new york

Sleepy Moon

The legendary Broadway singer and comedienne, Fanny Brice, is featured on the cover of this 1915 song, written by Tin Pan Alley songwriter Harry von Tilzer.  An aircraft at night with Ms. Brice under its spotlight is a fine example of imagination and show business hustle.  It is part of the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Aeronautical Sheet Music from the National Air and Space Museum Library.

Gather Out of Star-Dust

Gather out of Star-Dust: A Harlem Renaissance Album is a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance, a period of tremendous artistic and cultural achievement among African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s, with New York City's Harlem neighborhood at its epicenter. The book is also based on a current exhibit of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Yale University.

Sculptures Precieuses et Bijoux de Braque

Georges Braque was a major 20th-century French painter, sculptor, draughtsman, and printmaker. At the age of 79, Braque turned his attention to jewelry. He teamed up with master jeweler Baron Heger de Löwenfeld to turn 110 gouache maquettes into intricately textured gold sculptures inlaid with precious stones. The collection, inspired by Greek mythology, incorporates themes of flight and metamorphosis. The two artists worked so closely together that Braque referred to De Löwenfeld as the “continuation of my hand.”

Louise Nevelson: Black, White & Gold

Although black—the color that contains all colors—has been American sculptor Louise Nevelson’s signature color, the artist began incorporating white and gold into her work in the 1960s. This announcement for an exhibition of sculptures by Nevelson at The Pace Gallery, New York, October 23-November 28, 1992, reflects her limited palette. Reproductions of her assemblage sculptures are presented in three die-cut printed pop-ups, printed in silver and gold. Nevelson herself is pictured in a silver-printed portrait on the front cover. The entire elegant presentation is ribbon-tied.

New York Crystal Palace

New York City's 1853 Exhibition, The New York Crystal Palace, was held on the site of what is now Bryant Park between Fifth and Sixth Avenues on 42nd Street. Housed in an innovative cast‐iron and glass structure designed by Georg Carstensen and German architect Charles Gildemeister, The Crystal Palace was one of the city’s first tourist attractions, displaying a broad array of consumer goods and technological advancements. Tragically, the building was destroyed by fire five years after its completion.

Ailey Spirit

Ailey Spirit is a reflection of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s amazing journey as it has progressed from “a small group of young, African-American dancers traveling the country in a station wagon, to what we now respect as one of the best modern dance companies in the world.”  Photographs from an array of

Batouala

René Maran was born in Martinique, educated in France, and served as a colonial administrator in the French colonies of West Africa.  In 1921, he won the Prix Goncourt for Batouala. He was the first black author to be so honored. Although the book's preface includes a blistering critique of French colonial abuses, Maran asserts that the novel is a story not of black against white, but simply of two men in a Banda village fighting over a woman.

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