories. At the young age of 17, the youngest ever age of a driver in Formula 1, he will have to overcome a lot of skepticism about his abilities in the tough world of Grand Prix racing. He certainly possesses the speed, but first across the line and not necessarily being fastest is what counts in collecting championship points. Additional driver changes of significance are Kevin Magnussen being relegated to ‘test driver’ in lieu of Alonso’s race seat at McLaren. Magnussen actually started the season in Melbourne due to Alonso’s testing accident and resulting concussion that was caused by a strong gust of wind destabilizing the car in a test in Barcelona in February. Fortunately, Alonso seems to have made a normal recovery and the MclarenHonda while still 2+ seconds off the pace is showing signs of improvement. The 11 team field of 2014 has shrunk to 10 with the financial collapse of Caterham in 2014. Team Marussia no longer exists and has been rebadged as its predecessor, ‘Manor Team’, but the financial security of it along with several other marquees is
uncertain. Foremost in the news of F1; Force India tested in Barcelona only as a result of Mercedes underwriting the test for them and Sauber continues to struggle with a missing main sponsor. The latter is currently in the courts with its former driver. To date after 4 races, Sauber is showing the best results amongst the very much underfunded teams. The four teams that can win races in 2015 are Mercedes (favorite to take the world championship to make it two years in a row, Williams-Mercedes, Ferrari and Red
Photography by Darren Heath
Left: Jenson Button, 2015 Australian Grand Prix. Above: Lewis Hamilton, 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix. Below: Sabastian Vettel, 2015 Bahrain Grand Prix. Bottom: Start of the 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix.
Bull-Renault. McLaren-Honda can never be ruled out, but so far there is no indication that the illustrious team has an enginechassis combination with enough speed and reliability to win. Mercedes: The team dominated 2014 by a wide margin and effectively blitzed the opposition with 16/19 victories, the bulk by Hamilton who took the title. Hamilton had a rocky relationship with his team mate Nico Rosberg and team manager Christian ‘Toto’ Wolff had to intervene in the battle between the two drivers several times during the season. Hamilton’s blinding speed won out in the end to gain him his second world championship title. More of the same
looks set for 2015 with an engine and chassis combination which still has a 5-7 mph straight line speed advantage on Ferrari. Additionally, tire wear which is a problem in Formula 1 is far less an issue than with rival cars so it would be surprising if one of the two Mercedes did not take the title again this year. Reliability has not been a major issue for the team. At the time of publication, Hamilton has won 3/4 races to date and leads Rosberg 93-66 in points. Williams-Mercedes: Powered by the all conquering and reliable Mercedes engine, Williams seems to be in the second best position right now. They have the power and the Williams chassis is capable of win-
ning races. Long term veteran of Formula 1 racing, Felipe Massa continues in his role as team leader and the highly talented young Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas seems like a man poised to take his first race win this year. If the team can overcome its tire wear problem it has the resources to challenge for wins. Red Bull-Renault: Lead driver Daniel Ricciardo and newly promoted team number two Daniil Kyvat will have their hands full trying to keep up with the Mercedes powered cars this year. Despite the change in engine regulations that allows for up to 4 slight modifications during the season, they still are showing a lack of speed relative to Mercedes powered cars on the long straights and horrendous reliability problems. Indeed, Ricciardo who drove brilliantly last year and clearly overshadowed his famed 4 time world champion team mate Sebastian Vettel by winning three races which were the only 3 victories by a non Mercedes engined car. One tends to believe that Vettel’s departure from Red Bull was at least partially based on his poor showing versus Ricciardo. Kyvat has speed and aggression and it remains to be seen if he can parlay those attributes into good results this year. For 2015, teams were initially limited to 4 engines throughout the season per car according to a new regulation which seems too few for a 19 race season. To date, Ricciardo has gone through 4 Renault motors and he still has 15 more of the 19 race calendar to go! One more engine has just been added by the FIA regulatory body but clearly Red Bull Renault will have to use more to finish the season which means incurring penalties. Ferrari: Arguably the team with more fans than any other, this is a team that has not won a world championship since Kimi Raikkonen took the title by a small margin in 2007. At the end of 2014, sweeping changes were made to the team, (President of Ferrari removed, F1 team manager removed and Alonso departed for McLaren), that should at the very least bring about a difference. The car has been redesigned and the grotesque front end of the 2014 car is nowhere to be seen. The regulation change allowing for engine modification has also granted them some catch-up play, and with Vettel settling in with his new team mate Raikkonen, we could see a resurgence of Scuderia Ferrari. So far, Vettel has taken one win (Malaysia) and he and Raikkonen are running third and fourth in points. The new SF-15T Ferrari produced by ex-Lotus designer James Allison has the potential to produce wins in the hands of the two very talented drivers. This year Formula 1 will be broadcast in the USA by NBC. Please check local times and schedules in order to catch this exciting sport that seeks to blend the best drivers with the most advanced auto technology in the world.
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FEATURE
Researchers from the University of Miami RSMAS working to contain a tiger shark before inserting a tag.
International Seakeepers Society
A nonprofit organization comprised of opinion leaders, scientists, and environmental advocates that promotes oceanographic research, conservation and education through direct involvement with the yachting community By Molly Canfield
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eaKeepers was founded in 1998 by a small group of yacht owners who were alarmed by the deterioration of our natural environment. The organization’s initial focus was on the development and use of instrumentation installed on yachts to monitor marine conditions throughout the world’s oceans. Today, SeaKeepers continues to work with yachts as a vital part of its programming. SeaKeepers DISCOVERY Yachts Program enables the yachting community to take full advantage of their unique potential to advance marine sciences and raise awareness about global ocean issues. The program is comprised of scientific expeditions, instrument deployments and educational outreach events. SeaKeepers collaborates with numerous organizations, academic institutions and government agencies in order to accomplish its DISCOVERY Yachts missions. In 2014 SeaKeepers accomplished twenty missions, including four outreach programs, five scientist-led DISCOVERY Yacht expeditions and eleven instrument deployments. The five scientist-led expeditions consisted of groundbreaking work in genome sequencing; two significant shark tagging research trips in the Bahamas; an expedition involving marine mammal research; and the development of ocean monitoring devices for oil spill research. In January 2014, SeaKeepers hosted a genome sequencing expedition off the Florida Keys and Bimini, Bahamas. A state-of-the-art mobile biomedical laboratory built by Florida Biodiversity Institute was brought onboard DISCOVERY Yacht Copasetic, a 141-foot Hike Metal Products, 58
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for the expedition. This onboard laboratory revolutionized fieldwork and facilitates real-time, remote genome scale sequencing. The mission provided groundbreaking proof that a mobile genome sequencing laboratory is not only functional but also invaluable for accurate marine biodiversity investigations. Over the course of one week, top scientists from the University of Florida successfully sequenced 15 genomes, proving that modern technology and instrumentation traditionally found in top biomedical centers can function accurately in the field. In May, SeaKeepers and a team of researchers from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science traveled to Tiger Beach, Bahamas for a tiger shark tagging expedition. Researchers successfully tagged 13 tiger sharks, took blood samples, and conducted ultra-sounds using a custom-made floating platform designed by Florida Biodiversity Institute and Dr. Neil Hammerschlag. DISCOVERY Yacht Penny Mae, a 138-foot Richmond, served as the base for the expedition and LoJo, a 28-foot Bertram, played a vital role as a support vessel. SeaKeepers repeated the tiger shark tagging expedition in November with University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program, Florida Biodiversity Institute, and National Geographic. DISCOVERY Yachts Fugitive, a 125-foot Northcoast, and Qing, a 150-foot Cheoy Lee, served as on site bases of operation. Part of the expedition was devoted to collecting and downloading data from acoustic receivers mounted to the seafloor in Tiger Beach, Bahamas. Since October 2013, the receivers recorded more than 20,000 detec-
Top: DISCOVERY Yacht Copasetic served as the base for the genome sequencing expedition and an educational outreach program. Bottom: The state-of-the-art mobile biomedical laboratory container built by Florida Biodiversity Institute onboard DISCOVERY Yacht Copasetic.
Photo: Brittany Stockman
Photo: Molly Canfield
Top: CARTHE, Fleet Miami, SeaKeepers and StreetWaves after an outreach program testing drifter designs onboard DISCOVERY Yacht Shredder. Bottom: Youth from StreetWaves testing drifter designs during an outreach program with SeaKeepers and CARTHE onboard DISCOVERY Yacht Shredder.
In addition to expeditions, SeaKeepers DISCOVERY Yachts hosted four educational outreach programs. These outreach programs ranged in location from Bimini, Bahamas to Newport, Rhode Island. Each educational trip was customized to satisfy the needs of the individual school or NGO involved. For example, a day on the water with school children from Bimini concluded with the deployment of a SeaKeepers Drifter, which is still being monitored today. Other programs included studying wave movement, wind and currents, and plastic pollution. Throughout the year, SeaKeepers also facilitated eleven instrument deployments. These included Argo floats deployed as part of the oceanography course curriculum onboard the Photo: Molly Canfield Semester at Sea ship MV Explorer during the fall of 2014. Additionally, SeaKeepers Drifters are continually deployed to support the tions of tagged sharks. These data give researchers insight to the behavior Global Drifter Program through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric and habitat use of tiger sharks in the Bahamas, and how these patterns may Administration and World Meteorological Organization. In 2014 SeaKeepers be related to reproduction, diet and health as well as the potential impacts Drifters were deployed in all four hemispheres. of tourism at Tiger Beach. Vessel owners who generously donate time on their yachts to the In September, SeaKeepers conducted a three-day expedition offshore of DISCOVERY Yachts Program are honored at the SeaKeepers Founders’ Miami, Florida onboard DISCOVERY Yacht Shredder, a 54-foot East Bay Dinner, an annual signature event. The event is dedicated to recognizing the operated by Fleet Miami. During the expedition SeaKeepers worked with yacht owners and captains, scientists, and sponsors who made the expediresearchers from the Consortium for Advanced Research on the Transport tions possible. At the 2014 Founders’ Dinner, SeaKeepers awarded eight of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE) to deploy a variety of GPSDISCOVERY Yachts for their invaluable contribution to ocean research. equipped surface current drifters that can offer insight into responses to DISCOVERY Yachts are also featured on the SeaKeepers website ocean disasters like oil spills, search and rescue missions, and ocean polluand recognized for their research and conservation efforts in the SeaKeeption. A number of the drifters are biodegradable which offer scientists the ers newsletter. Many expeditions have resulted in local and national press. ability to conduct large-scale tests over sizeable expanses of water without Vessel owners may also qualify for tax benefits. polluting the ocean. SeaKeepers staff work closely with yacht owners and captains to coor In October, SeaKeepers worked with The Golden Gate Cetacean Redinate research and outreach activities that reflect the yacht owner’s oceansearch (GGCR) team and DISCOVERY Yacht E Cruz, a 46-foot Maxum related interests. Scientific expeditions provide yacht owners, guests and crew powerboat, to study the behavior and population of harbor porpoises in San the opportunity to participate in ongoing research while engaging with influFrancisco Bay by photo identification. Ninety-one porpoises were observed, ential, well-known marine scientists. Each scientific expedition is organized over twice as many as GGCR has ever seen from a boat in the Bay, and half with both the science and yacht in mind. A list of proposed expeditions is kept a dozen new cetaceans were added to GGCR’s ID catalog. The results of up to date on the SeaKeepers website. Expeditions customized to the yacht the survey will allow GGCR to correlate porpoise distribution with oceanoowner’s interest and yacht itinerary and location can also be arranged. graphic characteristics to designate critical habitat locations.
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FEATURE
A front seat in heaven for a day, 1935.
THE FLOATING HOSPITAL
The first pediatric charity hospital created in New York City, fresh off the heels of the Civil War. And 149 years later, it remains one of the last family-practice-based charity hospitals in the city By Sean Granahan “Does it float?” –By far the most frequently asked question staff members at The Floating Hospital hear as they talk about the challenges inherent to providing healthcare to New York City’s exploding homeless family population. “Well, it did . . . through 9/11.” – Is the answer. Founded as part of the St. John’s Guild of Trinity Church in 1866 – yes, 1866 - The Floating Hospital (TFH) was the first pediatric charity hospital created in New York City, fresh off the heels of the Civil War. And 149 years later, it remains one of the last family-practice-based charity hospitals in the city.
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t’s easy to fall under the spell of this storied organization, as it has steadfastly remained true to its charitable purposes, has survived two World Wars, the turmoil of the 1960’s and 70’s, and the rapid advance of technology and social media at the turn of the millennium. It has lived through revolutions in health care: the discovery of penicillin and aspirin; the invention of typewriters and telephones; even the standardization of time itself occurred on its watch. At a time when electronic health records were more akin to the product of Jules Verne’s imagination, TFH was using
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hand-written ships logs to record the afflictions of the great masses of poor, immigrants, and discharged soldiers looking to start new lives that flooded its decks. The Floating Hospital is an icon of New York City, a scrappy survivor who has seen the City’s highs and lows through the eyes of its neediest. It remains as relevant now as at the time of its birth. Then. Describing The Floating Hospital’s history is akin to exploring New York City’s past. It starts with a scene frequently observed in the 1860’s: a police officer forcing a group of playing newsboys and other street children off the grass at City Hall Park and onto the scorching hot brick pavement. George F. Williams, then Managing Editor of the New York Times, decided that these boys and everyone like them ought to have a chance to play barefoot in the grass far from the cruelty of 19th Century New York City. His idea was to give these tenement-dwelling children chartered boat trips to the more bucolic areas surrounding the city, allowing them to fill their lungs with clean air while also providing healthcare. Child labor was a fact of life in 1860’s New York, and thus defined TFH’s first targeted population. William’s efforts through Trinity Church led to the launch of The Emma Abbott, the first ship in the Floating Hospital’s fleet, which was built to accommodate up to 2500 mothers and their children each trip. In its first year, it served over 20,000 of the City’s poorest. During one of these early outings, it became readily apparent that the need was far greater than the Guild had imagined, and that its staff needed to include trained nurses, among other
Patients waiting to board, 1936.
Top left: View of Liberty Island, 1953
Busses brought patients to the pier for care and a lovely summer cruise,1951 health professionals, to treat, and ultimately educate, patients on ways to ensure that their children stayed healthy and were given proper nutrition. Over the next decade, the Guild opened the Seaside Nursery and the Seaside Hospital on Staten Island, extending care to a land-based operation as well. A typical excursion on The Floating Hospital at this time would consist of a pleasant voyage in the sea air, where staff of the hospital would provide medical services to families that needed it. The passengers on these boats would be given a healthy meal, provided with cold milk for their babies, and received classes on how to take care of themselves and their children. The children would be given the rare opportunity to bathe, teaching both parents and children the benefit of cleanliness. In the stifling and overcrowded conditions of New York’s City’s tenement dwelling class, these basics were actually luxuries that few could afford. Jacob Riis’ 1889 seminal collection of photographs entitled How the Other Half Lives, detailing the deplorable conditions that New York City’s lower classes lived in, opened the eyes of millions of people in the city of New York itself about the living conditions of people located only a few miles (or even steps) away. Thus, the concept of preventative medicine took root, and The Floating Hospital was one of its pioneers. In the 1960’s, the Seaside Hospital was demolished, following a short stint as a military hospital during the Second World War. Over the ensuing years, The Floating Hospital remained a primarily maritime charity, and as ships became obsolete, others were built to take their places. It continued for 31 years as a sea-based hospital, aiding the underserved and homeless by providing primary medical care, dental, and mental health care from its eventual home at the South Street Sea Port. In the 1990’s it opened a few clinics within family homeless shelters, recognizing the importance of being closer to those it served. On September 11th, 2001, the lives of all New Yorkers, including The Floating Hospital, changed forever. Having given away all of its supplies on the day of the tragedy, and having lost its dock space to the massive debris
removal and clean-up efforts, the ship was tugged to Brooklyn to start its new life as an administrative and storage facility as TFH utilized a few of its homeless shelter-based clinics to survive. Like all great New York City tales of the downtrodden rising from tough circumstances, the organization expanded again to meet the great challenge of the new millennium: family homelessness. The stereotypical face of a homeless person is of an older male, left on the wayside by a mental health system known for years to be inadequate, and prone to substance abuse and/or violence. The true face of the homeless in NYC today could not be any farther from that perception. More and more of the homeless population are actually families, many forced from their homes by a sky-rocketing luxury rental market, with few job prospects, and many facing the specter of domestic violence. The faces of today’s homeless are young women and children, not on the street, but living in crowded family homeless shelters and City-rented motels. Approximately 81% of the entire homeless population is made up of families and children. At 43% of the total homeless population, children are the single largest group within that population – and growing. This is a new era in the crisis of homelessness in New York City, which exists in stark contrast with the contemporary vision of the affluent New York City.
Now. Lacking its signature ship, today The Floating Hospital meets the challenge of helping the city’s poor through a main clinic located in Long Island City, Queens, and its series of satellite clinics based in family homeless shelters. As a Federally Qualified Health Center, TFH functions at the highest quality standards for its 61,500 annual patient visits. It remains the largest provider of primary healthcare to the modern poor – homeless families and victims of domestic violence living in safe houses and shelters. TFH’s caregiving staff is a multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual team of licensed, board-certified, physicians, psychiatrists, nurse practitioners,
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FEATURE
Serving fresh, cold milk to little patients on a hot summer day aboard the Lloyd I Seaman, 1945
Boarding “The Ship of Health,” 1937 The hottest days brought the biggest crowds, 1953
Young patients at the Seaside Hospital enjoy a day on the beach with their medical care. Sun and surf were part of The Floating Hospital’s prescription for health. physician assistants, dentists, psychologists, health educators, substance abuse counselors, and social workers. TFH provides the full gamut of integrated primary medical, dental and mental health services, including specialties such as a child and geriatric psychiatry and cardiology. Equally important, staff at TFH cares about what they do and whom they serve. “We change lives,” according to Michelle Morgan-Jackson, head of The Floating Hospital’s health education department, “we help people make healthy lifestyle decisions.” Despite the fact that health education is not billable to government insurances like Medicaid, TFH’s historical commitment to health education has never wavered, and health education remains an integral part of its commitment to homeless families. A sophisticated health education team motivates patients to improve and maintain their health and prevent disease through individual counseling and group activities. Educa62
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View from bridge to bridge tion programs focus on teaching at-risk communities the benefits of healthy lifestyle choices, managing chronic illnesses (asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure), timely immunizations, and good hygiene. Educators also provide HIV pre/post-test counseling. “They treat me like a queen” – “they open the door for me” - “they talk to us like a friend does” - The Floating Hospital’s patient surveys abound with comments like these for its van transportation service. In place of sea excursions, TFH provides a desperately needed van transportation service that extends through all five boroughs of New York City and allows families living in shelters in the furthest reaches of the City’s transportation infrastructure to access a family doctor. While van transport in a city full of subways may seem odd, imagine yourself, four small children - with the host of strollers, supplies, etc., necessary for travel with small children – navigating the sub-
Police officer and young patienton the Lloyd I. Seaman, the 4th Floating Hospital
Line to board, near or before 1920
An early benefactor of The Floating Hospital, 1941
The Floating Hospital’s transportation service, now and then (1930s)
The tiniest of patients enjoy a view of the sea, 1930 terranean labyrinth of the NYC subway system. Access to care is one of the largest barriers facing young, homeless mothers, many of whom are homeless as a result of domestic violence. This service is especially important for these fragile families, who are often placed in shelters in the middle of the night, quickly spirited away from the dangerous circumstances that brought them there. Many have no knowledge of, or familiarity with, the neighborhood to which they have been placed. Visiting The Floating Hospital ensures their anonymity and eases their access to primary care and mental health services. For The Floating Hospital, going the extra mile is a staple of care. Its summer lunch and high school internship programs provide meaningful outlets for inner-city youth. TFH’s holiday program for families who use its services provides homeless mothers the opportunity to gift shop with dignity, one-on-one with a personal shopper (a TFH employee or member of one of
A crisp lineup of nurses, 1938 our many volunteer groups). Vouchers replace cash, giving the moms a choice in their selections while removing the stigma of a handout. Not since the Great Depression has NYC seen such high numbers of homeless families. Their plight has never been worse in generational memory, and the medical care of homeless families poses a vexing challenge for the traditional healthcare delivery models. As noted by TFH’s President Sean T Granahan, Esq., “at its core, the paradox is that life, and its circumstances, is not the same for everyone, and there are those among us in the great and prosperous city of New York who need The Floating Hospital’s helping hand; who have families to raise with no income, or on incomes unimaginable to most of us; and who lack even the basic opportunities to easily improve their situations. As a large urban center NYC will always have poor, and should always have The Floating Hospital’s helping hand.”
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PULSE
Art Her Stills Run Deep
Artist Celine McDonald Paints Life in New England Icons By Cindy Clarke 1
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ur conversation about her work took shape one intimate image at a time. Dories, in a flotilla of brilliant colors, singularly captivating on silent seas. A white boat, rope dangling, floating on a sandy beach. Cottages flirting with a cloudless cornflower sky. Country sheds, outlined in tinted shadows and opening to unseen guests. Bikini clad figures, solitary and strong, contemplating the ocean blue. Couples daring an urban street, a painted chair, overturned, a fishing boat docking into view. These are the reflective expressions of a gifted painter whose art has caught our focused attention and is popping up in homes, shop galleries and exhibitions from Boston and New York to Miami. “My work begins with chaos and ends with perceived serenity,” explains the artist Celine McDonald. She speaks in the same calming voice she paints in, thoughts measured with meaning, hued breath softly shaping figures and New England icons into immortality. She finds solace in familiar images, escaping the sensory overload and hectic pace of life in Manhattan and beyond by going into her own meditative space. Her studio sits in a converted barn in the heart of the Westchester hamlet of Pound Ridge, New York. The countryside rolls outside in waves of fieldstone walls and treed lawns, pastoral green in summer, winter white when we visited in March, in all seasons serving as a natural canvas that inspires works fashioned from life. Inside it’s quiet and orderly, a self-contained, picture-perfect artist’s retreat that nurtures her inherent, inherited genetic memories and inspires perspectives that are ultimately healing and uniquely Celine’s. A hint of burning sage hints at her spiritual side. When she can,
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she spends hours here in uninterrupted bliss, sketching, drawing, painting, altering, revising, reworking, reapplying, layer of oils upon oils, until she achieves the balance, beauty and hidden movement that distinguishes her work. She talks about the similarities that link her art with her past: her love of the water, her New England roots, her lifelong role as caretaker, her passion for painting and her recent revelation about her family’s seafaring legacy in the fishing towns of Nova Scotia. She reveals her fascination with birth and death and the vehicles that have integral roles in both processes: the womb and the coffin, shapes that visually play out on canvas in her painted boats. Her cottages and sheds, lifesize containers, share similar roles as protective spaces. Her figures stand strong and independent, suggesting the individual path we all walk in life. Dramatic colors blaze them into reality.
Married with four daughters, Celine hails from dual careers. She was professionally trained as a pediatric oncology nurse. And she was formally schooled in fine arts at Marymount Manhattan College, the Massachusetts College of Art and New York’s School of Visual Arts and was a Fellow at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in Massachusetts. Both disciplines shape her shapes. Both color her world and her work. An active, self-described physical person, with a curious spirit and a compassionate soul, she prefers to paint big pictures that make a bold statement. But her smaller works, painted prayers she calls them, are equally powerful and energized by the emotions and experiences she puts into them. “I love messy paintings but whenever I try to create one, order and clarity win out,” she says.
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3 So it goes with her boats as well, “I always come back to the boats.” People who have seen her work always come back for her boats too, says Boston gallery owner Beth Kantrowitz. “At first glance, they see a brightly colored, seemingly simple picture of a boat, or a person or a shed. Then, they sense contrasting feelings of joy and sadness that go beyond the mere image. Ultimately they find a peacefulness that touches them heart and soul.” “With Celine’s paintings, you have to imagine what’s in the boat or the cottage or behind the blank faces of her beautiful beach-bound figures. You won’t find oars to power the boats or facial features to influence your thoughts. What you will discover is an intimacy that connects you to the piece and works that are viscerally and visually stirring.” Beth says collectors clamor for the vibrant painting style Celine has mastered, saying they make an impactful statement that’s both decorative and deep. If you’re lucky enough to happen upon her boats and beaches in person, look closely, linger longer and dive in. Walk your imagination up to her sheds and cottages and go inside. These still images are anything but for they have the power to move you a little more each and every time you see them.
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6 1. 2 Blue Cabanas, 36" x 36", oil on wood 2. White Boat with Rope, 20" x 20", oil on wood 3. Red Boat Turned Right, 36x36, oil on wood 4. Woman in Orange Two Piece Suit, 36"x36", oil on wood 5. White Cottages, 48"x24", oil on canvas 6. Whiteboat, 24”x24”,oil on wood
To see more of Celine McDonald’s paintings, visit www.celinemcdonald.com or email beth.bkprojects@gmail.com CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE
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PULSE
Music Up In Smoke
The Failure of Burning Man By Peter Fox
3. Decommodification (Commerce is not permitted; the only commodities for sale at Burning Man are coffee and ice.) 4. Radical Self-Reliance (Every individual is encouraged/required to discover, exercise, and rely on their own inner resources). 5. Radical Self-Expression (Without violating the liberties of the receiver, each individual is allowed to express what is inside of them-read: almost anything goes). 6. Communal effort (Promote, produce, and protect social networks and works of art). 7. Civic Responsibility (All members of the “Black Rock Society” are responsible for the social welfare of those attending any event that they chose to organize). 8. Leave no Trace (Respect the environment, clean up after yourself, leave the place better than you found it). 9. Participation (Transformative change in any society can only occur through open-hearted inclusion of all who desire to participate in social events).
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very year on or around Labor Day, a makeshift city pops-up in the Nevada desert near the small town of Black Rock. The Burning Man Festival, begun in 1986 as a two day, end-of-summer bohemian bash for a group of forty people near San Francisco, has steadily grown in size, scope, and cultural significance. Described by one of its founding members,
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Larry Harvey, as an “experimental alternative society”, the festival began with ten core principles, namely: 1. Radical inclusion (Everyone is welcome). 2. Gifting (Every attendee should bring and distribute gifts for as many people as possible).
10. Immediacy. (The quest to overcome barriers that stand between us and our true inner-selves, while recognizing and respecting the reality of those around us). Each year, on the sixth and final night of Burning Man, a forty-foot high, wooden effigy of man is burned at the center of Black Rock City, (Or “the Playa” as it has been called by attendees, who are also referred to as “burners.”) It symbolizes the “passing away” -organizers refuse to use the word destruction to describe the process- of outdated societal models, To make way for the new, as defined by the principles of Burning Man. With the ten principles and hedonistic rituals serving as the backdrop, the paradox of the present day Burning Man festival can be identified. Consider... Thirty years have passed since the first Burning Man festival near San Francisco. When the organizers lost their permit, Burning Man migrated to Nevada, where it has been transformed from an admission-free love fest, to an economic juggernaut that plays host to nearly fifty thousand guests each year. The organizers, (California natives John Law, Michael Mikel and William Binzen), charge upwards of
$400.00 per ticket for the event. Last year was the first Burning Man festival to sell out. This year, tickets to the event sold out in an astonishing 44 minutes, with well heeled “Burners”, travelling from Russia, China, and the Middle East for a chance to let it all hang out for seven days and six nights in the Nevada desert. Much of the art displayed at Burning Man is performance based; there are themed tents featuring everything from independent films, interactive sculptures and dramatic plays. There are several tents which feature (you guessed it) orgies, complete with air conditioning, showers and fresh linens. As cash exchanges are forbidden on the Playa, some attendees who set up exhibits or tents to house their “art” have taken to charging fees to burners ahead of time on the internet, providing a code, which in turn, gets them a wristband with which to gain admission to techno-raves, and all that come with them. Last year, several high rollers, like Mark Zuckerberg, the Winklevoss twins, P-Diddy, et.al, shuttled in and out of the desert in chartered 747’s. Much to the chagrin of proletariat burners who save up all year to gather the resources to attend, the emergence of a class structure at the festival in recent years has, despite heated denials from organizers, been unmistakable. Many events exclude attendees who show up at plush, air conditioned tents without a wristband. A large number of attendees arrive by any means that they can, but most arrive in mobile
As the founding principles of Burning Man erode from their origins more and more each year, the public’s fascination with it grows. What began as an experiment of an inclusive, non-exploitative and open festival of art and culture has devolved into a celebration of America’s biggest complaint. homes, rented in neighboring states at hyperinflated rental prices for Burning Man week, or in “Art Cars”, some of which are breathtakingly and lovingly decorated months in advance of Burning Man; they receive special permits for which Burners must apply for well ahead of the event. As the festival continues to grow in popularity and size, similar events have sprung up in 17 countries and 30 states, with these spin-off festivals following organizational models resembling that of Burning Man (And no, Burning Man organizers have not, as of yet, franchised or sponsored any of these events outside of the Black Rock festival). As the founding principles of Burning Man erode from their origins more and more
each year, the public’s fascination with it grows. What began as an experiment of an inclusive, non-exploitative and open festival of art and culture has devolved into a celebration of America’s biggest complaint: the omnipotent power of the one percent to buy, and then exclude; not only ideas, but enjoyment of their manifestation. The only element of Burning Man that grows faster than the hypocrisy of Black Rock’s current state of being is our fascination with it, and our desire to be next to it. Ironically, Burning Man’s self professed counter-culture agenda has become anything but; and as the festival grows each year at an unbridled pace, it has become a reflection and affirmation of the very qualities it proclaims to rail against.
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PULSE
Theater Be Who You Are, Love Who You Love and Carry On The Producing Career of Daryl Roth By William Squier
“My professional life is totally intertwined with my personal life,” feels Daryl Roth, the producer of close to 90 plays and musicals on and off Broadway.
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ith many a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner among them, you might think that Roth would be tempted to rest on her laurels. But, she remains committed to bringing works to the stage that speak to issues that are close to her heart: those of gender, race and religion. “I get such a sense of fulfillment from the way that the theater can change people, and move them, and make things better,” Roth says. “That’s what I love about it.” Born and raised just across the Hudson River in Wayne, NJ, Daryl Roth grew up going to Broadway shows. “My parents were wonderful theatergoers,” she recalls. “Musicals especially. When my sister and I were young, they took us to anything that was fun and age appropriate. When I was older I’d take myself on Saturday afternoons and it was like going to Heaven.” “I never figured there’d be a place for me in the theater because I didn’t aspire to be an actress,” Roth continues. “But, I loved putting on little shows in our house and enlisting my sister, the dog and anyone else that would participate. It was the ‘putting it together’ that felt right for me. When you define what a producer does, it’s just that!” At first, however, Roth channeled her artistic sense and organized mind into interior design. After graduating from NYU with a degree in Art History, meeting and marrying her husband (real estate entrepreneur Steven Roth), and starting a family, she embarked upon a stint as a designer of office interiors. “I loved it because there was a beginning, a middle and an end,” Roth explains. But, it wasn’t long before she heard the siren song of the stage. It happened when Roth was asked to join the Board of Directors of New York City Center, Manhattan’s oldest performing arts home to a
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variety of theater and dance companies. She was placed on a committee that was exploring what ultimately became the Center’s Encores! musical theater series. From there, she took her first steps toward a producing career that has resulted in a remarkable string of hits, including Three Tall Women, De La Guarda, Wit, Anna in the Tropics, Caroline, or Change, August: Osage County, Love, Loss and What I Wore, The Normal Heart and the Tony Award Best Musical Kinky Boots. VENU: You credit author/director Richard Maltby with your start as a producer. How did that happen? DARYL ROTH: “Richard was working on the same committee at City Center and we became friends. Then, one night in 1988, he asked if I wanted come down to this club to hear some songs that he and David Shire had written. I was so thrilled! It was a night of cabaret in a place that, sadly, no longer exists, Eighty-Eights. It was crazy, because I felt that every song they presented was talking to me directly: stories about going through life changes, taking care of aging parents or dealing with your children. At the end of it, I said to Richard and David, ‘These songs are won-
Contributed Photo
derful. They’ve affected me so deeply that I can only think they would affect other people, too. Would you let me try to produce this as a show?” I don’t know who was talking inside of my body when I said that! And they said, ‘Sure!’ We approached the Williamstown Theater Festival and they had a slot available in the downstairs theater where they were experimenting with doing small musicals. Then, we took it to the Cherry Lane Theater where it became Closer Than Ever. It ran for nine months. And I learned so much. I learned how to keep something that you really believe in going. And that has stood me in good stead all these years. The reviews were fine, but it took awhile to build the audience. Every night I stood there and saw people loving it. So, I knew that I had to keep it going. We were very lucky that RCA chose to record the original cast album – they just weren’t doing that with Off-Broadway musicals. Because of that the show has had a wonderful life. And a casting agent friend told me that songs from Closer Than Ever are used regularly for auditions because they’re storytelling songs.” VENU: Why did so much of your earliest work as a producer take place Off-Broadway? ROTH: “I loved the Off-Broadway experience for many reasons. There are certain plays and small musicals that belong Off-Broadway. The ones that I was attracted to were stories that were challenging and pushed buttons. People make the mistake of thinking that everything has to be on Broadway to be recognized. I don’t subscribe to that at all. You can have a beautiful, intimate experience in a smaller theater. Plus, I felt that I wasn’t ready for Broadway. I wanted to have a little more confidence in myself. I haven’t always had that. For example, I went to “Kinky Boots” producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig accept the award for Best Musical, at the 67th Annual Tony Awards.
Top, Tyne Daly, Lisa Howard, Sierra Boggess, David Burtka and Harriet Harris in “It Shoulda Been You.” Bottom, Andy Kelso, Billy Porter and Jeanna de Waal in “Kinky Boots.”
Photo: Andrew Eccles
Photo: Matthew Murphy
see Angels in America on a trip to London. I was so overwhelmed and moved that I came back to New York, found out who represented Tony Kushner and called to say that it was one of the most brilliant theater experiences I’d ever had. But, what I really wanted to say was ‘Can I be part of the producing team when it comes to New York?’ I didn’t and I regret it to this day!” VENU: You’ve said that you were viewed by some as a “dilettante” when you started out. When did that change? ROTH: “I think what really happened is that I changed. My confidence grew and I cared less about what people thought about me! I was doing very good work, receiving awards and having critical success. People finally realized that I was in it for real. A dilettante is someone who comes and goes and tries this and that. I’ve been at it for twenty-eight years. Once I made up my mind that this is where I wanted to spend my career, there was no turning back.” VENU: You worked with some incredible playwrights like, Edward Albee, Larry Kramer or Harvey Fierstein -- writers with
personalities as vivid as the work they create. What’s that been like? ROTH: “Stimulating and creatively exciting! I grew up reading Edward Albee’s plays in high school and college. So, when I met him and produced Three Tall Women in 1994, I really believed that I had reached the pinnacle of my career! And I went on, with Liz McCann, to produce six of his plays! I had such high regard for Larry Kramer -- as a person and for his accomplishments -- I jumped at it when I had a chance to produce a revival of The Normal Heart. It was a total labor of love. My son (Jordan Roth, President and majority owner of Jujamcyn Theaters) is gay. So, I do everything and anything I can to make his world better. I thought that The Normal Heart is something that young people needed to be exposed to again. It was important to me that young, gay men and women recognized on whose shoulder they stood.”
VENU: Your 1998 production of De La Guarda anticipated the immersive theater movement that’s so big a part of the New York theater scene today. How did that come about? ROTH: “I was shown a video of De La Guarda and remember asking Jordan, ‘What do you think about this thing?’ He said that I should give it a try. We were still working on the plans for the Daryl Roth Theater and nothing had been built yet. What they needed was the big empty space. So, we figured we had nothing to lose! If they only lasted a month, fine. Six months, fine. And here we are in 2015 and still doing it!” VENU: So, you never actually got to finish building your Off-Broadway theater because De La Guarda ran there until 2004? ROTH: And now we have Fuerza Bruta, which I call its’ cousin. There are times that I wish that I had a proper 299-seat theater to put a play in. But, then I realize how lucky I am that it ran so long! And I get over it!” VENU: Many of the plays and musicals that you’ve produced have enjoyed critical acclaim along with commercial success. How do you strike that balance? ROTH: “The way I choose to produce something is based on how it affects me personally.
I take into account the things that are important to me – whether it’s about gender, race or religion – and if I feel I can facilitate getting that information to people under the safe umbrella of theater. What do I want to say by presenting this play by this playwright? Why is important to hear it? Will it change someone’s mind?” VENU: You’ve spoken of understanding “the outsider’s mentality” and that it influences the choice of plays that you produce. Where does that understanding come from? ROTH: “A couple of things, rolled together. When I grew up I was the only Jewish student in my school, which made me feel very much an outsider. Fortunately, I came from a strong and supportive family, so I never felt unloved. But, I felt outside the mainstream. So, I have empathy for people that are in the minority. Then, as I got older, I realized that I wasn’t ‘a joiner’ or a group person. I followed my own path. I have a few very good friends. My family is everything. And my career is a very close second.” VENU: You were the driving force behind the creation of one of your biggest hits: Kinky Boots? ROTH: “I approached Harvey to write the book for Kinky Boots because I felt he had the right sensibility – that he would get it, inside and out. He suggested that we work with Cindi Lauper and she turned out to be a genius. Jerry Mitchell was my choice for director. And I approached a colleague, Hal Luftig, to co-produce it with me because I hadn’t done a big, Broadway musical by myself.” VENU: Now you’re about to do it again with It Shoulda Been You. ROTH: “It’s a wonderful, heart-warming, funny, joyful new musical with a little message -- a story that rolls together all of the things that I care about. It’s written by the husband of David Hyde Pierce, who is making his Broadway directing debut, and has a great ensemble cast (that includes Tyne Daly, Harriet Harris, Sierra Boggess, Montego Glover, Chip Zien, Josh Grisetti, Adam Heller, Michael X. Martin, Anne L. Nathan and Edward Hibbert). David Burka, who plays the groom, is married in real life to Neil Patrick Harris. It’s set at a wedding where the grandfather of the groom has promised him a big inheritance when he gets married. Then, an old boyfriend of the bride comes back to try and stop the wedding, but not for the reason we think. He knows that the real couples are the bride and her maid-ofhonor and the groom and his best man! My hope is that people will come, love it and take away the message that you need to be who you are, love who you love and carry on.” VENU: At an award ceremony in 2012, you said that you were inspired to bring stories to the stage that leave audiences “a little smarter, as little bit kinder, a bit more informed, hopefully encouraged to do something in response.” Would you like that as your legacy? ROTH: “I would be happy with that, after my family! I would be!”
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Film + Entertainment
Fox on Film by PETER FOX: about.me/foxonfilm
Left to right: Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert Photo by Colin Jones, Courtesy of Imageworks/Sony Pictures Classics
“Lambert & Stamp” Directed by James D. Cooper
Rated R, 117 minutes. A Sony Classics Pictures release
“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.” - Hesiod, 8 th Century BC
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E
arly 1960s London: the postwar generation who grew up playing in air raid shelters and bomb sites is detonating a youth rebellion that brings Hesiod’s words back to life. At London’s Shepperton Studios, two young 2nd assistant directors compare notes on film, music, and frustrated ambitions, forging an unlikely friendship and collaboration that leaves an indelible mark
on pop music and culture of the ‘60s and beyond. Rockumentaries which stand the test of time, like, The Last Waltz, Ladies and Gentlemen the Rolling Stones, and Woodstock, are far and few between. It is not too early to say that Lambert & Stamp will take its place on that shortlist as one of the great rock documentary films of all time. This enormously entertaining film about the humble beginnings of The Who gives due acknowledgement to Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, who are described by Roger Daltrey as the band’s fifth and sixth members. James D. Cooper’s rollicking film is a heady return to Swinging Sixties England at the height of the Mod explosion that’s packed with eyepopping archival material and
killer tunes. It’s also a vigorous testament to the rewards of creative collaboration, shining a spotlight on two highly unorthodox, self-invented rock entrepreneurs In the early Sixties, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, aspiring filmmakers, set out to make a cinema vérité documentary about the mod world of rock and roll, but sidetracked instead into managing and developing the sonic powerhouse that came to be called The Who. Their gorgeously propulsive footage—the rock documentary that was never completed—lays a foundation for director James D. Cooper’s kaleidoscopic study of an era and a rare friendship’s creative bond. Present-day interviews with the surviving principals, now grown older, reflect thoughtfully on their relationships and life trajectories. Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp were a class apart. Chris Stamp, the son of a tugboat captain, was a Cockney East Ender and “rough tough fighting spiv,” as described by his elder brother, actor Terence Stamp. Stamp came to his interest in performing arts and cinema via the roundabout route of a backstage job at the ballet (an occupation suggested by his brother Terence because Chris’s only real interest till then seemed to be girls, and the ballet theater was a good place to find them). Lambert, the son of a celebrated symphony orchestra conductor, was Oxford-educated, multilingual, impeccably dressed, and possessed of an unmistakably highbrow accent and manner. Lambert was as open a homosexual as one could be in an era when the closet was the norm. (Homosexuality was illegal in England in the 1960s.) He was also a member of the aristocracy. His father was composer-conductor Constant Lambert. He was educated at Oxford and was fluent in several languages. Stamp was born dirt poor in London’s tough East End. But despite their differences, the two bonded working as assistant film directors
Left to right: Chris Stamp, Pete Townshend and Kit Lambert Photo courtesy of Pictorial Press/Sony Pictures Classics
at Shepperton Studios. As young would-be cineastes, however, the two Shepperton assistants shared a love of jazz, literature, and the French New Wave films that reflected their own restless impatience with the dreary grey of postwar society. Kit had seen the world as an Army officer and as cameraman on a perilous and grueling expedition into the Amazon. Recognizing Kit’s fundamental courage, Chris credits him with “widening my angle of awareness on possibilities.” “They complemented each other, like two and two make six,” says Terence Stamp. Realizing that they’d never break out as directors at Shepperton, they hatched the plan to find their rock and rollers and film the very process of creating a hit group, thus providing their own directorial calling card. Chris Stamp—still handsome as an elder gentleman as he was in his rakish youth— recalls that “Kit and I looked everywhere at these bands to put in our so-called movie...we didn’t know what we wanted, but we absolutely knew what we didn’t want: if we found the people doing the music to be smart and neat and jumping up and down, they weren’t what we wanted. What we wanted—it was really about us. It was going to be some
mad fucking concoction of stuff that looked like Lambert and Stamp.” The film chronicles the fascinating story of these business partners who took a rough-and-tumble group known as the High Numbers and as their managers helped transform Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon and John Entwistle into the legendary rock band the Who. Along the way, Lambert and Stamp created a successful label, Track Records. They produced the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They lived like rock stars. But drugs, disagreements and money eventually got in the way. The Who fired them in the 1970s. Lambert, who battled drug and alcohol addiction, died in 1981 at age 45 of a cerebral hemorrhage after a fall at his mother’s house. Stamp had also dealt with substance abuse, but unlike Lambert turned his life around and became a psychodrama therapist and addiction counselor. Cooper, a cinematographer who makes his feature debut with “Lambert & Stamp,” describes the film as a love story. In fact, he noted, women who have attended screenings have told him that “this is probably the first and most brilliant examination of the vulnerabilities of men.” When he pitched the idea to Stamp, whom he
had known for several years, Cooper told him, “I don’t want to do a Who documentary. I want to do something about the emotional reality of this.” When Stamp finally agreed to participate, he told Cooper, “If you are willing to put yourself through this, you will have my complete participation and availability.” Lambert & Stamp features a treasure trove of archival footage from the era, a pulsating soundtrack and revealing interviews with Townshend, Daltrey and most notably the charismatic Stamp, who died of cancer in 2012 at age 70. “In the last couple of years, you could see his health catching up with him,” said Cooper. “I knew he was having some issues, but he never brought that to the forefront. He entered into this process with me, and he wasn’t going to be the first to say, ‘It’s too much.’ He just kept showing up and showing up in a marvelous way.” Because Lambert had been dead for almost 35 years, Cooper said it was challenging to make audiences feel his presence in the film. “We were incredibly fortunate that both of these guys had been filmed to the degree they had,” said Cooper. “But just because you have footage of the person doesn’t necessarily mean you are presenting them in a character arc. We had to work very hard in the structure of the film to develop (Lambert’s) character and to keep his placement in the film.” Though Lambert and Stamp had no experience in managing and no money when they met the group in 1964, Townshend and Daltrey told Cooper that they “had a kind of magic between the two of them that was irrefutable. They said it was something you can’t describe. The two of them together were mesmerizing, intoxicating and alluring.” Refreshingly straight-forward and highly entertaining, this important documentary will have a longer than usual shelf-life at the theaters. If you have the chance, go see this one on the big screen.
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by Matthew Sturtevant
DECORATIVE ARTS
On The Block:
Tour of Turing. Enigma. Humungous Fungus. Descartes, among others. Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952 when it was a crime in Britain. Forced to undergo chemical castration, Turing killed himself in 1954 at the age of 41. He was officially pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II only in 2013, six decades after his death. Enigma In the same sale, 3-rotor Enigma I Enciphering Machine (aka Heeres Enigma) is in complete working condition and sold for almost 1.5 times its high estimate. The machine, with serial number 18660, was manufactured for the German military in Berlin in July of 1944. Few of these machines are known to have survived the war. Patented by Arthur Scherbius in 1918, the Enigma Machine uses three interchangeable rotors, which scramble plain-text messages to produce a cipher text message, a virtually unbreakable code. The Germans first used this machine as their primary cipher device in 1926 to encrypt naval coded messages. The code was finally cracked by a team of young British code breakers at Bletchley Park led by none other than Alan Turing.
Tour of Turing At Bonhams New York April 9, 2015 A long-lost notebook owned by British mathematician and World War II code breaker Alan Turing sold at auction in New York on Monday for $1 million. The sale of the recently discovered notebook comes at a time of enormous interest in Turing’s life and work generated by Oscar-winning movie “The Imitation Game”. The manuscript, which sold for $1.025 million in
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two minutes of bidding, dates back to the mid-1940s when Turing was working to break the Nazi Enigma code at Britain’s Bletchley Park. The notebook is believed to be the only extensive Turing autograph manuscript in existence and gives an insight into the man whose work, when he was just 24, led to the universal computer machine. It features 56 pages of Turing’s notes on the foundations of mathematical notations and computer science, made during his leisure time at Bletchley Park. It shows that Turing was examining the works of German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and French philosopher and mathematician Rene
Humungous Fungus On 6 December at Sotheby’s New York, a white truffle weighing in at a massive 4.16 pounds (1.89 kilos) when discovered sold for $61,250. The truffle, by far the largest ever found, sold to a food and
Photographs: Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2015
wine lover from Taiwan bidding by phone who also planned to participate in the day’s wine auction. The extraordinary tuber was discovered just the week before the sale in central Italy and was offered by the Balestra family of Sabatino Truffles who plan to donate proceeds to a number of charitable organizations, including Citymeals-on-Wheels, a local group to feed the hungry and the Children’s Glaucoma Foundation.
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Gallery + Museum GUIDE
CT Bridgeport
City Lights Gallery 37 Markle Court, Bridgeport Tel: 203.334.7748 Web: citylightsgallery.org Hours: Wed - Fri 11:30am-5pm; Sat 12- 4pm, or by appointment City Lights Gallery presents local, regional and emerging artists to Bridgeport and its visitors. The gallery hosts various community-based exhibits and events such as: Artists’ Receptions, Arts/crafts classes, Open Studio Workshop, Lunch Time Art Demonstrations, Movie Night Series, Concerts and Music, Private and Corporate Rentals. _______________________________________ Housatonic Museum of Art 900 Lafayette Blvd., Bridgeport Tel: 203.332.5052 Web: hctc.commnet.edu/artmuseum Hours: June/July/August, Monday through Friday 8:30am-5:30pm; Thursday evening until 7pm The Museum has one of the most significant collections of any two-year college in the country and includes works by master artists such as Rodin, Picasso, Matisse, Miro and Chagall. Both art enthusiasts and casual observers have the rare opportunity to engage daily with original works of art and artifacts on continuous display throughout the College and campus grounds. The Museum also presents lectures, programs and changing exhibitions in the Burt Chernow Galleries for our students and the community at large, serving as a rich cultural resource for the Greater Bridgeport area. _______________________________________ Schelfhaudt Gallery University of Bridgeport 84 Iranistan Avenue, Bridgeport 203-576-4696
DARien Geary Gallery 576 Boston Post Road, Darien Tel: 203.655.6633 Web: gearygallery.com Hours: Wed - Sat 9:30-5pm A preeminent Fairfield County gallery for representational art. We are friends to artists, spotting talent and market appeal, and nurturing careers, with a art exhibits that rotate approximately every five weeks.
Fairfield Fairfield University 1073 N. Benson Road Tel: (203) 254-4046 Bellarmine Museum of Art (Bellarmine Hall) Jan Dilenschneider: Dualities June 4 - September 18, 2015 Hours: Monday-Friday, 11am-4pm Web: fairfield.edu/museum Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery (Quick Center for the Arts) Craig Barber photography exhibition Ghosts in the Landscape: Vietnam Revisited Through June 6, 2015 Hours: Monday-Friday, 11:00-5:00 Web: fairfield.edu/walshgallery _______________________________________ The Fairfield Museum + History Center Explore the Past, Imagine the Future 370 Beach Road, Fairfield Tel: 203.259.1598 Fax: 203.255.2716 Web: fairfieldhistory.org Hours: Open daily 10am - 4pm Believing in the power of history to inspire the imagination, stimulate thought and transform society. ON VIEW NOW: Creating Community: Exploring 375 Years of Our Past IMAGES 2015 – 7th Annual Juried Photography Exhibition, celebrating the work of regional photographers. Solo Exhibit by Howard Schatz Celebrating the human form in portraits and studies in motion.
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Troy Fine Art 3310 Post Road, Southport (Fairfield) Tel: 203.255 .1555 Web: troyfineart.com Hours: Mon - Fri 9:30am-5pm, or by appointment in your home or office at your convenience. Fine Art Gallery, Exceptional Design, Conservation Framing, Perfect Installation. _______________________________________
Greenwich
Abby M. Taylor Fine Art 43 Greenwich Avenue Tel: 203.622.0906 Web: amtfineart.com Abby M Taylor Fine Art LLC is a dealer in investment quality American and European paintings, sculpture, works on paper and photography from the 19th century to the present. _______________________________________ Bruce Museum 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich Tel: 203.869.0376 Web: brucemuseum.org Hours: Tue-Sat 10-5pm Sun 1-5pm A regionally based, world-class institution highlighting art, science and natural history in more than a dozen changing exhibitions annually. The permanent galleries feature the natural sciences that encompass regional to global perspectives. _______________________________________ Flinn Gallery Greenwich Library, 2nd Floor 101 W. Putnam Avenue, Greenwich Web: flynngallery.com Tel: 203.622.7947 Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-5pm; Thur 10am-8pm Sat 10am-5pm; Sun 1pm-5pm
Samuel Owen Gallery 382 Greenwich Avenue, Greenwich Tel: 203.422.6500 Web: samuelowengallery.com Hours: Mon-Sat 10:30-6pm; Sun 11-3pm
Underwater Study by Howard Schatz
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Presenting a selection of enduring American Masters and Contemporary artists, we invite new clients and seasoned connoisseurs to explore the values of fine art collecting. _______________________________________
The Flinn Gallery is a non-profit, education oriented exhibition space that presents art in all mediums from a wide range of periods, visions and techniques. _______________________________________
The Schelfhaudt Gallery at the University of Bridgeport produces a varied and eclectic number of shows each academic year. Exhibits include works from students, alumni, local, regional and nationally known artists and associations such as the New York Type Directors. The Schelfhaudt Gallery is also host to the Innovators Entrepreneurs events, film screenings and multiple symposiums.
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Southport Galleries 330 Pequot Avenue Tel: 203.292.6124 Web: southportgalleries.com
Likened to, “a little bit Chelsea on lower Greenwich Avenue”, Samuel Owen Gallery specializes in paintings, photography and prints by American and European midcareer and contemporary artists. Regularly scheduled artist receptions fill the gallery to capacity with a colorful crowd. _______________________________________
Gallery + Museum GUIDE
F eatured G alleries , M useums & C reative S ervices
Evert Witte
Saturday, May 2 – Sunday, June 28, 2015
The Lionheart Gallery 27 Westchester Ave, Pound Ridge, NY, 10576
Sandra Russell Clark
www.thelionheartgallery.com 914 764 8689
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Gallery + Museum GUIDE
MADISON Susan Powell Fine Art 679 Boston Post Road Tel: 203.318-0616 Web: susanpowellfineart.com Hours: Wed-Sat 11am-5pm Sun: Anytime by appointment The gallery specializes in Contemporary Realism, and Impressionism, with monthly exhibitions featuring nationally-known and emerging artists.
New Canaan Handwright Gallery & Framing 93 Main Street, New Canaan Tel: 203.966.7660 Fax: 203.966.7663 Web: handwrightgallery.com Hours: Mon-Sat 10-5:30pm Handwright Gallery & Framing provides a full range of framing and installation services for the Fairfield County area. The gallery offers original paintings including watercolors, oils, and pastels along with sculpture from traditional to contemporary. Our gallery represents emerging and award-winning regional artists. _______________________________________ Silvermine Arts Center 1037 Silvermine Road New Canaan, CT 06840 Tel: 203.966.9700 Web: silvermineart.org Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat 12pm-5pm; Sun 1pm-5pm April 12- May 20th: 25th Annual Silvermine School of Art Exhibition: showcasing the artistic achievements of the Silvermine School of Art students of all ages. June 6th – July 26th:: 65th Annual Art of the Northeast Exhibition Co-curators: Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam: Co-founders Suburban and the Poor Farm Opening Reception: Saturday, June 6th – 6-8pm
Yale Center for British Art 1080 Chapel Street Tel: 203-432-2800 Web: britishart.yale.edu Temporarily closed for building conservation . REOPENING SPRING 2016 ______________________________________ Yale University Art Gallery 1111 Chapel Street (at York Street) Tel: 203-432-0600 Web: artgallery.yale.edu Hours: Tue-Fri 10am–5pm Thu (Sept–June) 10am–8:00pm Sat–Sun 11am–5pm The Gallery is free and open to the public.
Norwalk Artists’ Market 163 Main Street, Norwalk Tel: 203.846.2550 Fax: 203.846.2660 Web: artistsmarket.com Hours: Mon-Sat 9-5pm; Thu 9-8pm; Sun 12-4pm Artists’ Market is an oasis of art, an exciting blend of a gallery, a museum, and a busy framing workshop. Here you’ll find artistic creations in a variety of media: classic contemporary handmade American crafts, exquisite fine art and photography as well as custom framing for those who want to show off something special or preserve heirlooms for future generations. _______________________________________ Center for Contemporary Printmaking Mathews Park 299 West Avenue Norwalk, CT 06850 Tel: 203.899.7999 Web: contemprints.org Hours: Mon-Sat 9am-5pm; Sun 12- 5pm | Admission Free Dedicated to the art of the original print, the Center annually hosts 4 major exhibitions, a members’ exhibition, artist talks, over 75 printmaking workshops, and programs for schools and colleges. Print studio rental is available for private and corporate functions and to members who work independently. _______________________________________ Leclerc Contemporary At Fairfield Co. Antique and Design Ctr. 19 Willard Road, Norwalk, CT 06851 Tel: 203.826.8575 Web: leclerccontemporary.com Hours: Monday-Saturday 10-6, Sun 11-5 and by appointment.
2014, AoNE exhibition
New Haven Fred Giampietro 1064 Chapel Street New Haven, CT 06510 Tel: 203.777.7760 Web: giampietrogallery.com Hours: Mon-Sat 11-6pm, or by appointment _______________________________________
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Brand new upscale contemporary art gallery located just off Westport Avenue. Featuring new art exhibits every 6 weeks. _______________________________________ Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum 295 West Avenue, Norwalk Tel: 203-838-9799 ext 4 Web: lockwoodmathewsmansion.com
Stamford Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery 96 Bedford Street, Stamford, CT Tel: 888-861-6791 Web: flalvarezgallery.com Hours: Mon by appt. Tue-Sat 10am-6pm Sun closed The Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery was founded by contemporary artist Fernando Luis Alvarez with the goal of providing other artists with what he always yearned for from a gallery, yet which he never received. Franklin Street Works 41 Franklin St, Stamford, CT Tel: 203-595-5211 Web: franklinstreetworks.org Hours: Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun: 12 -5:00pm Thurs: 12-7pm F ranklin Street Works is a new, not-forprofit contemporary art space, café, and social gathering place in Stamford, Connecticut. It produces original on-site and off-site exhibitions, artist projects, and related programming. Located in renovated row houses on Franklin Street, the two-story space includes three galleries and a café.
Old Lyme Chauncey Stillman Gallery Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts 84 Lyme Street, Old Lyme Tel: 860.434.5232 Fax: 860.434.8725 Web: lymeacademy.edu Hours: Mon-Sat 10-4pm Exhibitions, free and open to the public, include a broad spectrum of professional, student and alumni artwork throughout the year. _______________________________________ The Cooley Gallery 25 Lyme Street Old Lyme, CT Tel: 860-434-8807 Web: cooleygallery.com Hours: Tue-Sat 10am-5pm _______________________________________ Diane Birdsall Gallery 16 Lyme Street, Old Lyme 860 434 3209 Web: dianebirdsallgallery.com Hours: Wed-Sat: 12-6 pm Sun: 1-4 pm _______________________________________ Florence Griswold Museum 96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme Tel: 860.434.5542 For hours, admission, special events visit: FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org “Home of American Impressionism.” Historic boardinghouse of the Lyme Art Colony, modern gallery with changing exhibitions. Gardens and grounds to enjoy. _______________________________________
Gallery + Museum GUIDE
F eatured G alleries , M useums & C reative S ervices
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Gallery + Museum GUIDE
Ridgefield The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum 258 Main Street Tel: 203.438.4519 Web: aldrichart.org Hours: Tue-Sun 12-5pm The Aldrich is dedicated to fostering innovative artists whose ideas and interpretations of the world around us serve as a platform to encourage creative thinking. The Aldrich, which served an audience of over 37,700 in 2011, is one of the few independent, non-collecting contemporary art museums in the United States, and the only museum in Connecticut devoted to contemporary art. _______________________________________ Ridgefield Guild of Artists 93 Halpin Lane, Ridgefield Tel: 203.438.8863 Web: rgoa.com Email: rgoa@sbcglobal.net Hours: Wed-Sun 12-4pm For a complete calendar of events and offerings, please visit our web site at rgoa.org. _______________________________________ Watershed Gallery 23 Governor Street, Ridgefield Tel: 203.438.44387 Web: watershedgallery.com Hours: Tue-Fri 11-6; Sat 11-5; Sun 1-5 Watershed Gallery represents artists from around the world – and around the corner – in a range of media, from painting, printmaking and works on paper, to photography and sculpture. Rotating shows highlight artists who produce abstract and loosely representational art, and who create an emotional connection with the viewer.
Westport Amy Simon Fine Art 1869 Post Road East, Westport Tel: 203.259.1500 Fax: 203.259.1501 Web: amysimonfineart.com Hours: Tue-Sat 11-5:30 and by appt. Amy Simon Fine Art specializes in work by mid-career and emerging artists, contemporary blue chip editions and Asian contemporary art. The gallery’s inventory and exhibitions reflect its eclectic interests and expertise in these areas. Amy Simon works with collectors worldwide. It is our mission to introduce clients to work that we are passionate about. _______________________________________ Picture This Custom Framing & Fine Art and Nylen Gallery 772 Post Road East, Westport Tel: 203.227.6861 Web: picturethisofwestport.com Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-5:30pm Sat 10am-5pm Framing: Creative presntation and preservation solutions for every kind of art. Digital art services offred as well. _______________________________________
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Westport Art Center 51 Riverside Avenue, Westport Tel: 203.222.7070 Fax: 203.222.7999 Web: westportartscenter.org Hours: Mon-Fri 10-4; Sat 10-5; Sun 12-4 _______________________________________ Worrell Smith Gallery 611 Riverside Ave, Westport CT Tel: 203.297.3059 Web: worrellsmithgallery.com Hours: Monday-Saturday 10-6PM Westport’s newest gallery for contemporary and modern. Featuring a rotating exhibition schedule as well as a constant offering of modern sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, and art.
NY
Pound Ridge The Lionheart Gallery 27 Westchester Avenue Pound Ridge, New York Tel. 914-764-8689 Web: Thelionheartgallery.com Hours: Wed-Sat 11 am - 5 pm; Sun. 12- 5 pm and by appointment.Those traveling a distance would be advised to call ahead, as the gallery is occasionally closed for private viewings with collectors. The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge, New York is located in Northern Westchester’s Hudson River Valley on the border of Stamford and New Canaan, Connecticut. The Lionheart Galley has beautifully lush grounds with a pond and a aviary garden. Gallery Director Susan Grissom curates each exhibit from work chosen from the artists’ studio. The gallery carries an inventory that consists of painting, printmaking, fine art photography, Mixed Media and Sculpture. They also have a small works gallery with affordable works of art, art books, and art gifts.
BROOKLYN
A.I.R. Gallery 111 Front Street, #228, Brooklyn, NY Tel: 212-255-6651 Web: airgallery.org Hours: Wed - Sun 11 am - 6 pm
A.I.R. Gallery’s goal is to provide a professional and permanent exhibition space for women artists to present work of quality and diversity.
Victor’s Garden, Claudia Mengel 60 X 48
Larchmont
Purchase
Kenise Barnes Fine Art 1947 Palmer Avenue Tel: 914.834.8077 Web: kbfa.com Hours: Wed-Sun 12-6pm
Neuberger Museum of Art 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase Tel: 914.251.6100 Web: neuberger.org Hours: Tue-Sun 12-5pm; Closed Mondays and Holidays. Admission: Adults $5, Students $3, Seniors (62+) $3.
We are a gallery and consulting firm that represents emerging and mid-career investment-quality artists. Our program includes over thirty artists working in a variety of mediums. The gallery mounts seven exhibitions annually, and participates in art fairs in Miami, Santa Fe and New York.
ManhattAn Castle Fitzjohns Gallery 98 Orchard Street, NY, NY Tel: 212-260-2460 Web: castlefitzjohns.com Hours: Mon-Sun 12-7pm Located in a 3,000 square foot two story locale situated in Manhattan’s Lower East Side (LES), Castle Fitzjohns Gallery represents a wide range of emerging and midcareer artists, as well as select secondary market pieces from our collection. _______________________________________
Westchester County’s premier museum of modern, contemporary, and African art and an integral part of Purchase College. From the mid-century American art and African art that form the core of the collection to the presentation of about ten changing exhibitions each year that range from retrospectives of the work of one artist to thematic surveys of contemporary art to newly-commissioned artist projects, we continue the commitment of founding patron Roy R. Neuberger (1903-2010) by championing the art of our time.
RYE The Rye Arts Center 51 Milton Road, Rye, NY Tel: 914-967-0700 Web: ryeartscenter.org Hours: Mon-Fri 9:30 -7:00pm Sat 9:30-1:00pm _______________________________________
Gallery + Museum GUIDE
F eatured G alleries , M useums & C reative S ervices
WPA:JOBS Lecture Series: Sunday, April 19, 2-5pm: Opening Reception. 3pm: Lecture by Susan Teller, Susan Teller Gallery, NYC Sunday, May 3, 3pm: Wendy Jeffers, Chairman of the Board of the Archives of American Art Thursday, May 7, 7pm: Amy Trout, Museum Curator, Connecticut River Museum, Essex, CT Thursday, May 14, 7pm: Richard Baiano, President, Childs Gallery, Boston MA Will Barnet, (Detail) Men in Ditch (New York Central Park), Lithograph, 1936
WPA JOBS +
MARCH 28 TO MAY 23, 2015
MATHEWS PARK | 299 WEST AVENUE | NORWALK, CT | 203 . 899 . 7999 | WWW.CONTEMPRINTS.ORG
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PHOTO: World Red Eye
Left, Diamond Ball chairs Ana Figueroa Cisneros and Tony Cisneros; Center, Lucy Morillo, artist Romero Britto; Right, Christy and David Marti.
PHOTO: Juan E. Cabera
PAMM Ball 2015 Raises the Bar in Miami
Just when I thought I’d seen it all, the Pérez Art Museum Miami’s (PAMM) Art of the Party, presented by Louis Vuitton, took my breath away! The PAMM’s largest annual fundraiser put a contemporary spin on a classic tradition with a new format and new date (thankfully moved from the exhausting Art Basel week). From the glowing magenta lighting, to the dramatic, sparkling view of Biscayne Bay, this architectural gem was clearly the star of the night. There were three unique experiences to choose from. The Chef’s Table seated dinner under the stars was a mere $2500. or $5000 per person and included an exquisite four-course meal by world-renowned Chef Thomas Troisgros. For $1250 per person, a personal butler took care of our every whim in the Supper Club. The evening was capped off with a live concert on the Knight Plaza, where all dinner guests converged. The people watching was superb. A crème de la crème crowd with fashions to die for. The place to be.
PHOTO: David Heischrek
PHOTO: David Heischrek
Top Left, Jorge Pérez, Pitbull, Stephen Ross; Top; Darlene Pérez, Alejandra Palacio; Bottom, Gingi Beltran, Susie Wahab, Sandra Tamer.
PHOTO: World Red Eye
Trump Int'l Real Estate Celebrates Opening
Trump, easily the most recognized name in real estate, is rapidly dominating the South Florida market. Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., key players in the Trump empire, made an exclusive appearance at the grand opening party for Trump International Realty’s Florida operation. The party was a who’s who of Miami’s business leaders. The office is located at the (gorgeously refurbished) Trump National Doral resort and is headed up by Managing Broker Olimpia “Lily” Zanardi -- for 30 years a wellrespected, award-winning leader in South Florida real estate.
Left, Hal Lucas, Marisa Toccin Lucas; Right, Pictured left to right, Swanee DiMare, Judge Bronwyn Miller, Lesli Brown
WOT Gala: Elegant Night Raises $750,000 Over 500 of Miami’s best and most prominent philanthropists, business leaders and notables attended the Women of Tomorrow (WOT) Mentor & Scholarship Program’s black-tie gala at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. James Rosenquist, widely regarded as one of the greatest living American artists, was honored as the program’s inaugural recipient of the Spirit of Tomorrow Award. The very glamorous gala celebrated the organization’s 18th year of mentoring at-risk high school girls, raising approximately $750,000 for the program. WOT Gala chair Marisa Toccin Lucas outdoes herself once again! Follow Daisy on Twitter @DaisySociety, for more on Miami society TheDaisyColumn.com
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CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE Photo: Zoltan@Luxhunters.com
PHOTO: David Heischrek Left to Right, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Lily Zanardi, Eric Trump
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MANAGEMENT
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All fractional aircraft offered by NetJets ® in the United States are managed and operated by NetJets Aviation, Inc. Executive Jet® Management, Inc. provides management services for customers with aircraft that are not fractionally owned, and provides charter air transportation services using select aircraft from its managed fleet. Marquis Jet ® Partners, Inc. sells the Marquis Jet Card ®. Marquis Jet Card flights are operated by NetJets Aviation under its 14 CFR Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate. Each of these companies is a wholly owned subsidiary of NetJets Inc. ©2011 NetJets Inc. All rights reserved. NetJets, Executive Jet, Marquis Jet, and Marquis Jet Card are registered service marks. *Advance notice requirement depends on the type of aircraft purchased or leased and on the size of the interest acquired.