December 2011
36 posts
NYPL Offers FREE Seminars for NYC Teachers →
nypl.org
The Cullman Center Institute for Teachers is a dedicated program that offers opportunities for teachers to gain professional development and enrich their understanding of history and literature by attending seminars taught by the accomplished writers and scholars of NYPL’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Courses offered this Spring include: writing workshops for Fiction, Non-Fiction or Romance, seminars about the history of New York, the Middle Ages, or African-American culture, or an in-depth look at The Great Gatsby and more. It’s a diverse group of classes, sure to inspire - but hurry, the deadline is January 9th! To apply click here.
♪ ♫ Musical Flashback Friday ♪ ♫
Today’s flashback Friday is brought to you by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ Music Division: the 1895 sheet music to New Year’s Bells composed by Alf Hampton. Whether you sing it, say it or shout it - we’d like to wish everyone a safe and happy New Year’s Eve and best wishes for 2012!
I Love Lucy - Stars On the Stage and Screen →
nypl.org
An interesting look at the theatrical performances of I Love Lucy’s beloved stars.
“…it is reassuring that in a world of many bewildering changes, a little bit of one’s childhood will forever remain the same.”
—Ian Buruma, Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and celebrating a birthday today!
Magical Mustache Monday
Herrmann the Great, once the world’s greatest magician. He invented a version of the bullet catch, one of the deadliest acts in magic, but it was a common heart attack that took Herrmann in the end. Pay homage at Woodlawn Cemetery, where he’s laid to rest.
Frolicking Flashback Friday
Picture it… New York City. 1862. One hundred people (maybe more) frolicking outside, enjoying the skating pond at Central Park. Here’s a picture of such merry-making from the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, courtesy of the prolific Currier & Ives. What will you be doing this holiday? Wherever you may be, whoever you enjoy it with, everyone here at NYPL wishes you a happy and a healthy!
It’s not too late for Christmas tunes! Check out a CD from your local branch. Most close at 6pm today. You could snag Kidz Bop Christmas, Noel by Josh Groban, or Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas Symphony!
Check out the whole list of available titles:
http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/search?commit=Search&f_circ=CIRC&f_format=MUSIC_CD&q=christmas&searchOpt=catalogue&search_category=subject&t=subject&f_status=_anywhere_
Keep your out-of-town relations happy - take them to the NYPL!
So you have family in town and need to keep them busy sightseeing. Don’t forget NYPL exhibitions! They’re free and open to the public, and exhibitions are up at different branches around town.
There’s Leironica Hawkins’ art exhibition Asperger’s Syndrome: An Invisible Disability, on display at Grand Central Library.
There’s Malcolm X: A Search for Truth at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, which offers the public new insights into Malcolm X’s multifaceted persona and personality.
There’s The Birth of Promotion: Inventing Film Publicity in the Silent Film Era or Out of the Shadows: The Fashion of Film Noir at the Library for the Performing Arts, at Lincoln Center.
And there’s our Centennial exhibition, Celebrating 100 Years, at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue, where you can see Winnie the Pooh (and Tigger too) — the real soft toys that Christopher Robin himself played with as a boy — along with a Gutenberg Bible, a copy of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand, Virginia Woolf’s cane, and many other wonderful items from the Library’s archives.
If you don’t make it down to a library before the end of the year, don’t fret — both the Centennial Exhibition and Malcolm X have been extended into the spring. Yay!
Hope we’ll see you soon!
NB: All Library branches are closed Dec. 24-26, re-opening on Tuesday, December 27.
Mustache Monday goes to the Circus
This circus performer sports a strong-man mustache and a chest full of tattoos.
We don’t know who he is, but his photo was taken by Charles Eisenmann, a German immigrant who established a photo studio on the Bowery in the 1870s (229 Bowery, to be precise – today part of the Bowery Mission). According to Syracuse University Library, which houses The Ronald G. Becker Collection of Charles Eisenmann Photographs, he focused on a clientele of dime-museum “freaks and curiosities,” who needed cartes de visite to help market themselves to side shows and circuses.
This image is stored in our Billy Rose Theater Division, which has a whole photograph file on the circus, for your viewing pleasure.
The Mysterious Paper Sculptures of Edinburgh →
laughingsquid.com
Check out these beautiful sculptures, created by an anonymous artist in support of libraries in Scotland.
Have A Ball This Holiday Season
The NY Post’s Barbara Hoffman named our “confetti ball” a top pick of the holiday season in the paper’s annual “museum gift guide”, which ran this weekend! Yay! You can pick one up at our online shop, and while you’re there, check out countless other cool gift ideas, like a Reading Room lamp or a Winnie the Pooh doll or Patience and Fortitude book ends, and on and on and on. Happy shopping!
