American Writers Museum is Chicago’s New Literary Paradise | Amy Diegelman

Museums | Writers | Literature

May 16, 2017

“It’s an affirmation that we are a literary people.” That was how Anna Castillo expressed the impact of the new (and first) American Writers Museum. Castillo, a Latina poet, Chicago native, and author of So Far From God, was joined by Rosellen Brown, author of Cora Fry’s Pillow Book, for a discussion to open the museum’s press day in Chicago. The topic that dominated the conversation was the modern, evolving culture of writing in America. It couldn’t have been more appropriate.

The Children’s Hall

 

 

 

 

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Because This Place Has Been Showing How Black Lives Matter for 90 Years

A First Fridays party in the Schomburg Center courtyard.  

(Photo: Cheryl Lathan/courtesy of the schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

For some, Harlem’s Schomburg Center is simply their local New York Public Library. But it’s also where you could have heard, recently, a lecture on Nat Turner, a scholarly discussion of the Young Lords Party (a Puerto Rican nationalist group), or a conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates. The library, around since 1925, also functions like a museum, with rotating exhibitions — next up, “Black Suburbia: From Levittown to Ferguson” and “Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination” — meant to introduce visitors to the center’s vast collection of art, film, and rare books and manuscripts. There’s also a gift shop filled with books by James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Maya Angelou — as well as everything else that can be black: posters of African art, a Kwanzaa kinara, an Aretha Franklin CD. And there are, of course, Black Lives Matter T-shirts. It’s all a physical reminder — one I’ve lately sought out more and more — that the current political movement is built on a legacy that’s both deep and wide.

Because This Place Has Been Showing How Black Lives Matter for 90 Years

EXCLUSIVE: Municipal Archives offer rare glimpse into NYC’s nearly 400-year history most people will never know BY GINGER ADAMS OTIS

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Australian historian Shane White at the New York County Clerk Records office, which he said has "the best set of records I have ever seen."

Some of the city’s best-kept secrets are all hidden in one place — but you have to know what you’re looking for to find them.

Inside the Municipal Archives, there’s a remarkable set of records full of forgotten history: the District Attorney’s Indictment Papers.

They’re part of an incredible 221,000 cubic feet of documents kept by the city’s team of archivists and conservationists. Almost anything related to New York City life can be found there, from 1645 all the way through the Bloomberg years.

This includes things like the very earliest etchings of the green space that became Central Park, tales of a black millionaire who got his start running brothels in the city and Robert Moses’ vision to create a huge expressway in lower Manhattan.

Moses’ plan to turn Tribeca into a highway will be re-created for a city Department of Records’ exhibit opening Wednesday. It will feature a large-scale model of what the expressway would have looked like.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

White has found records on libel cases, drunken brawls, murders and even some old evidence from long-ago cases within the archives.

Read more: http://nydn.us/1RuqJ0x