Elaine and I had never considered a membership in the Art Institute of Chicago. We live at a great distance, and we visit just a few times a year. But as a helpful fellow at the ticket counter pointed out yesterday, just two visits a year would recoup the cost. A membership for one gets us admission for two, along with a magazine, a 10% discount on purchases, safe passage to the Member Lounge (with free coffee and tea), and, yes, a totebag. We have promised not to fight over the totebag.
There are some great things at the AIC now. Among them: an enormous Picasso exhibition, an exhibition of Chicago immigrant and migrant experience in art (with a woodcut by Elaine’s great-uncle Aaron Bohrod), Irving Penn’s chewing-gum-on-pavement photographs, and work inspired by or made in collaboration with poets (Frank O’Hara and Larry Rivers FTW). And the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine art is back.
[Kylix (Wine Cup). Greek, Athens. Attributed to the Workshop of Nikosthenes. 530/520 B.C. Terracotta, decorated in the black-figure technique. Anonymous loan.]
[Pablo Picasso, White Owl on Red Ground. Vallauris, March 25, 1957. Red earthenware clay, decoration in engobes, knife engraved. Private collection.]
An unexpected benefit of membership: running into a old friend and colleague—in the Member Lounge.
Perhaps you too should join a museum.
A related post
Word of the day: apotropaic
[Descriptions verbatim from the AIC information cards.]
Friday, March 15, 2013
On joining a museum
Overheard
“I think you could laser-focus it a little more.”
Related reading
All “overheard” posts (Pinboard)
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Teenagers with moose, also plural
[“Des Moines, Iowa High School Teen Agers.” Photograph by George Skadding. November 1947. From the Life Photo Archive.]
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Hummingbird Nest Cam
My daughter Rachel gave me the link. I tuned in today by chance, around 4:45 p.m. (PDT), and saw Phoebe feeding her babies. So cute. Add as many o’s to so as you like.
Which will it be: instant calm, or unexpected excitement? There’s only one way to find out: Hummingbird Nest Cam. Either way, the hummingbirds are sooooooo cute.
Thank you, Rachel.
Goodbye, Google Reader
I just went to check my RSS feeds and learned that Google Reader will soon be shutting down:
We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.Now what? Feedly?
7:27 p.m.: Yes, I think it’ll be Feedly.
10:02 p.m.: 12,000+ Orange Crate Art subscribers use Google Reader. What’s next for you?
[Where did I go when I “went” to check my RSS feeds?]
Domestic comedy
Staring down the sink:
“Habemus dishes.”
Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
Adjunct teaching and health insurance
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has prompted the Internal Revenue Service to think about the hours of work that go into adjunct teaching. The IRS estimate: three hours for every credit-hour. Thus a three-credit class would count as nine hours of work per week. Four courses would put an instructor over the thirty-hour week that qualifies for health insurance:
Although the rules are still in the making, Maria Maisto, president of the New Faculty Majority, a national advocacy group for adjuncts, said what the IRS had proposed so far seems promising.What these schools and others are doing reminds me of the corporate strategy of giving employees thirty-nine hours a week to keep the work “part-time” (without health insurance). I’ll say it again: the exploitation of adjunct labor is the shame and scandal of American higher education.
“I think the IRS is on the right track in recognizing that adjunct faculty constitute a unique category of worker in terms of how their work is currently recognized and compensated,” Ms. Maisto wrote in an e-mail. “It is helpful that the IRS is recognizing that there is a lack of uniformity in the way that adjunct work hours are currently calculated and how adjuncts are treated. This seems to be a huge step forward in the government's education about the true nature of contingent academic work.”
But even as the IRS is working to provide colleges with the guidelines they have sought from the agency, a few institutions have made pre-emptive moves by cutting back the number of hours adjuncts are allowed to work—among them, Youngstown State University, Stark State College, and the Community College of Allegheny County, where at least 200 adjuncts face a newly instituted cap on the number of courses they can teach.
IRS Says Colleges Must Be “Reasonable” When Calculating Adjuncts’ Work Hours (Chronicle of Higher Education)
*
April 23, 2012: The Chronicle of Higher Education continues to follow the story: Colleges Are Slashing Adjuncts’ Hours to Skirt New Rules on Health-Insurance Eligibility.
A related post
The Adjunct Project
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Naked Bronx
I was happy to see the Bronx appear as a minor character in “Murder Is a Face I Know,” an episode of Naked City that first aired January 4, 1961. (Gotta love those Naked City titles.) I recognized in an instant the fence to the left in the scene below: it encloses the green of Edwards Parade on the Rose Hill campus of Fordham University. A friend and I once sat just on the other side of that fence and split a bottle of white wine before a seminar. I was auditing; she was taking it for credit. To the right, Dealy Hall, home of the English Department and many other departments. We didn’t have far to walk. Joey Ross (Keir Dullea) though is running, and in another direction:
The same location in 2009:
Joey is running to meet his father Nicholas (Theodore Bikel), who works in a clothing store on Webster Avenue. Giovanni Famous Pizza now occupies the right section of Darnleys Sportswear & Slacks (or Slacks and Sportswear). Google Maps’ patented “This is your street on drugs” effect is visible in the split Giovanni sign:
Joey crosses Webster Avenue. If you squint, you can see the Third Avenue El in the background, to be torn down sometime after service ended in 1973:
In 2011, Sears still stands. The massive building to the east of Sears is 1 Fordham Plaza, an office and retail complex whose construction meant the end of the Eldorado Bar.
Joey meets his father, and together they cross Fordham Road:
Yes, Webster Avenue and Fordham Road both have many lanes for a pedestrian to get across, and I don’t think being stuck on the pedestrian island (in the 2011 image) would make me feel much safer. (A pedestrian island in the middle of a racetrack? No thanks.) In 2008, the Fordham-Webster intersection was deemed the most dangerous intersection in New York City. Plans are underway to make it safer. One detail: notice the two projecting signs for Surprise Ladies Wear, the same structures that served Kingsley (Kingsley what?) in the black-and-white world.
Late in the episode, we’re back on the (unnamed) Fordham campus, with a glimpse of the University Church and St. John’s Hall:
In 2009:
I know very little about what’s inside, but I do know that this church must be one of very few in which the word tappen has been spoken from the lectern.
This MTA map shows the Fordham-Webster intersection, with the two streets bounding the campus on the south and west. Staring at the tangle gives a good sense of the density of life at this intersection:
More Bronx tales
Elvis pretzels
Nick DeMaio and the Eldorado
[Naked City’s Horace McMahon (Lieutenant Mike Parker) attended Fordham Law School. In the Bronx, or in Manhattan? I don’t know. All color photographs from Google Maps. Click any Naked City or Google Maps image for a larger view.]
