Antiquarianation

At the Morgan Library & Museum June 3 through October 2, 2011 As a habitual list maker, list refiner and scrapbooker, I jumped at the chance to visit the exhibit   Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art   on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through October. In fact, I found it so intriguing that I visited twice. The exhibit, ingeniously brought together from different collections in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art , was far more visually interesting than one might imagine. Some of the list makers include Grant Wood, H.L. Mencken, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Pablo Picasso, and N.C. Wyeth. Many, if not most, of the lists are illustrated and provide insight into the artists’ creative processes, motivations, organizational devices, social milieux and, in several cases, drinking habits. Exhibition catalogue Some of my favorite items include...

Several days ago, the New York Times reported on Baltimore's fiscally troubled Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum . For the second year in a row, the city of Baltimore has withheld funding from the small museum, which has long been a victim of geography as it is located in an economically depressed neighborhood far from the usual tourist destinations. Read the NYT article here . To support the Poe House through a donation, purchase of a block print of The Raven (Forevermore) by the artist Gaia or to sign a petition asking the mayor of Baltimore to restore funding to the museum, follow this link: http://www.poebicentennial.com/store.html Copyright 2011 Antiquarianation All Rights Reserved