The Smithian

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art: photo by Gordon Parks. “First Aid: Interracial activities at Camp Nathan Hale.” Southfields, New York,1943

…Conceptual Art came as a blessing in the 1960s and ‘70s, with its big ideas in small, often ephemeral packages: postcards, collages, written words, gestures. And the dematerializing impulse was an international phenomenon, as…“Open Work in Latin America, New York & Beyond: Conceptualism Reconsidered, 1967-1978” makes clear.

more.

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art: by Clemente Padín

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art: by Sue de Beer—still from “Permanent Revolution” 2007

New York.

Hurricane Sandy raises big questions about how we will live in the future. A city mayor…cannot stand up amid the wreckage and tell people that everything is fine, that it will never happen again. Today we face an ecological challenge of our own making: now that the majority of us live in cities, it is within the metropolis that our future salvation or death warrant will be drafted. For some geographers the future looks bleak.

more.

New York state Sen. Malcolm Smith and a New York City councilman have been arrested in an alleged plot to rig the New York City mayor’s race. Smith and City Councilman Dan Halloran were arrested early Tuesday at their homes…U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Smith “tried to bribe his way to a shot at Gracie Mansion”…In meetings with a cooperating witness and an undercover FBI agent posing as a wealthy real estate developer, Smith agreed to bribe leaders of Republican Party county committees around New York City in an attempt to run for mayor as a Republican, even though he was a registered Democrat…

WTH. plus more. and more.

The Atlantic has a great photo retrospective on the end of World War 2. The story contains an image of Levittown, New York. Levittown was one of the country’s first planned suburban communities. It was also an ideal-typical example of how American Apartheid was created in suburbia. Non-whites, and other ethnic “undesirables” were explicitly prohibited from living in Levittown. These rules would be in place in similar communities all across America where they would be enforced by physical violence in the public sphere, and also by the law in the form of restrictive housing covenants. the Atlantic’s caption of the Levittown photo contains no such information. Images of the past when viewed in the present are a representation of reality. These realities tell us just as much about our present concerns as they do about the supposed “facts” of the past…

On a Virginia plantation in 1852, a young house slave tends to her ailing mistress, creates exquisite paintings and plans her escape. In 2004 New York, an ambitious young lawyer works night and day on the biggest case of her promising career. Tara Conklin’s debut novel, The House Girl, intertwines these women’s narratives in a story of art and injustice.

more, plus audio, and text excerpts of interview with the author, here.

The opposition by the New York State chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s restrictions on…soda caught many…by surprise. But it shouldn’t: though the organization argues it is standing up for consumer choice and minority business owners, who it claims would be hurt, this is also a favor for a stalwart ally—Coca-Cola…has given generously to support N.A.A.C.P. initiatives over the years. This is more than a story of mutual back-scratching, though. It is the latest episode in the long and often fractious history of soft drinks, prohibition laws and race.

more.

“I wrote what I felt I had to write, and I’m willing to put my own sanity and my reputation behind it.” — Gloria Naylor

She was born in this day—in Harlem, New York—in 1950.

…the acts of both forgetting and remembering are found not only in personal narratives of history; the journey upon which Peterson embarks also forces readers to consider how and whom institutions choose to forget and/or remember—indeed, how the nation selectively forgets and remembers.

more.