The Morgan's Dazzling Islamic Manuscript Paintings

They're on display now.

From a post on Salon...

Roughly when, and under what circumstances, did most of these manuscripts come to the Morgan?

Actually, in a funny kind of way, the collection was the offspring of a love affair. Belle da Costa Green was [Pierpont] Morgan’s rather attractive librarian; in November of 1908, Bernard Berenson, the famous art historian of the Italian Renaissance, came to the library — and it was love at first sight. About two years later, they went off together to the great exhibition that was being held in Munich in 1910. This was one of those great blockbuster shows on Islamic art. And after having fallen in love with each other, they fell in love with Islamic manuscripts. Interestingly, Berenson, between 1910 and 1913, actually developed a small collection of these things; in a letter, Belle da Costa Green also said that she should like to collect in this area for herself. And she did.

At the exhibition in 1910, they saw two magnificent portfolios of album leaves [individual pages from separate works, drawn together by collectors]. These had been lent by Sir Charles Hercules Read, who was working at the British Museum — he was the keeper of anthropology and antiquities. Belle da Costa Green wrote to him; she said that she had seen his beautiful leaves, and that she thought they were the best things in the show, and should he decide to sell them, would he be so kind as to give Morgan the first refusal? He did — and so Morgan bought the Persian album and the Mughal album from Charles Hercules Read, and those are of course two of the things that are featured in the exhibition. So it was through Belle da Costa Green, really, that Morgan was “turned on” to Islamic manuscripts.

The core of our collection was purchased by Morgan between 1910 and 1913. When Morgan died, in March of 1913, Belle da Costa Green wrote a letter to Berenson, and said, “Isn’t it a pity that, just as I got my Mr. Morgan interested in collecting these things, he died?” And the second group of manuscripts that we received of Islamic nature were indeed those that were bequeathed to us by Belle da Costa Green when she died, in 1950. These are the two big clusters of these materials in the collection.

Here's What I Hate about Writers' Houses

April Bernard says why in a piece in the New York Review of Books.



From the essay...



There I was, after many years of living in Bennington, Vermont, finally visiting the “Robert Frost Stone House Museum”—which happens to be in the next town north, South Shaftsbury. Frost is buried in the churchyard of the Old First Church in Bennington, and he lived in the Stone House and another Shaftsbury farmhouse for almost 20 years. Over his long life, he also lived in about a dozen other houses all over New Hampshire and Vermont, and many of these, in the strange world of competitive writer shrine-making, similarly have been designated “Frost houses.”



Here’s what I hate about Writers’ Houses: the basic mistakes. That art can be understood by examining the chewed pencils of the writer. That visiting such a house can substitute for reading the work. That real estate, including our own envious attachments to houses that are better, or cuter, or more inspiring than our own, is a worthy preoccupation. That writers can or should be sanctified. That private life, even of the dead, is ours to plunder.

Marvels and Monsters

NPR visits an exhibit at NYU that highlights Asians depicted in comic books.



From the piece...



KEYES: Jeff, the exhibition kind of looks at the way comic books and current events mesh together. Over time, how has American history influenced the way Asians are depicted?



YANG: One of the things that we realized as we looked at this collection - and the collection is extraordinary. He has collected literally hundreds, thousands of comic books across a span that, in many ways, defines the forge of Asian America, in a way, you know, 1941 all the way through 1986, a period of time in which America was engaged in physical wars and sort of spiritual ones with Asian countries - you know, from World War II, the war in the Pacific, through the Korean War, Vietnam War, and then the economic and political battles with Japan and China that followed.



And so comic books, in a lot of ways, pick up a lot of this resonant energy around how Americans were thinking of Asians in ways that virtually no other medium does. You see this character, like the character of the Yellow Claw emerging, this sort of monstrous, incredibly alien, exotic figure, this puppet master behind the scenes emerging just as America's anxiety around Chinese immigration, around the changing demographics of the country was first beginning to be felt.

Big Plans for Laura Ingalls Wilder Home

Indeed!



From an article in the News-Leader...



Wilder moved to the Ozarks in 1894, which is where she eventually penned her famous "Little House" books.



The Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association owns five of her original manuscripts, and board members hope to preserve them and the history of this farm through an upcoming renovation and restoration project.



The association has received a $200,000 grant from the USDA to build an archival library. It needs to raise additional funds, and Coday said former first lady Laura Bush has agreed to be an "honorary chairman" of the campaign.



"She said she loved the books since she was a little girl. She was a school librarian, and that makes her very interested in us doing the right thing with all these treasures," Coday said. "She said she couldn't promise anything other than her support as honorary chairman. We won't ask her to do more than she can."



The library will house the original manuscripts, first editions of her books, letters and some of the items currently in the museum, which they would eventually like to tear down.

Poe Museum Nevermore?

The Edgar Allan Poe House in Baltimore is facing steep financial difficulties, again.



From a piece in the New York Times...



For a second year city leaders have chosen not to subsidize a museum in the tiny house where the impoverished Poe lived from around 1833 to 1835, a decision that means it may have to close soon.



Since the city cut off its $85,000 in annual support last year, the house has been operating on reserve funds, which are expected to run out as early as next summer. In the coming months consultants hired by the city will try to come up with a business plan to make the Edgar Allan Poe House financially self-sufficient, possibly by updating its exhibits to draw more visitors.



But the museum sits amid a housing project, far off this city’s tourist beaten path, and attracts only 5,000 visitors a year.



“It would be ironic, after all these years of aggressively and actively promoting the Poe House and the Poe grave, to have it close,” said Jeff Jerome, the house’s curator for more than 30 years.

Peter Pan House to Become Center for Children's Literature?

That's the hope.

From a story on the BBC...

Author JM Barrie played in the grounds of the building as a child but the property has fallen into disrepair.

The Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust is currently raising funds for the upgrade of the building and has secured Joanna Lumley as a patron for its plans.

She said: "I am so thrilled and proud to be here to launch these exciting plans for the future of Moat Brae House and garden.

"There is such wonderful potential to create a fantastic National Centre for Children's Literature.

"I want to help raise the profile of this admirable project so that Peter Pan fans from all over the world can support this wonderful restoration."

The house and garden were in private ownership between 1823 and 1914.

It subsequently became a nursing home which shut in 1997 and fell into disrepair.