twi-ny recommended events

HUMP DAY WITH HAMPSHIRE: Featuring Emily Hampshire, Michelle Visage, Ross Mathews, and Katherine Moennig

Newly minted talk show host Emily Hampshire is obsessed with her bitmoji

Who: Michelle Visage, Ross Mathews, Katherine Moennig, host Emily Hampshire
What: Hump Day livestreamed talk show benefiting the Actors Fund
Where: The Actors Fund YouTube page
When: Wednesday, April 15, suggested donation, 2:00
Why: Schitt’s Creek might be over, but you can still keep getting your Emily Hampshire fix on Wednesdays during the pandemic with Hump Day with Hampshire, a livestreamed talk show hosted by Hampshire, who played everyone’s favorite motelier, Stevie Budd, on the Canadian comedy. On April 15 at 2:00, Hampshire, who also starred in 12 Monkeys, Made in Canada, and Blood, will be joined by singer, author, and radio and TV personality Michelle Visage (RuPaul’s Drag Race, Strictly Come Dancing), author and podcaster Ross Mathews (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, RuPaul’s Drag Race), and actress Katherine Moennig (The L Word, Ray Donovan). In addition to virtual interviews, be on the lookout for such games as “Show Us Your Junk (Drawer),” “What Is Your quarROUTINE,” and “Phone a Friend Roulette.” The series is a benefit for the Actors Fund, so if you can, please donate, although you don’t have to in order to watch and enjoy.

“I couldn’t ask for a better creative distraction than hosting a show that not only helps raise money for an important cause but also lets me connect with a dream-team roster of guests without having to leave my apartment or even put on pants!” Hampshire, who is utterly charming as host, said in a statement. “There’s such an insane amount of stress in the world right now, and if we can do something a little fun for all the stir-crazy people out there and help the industry, that means everything to me.” You can also catch up with previous episodes; Bobby Berk, Sophia Bush, Annie Murphy, and Adam Rippon appeared on April 1 and Gigi Gorgeous, Noah Reid, Sarah Levy, and Lance Bass on April 8.

OUR BRILLIANT FRIENDS AFTER DINNER BOOK CLUB AND WATCH PARTY

watch party

Who: Ann Goldstein, Michael Reynolds, Alexander Chee, Sarah Treem
What: Live discussion, reading, and watch party to benefit #SaveIndieBookstores
Where: McNally Jackson Zoom meeting
When: Monday, April 13, advance registration required here, suggested donation $5 and up, 9:00
Why: Fans of Elena Ferrante’s novels, which include The Days of Abandonment, The Story of a New Name, and The Lost Daughter, will gather online on April 13 at 9:00 for a book club and watch party hosted by Ferrante’s publisher, Europa Editions, along with City Lights Books in San Francisco, the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, and McNally Jackson Books here in New York City. The event begins at 9:00 with a live conversation and chat about Ferrante’s work and the HBO adaptation My Brilliant Friend, followed at 9:50 by a reading from her latest book, The Lying Life of Adults (Europa Editions, November 2019, $26) and a watch party at 10:00 of episode five of the second season of the series, The Betrayal, which is directed by Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher, the writer-director of such international successes as Heavenly Body, The Wonders, and Happy as Lazzaro. (Note that the show will not be aired over the livestream but must be watched over HBO.) The discussion features Ferrante’s English-language translator, Ann Goldstein, who will read an excerpt from the new novel; Europa editor in chief Michael Reynolds; writer, professor, and poet Alexander Chee; and writer and producer Sarah Treem (The Affair, In Treatment). The mysterious and elusive, pseudonymous Ferrante will not be participating, of course. Suggested donation is $5 (or more if you can afford it), with all proceeds benefiting #SaveIndieBookstores.

FOCUS MOVIE MONDAYS: MOONRISE KINGDOM (Watch Party with Wes Anderson Q&A)

Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) are on the run in Wes Anderson’s delightful Moonrise Kingdom

MOONRISE KINGDOM (Wes Anderson, 2012)
Monday, April 13, free, 5:00
www.facebook.com/events
www.eifoundation.org

As part of Focus Features’ free Movie Mondays livestreaming series, director Wes Anderson will participate in a Q&A on April 13 following a 5:00 watch party for his 2012 gem, Moonrise Kingdom. In such unique films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, black-comedy master Anderson has created a bizarre collection of characters who seem to live in their own alternate realities. In Moonrise Kingdom, he has once again assembled an oddball assortment of men, women, and children in a terrifically clever and entertaining fairy tale all its own. Tired of being abused by his fellow Khaki Scouts and dismissed by his foster parents, twelve-year-old orphan Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) runs away from Camp Ivanhoe on the island of New Penzance, much to the chagrin of dedicated scout master Randy Ward (Edward Norton). Meanwhile, twelve-year-old loner Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is fed up with her life as well, which she mostly spends listening to Benjamin Britten, reading fairy tales (fictitious stories made up by Anderson), watching the world through a pair of ever-present binoculars, and despising her parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand).

Afraid of what might have happened to the children, the local police officer, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), gets involved, as does a stern woman from social services (Tilda Swinton) and, eventually, a very different kind of scout, Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman). The proceedings are overseen by a narrator (Bob Balaban) who ends up being more than just an omniscient presence. Moonrise Kingdom is an absolute gem of a film, an exciting, original tale about growing up, told in a fabulously funny, deadpan manner that combines slapstick humor with wildly ironic elements, filled with the endless wonders of childhood, although it is most definitely not for children. Newcomers Gilman and Hayward appear wise beyond their years in the lead roles, with outstanding support from an all-star cast, most prominently Norton as the by-the-book scout master on a mission. Written by Anderson with Roman Coppola and featuring a lovely score by Alexandre Desplat, Moonrise Kingdom is one of the best films of 2012, by a director whose imagination never ceases to amaze. Focus Movie Mondays continues April 20 with Kevin Smith’s Mallrats and April 27 with Paweł Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love.

REMARKABULL PODVERSATIONS: “QUEEN MAB” WITH MICHAEL URIE

Who: Michael Urie, Nathan Winkelstein
What: Live discussion of “Queen Mab” speech from Romeo & Juliet
Where: Red Bull Theater’s website, Vimeo, Facebook (and Zoom for up to fifty participants; requires advance registration here)
When: Monday, April 13, free, 7:30
Why: Red Bull Theater’s RemarkaBULL Podversations streaming series kicks off April 13 at 7:30 with actor Michael Urie discussing Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech from William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet with host Nathan Winkelstein, the company’s associate producer. Red Bull specializes in Jacobean and Shakespearean works; Urie (Ugly Betty, Buyer & Cellar) starred in the troupe’s 2017 adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 satire, The Government Inspector. The monologue, delivered in Act 1, Scene 4, begins: “O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. / She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes / In shape no bigger than an agate-stone / On the fore-finger of an alderman, / Drawn with a team of little atomies / Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.” Urie portrayed Mercutio in Folger Theatre’s 2005 production of the play, directed by PJ Paparelli. If you want to participate in the live chat, you need to register in advance for the Zoom feed here.

HENRY WARD BEECHER MONUMENT

Longtime Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher is honored with statue in Columbus Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Columbus Park
Cadman Plaza near Johnson St.
www.nycgovparks.org
www.mas.org

“It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich,” American abolitionist, orator, minister, and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher said. The eminently quotable Connecticut native and longtime Brooklynite would most likely have a lot to say about the novel coronavirus, particularly this Easter weekend as many churches around the country remain open, declining suggestions and even local regulations regarding social distancing.

“To array a man’s will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.”

Beecher first served as a Presbyterian minister in Indiana before moving to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn in 1847. He advocated for evolution, science, and woman suffrage and against slavery while also generating a spectacular sexual scandal. Beecher was a celebrity preacher, and he got a lot of press; he was even popularized in limericks, such as this fine one from English writer and artist Oliver Herford: “Said a great congregational preacher / To a hen, ‘You’re a beautiful creature.’ / And the hen, just for that, / Laid an egg in his hat, / And thus did the Hen reward Beecher.”

“Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.”

Master sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward, who designed statues of George Washington at Federal Hall, Horace Greeley in City Hall Park, William Earl Dodge in Bryant Park, Roscoe Conkling in Madison Square Park, and William Shakespeare, the Indian Hunter, and the Pilgrim in Central Park, honored Beecher with a monument dedicated at Borough Hall in 1891 and relocated to Columbus Park in 1959; the face was modeled after a death mask Ward made of Beecher on March 8, 1887, when the minister died at the age of seventy-three.

“Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.”

In a closed-off grassy area, Ward’s figure of Beecher stands proudly on a Barre granite plinth designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt. Beecher is dressed in an Inverness cloak, arms at his side, staring off into the distance, his eyes on the future. To his right, a young black woman places a palm branch on the pedestal at his feet, while to his left a pair of white children offer a garland. The unpunctuated inscription on the back reads: “The grateful gift of the multitudes of all classes creeds and conditions at home and abroad to honor the great apostle of the brotherhood of man.” The sculpture was restored in 2017 and 2019 as part of the Municipal Art Society of New York’s Adopt-a-Monument/Mural program.

Henry Ward Beecher monument undergoes restoration in 2019 (photo courtesy Municipal Art Society of New York)

“There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.”

Beecher, the son of Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher and brother of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, is surrounded by several other prominent works, including Anneta Duveen’s 1972 bust of Robert F. Kennedy, S. Hemming’s 1973 bas relief of Brooklyn Bridge builder Washington A. Roebling, a 1965 marker paying tribute to former Brooklyn borough president John Cashmore, and Emma Stebbins’s large-scale 1867 statue of park namesake Christopher Columbus, rising atop a giant plinth by architect Aymar Embury II.

“When a nation’s young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.”

Beecher, who is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, wrote such books as Notes from Plymouth Pulpit, Summer in the Soul, Yale Lectures on Preaching, Evolution and Religion, and the novel Norwood, or Village Life in New England. One can only wonder what he would say today about what is happening in Brooklyn and all over the world as a pandemic rages among the populace and divides people along political and religious lines.

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”

JEAN-MARIE APPRIOU: THE HORSES

Jean Marie-Appriou’s Public Art Fund commission sits at the entrance to Central park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Scholars’ Gate, Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Central Park entrance, 60th St. & Fifth Ave.
Through August 30, free
www.publicartfund.org
online slideshow

Most of us rarely see horses without a human on top of them or pulling a carriage. A jockey on a racehorse. A cowboy galloping across the plains. An equestrian jumping at Madison Square Garden. A cop at a parade. At Grand Army Plaza near the Sixtieth St. entrance to Central Park on Fifth Ave., William Tecumseh Sherman sits proudly on his horse Ontario in Augustus Saint Gaudens’s shimmering, gilded 1903 bronze monument of the Civil War hero, rising high on Charles McKim’s granite base, led by the figure of a crowned Victory. Nearby, hansom cab drivers line up to take lovers and families on carriage rides through the park, a controversial profession that continued to operate well into the coronavirus epidemic. “As we face an unprecedented crisis of contagion, it is shocking that carriage drivers still cram tourists into small carriages and give them shared, reused blankets, with the driver seated just inches ahead of them,” Alec Baldwin wrote in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio when they were still in business. “This reckless disregard may well fuel the spread of the coronavirus to both New Yorkers and unwitting visitors from across the country.” NYC Horse Carriage Rides ultimately announced they were shutting down on March 25.

“Le Guerrier” (“The Warrior”) displays his unique headgear in equine installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Near the troublesome spectacle of the carriages and the majestic equestrian Sherman, French artist Jean Marie-Appriou has installed his first New York City public commission, The Horses at Scholars’ Gate on Doris C. Freedman Plaza, at the start of the path that leads to the zoo. The thirty-three-year-old Paris-based sculptor references multiple aspects of Equus ferus in the cast aluminum work, which consists of three parts that incorporate Symbolism, mythology, and a touch of alchemy.

Jean Marie-Appriou’s The Horses invites visitors to walk under, around, and through them (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The trio of silvery sculptures is centered by “Le Guerrier” (“The Warrior”), a sixteen-foot-high armored horse that has twisted its skinny body to form a gateway into and out of the park. On one side of it is “Les Amants au Bois” (“The Lovers in the Woods”), the bottom half of two horses, melded together, their flat tops like vacant plinths. On the other side is “Le Joueur” (“The Player”), relaxing on the ground like a caped Sphinx waiting to be worshiped. The detail on the horses is impressive, from their hooves to the shaffron and ribcage of horse heads of “Les Amants au Bois,” from the intricate leaves and bugs on “Le Joueur” to the bumps and thumbprints that reveal the hand of the artist and the casting process, which involved clay and foam models.

Detailed inspection of The Horses offers cool surprises (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“The playful horse, the war horse, they are not horses as they are often represented in art history, as very brave,” Appriou, who has also installed outdoor works in France, Switzerland, and Miami, explains in a Public Art Fund video. “They are crouching, they are a bit scared, they hang their heads as they are approaching the spectator. It’s more like horses stepping down from the base, that do not radiate power, nor are they objects that valorize a soldier or a general.”

Augustus Saint Gaudens’s golden statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman can be seen through “Le Guerrier” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Passersby are encouraged to interact with the horses, even invited to sit on “Le Joueur,” although you should probably avoid that during the coronavirus pandemic. But you can walk under, through, and around them and glory in the sheer beauty and grandeur of the animals. It’s tempting to think about hopping on one of them and riding off into the sunset, like at the end of a Clint Eastwood Western, venturing into another world, far away from the myriad challenges of this one, amid echoes of Richard III crying out, “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

JUDITH WELLER: THE GARMENT WORKER

The Garment Worker keeps toiling away at 555 Seventh Avenue Plaza (photo by twi-ny/ees)

555 Seventh Avenue Plaza
Permanent installation
www.publicartfund.org

“Could it be that living through the time of coronavirus will reconfigure the organisation of fashion, fundamentally changing how brands practice their role? I hope it can be so,” Sarah Mower writes in a March 25 article for British Vogue. During the pandemic, many fashionistas, from major corporations to DIY home sewers, have stepped up to make masks, gloves, and other items for health-care workers on the front lines of the battle to stave off the infectious disease known as Covid-19.

The garment industry has been a centerpiece of American ingenuity since the 1800s. An enormous influx of immigrants around the turn of the twentieth century toiled in the industry, often in sweatshops churning out clothing and other items. Israeli-born, New York-based artist Judith Weller honored the immigrant employees with her eight-foot-high statue The Garment Worker, a tribute to her father, a garment industry machine operator. Weller expanded the piece from its original twenty-four-inch height; the large-scale sculpture was commissioned by the Public Art Fund and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and donated to the city of New York by a wide range of garmentos, from Anne Klein, Bill Blass, Ellen Tracy, Liz Claiborne, and Ralph Lauren to the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union, the Association of Rain Apparel Contractors, the Jewish Community Fund, the Ladies Apparel Contractors Association, and United Tool, among others. “When I was a little girl, I recall seeing him at work,” Weller said of her father at the time of the installation, which was initially scheduled to run from October 31, 1984, to the following Halloween but is now permanent. “I utilized what I know of him as well as my memory in creating the sculpture.”

Judith Weller honors her Jewish immigrant father with statue (photo by twi-ny/ees

Popular Garment District sculpture reveals skill and determination of fashion industry workers (photo by twi-ny/ees)

The bronze man, wearing a yarmulke, sits determinedly at his sewing machine, carefully stitching fabric. He’s focused on his hands, which delicately push down on the material; the table he works on is open to reveal his legs and feet. The drudgery is apparent on his stern face, as is his dedication to his task. Perhaps today the man would be making masks and gloves to save the lives of New Yorkers and other Americans. “The human figure expresses my struggle, anxiety, frustration, yearning, and hope. It offers unlimited and inexhaustible possibilities,” Weller explains in her artist statement.

The Garment Worker continues to work every day in the shadow of the giant button and needle that lean on the Garment District Information Kiosk at the corner of Thirty-Ninth St. and Seventh Ave. (Fashion Ave.). He is no mere relic of the past but a reminder of who we all are and where we came from, and what we can do to maintain the country’s ever-more-fragile infrastructure.

Judith Weller honors her Jewish immigrant father with statue (photo by twi-ny/ees)

“The big question is whether this spontaneous surge of human spirit, practicality, and creativity will grow strongly enough, for long enough, to turn fashion’s priorities around,” Mower writes in British Vogue. “Will this nightmare time actually become a historic and positive turning point, converting both industry producers and wearers to, literally, a new way of seeing and valuing clothes? There’s a possibility that all these weeks of staying at home will result in discovering a streak of waste-not creativity we never knew we had.” That evaluation is right on the button, hitting the . nail on the head.