this week in literature

MUSEUM DAY

Multiple venues
Admission: free with printed ticket
www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday

The sixth annual Free Museum Day, sponsored by Smithsonian magazine, takes place on Saturday, September 25, with institutions all over the country opening their doors to people who have downloaded a free ticket for two from the above website. There’s only one ticket allowed per household/e-mail address, so be careful before filling out the online form; some of the museums are free anyway, either all the time or on Saturdays, while others might be between exhibits so there won’t be all that much to see. The participating venues in the five boroughs are the American Folk Art Museum, Asia Society, the Bartow-Pell Mansion, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Museum, the Children’s Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt, El Museo del Barrio, the Fraunces Tavern Museum, Historic Richmond Town, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, the Museum of American Finance, the Society of Illustrators, the Museum of Arts & Design, Museum of the City of New York, the New Museum, the New York City Fire Museum, the New York Transit Museum, the New-York Historical Society, the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, the Queens Botanical Garden, the Queens Historical Society, the Queens Museum of Art, the Rubin Museum of Art, the South Street Seaport Museum, the Staten Island Museum, the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, the Center for Book Arts, the Drawing Center, the Hispanic Society of America, the Jewish Museum, the Morgan Library, the Museum at FIT, the Noble Maritime Collection, the Noguchi Museum, the Skyscraper Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Ukrainian Museum, and the Vilcek Foundation. Of course, if you pair up with friends and relatives, you can get more tickets for different places.

DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL

“Sushi” is performed in the windows of the BoConcept furniture store at 79 Front St. hourly between 2:00 & 5:00 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations
September 24-26
www.dumboartsfestival.com

The 2010 DUMBO Arts Festival will feature hundreds of events Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, three days of open studios, juried exhibitions and installations, concerts, dance, a digital summit, book signings, walking tours, performance art, a visual poetry marathon, children’s activities, and more, much of it free. The New York Photo Festival is premiering “Capture Brooklyn” at the powerHouse Arena, No Longer Empty will take over a suite in 111 Front St. as well as scaffolding outside 25 Washington St., Tom Verlaine will be playing at Galapagos with Billy Ficca and Patrick Derivaz, and Jonathan Lethem will be celebrating the launch of the paperback version of CHRONIC CITY. Among the other myriad participants and special events are the Brooklyn Ballet, Jane’s Carousel, storyteller LuAnn Adams, E. J. Antonio, the Strung Out String Band, Daniel Fishkin, Crystal Gregory, Mighty Tanaka, Bubby’s seventh annual Pie Social, a Steampunk Salon Saloon, and a bug-eating discussion with chef and artists Marc Dennis.

Anyone can be a star in Nelson Hancock’s two-part “That’s (not) Me” at DUMBO Arts Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

We particularly recommend Nelson Hancock’s “That’s (not) Me” outside on Main St. and inside at 55 Washington St., an August Sander-inspired project in which you can take a photograph of a friend or stranger, then switch places, then take a self-portrait, and you get to take home each photo of yourself; “Sushi,” in which Felisia Tandiono, Kashimi Asai, and Nung-Hsin Hu perform as three pieces of sushi in the windows of BoConcept at 79 Front St.; Andrea Cote and Michael Drisgula’s “Clay,” in which Cote will sculpt your head in clay while Drisgula documents it on video, with the same piece of clay used for all sitters; Fountain Art Fair favorite Allison Berkoy’s creepy projection “Asleep #3,” hidden away in a loading dock at 30 Washington St.; eteam’s “Gallery Cruise” at Smack Mellon on 92 Plymouth St., where you can relax at a table in the Tea Room, which offers a view of the Atlantic Ocean through a pair of windows; and Demetria Mazria’s “Take-Less” at 30 Washington St., composed of plastic take-out containers that form the number 2629, representing the number of such containers used (and then thrown out) every second in the United States. (We were looking forward to Janet Biggs’s “Wet Exit,” but it was canceled at the last minute.)

SPIKE JONZE: I’M HERE

Spike Jonze will be at the IFC Center on Thursday to screen his short film I’M HERE and sign copies of the accompanying DVD/CD/book package

IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Thursday, September 23, 7:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Writer, director, producer, skateboard aficionado, and practical joker Spike Jonze has made the feature films BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION., and WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE as well as some of the greatest music videos ever, including the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage,” Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” and “Weapon of Choice,” and Weezer’s “Buddy Holly.” Ever the eclectic personality, he has also produced and appeared in the JACKASS movies. His latest short film is I’M HERE, a charming, bittersweet tale about robot love. Andrew Garfield stars as Sheldon, a sad, lonely robot made of old-fashioned parts who is befriended by the much more modern Francesca (Sienna Guillory), against the better judgment of her oh-so-chic clique. Francesca tends to be rather injury prone, and there is literally nothing Sheldon won’t do to make her happy. Jonze will be at the IFC Center on Thursday for a screening of the twenty-nine-minute flick, followed by a Q&A and a signing of the accompanying DVD/CD/book package (McSweeney’s, August 2010, $35).

SEYMOUR CHWAST: THE DIVINE COMEDY

Designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast reinterprets Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY in new graphic novel

Society of Illustrators
138 East 63rd St.
Friday, September 24, $10-$20, 6:30
www.societyillustrators.org
www.pushpininc.com

Longtime commercial designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast enters the world of the graphic novel with his original take on a complex classic, DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY (Bloomsbury, September 2010, $20). Adapted from Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century foray into the nine circles of hell, Chwast’s black-and-white tale follows Dante, depicted as a tall, thin, pipe-smoking noir writer in hat, trenchcoat, and sunglasses, and Virgil, a short, stout, mustached man in dark suit and hat who walks with a cane. As the pair make their way through thirty-three cantos of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, they come upon Captain Charon, who ferries the dead across the River Acheron; souls boiling in tar; an angel that carves peccatums on Dante’s forehead; sinners engulfed in flames; and sowers of discord who are repeatedly stabbed by a devil. Also among the punished are falsifiers of metals, blasphemers, thieves, the unshriven, the avaricious, the gluttons, and the lustful. Chwast’s interpretation of Dante is indeed divine and comic, a playful retelling filled with humor and light horror. Chwast, who is seventy-nine and known as the Left-Handed Designer, will be at the Society of Illustrators on September 24 for a lecture, book launch, and reception celebrating the release of this delightfully devilish hardcover.

PETER ORLOVSKY MEMORIAL READING

The Poetry Project will honor the life and work of Peter Orlovsky, longtime partner of Allen Ginsberg, at free event at the Poetry Project on September 22 (photo by Ludwig Urnig)

The Poetry Project, St. Marks Church
131 East Tenth St. at Second Ave.
Wednesday, September 22, free, 8:00
212-674-0910
www.poetryproject.org

On May 30, Beat Generationer Peter Orlovsky died of lung cancer at the age of seventy-six. Although most well known as the longtime on-and-off partner of Allen Ginsberg, New York City native Orlovsky was a poet in his own right. “Make my grave shape of heart so like a flower be free aired & handsome felt, / Grave root pillow, tung up from grave & wiggle at blown up clowd,” he wrote in 1958’s “Snail Poem.” Orlovsky also taught at the Naropa Institute’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, was an army medic in the Korean War, and appeared in several Robert Frank films, including the classic short PULL MY DAISY and ME AND MY BROTHER, which dealt with Peter’s mentally troubled brother, Julius. On September 22, a large group of friends and admirers will gather at the Poetry Project to pay tribute to Orlovsky, reading from such works as CLEAN ASSHOLE POEMS AND SMILING VEGETABLE SONGS, STRAIGHT HEARTS’ DELIGHT: LOVE POEMS AND SELECTED LETTERS, and LEPERS CRY; among those scheduled to participate in the free event are Chuck Lief, Philip Glass, Ed Sanders, Steven Taylor, Hal Willner, Janine Pommy Vega, Andy Clausen, Patti Smith, Anne Waldman, Gordon Ball, Rosebud Pettet, Simon Pettet, Bill Morgan, Anselm Berrigan, and John Godfrey.

PUBLIC ART FUND TALKS: RYAN GANDER

Ryan Gander’s “The Happy Prince” will tantalize passersby through April 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The New School, Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th St. between University Pl. & Sixth Ave.
Thursday, September 16, $10, 6:30
212-223-7805
www.publicartfund.org
“the happy prince” opening slideshow

In describing British artist Ryan Gander and his “Passengers: 1.3” 2007 exhibit at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, CCA director Jens Hoffman wrote, “Gander’s works are uncommonly hard to decipher. He sends us on a journey that is less about trying to arrive at an intellectual understanding and more about engaging in a form of detective work, which is often linked to the history of larger social structures and their relationships to the human condition. He lays out the evidence and asks us to study it carefully, connecting the different elements and forming our own personal relationship with them.” Hoffman’s perfect summation can also be applied to Gander’s latest piece, his first commissioned public sculpture, “The Happy Prince,” which went on view yesterday at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the beginning of Central Park on 60th St. & Fifth Ave.

Ryan Gander will be giving one of his “Loose Associations” PowerPoint performance-lectures at the New School on September 16 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Using glass-reinforced concrete, Gander has brought to life the end of Oscar Wilde’s 1888 absurdist fairy tale about a gilded statue of the Happy Prince, which goes from being “as beautiful as a weathercock” to “little better than a beggar” after a severe frost. Ever the visual storyteller, Gander incorporates many elements of the tale into his sculpture, including the Swallow, the prince’s crown, and his heart, all of which can be found within the rubble with some detective work. The sculpture not only comments on public art and monuments but also relates to Central Park and New York itself, a proud city that has more than its fair share of princes and beggars. Gander, whose “Intervals” site-specific installation opens at the Guggenheim on October 1, will be presenting one of his famed “Loose Associations” illustrated performance-lectures at the New School on September 16 as part of the Public Art Fund Talks series, in which he combines text and images in unique ways via PowerPoint.

PETER YARROW BENEFIT CONCERT

Peter Yarrow will perform a benefit concert for the Museum at Eldridge Street on September 20

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Monday, September 20, $36, 7:00
RSVP: 212-219-0888 ext205, hgriff@eldridgestreet.org
www.eldridgestreet.org
www.peterpaulandmary.com

As one-third of the folksinging trio Peter, Paul & Mary, Peter Yarrow sang such seminal songs as “If I Had a Hammer,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” “All My Trials,” “500 Miles,” and, of course, “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” a mix of traditional and original tunes that played an important role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Sadly, Mary Travers passed away in September 2009 from complications arising from her chemotherapy treatment for leukemia, but Yarrow is still keeping the flame burning, founding the nonprofit group Operation Respect, which works “to assure each child and youth a respectful, safe and compassionate climate of learning where their academic, social and emotional development can take place free of bullying, ridicule and violence”; displaying public outrage when Chip Saltsman sent “Barack the Magic Negro,” an insensitive reworking of Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” to members of the RNC; and participating in the fight against colon cancer through his 2010 tune “The Colonoscopy Song.” He has also written or been part of a number of children’s books, including THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, set for release November 15 and featuring the final performance ever by Travers, singing to a new score of the title track by Yarrow. The Christmas book serves as the perfect lead-in to Yarrow’s latest project, a September 20 benefit concert raising funds for the Museum at Eldridge Street, site of a historic Lower East Side synagogue that is being lovingly restored. Tickets are only $36, with all proceeds going to the museum’s extensive cultural and educational programs.