Three Ancestral Jugs and a Tlingit Comb

My friend Lucy had the very clever idea of making up a Bingo card consisting of works to be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What a treasure hunt it was, taking me to corners of the Met where I’d never ventured.

Eve Beglarian’s She Gets to Decide, sung by Lucy Dhegrae

This is a challenging piece, both emotionally and intellectually. Beglarian wrote of it:

Read more: Eve Beglarian’s She Gets to Decide, sung by Lucy Dhegrae

“She Gets to Decide began as a meditation on the controversial Balthus painting Thérèse Dreaming. While the painting seems unquestionably pervy to me, I am also struck by the power and self-sufficiency Thérèse radiates.” [The complete program note, from which this excerpt is taken, may be found here]

In a wide-ranging discussion, Eve and Lucy discuss Lucy’s project, “The Processing Series,” of which Eve’s piece is a part (I commend the whole of their conversation, but at the very least Eve’s description of the piece, which starts at about 1:16:50):

Bringing in Spring with Shawn Jaeger’s The Cold Pane

Shawn Jaeger, photo by Arthur Moeller

Shawn Jaeger‘s The Cold Pane is an exquisite summoning of spring. Jaeger’s composition sets five texts by Wendell Berry. They can be found here, together with the score. The piece is scored for soprano and chamber ensemble (clarinet in B-flat, mandolin, violin, double bass). The performers are Contemporaneous members Lucy Dhegrae, Vicente Alexim (clarinet), Colin Davin (mandolin), Josh Henderson (violin), and Pat Swoboda (double bass). David Bloom conducts.

Trolling the Heilbrunn Timeline: A Goldsmith in His Shop

Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in His Shop (1449)

On returning from Italy, I decided it was high time I supplemented my scant knowledge of medieval and Renaissance art, so I gathered up a few books* on the subject. After reading said books, it occurred to me that a Renaissance art vacation extender might be available at the Metropolitan Museum, so I looked up the Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. I’d forgotten, if I really ever knew, what a rich resource this is, and trolling around the Medieval/Renaissance sections proved a time sink of the best sort. I picked out a few artworks to visit in person next time I could. Here’s one of those I visited yesterday.

July Miscellany, with music by Jaeger, Mattingly & Trapani & performances by Dhegrae & Contemporaneous

That’s Robert Louis Stevenson contemplating the proceedings, courtesy John Singer Sargent. The proceedings include, among other things, El café by Joaquín Torres-García and the Cabinet of Geology and Mineralogy from the announcement of a project by Mark Dion at Vassar College.