Excerpt – “If I were trying to decide which university to attend, I would want a university that offered the widest range of programs and experiences,” he says. “Having a presidential library on campus separates an institution from other schools.”
Museums
A Changing Turkey, Reflected in Author Orhan Pamuk’s Novel Museum
ISTANBUL — The first thing you see are the cigarette butts. There are thousands of them — 4,213 to be exact — mounted behind plexiglass on the ground floor of the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s new museum, named for and based on his 2008 novel, “The Museum of Innocence.” Story and multi-media from The New York Times.
It’s a fittingly strange beginning to a tour of this quirky museum, tucked away in a 19th-century house on a quiet street in the Cukurcuma neighborhood, among junk shops that sell old brass, worn rugs and other bric-a-brac.
But it is also, like everything else on the museum’s four floors, a specific reference to the novel — each cigarette has supposedly been touched by Fusun, the object of the narrator’s obsessive love — and, by extension, an evocation of the bygone world in which the book is set.
“The Museum of Innocence” is about Istanbul’s upper class beginning in the 1970s, a time when Mr. Pamuk was growing up in the elite Nisantasi district. He describes the novel as a love story set in the melancholic back streets of that neighborhood and other parts of the European side of the city. But more broadly it is a chronicle of the efforts of haute-bourgeois Istanbulis to define themselves by Western values, a pursuit that continues today as Turkey as a whole takes a more Islamic turn.
A Trip To The World’s Largest ‘Art Museum’ In Print
At 18 pounds, The Art Museum spans thousands of years and shows more than 2,700 works from more than 650 galleries. The ambitious project bringing together the best of museums worldwide is 10 years in the making. If this one museum were real, there would hardly be any need for another.
Full story on NPR: A Trip To The World’s Largest ‘Art Museum’ In Print
Egyptians Remain Vigilant Guarding Libraries & Museums
From Discovery News: Egyptians are bravely defending their cultural heritage, according to a statement from Ismail Serageldin, librarian of Alexandria and director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
“The young people organized themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria,” he said.
“The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the representatives of the demonstrators, who are joining us in guarding the building from potential vandals and looters,” Serageldin said.
However, the risk for cultural and archaeological sites remains high.
The West Bank, where the mortuary temples and the Valley of the Kings are located, is without any security, with only villagers trying to protect the sites.
“All the antiquities in the area have been protected by the locals all night, and nothing has been touched,” Mostafa Wazery, director of the Valley of Kings at Luxor, said.
UPDATE: Sun Jan 30, 14:40pm EST: In a faxed statement, Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, confirmed that a total of 13 cases were smashed at the Egyptian museum, adding that other sites are at risk at the moment.
Comic Books Get Stripped at NY’s Museum of Sex
From BookTryst, snippets of a new exhibit at the MOSEX museum.
The adult, sexual kind of fantasy has inspired a genre of art with its own instantly recognizable icons: voluptuous women and muscle-bound men; fetish clothing featuring six-inch stilettos, leather, lace, and latex; bondage gear including handcuffs, masks, and corsets; and sadomasochistic props like whips, chains, and ropes.
New York City’s Museum of Sex has just mounted (pun intended) a new exhibition of the erotic art of comic strips and comic books in the 20th and 21st centuries, to “reveal how the comic book medium has been used over time to depict sexual fantasy, poke fun at taboo topics and lampoon icons of popular culture.” Comics Stripped, a show made up of over 150 artifacts, including original drawings, illustrated books, comic books, magazines and videos, chronicles the history of “dirty drawings” from the Great Depression to the present day.
Field Museum Library
Chicago’s Field Museum is one of the foremost museums of natural history in the world. AL Focus recently visited the Field Museum library to learn about its role in the museum’s research, exhibit development, and educational programs.
New Jersey Library Loans a Little-Seen Painting to the Metropolitan Museum
From Arts Journal: A few days ago, the Dover Free Public Library in Morris County NJ, took ‘Emigrant Train Attacked by Indians’ by Emanuel Leutze (painter of the more famous Washington Crossing the Delaware) down from its walls, packed it, and put it in a truck destined for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It will be on loan there for five years. After that, no one is talking.
Why? Dover library director Robert Tambini told the Morris Country Daily Record that he was bothered that such an important painting, which hung in the library’s reading room, was unrecognized, unseen by enough people. It was lent to the library in 1934, and given to it in 1943 by a local family, the Derrys, in memory of Olivia Smith Derry.
Recently appraised for insurance, it was valued at $2.5 million, up from $300,000 in 1988, according to the DR. Here’s a link to the article in the Daily Record.
Share your thoughts on the Future of Museums and Libraries Wiki
Share your thoughts on the Future of Museums and Libraries Wiki
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) invites you to help invent the future of museums and libraries through your participation in UpNext: The Future of Museums and Libraries Wiki. IMLS’s first-ever wiki is a platform where individuals inside and outside of museums, libraries, and related fields can discuss, dissect, expand, and inform the issues outlined in the Future of Museums and Libraries: A Discussion Guide. IMLS will use the knowledge shared in the wiki to help shape the agency’s strategic plan, research directions, publications, convenings, and grant making. The wiki will be officially launched March 3, but is open for registration now.
Anne Frank museum to display her actual diaries
The Anne Frank House museum says it will put the teenage Holocaust victim’s diaries and other writings on permanent display to commemorate what would have been her 80th birthday on June 12, 1929.
Frank died in a concentration camp at 15.
Until now her posthumously published diaries and other works have been kept in an archive at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. Some have previously been displayed at the museum, which encompasses and preserves the “Secret Annex” — the tiny apartment above a canal-side warehouse where the Frank family hid for two years.
President Obama Requests $265,556,000 for the Institute of Museum and Library Services
From the press release at IMLS:
“Washington, DC—President Obama has requested $265,556,000 for fiscal year 2010 for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The request, which was transmitted to Congress today, represents an increase of $1,453,000 over the FY 2009 enacted level for the Institute’s programs and administration. The proposed budget will support museums and libraries as they provide unparalleled value to the public, fuel knowledge sharing, and energize our economy, creativity, and competitiveness.
‘We are pleased to have President Obama’s support for the nation’s museums and libraries,’ said Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Director of IMLS. ‘With this proposed budget, IMLS looks forward to continued support of these institutions as they connect people to information and ideas.’
The President requested $213,240,000 for the nation’s 123,000 libraries.
[click to continue reading release]
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