1.
Cedar Rapids
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Cedar Rapids /ˈsiːdər ˈræpᵻdz/ is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River,20 miles north of Iowa City and 100 miles northeast of Des Moines and it is a part of the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor of Linn, Benton, Cedar, Jones, Johnson, and Washington counties. Cedar Rapids is a hub of the state, located in the core of the Interstate 380. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 126,326, the estimated population of the three-county Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes the nearby cities of Marion and Hiawatha, was 255,452 in 2008. In the 1990s and 2000s, Hollywood would feature several Cedar Rapidians including actors Bobby Driscoll, Ashton Kutcher, Elijah Wood, the city is also the setting for the musical The Pajama Game and the comedy film Cedar Rapids. Cedar Rapids is nicknamed the City of Five Seasons, for the fifth season, the symbol of the five seasons is the Tree of Five Seasons sculpture in downtown along the north river bank. The name Five Seasons and representations of the sculpture throughout the city in many forms. The location of present-day Cedar Rapids was in the territory of the Fox, the first permanent settler, Osgood Shepherd, arrived in 1838. When Cedar Rapids was first established in 1838, William Stone named the town Columbus, in 1841 it was resurveyed and renamed by N. B. They named the town Cedar Rapids for the rapids in the Cedar River at the site, Cedar Rapids was incorporated on January 15,1849. Cedar Rapids annexed the community of Kingston in 1870, the economic growth of Cedar Rapids increased in 1871 upon the founding of the Sinclair meatpacking company. In 2010, the Census Bureau reported Cedar Rapids population as 87. 98% white, and 5. 58% black. During the Iowa flood of 2008, the Cedar River reached a high of 31.12 feet on June 13,2008. 1,126 city blocks were flooded, or more than 10 square miles,561 city blocks were severely damaged and this is 14% of the citys total area. It is estimated 1300 or more properties are to be demolished in the Cedar Rapids area because of the flood, more than 4000 members of the Iowa National Guard were called up to assist the city. The temporary levies became saturated not only with the flood waters, the inundation of southern Minnesota, central and western Wisconsin, and northeastern Iowa by Hurricane Paines remnants began on September 21 and 22 and continued until the end of September 2016. This cresting in Cedar Rapids was below the estimate of 25 feet and the revised estimate of 23 feet. This flood was above levels considered to have about a 1 percent chance of occurring in a given year
Cedar Rapids
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Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids
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Downtown Cedar Rapids, overlooking the Cedar River.
Cedar Rapids
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Flooded Business District June 12, 2008
Cedar Rapids
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Czech Village is at the heart of the city's Czech heritage. Pictured is Sykora Bakery which is now open to the public.
2.
Iowa
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Iowa is a U. S. state in the Midwestern United States, bordered by the Mississippi River on the east and the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west. Surrounding states include Wisconsin and Illinois to the east, Missouri to the south, Nebraska and South Dakota to the west, in colonial times, Iowa was a part of French Louisiana and Spanish Louisiana, its state flag is patterned after the flag of France. After the Louisiana Purchase, people laid the foundation for an economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. Iowa is the 26th most extensive in area and the 30th most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital and largest city by population is Des Moines, Iowa has been listed as one of the safest states in which to live. Its nickname is the Hawkeye State, Iowa derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many Native American tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east, the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west, Iowa is the only state whose east and west borders are formed entirely by rivers. Iowa has 99 counties, but 100 county seats because Lee County has two, the state capital, Des Moines, is in Polk County. Iowas bedrock geology generally increases in age from west to east, in northwest Iowa, Cretaceous bedrock can be 74 million years old, in eastern Iowa Cambrian bedrock dates to c.500 million years ago. Iowa is generally not flat, most of the consists of rolling hills. Iowa can be divided into eight landforms based on glaciation, soils, topography, Loess hills lie along the western border of the state, some of which are several hundred feet thick. Northeast Iowa along the Mississippi River is part of the Driftless Zone, consisting of steep hills, several natural lakes exist, most notably Spirit Lake, West Okoboji Lake, and East Okoboji Lake in northwest Iowa. To the east lies Clear Lake, man-made lakes include Lake Odessa, Saylorville Lake, Lake Red Rock, Coralville Lake, Lake MacBride, and Rathbun Lake. The states northwest area has remnants of the once common wetlands. Iowas natural vegetation is tallgrass prairie and savanna in areas, with dense forest and wetlands in flood plains and protected river valleys. Most of Iowa is used for agriculture, crops cover 60% of the state, grasslands cover 30%, as of 2005 Iowa ranked 49th of U. S. states in public land holdings. Endangered or threatened plants include western prairie fringed orchid, eastern prairie fringed orchid, Meads milkweed, prairie bush clover, the explosion in the number of high-density livestock facilities in Iowa has led to increased rural water contamination and a decline in air quality. Iowa has a continental climate throughout the state
Iowa
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Topography of Iowa, with counties and major streams.
Iowa
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Flag
Iowa
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DeSoto lake at
DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, Iowa.
Iowa
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Fountain Springs Park in Delaware County, Iowa.
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
United States
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Native Americans meeting with Europeans, 1764
United States
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Flag
United States
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The signing of the
Mayflower Compact, 1620.
United States
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The
Declaration of Independence: the
Committee of Five presenting their draft to the
Second Continental Congress in 1776
4.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
New York City
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Clockwise, from top:
Midtown Manhattan,
Times Square, the
Unisphere in
Queens, the
Brooklyn Bridge,
Lower Manhattan with
One World Trade Center,
Central Park, the
headquarters of the United Nations, and the
Statue of Liberty
New York City
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New Amsterdam, centered in the eventual
Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year
England took control and renamed it "New York".
New York City
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The
Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the
American Revolution, took place in
Brooklyn in 1776.
New York City
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Broadway follows the Native American Wickquasgeck Trail through Manhattan.
5.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
New York (state)
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British general
John Burgoyne surrenders at
Saratoga in 1777.
New York (state)
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Flag
New York (state)
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1800 map of New York from
Low's Encyclopaedia
New York (state)
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The
Erie Canal at
Lockport, New York in 1839
6.
University of Chicago
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The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It holds top-ten positions in national and international rankings and measures. The university currently enrolls approximately 5,700 students in the College, Chicagos physics department helped develop the worlds first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction beneath the viewing stands of universitys Stagg Field. The university is home to the University of Chicago Press. With an estimated date of 2020, the Barack Obama Presidential Center will be housed at the university. Both Harper and future president Robert Maynard Hutchins advocated for Chicagos curriculum to be based upon theoretical and perennial issues rather than on applied sciences, the University of Chicago has many prominent alumni. 92 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as professors, students, faculty, or staff, similarly,34 faculty members and 16 alumni have been awarded the MacArthur “Genius Grant”. Rockefeller on land donated by Marshall Field, while the Rockefeller donation provided money for academic operations and long-term endowment, it was stipulated that such money could not be used for buildings. The original physical campus was financed by donations from wealthy Chicagoans like Silas B, Cobb who provided the funds for the campus first building, Cobb Lecture Hall, and matched Marshall Fields pledge of $100,000. Organized as an independent institution legally, it replaced the first Baptist university of the same name, william Rainey Harper became the modern universitys first president on July 1,1891, and the university opened for classes on October 1,1892. The business school was founded thereafter in 1898, and the law school was founded in 1902, Harper died in 1906, and was replaced by a succession of three presidents whose tenures lasted until 1929. During this period, the Oriental Institute was founded to support, in 1896, the university affiliated with Shimer College in Mount Carroll, Illinois. The agreement provided that either party could terminate the affiliation on proper notice, several University of Chicago professors disliked the program, as it involved uncompensated additional labor on their part, and they believed it cheapened the academic reputation of the university. The program passed into history by 1910, in 1929, the universitys fifth president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, took office, the university underwent many changes during his 24-year tenure. In 1933, Hutchins proposed a plan to merge the University of Chicago. During his term, the University of Chicago Hospitals finished construction, also, the Committee on Social Thought, an institution distinctive of the university, was created. Money that had been raised during the 1920s and financial backing from the Rockefeller Foundation helped the school to survive through the Great Depression, during World War II, the university made important contributions to the Manhattan Project. The university was the site of the first isolation of plutonium and of the creation of the first artificial, in the early 1950s, student applications declined as a result of increasing crime and poverty in the Hyde Park neighborhood
University of Chicago
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An early
convocation ceremony at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
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The University of Chicago
University of Chicago
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View from the
Midway Plaisance
University of Chicago
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The campus of the University of Chicago. From the top of
Rockefeller Chapel, the Main Quadrangles can be seen on the left (West), the
Oriental Institute and the
Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics can be seen in the center (North), and the
Booth School of Business and
Laboratory Schools can be seen on the right (East). The panoramic is bounded on both sides by the
Midway Plaisance (South).
7.
Photographer
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A photographer is a person who makes photographs. As in other arts, the definitions of amateur and professional are not entirely categorical, a professional photographer is likely to take photographs to make money, by salary or through the display, sale or use of those photographs. An amateur photographer may take photographs for pleasure and to record an event, emotion, place, as a person without a monetary motivation. A professional photographer may be an employee, for example of a newspaper, or may contract to cover a planned event such as a wedding or graduation. Others, including paparazzi and fine art photographers, are freelancers, first making a picture, some workers, such as crime scene detectives, estate agents, journalists and scientists, make photographs as part of other work. Photographers who produce moving rather than still pictures are often called cinematographers, videographers or camera operators, an amateur may make considerable sums entering work in contests for prize money or through occasional inclusion of their work in magazines or the archive of a photo agency. The term professional may also imply preparation, for example, by academic study, Photographers are also categorized based on the subjects they photograph. Some photographers explore subjects typical of such as landscape, still life. The exclusive right of photographers to copy and use their products is protected by copyright, countless industries purchase photographs for use in publications and on products. This is usually referred to as usage fee and is used to distinguish from production fees, an additional contract and royalty would apply for each additional use of the photograph. The contract may be for one year, or other duration. The photographer usually charges a royalty as well as a one-time fee, the contract may be for non-exclusive use of the photograph or for exclusive use of the photograph. The contract can also stipulate that the photographer is entitled to audit the company for determination of royalty payments. A royalty is also based on the size at which the photo will be used in a magazine or book. Photos taken by a photographer working on assignment are often work for hire belonging to the company or publication unless stipulated otherwise by contract. There are major companies who have maintained catalogues of stock photography and images for decades, such as Getty Images, commercial photographers may also promote their work to advertising and editorial art buyers via printed and online marketing vehicles. Many people upload their photographs to social networking websites and other websites and those interested in legal precision may explicitly release them to the public domain or under a free content license. Some sites, including Wikimedia Commons, are punctilious about licenses, the dictionary definition of photographer at Wiktionary Media related to Photographers at Wikimedia Commons
Photographer
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2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships photographer stand.
Photographer
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A group of photographers taking photographs of retired footballer
Franz Beckenbauer.
Photographer
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Nature photographer Urmas Tartes working on an outdoor environment.
Photographer
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A photographer (
Douglas Osheroff) setting up a shot with the aid of a
tripod.
8.
Fania Marinoff
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Fania Marinoff was a Russian-born American actress. She played supporting and lead roles in dozens of Broadway plays between 1903 and 1937, and eight U. S. silent movies between 1914 and 1917, born in Odessa, Russian Empire, she was the youngest of 13 siblings. She came to the United States as a child with her elder brother Louis. She married Carl Van Vechten in 1914 and they had met two years earlier, and their marriage lasted over 50 years, despite rumors of Van Vechtens homosexuality. She died in 1971 in Englewood, New Jersey from pneumonia
Fania Marinoff
–
Fania Marinoff by
Arnold Genthe, 1913
9.
Fine-art photography
–
Fine art photography is photography created in accordance with the vision of the artist as photographer. Here is a list of definitions of the related terms art photography, artistic photography, Fine art photography, A picture that is produced for sale or display rather than one that is produced in response to a commercial commission. Fine art photography, The production of images to fulfill the vision of a photographer. Artistic photography, A frequently used but somewhat vague term, the idea underlying it is that the producer of a given picture has aimed at something more than a merely realistic rendering of the subject, and has attempted to convey a personal impression. Fine art photography, Also called decor photography, or photo decor and that can be used as wall art. Among the definitions that can be found in scholarly articles are, In 1961, Dr S. D. Jouhar founded the Photographic Fine Art Association, and he was its Chairman. Their definition of Fine Art was “Creating images that evoke emotion by a process in which ones mind. A1986 ethnographic and historical study by Schwartz did not directly define fine art photography, historically, has sometimes been applied to any photography whose intention is aesthetic, as distinguished from scientific, commercial, or journalistic, for this meaning, use photography. One photography historian claimed that the earliest exponent of Fine Art or composition photography was John Edwin Mayall, successful attempts to make fine art photography can be traced to Victorian era practitioners such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and Oscar Gustave Rejlander and others. In the U. S. F. Holland Day, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen were instrumental in making photography a fine art, in the UK as recently as 1960, photography was not really recognised as a Fine Art. Dr S. D. Jouhar said, when he formed the Photographic Fine Art Association at that time - At the moment photography is not generally recognized as anything more than a craft, in the USA photography has been openly accepted as Fine Art in certain official quarters. It is shown in galleries and exhibitions as an Art, there is not corresponding recognition in this country. The London Salon shows pictorial photography, but it is not generally understood as an art, whether a work shows aesthetic qualities or not it is designated Pictorial Photography which is a very ambiguous term. Breakthrough star artists in the 1970s and 80s, such as Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Farber, others investigated a snapshot aesthetic approach. American organizations, such as the Aperture Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art, have much to keep photography at the forefront of the fine arts. Until the mid-1950s it was considered vulgar and pretentious to frame a photograph for a gallery exhibition. Prints were usually simply pasted onto blockboard or plywood, or given a white border in the darkroom, prints were thus shown without any glass reflections obscuring them. Steichens famous The Family of Man exhibition was unframed, the pictures pasted to panels, even as late as 1966 Bill Brandts MoMA show was unframed, with simple prints pasted to thin plywood
Fine-art photography
–
Alfred Stieglitz's photograph
The Steerage (1907) was an early work of artistic modernism, and considered by many historians to be the most important photograph ever made. Stieglitz was notable for introducing fine art photography into museum collections.
Fine-art photography
–
Depiction of
nudity has been one of the dominating themes in fine-art photography. Nude composition 19 from 1988 by
Jaan Künnap.
Fine-art photography
–
Ansel Adams ' The Tetons and the Snake River (1942).
Fine-art photography
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Andreas Gursky, Shanghai, 2000, C-print mounted to plexiglass, 119 x 81 inches
10.
Harlem Renaissance
–
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African-American arts. The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1918 until the mid-1930s, many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this flowering of Negro literature, as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, until the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans had been enslaved and lived in the South. During the Reconstruction Era, the emancipated African Americans, freedmen, began to strive for civic participation, political equality and economic, soon after the end of the Civil War the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 gave rise to speeches by African-American Congressmen addressing this Bill. By 1875 sixteen blacks had been elected and served in Congress, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was denounced by black Congressmen and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, part of Reconstruction legislation by Republicans. By the late 1870s, Democratic whites managed to power in the South. From 1890 to 1908 they proceeded to pass legislation that disenfranchised most Negros and many poor whites and they established white supremacist regimes of Jim Crow segregation in the South and one-party block voting behind southern Democrats. Convict laborers were typically subject to forms of corporal punishment, overwork. While a small number of blacks were able to land shortly after the Civil War. As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate north in great numbers, most of the African-American literary movement arose from a generation that had memories of the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Sometimes their parents or grandparents had been slaves and their ancestors had sometimes benefited by paternal investment in cultural capital, including better-than-average education. Many in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the early 20th century Great Migration out of the South into the Negro neighborhoods of the North, African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life, uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem. During the enormous influx of European immigrants in the late 19th century, the once exclusive district was abandoned by the middle class. Harlem became an African-American neighborhood in the early 1900s, in 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group. Many more African Americans arrived during the First World War, due to the war, the migration of laborers from Europe virtually ceased, while the war effort resulted in a massive demand for unskilled industrial labor. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, despite the increasing popularity of Negro culture, virulent white racism, often by more recent ethnic immigrants, continued to affect African-American communities, even in the North
Harlem Renaissance
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Religion and Evolution Ad
Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
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"An' the stars began to fall." by Aaron Douglas
Harlem Renaissance
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Langston Hughes, novelist and poet, photographed by
Carl Van Vechten, 1936
11.
Gertrude Stein
–
Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in the Allegheny West neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, in 1933, Stein published a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of her partner, Alice B. Toklas, an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde, the book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of the cult-literature scene into the limelight of mainstream attention. Her books include Q. E. D. about a romantic affair involving several of Steins female friends, Fernhurst, a fictional story about a romantic affair, Three Lives. In Tender Buttons, Stein commented on lesbian sexuality and her activities during World War II have been the subject of analysis and commentary. After the war ended, Stein expressed admiration for another Nazi collaborator, some have argued that certain accounts of Steins wartime activities have amounted to a witch hunt. Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born on February 3,1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania to upper-middle-class Jewish parents, Daniel and her father was a wealthy businessman with real estate holdings. German and English were spoken in their home, when Stein was three years old, she and her family moved to Vienna, and then Paris. Accompanied by governesses and tutors, the Steins endeavored to imbue their children with the sensibilities of European history. Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oaklands Sabbath school, during their residence in Oakland, they lived for four years on a ten-acre lot, and Stein built many memories of California there. She would often go on excursions with her brother, Leo, Stein found formal schooling in Oakland unstimulating, but she read often, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Scott, Burns, Smollett, Fielding, and more. When Stein was 14 years old, her mother died, Three years later, her father died as well. Steins eldest brother, Michael Stein, then took over the family holdings and in 1892 arranged for Gertrude and another sister, Bertha. Here she lived with her uncle David Bachrach, who in 1877 had married Gertrudes maternal aunt, in Baltimore, Stein met Claribel and Etta Cone, who held Saturday evening salons that she would later emulate in Paris. The Cones shared an appreciation for art and conversation about it, Stein attended Radcliffe College, then an annex of Harvard University, from 1893 to 1897 and was a student of psychologist William James. In 1934, behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner interpreted Steins difficult poem Tender Buttons as an example of normal motor automatism. In a letter Stein wrote during the 1930s, she explained that she never accepted the theory of writing, here can be automatic movements
Gertrude Stein
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Stein in 1935 photographed by
Carl Van Vechten
Gertrude Stein
–
Gertrude Stein's birthplace and childhood home in
Allegheny West
Gertrude Stein
–
Gertrude Stein, age 3
Gertrude Stein
–
Henri Matisse,
Woman with a Hat, 1905.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
12.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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Cedar Rapids /ˈsiːdər ˈræpᵻdz/ is the second largest city in Iowa and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River,20 miles north of Iowa City and 100 miles northeast of Des Moines and it is a part of the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor of Linn, Benton, Cedar, Jones, Johnson, and Washington counties. Cedar Rapids is a hub of the state, located in the core of the Interstate 380. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 126,326, the estimated population of the three-county Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes the nearby cities of Marion and Hiawatha, was 255,452 in 2008. In the 1990s and 2000s, Hollywood would feature several Cedar Rapidians including actors Bobby Driscoll, Ashton Kutcher, Elijah Wood, the city is also the setting for the musical The Pajama Game and the comedy film Cedar Rapids. Cedar Rapids is nicknamed the City of Five Seasons, for the fifth season, the symbol of the five seasons is the Tree of Five Seasons sculpture in downtown along the north river bank. The name Five Seasons and representations of the sculpture throughout the city in many forms. The location of present-day Cedar Rapids was in the territory of the Fox, the first permanent settler, Osgood Shepherd, arrived in 1838. When Cedar Rapids was first established in 1838, William Stone named the town Columbus, in 1841 it was resurveyed and renamed by N. B. They named the town Cedar Rapids for the rapids in the Cedar River at the site, Cedar Rapids was incorporated on January 15,1849. Cedar Rapids annexed the community of Kingston in 1870, the economic growth of Cedar Rapids increased in 1871 upon the founding of the Sinclair meatpacking company. In 2010, the Census Bureau reported Cedar Rapids population as 87. 98% white, and 5. 58% black. During the Iowa flood of 2008, the Cedar River reached a high of 31.12 feet on June 13,2008. 1,126 city blocks were flooded, or more than 10 square miles,561 city blocks were severely damaged and this is 14% of the citys total area. It is estimated 1300 or more properties are to be demolished in the Cedar Rapids area because of the flood, more than 4000 members of the Iowa National Guard were called up to assist the city. The temporary levies became saturated not only with the flood waters, the inundation of southern Minnesota, central and western Wisconsin, and northeastern Iowa by Hurricane Paines remnants began on September 21 and 22 and continued until the end of September 2016. This cresting in Cedar Rapids was below the estimate of 25 feet and the revised estimate of 23 feet. This flood was above levels considered to have about a 1 percent chance of occurring in a given year
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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Downtown Cedar Rapids, overlooking the Cedar River.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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Flooded Business District June 12, 2008
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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Czech Village is at the heart of the city's Czech heritage. Pictured is Sykora Bakery which is now open to the public.
13.
The New York Times
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The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946
The New York Times
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Cover of The New York Times (November 15, 2012), with the headline story reporting on
Operation Pillar of Defense.
The New York Times
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First published issue of New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851.
The New York Times
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The Times Square Building, The New York Times ' publishing headquarters, 1913–2007
The New York Times
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The New York Times newsroom, 1942
14.
Opera
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Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing, recitative, a style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of theatre, such as acting, scenery. The performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his operas in the 1760s. The first third of the 19th century saw the point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer, the mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, the 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso, since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. In 2009, an opera company offered a download of a complete performance. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti, others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action, in some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagners example, though some, the changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below
Opera
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The performers from the Atlanta Opera sing the finale of
Lucia di Lammermoor. The
opera orchestra is visible in the lowered area in front of the stage.
Opera
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The
Palais Garnier of the
Paris Opéra, one of the world's most famous
opera houses.
Opera
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Claudio Monteverdi
Opera
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George Frideric Handel, 1733
15.
Modern dance
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Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of Germany and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern dance is considered to have emerged as a rejection of. Socioeconomic and cultural factors contributed to its development. In the late 19th century, dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, moving into the 1960s, new ideas about dance began to emerge, as a response to earlier dance forms and to social changes. Eventually, postmodern dance artists would reject the formalism of modern dance, and include such as performance art, contact improvisation, release technique. American modern dance can be divided into three periods or eras, Modern dance has evolved with each subsequent generation of participating artists. Artistic content has morphed and shifted from one choreographer to another, artists such as Graham and Horton developed techniques in the Central Modern Period that are still taught worldwide, and numerous other types of modern dance exist today. In America, increasing industrialization, the rise of a class, and the decline of Victorian social strictures led to, among other changes. It was in this atmosphere that a new dance was emerging as much from a rejection of social structures as from a dissatisfaction with ballet, womens colleges began offering aesthetic dance courses by the end of the 1880s. Emil Rath, who wrote at length about this emerging artform at the stated, Music and rhythmic bodily movement are twin sisters of art. 1877, Isadora Duncan was a predecessor of modern dance with her stress on the center or torso, bare feet, loose hair, free-flowing costumes, and incorporation of humor into emotional expression. She was inspired by classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature, natural forces, and new American athleticism such as skipping, running, jumping, leaping and she thought that ballet was ugly and meaningless gymnastics. Although she returned to the United States at various points in her life and she returned to Europe and died in Nice in 1927. 1891, Loie Fuller began experimenting with the effect that gas lighting had on her silk costumes, Fuller developed a form of natural movement and improvisation techniques that were used in conjunction with her revolutionary lighting equipment and translucent silk costumes. She patented her apparatus and methods of lighting that included the use of coloured gels and burning chemicals for luminescence. 1905, Ruth St. Denis, influenced by the actress Sarah Bernhardt and Japanese dancer Sada Yacco, developed her translations of Indian culture and her performances quickly became popular and she toured extensively while researching Oriental culture and arts. Other pioneers included Kurt Jooss and Harald Kreutzberg, an accomplished choreographer, she was a founding artist of the first American Dance Festival in Bennington. Holm choreographed extensively in the fields of dance and musical theater
Modern dance
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Martha Graham in 1948
Modern dance
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Isadora Duncan in 1903
Modern dance
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Dancer at the
Laban school, Berlin 1929
Modern dance
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Martha Graham and Bertram Ross in 1961; photo by
Carl van Vechten
16.
Isadora Duncan
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Angela Isadora Duncan was an American dancer who performed to acclaim throughout Europe. Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, the youngest of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan, a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts and her brothers were Augustin Duncan and Raymond Duncan, her sister, Elizabeth Duncan, was also a dancer. Soon after Isadoras birth, her father was exposed in illegal dealings. Her parents divorced when she was an infant, and her mother moved with her family to Oakland and she worked there as a seamstress and piano teacher. From ages six to ten Duncan attended school but, finding it constricting she dropped out, as her family was very poor, she and her three siblings earned money by teaching dance to local children. In 1896 Duncan became part of Augustin Dalys theater company in New York and her father, along with his third wife and their daughter, died in 1898 when the British passenger steamer SS Mohegan hit some rocks off the coast of Cornwall. Duncan began her career at a very early age by giving lessons in her home to other neighborhood children. Her novel approach to dance was evident in these classes, in which she followed fantasy and improvised. A desire to travel brought her to Chicago where she auditioned for theater companies. This took her to New York City where her unique vision of dance clashed with the popular pantomimes of theater companies, in New York Duncan took some classes with Marie Bonfanti but was quickly disappointed in ballet routine. Feeling unhappy and unappreciated in America, Duncan moved to London in 1898, there she performed in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, drawing inspiration from the Greek vases and bas-reliefs in the British Museum. The earnings from these engagements enabled her to rent a studio where she developed her work, from London, she traveled to Paris, where she drew inspiration from the Louvre and the Exposition Universelle of 1900. In 1902, Loie Fuller invited Duncan to tour with her and this took Duncan all over Europe as she created new works using her innovative technique, which emphasized natural movement over the rigid technique of ballet. She spent most of the rest of her life touring Europe, to achieve her mission, she opened schools to teach young women her dance philosophy. The first was established in 1904 in Berlin-Grunewald, Germany and this institution was the birthplace of the Isadorables – Anna, Maria-Theresa, Irma, Liesel, Gretel, and Erika. – Duncans protégées, who would go on to continue her legacy, Duncan legally adopted all six Isadorables in 1919, and they took the Duncan last name. Later, Duncan established a school in Paris that was closed due to the outbreak of World War I. In 1910, Duncan met the occultist Aleister Crowley at a party where he refers to Duncan under the name Lavinia King, Crowley wrote of Duncan, Isadora Duncan has this gift of gesture in a very high degree
Isadora Duncan
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Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
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Isadora Duncan performing barefoot. Photo by
Arnold Genthe during her 1915–18 American tour.
Isadora Duncan
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Brooklyn Museum - Isadora Duncan 29 - Abraham Walkowitz
Isadora Duncan
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Isadora Duncan in a Grecian-inspired pose and wearing her signature Grecian tunic
17.
Anna Pavlova
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Anna Pavlovna Pavlova was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, Pavlova is most recognized for the creation of the role The Dying Swan and, with her own company, became the first ballerina to tour ballet around the world. Anna Pavlovna Pavlova was born on February 12,1881 in Ligovo, Saint Petersburg and her mother, Lyubov Feodorovna, was a laundress. When she was three years old her mother married Matvey Pavlov, who adopted her and gave her his surname. Pavlovas passion for the art of ballet was ignited when her mother took her to a performance of Marius Petipas original production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Imperial Maryinsky Theater, the lavish spectacle made an impression on Pavlova. When she was nine, her mother took her to audition for the renowned Imperial Ballet School, because of her youth, and what was considered her sickly appearance, she was rejected, but at age 10 in 1891 she was accepted. She appeared for the first time on stage in Marius Petipas Un conte de fées, young Pavlovas years of training were difficult. Classical ballet did not come easily to her and her severely arched feet, thin ankles, and long limbs clashed with the small, compact body favoured for the ballerina of the time. Her fellow students taunted her with such nicknames as The broom, undeterred, Pavlova trained to improve her technique. She would practice and practice after learning a step, in 1898, she entered the classe de perfection of Ekaterina Vazem, former Prima ballerina of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres. During her final year at the Imperial Ballet School, she performed roles with the principal company. She graduated in 1899 at age 18, chosen to enter the Imperial Ballet a rank ahead of corps de ballet as a coryphée and she made her official début at the Mariinsky Theatre in Pavel Gerdts Les Dryades prétendues. Her performance drew praise from the critics, particularly the great critic, such a style in many ways harked back to the time of the romantic ballet and the great ballerinas of old. Pavlova performed in various variations, pas de deux and pas de trois in such ballets as La Camargo, Le Roi Candaule, Marcobomba. She tried desperately to imitate the renowned Pierina Legnani, Prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Theaters, once during class she attempted Legnanis famous fouettés, causing her teacher Pavel Gerdt to fly into a rage. It is positively more than I can bear to see the pressure such steps put on your delicate muscles, I beg you to never again try to imitate those who are physically stronger than you. You must realize that your daintiness and fragility are your greatest assets and you should always do the kind of dancing which brings out your own rare qualities instead of trying to win praise by mere acrobatic tricks. Pavlova rose through the ranks quickly, becoming a favorite of the old maestro Petipa and it was from Petipa himself that Pavlova learned the title role in Paquita, Princess Aspicia in The Pharaohs Daughter, Queen Nisia in Le Roi Candaule, and Giselle
Anna Pavlova
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Anna Pavlova, ca. 1905.
Anna Pavlova
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Students of the Imperial Ballet School in Marius Petipa's
Un conte de fées. A ten-year-old Anna Pavlova participated in this work in her first ever ballet performance. She is photographed here on the left holding the birdcage. St. Petersburg, 1891.
Anna Pavlova
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Anna Pavlova in the Fokine/Saint-Saëns
The Dying Swan, Saint Petersburg, 1905
Anna Pavlova
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Photographic postcard of Anna Pavlova as the Princess Aspicia in the Petipa/Pugni
The Pharaoh's Daughter, Saint Petersburg, c. 1910
18.
Alfred A. Knopf
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Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. in 1915. The publisher had a reputation for a pursuit of perfection and elegant taste and it was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. The Knopf publishing house is associated with its borzoi colophon, which was designed by co-founder Blanche Knopf in 1925, Knopf was founded in 1915 by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. with a $5,000 advance from his father. The first office was located in New Yorks Candler Building, the publishing house was officially incorporated in 1918, with Alfred Knopf as president, Blanche Knopf as vice-president, and Samuel Knopf as treasurer. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, william A. Koshland joined the company in 1934, and worked with the firm for more than fifty years, rising to take the positions of President and Chairman of the Board. Blanche became President in 1957 when Alfred became Chairman of the Board, Alfred Knopf retired in 1972, becoming chairman emeritus of the firm until his death in 1984. Alfred Knopf also had a home in Purchase, New York. Beginning in 1920, Knopf also produced a chapbook, for the purpose of promoting new books, the Borzoi was published periodically over the years, the first being a hardback called the Borzoi and sometimes quarterly as the Borzoi Quarterly. In 1923 Knopf also started publishing periodicals, beginning with The American Mercury, founded by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, following the Good Neighbor policy, Blanche Knopf visited South America in 1942, so the firm could start producing texts from there. She was one of the first publishers to visit Europe after World War II and her trips, and those of other editors, brought in new writers from Europe, South America, and Asia. Alfred traveled to Brazil in 1961, which spurred a corresponding interest on his part in South America and their son, Alfred Pat Jr. was hired on as secretary and trade books manager after the war. In a 1957 advertisement in the Atlantic Monthly, Alfred A. Knopf published the Borzoi Credo, the credo includes a list of what Knopfs beliefs for publishing including the statement that he never published an unworthy book. Among a list of beliefs listed is the final one--I believe that magazines, movies, television, in 1960 Random House acquired Alfred A. Knopf. It is believed that the decision to sell was prompted by Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. leaving Knopf to found his own book company, Atheneum Books in 1959. While there have many notable editors at Knopf there have only been three editors-in-chief-- Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. Robert Gottlieb and Sonny Mehta. Knopf also employed literary scouts to good advantage, at least 17 Nobel Prize and 47 Pulitzer Prize winning authors have been published by Knopf, though they have also passed at times on subsequently notable books. Knopf books conclude with a page titled A Note on the Type. In addition, Knopf books date the year of the current printing on the title page
Alfred A. Knopf
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Alfred A. Knopf
19.
Paul Robeson
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Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass singer and actor who became involved with the Civil Rights Movement. He became politically involved in response to the Spanish Civil War, fascism and his advocacy of anti-imperialism, affiliation with communism, and criticism of the United States government caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era. In 1915 Robeson won a scholarship to Rutgers College, where he was twice named a consensus All-American and was the class valedictorian. Almost eighty years later, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and he received his LL. B. from Columbia Law School, while playing in the National Football League. At Columbia, he sang and acted in productions, and, after graduating, he became a figure in the Harlem Renaissance with performances in The Emperor Jones. Robeson first appeared outside the US in 1928 in the London premier of Show Boat, Robeson next appeared as Othello in London before becoming an international cinema star during the 1930s through roles in Show Boat and Sanders of the River. He became increasingly attuned to the sufferings of people of other cultures, despite being warned of his economic ruin if he became politically active, he set aside his theatrical career to advocate the cause of the Republican forces of the Spanish Civil War. He then became active in the Council on African Affairs, during World War II, he supported Americas war efforts and won accolades for his portrayal of Othello on Broadway. However, his history of supporting pro-Soviet policies brought scrutiny from the FBI, after the war ended, the CAA was placed on the Attorney Generals List of Subversive Organizations and Robeson was investigated during the age of McCarthyism. Due to his decision not to recant his public advocacy of pro-Soviet policies, he was denied a passport by the U. S. State Department and he moved to Harlem and published a periodical critical of United States policies. His right to travel was restored by the 1958 United States Supreme Court decision, Kent v. Dulles. In the early 1960s he retired and lived the years of his life privately in Philadelphia. Paul Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1898, to Reverend William Drew Robeson and his mother was from a prominent Quaker family of mixed ancestry, African, Anglo-American, and Lenape. Robeson had three brothers, William Drew, Jr. Reeve, and Ben, and one sister, in 1900, a disagreement between William and white financial supporters of Witherspoon arose with apparent racial undertones, which were prevalent in Princeton. William, who had the support of his entirely black congregation, the loss of his position forced him to work menial jobs. Three years later when Robeson was six, his mother, who was nearly blind, William found a stable parsonage at the St. Thomas A. M. E. Zion in 1910, where Robeson would fill in for his father during sermons when he was called away. His athletic dominance elicited racial taunts which he ignored, prior to his graduation, he won a statewide academic contest for a scholarship to Rutgers. He took a job as a waiter in Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island
Paul Robeson
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Robeson in 1942
Paul Robeson
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Birthplace in Princeton
Paul Robeson
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Robeson (far left) was
Rutgers Class of 1919 and one of four students selected into
Cap and Skull
Paul Robeson
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Robeson in football uniform at Rutgers, c. 1919
20.
Langston Hughes
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James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He famously wrote about the period that the negro was in vogue, like many African Americans, Hughes has complex ancestry. Both of Hughes paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved African Americans and both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners in Kentucky, according to Hughes, one of these men was Sam Clay, a Scottish-American whiskey distiller of Henry County and supposedly a relative of the statesman Henry Clay. The other was Silas Cushenberry, a Jewish-American slave trader of Clark County, Hughess maternal grandmother Mary Patterson was of African-American, French, English and Native American descent. One of the first women to attend Oberlin College, she married Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed race, Leary subsequently joined John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 and died from his wounds. In 1869 the widow Mary Patterson Leary married again, into the elite and her second husband was Charles Henry Langston, of African-American, Euro-American and Native American ancestry. He and his younger brother John Mercer Langston worked for the abolitionist cause, Charles Langston later moved to Kansas, where he was active as an educator and activist for voting and rights for African Americans. Charles and Marys daughter Caroline was the mother of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, the second child of school teacher Carrie Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. Langston Hughes grew up in a series of Midwestern small towns, Hughes father left his family and later divorced Carrie. He traveled to Cuba and then Mexico, seeking to escape the racism in the United States. After his parents separated, his mother traveled seeking employment, and young Langston Hughes was raised mainly in Lawrence, Kansas by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation and he spent most of his childhood in Lawrence. In his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea he wrote, I was unhappy for a long time, after the death of his grandmother, Hughes went to live with family friends, James and Mary Reed, for two years. Later, Hughes lived again with his mother Carrie in Lincoln and she had remarried when he was still an adolescent, and eventually they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended high school. His writing experiments began when he was young, while in grammar school in Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet. He stated that in retrospect he thought it was because of the stereotype about African Americans having rhythm, I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry
Langston Hughes
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1936 photo by
Carl Van Vechten
Langston Hughes
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Hughes in 1902
Langston Hughes
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Hughes at university in 1928
Langston Hughes
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Hughes's ashes are interred under a cosmogram medallion in the foyer of the Arthur Schomburg Center in Harlem
21.
Ethel Waters
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Ethel Waters was an American singer and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts and her notable recordings include Dinah, Stormy Weather, Taking a Chance on Love, Heat Wave, Supper Time, Am I Blue. Cabin in the Sky, Im Coming Virginia, and her version of the spiritual His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award. She was also the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award and he played no role in raising Ethel. Soon after she was born, her mother married Norman Howard, Ethel used the surname Howard as a child, before reverting to her fathers name. She was raised in poverty by her grandmother, Sally Anderson, Waters never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. She said of her childhood, I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family, Waters grew tall, standing 5 9½ in her teens. According to the historian and archivist Rosetta Reitz, Waterss birth in the North. Waters married at the age of 13, but her husband was abusive, on her 17th birthday, she attended a costume party at a nightclub on Juniper Street. She was persuaded to sing two songs and impressed the audience so much that she was offered work at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore. She later recalled that she earned the rich sum of ten dollars a week, after her start in Baltimore, Waters toured on the black vaudeville circuit. As she described it later, I used to work from nine until unconscious, despite her early success, she fell on hard times and joined a carnival, traveling in freight cars along the carnival circuit and eventually reaching Chicago. She did not last long with them, though, and soon headed south to Atlanta, Smith demanded that Waters not compete in singing blues opposite her. Waters conceded and sang ballads and popular songs, around 1919, Waters moved to Harlem and there became a celebrity performer in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her first Harlem job was at Edmonds Cellar, a club with a black patronage and she acted in a blackface comedy, Hello 1919. The jazz historian Rosetta Reitz pointed out that by the time Waters returned to Harlem in 1921, in 1921, Waters became the fifth black woman to make a record, for the tiny Cardinal Records. She later joined Black Swan Records, where Fletcher Henderson was her accompanist, Waters later commented that Henderson tended to perform in a more classical style than she preferred, often lacking the damn-it-to-hell bass
Ethel Waters
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Waters in 1943.
Ethel Waters
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Waters
Ethel Waters
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Waters with
Count Basie in
Stage Door Canteen (1943)
22.
Richard Wright (author)
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Richard Nathaniel Wright was an American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Literary critics believe his work helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th century, Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4,1908, at Ruckers Plantation, between the train town of Roxie and the larger river city of Natchez, Mississippi. His autobiography, Black Boy, covers the interval in his life from 1912 until May 1936 and he was the son of Nathan Wright and Ella (b.1884 Mississippi- d. Jan 13,1959 Chicago, Illinois}. His parents were free after the Civil War, both sets of his grandparents had been born into slavery and freed as a result of the war. Richards father left the family when the boy was six years old, in 1916 his mother Ella moved with Richard and his younger brother to live with her sister Maggie and her husband Silas Hoskins in Elaine, Arkansas. This was also in the area of the Mississippi Delta and former cotton plantations, the Wrights were forced to flee after Silas Hoskins disappeared, reportedly killed by a white man who coveted his successful saloon business. After his single-parent mother became incapacitated by a stroke, Richard was separated from his younger brother, at the age of 12, he had not yet had a single complete year of schooling. Soon Richard and his moved to the home of his maternal grandmother in the state capital, Jackson, Mississippi. There he was able to attend school regularly. After a year, at the age of 13 he entered the Jim Hill public school, in his grandparents pious, Seventh-Day Adventist household, Richard felt stifled by his aunt and grandmother, who tried to force him to pray so that he might find God. He later threatened to leave home because his Grandmother Wilson refused to him to work on Saturdays. This early strife with his aunt and grandmother left him with a permanent, at the age of 15, while in eighth grade, Wright published his first story, The Voodoo of Hells Half-Acre, in the local Black newspaper Southern Register. He described the story as about a villain who sought a widows home, after excelling in grade school and junior high, in 1923, Wright earned the position of class valedictorian of Smith Robertson junior high school. He was assigned to write a paper to be delivered at graduation in a public auditorium, Later, he was called to the principals office, where the principal gave him a prepared speech to present in place of his own. Richard challenged the principal, saying. the people are coming to hear the students, the principal threatened him, suggesting that Richard might not be allowed to graduate if he persisted, despite having passed all the examinations. He also tried to entice Richard with an opportunity to become a teacher, determined not to be called an Uncle Tom, Richard refused to deliver the principals address, written to avoid offending the white school district officials. Despite pressure even from his classmates, Richard delivered his speech as he had planned, in September that year, Wright registered for mathematics, English, and history courses at the new Lanier High School, constructed for black students in Jackson. He had to stop attending classes after a few weeks of irregular attendance because he needed to earn money for family expenses, the next year, at the age of 17, Wright moved on his own to Memphis, Tennessee, in November 1925
Richard Wright (author)
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Wright in a 1939 photograph by
Carl Van Vechten
Richard Wright (author)
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A historic marker in
Natchez,
Mississippi, commemorating Richard Wright, who was born near the city
Richard Wright (author)
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Plaque commemorating Wright's residence in Paris, at 14th Monsieur-le-Prince street
Richard Wright (author)
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Banned Books Week reading of Black Boy at
Shimer College in 2013
23.
Zora Neale Hurston
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Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American novelist, short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist. Of Hurstons four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, Hurston was the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston, two former slaves. Her father was a Baptist preacher, tenant farmer, and carpenter and she was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7,1891, where her father grew up and her grandfather was the preacher of a Baptist church. When she was three, her moved to Eatonville, Florida, in 1887 it was one of the first all-black towns to be incorporated in the United States. Hurston said she felt that Eatonville was home to her as she grew up there. Her father later was elected as mayor of the town in 1897 and in 1902 became preacher of its largest church, Hurston later used Eatonville as a backdrop in her stories. It was a place where African Americans could live as they desired, in 1901, some northern schoolteachers visited Eatonville and gave Hurston a number of books that opened her mind to literature, she described it as a kind of birth. Hurston spent the remainder of her childhood in Eatonville, and describes the experience of growing up there in her 1928 essay, How It Feels to Be Colored Me. Her father remarried to Matte Moge, this was considered a minor scandal, Hurstons father and stepmother sent her away to a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida. They eventually stopped paying her tuition and the school expelled her and she later worked as a maid to the lead singer in a traveling Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical company. In 1917, Hurston began attending Morgan College, the school division of Morgan State University. At this time, apparently to qualify for a free high-school education and she graduated from the high school of Morgan State University in 1918. In 1918, Hurston began her studies at Howard University, where she one of the earliest initiates of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and co-founded The Hilltop. While there, she took courses in Spanish, English, Greek and public speaking, in 1921, she wrote a short story, John Redding Goes to Sea, which qualified her to become a member of Alaine Lockes literary club, The Stylus. Hurston left Howard in 1924 and in 1925 was offered a scholarship by Barnard trustee Annie Nathan Meyer to Barnard College, Columbia University, Hurston received her B. A. in anthropology in 1928, when she was 37. While she was at Barnard, she conducted research with noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead, after graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia University. Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen and her apartment, according to some accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings
Zora Neale Hurston
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Hurston between 1935 and 1943
Zora Neale Hurston
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Zora Neale Hurston, photo by
Carl Van Vechten (1938)
24.
Wallace Thurman
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Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist active during the Harlem Renaissance. He also wrote essays, worked as an editor, and was a publisher of short-lived newspapers and literary journals. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry, A Novel of Negro Life, Thurman was born in Salt Lake City to Beulah and Oscar Thurman. When Thurman was less than an old, his father abandoned his wife. It was not until Wallace was 30 years old that he met his father, between his mothers many marriages, Wallace and his mother lived in Salt Lake City with Emma Jackson, his maternal grandmother. Jackson ran a saloon from her home, selling alcohol without a license, Thurmans early life was marked by loneliness, family instability and illness. He began grade school at age six in Boise, Idaho, from 1910 to 1914, Thurman lived in Chicago. Moving with his mother, he finished school in Omaha. During this time, he suffered from persistent heart attacks, while living in Pasadena, California in the winter of 1918, Thurman caught influenza during the worldwide Influenza Pandemic. He recovered and returned to Salt Lake City, where he finished high school and he enjoyed the works of Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Havelock Ellis, Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire and many others. He wrote his first novel at the age of 10 and he attended the University of Utah from 1919 to 1920 as a pre-medical student. In 1922 he transferred to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, while in Los Angeles, he met and befriended the writer Arna Bontemps, and became a reporter and columnist for a black-owned newspaper. He started a magazine, Outlet, intended to be a West Coast equivalent to The Crisis, in 1925 Thurman moved to Harlem. During the next decade, he worked as a ghostwriter, a publisher, and editor, as well as writing novels, plays, in 1926, he became the editor of The Messenger, a socialist journal addressed to blacks. There he was the first to publish the stories of Langston Hughes. Thurman left the journal in October 1926 to become the editor of World Tomorrow, the following month, he collaborated in founding the literary magazine Fire. Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, among its contributors were Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Bruce Nugent, Aaron Douglas, and Gwendolyn B. He was able to only one issue of Fire
Wallace Thurman
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Wallace Thurman
25.
Nigger Heaven
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Nigger Heaven is a 1926 novel written by Carl Van Vechten, set during the Harlem Renaissance in the United States in the 1920s. The book and its title have been controversial since its publication, the novel is a portrayal of life in the great black walled city of Harlem. It describes the interactions of intellectuals, political activists, bacchanalian workers, the plot of the novel concerns two people, a quiet librarian and an aspiring writer, who try to keep their love alive as racism denies them every opportunity. This roman à clef became an instant bestseller and served as a pocket guide to Harlem. It also split the black community, as some, e. g. Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen, appreciated it, while others like Countee Cullen. Du Bois, regarded it as an affront to the hospitality of black folks, the book fuelled a period of Harlemania, during which the area of Harlem became en vogue among white people, who then frequented its cabarets, bars, and so on. It is also believed to be the source of the phrase, Van Vechten by the 1920s was a noted music and dance critic in New York. Knopf had already published several of his novels by the time Nigger Heaven was conceived and he first became fascinated with Harlem when he read a book by a young black writer, Walter White. He sought out White, who worked for the NAACP, and White introduced him to many black artists, “This will not be a novel about Negroes in the South or white contacts or lynchings. It will be about NEGROES, as they live now in the new city of Harlem. ”Nigger heaven was a used in the 19th century to refer to church balconies. The short novel begins with a prologue about a violent pimp named Scarlet Creeper, the main part of the book is structured as two novellas. She briefly has a relationship with a writer named Byron Kasson and they have extended conversations on literature, the second novella is Byrons story. He greatly resents the segregated nature of New York, after his relationship with Mary, he takes up with a debauched socialite as they explore the wild-side of Harlem. The socialite dumps him adding to his negative views on the society in which they live. The novel ends with a violent confrontation involving Scarlet and Byron, while Scarlet is at fault, the book, due in part to the inclusion of the pejorative nigger in its title, was met with mixed reception. It was initially banned in Boston, Van Vechtens own father was said to have written his son two letters imploring that he change the title to something less offensive. Van Vechten discussed the title with poet Countee Cullen, who was enraged by it, Van Vechten was not averse to having the controversy serve as publicity, and he knew at least some in Harlem would defend him. The ambivalence about the book, its title, and what it signifies about the author, has continued into the 21st century
Nigger Heaven
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First edition of the text, with original dustwrapper, published in 1926.
26.
Vanity Fair (magazine)
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Vanity Fair is a magazine of popular culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast in the United States. The first version of Vanity Fair was published from 1913 to 1936, the imprint was revived in 1983, and came to include four European editions of the magazine. The current editor is Graydon Carter, Condé Montrose Nast began his empire by purchasing the mens fashion magazine Dress in 1913. He renamed the magazine Dress and Vanity Fair and published four issues in 1913 and it continued to thrive into the twenties. However, it became a casualty of the Great Depression and declining advertising revenues, although its circulation, Condé Nast announced in December 1935 that Vanity Fair would be folded into Vogue as of the March 1936 issue. Condé Nast Publications, under the ownership of S. I. Newhouse, the first issue was released in February 1983, edited by Richard Locke, formerly of The New York Times Book Review. After three issues, Locke was replaced by Leo Lerman, veteran features editor of Vogue and he was followed by editors Tina Brown and Graydon Carter. Regular writers columnists have included Dominick Dunne, Sebastian Junger, Michael Wolff, Maureen Orth and Christopher Hitchens. Amongst the most famous of these was the August 1991 Leibovitz cover featuring a naked, pregnant Demi Moore, in addition to its controversial photography, the magazine also prints articles on a variety of topics. In 1996, journalist Marie Brenner wrote an exposé on the tobacco industry titled The Man Who Knew Too Much, the article was later adapted into a movie The Insider, which starred Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. S. The magazine also features interviews with celebrities, including a monthly Proust Questionnaire. The magazine was the subject of Toby Youngs book, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, about his search for success, from 1995, the book has been made into a movie, with Jeff Bridges playing Carter. There are currently five international editions of Vanity Fair being published, namely in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, the British Vanity Fair was first published in 1991. The Italian Vanity Fair was established in October 2003 and celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2013, Vanity Fair Germany launched in February 2007 at a cost of €50 million, then the most expensive new magazine in Germany in years and Condé Nasts biggest investment outside the United States. After circulation had plummeted from half a million to less than 200,000 per week, a French version started in June 2013. The Spanish version of the magazine was first published in Spain in 2008, in April 2015 Condé Nast México y Latinoamerica was to launch Vanity Fair Mexico. As a successor to a similar invitation-only event annually held by the late agent Irving Paul Lazar, during its first years, the magazines Oscar party was co-hosted by producer Steve Tisch at Mortons in West Hollywood. At first, editor Graydon Carter kept the invitation list small, between 2009 and 2013, the party was held at Sunset Tower
Vanity Fair (magazine)
–
Cover of the February 2012 issue of Vanity Fair
27.
Gertrude Abercrombie
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Gertrude Abercrombie was an American painter based in Chicago. Abercrombie was born on February 17,1909, in Austin and her parents, Tom and Lula Janes Abercrombie, were traveling opera singers who happened to be in Austin on the day of Gertrudes birth. The family lived in Berlin in 1913 to further her mothers career, upon their return the family lived in Aledo, Illinois, before settling in Hyde Park, Chicago in 1916. She was raised in a strict Christian Scientist environment at home and she earned a degree in Romance languages from the University of Illinois in 1929. She also worked briefly as an artist for Sears, in 1932 she began to focus strictly on her art. The following summer she made her first sale at an art fair in Chicago. In the mid-1930s she moved out of her familys home and became active in the art scene. From 1934 to 1940 she served as a painter for the Works Progress Administration, during the 1930s and 1940s she also began creating woodcuts. In 1940 she married lawyer Robert Livingston, and in 1942 gave birth to their daughter Dinah and that same year she married music critic Frank Sandiford, with Dizzy Gillespie performing at the wedding. The couple were active in the lifestyle and jazz scene of Chicago hence their connection with Gillespie. They met musicians through Sandiford and through Abercrombies own skills as an improvisational pianist, the couple would divorce in 1964. By the late 1950s her health declined due to trouble, alcoholism, and arthritis. After 1959 her paintings diminished in number as well as scale and she required a wheelchair and was eventually bedridden. In the final year of her life, a retrospective of her work was held at the Hyde Park Art Center. She died in Chicago on July 3,1977 and her will established the Gertrude Abercrombie Trust which distributed her work and the work of other artists she owned to cultural institutions throughout the Midwest. She painted many variations of her subjects, sparsely furnished interiors, barren landscapes, self-portraits. Many compositions feature a woman in a flowing gown, often depicted with attributes of sorcery, an owl, a black cat. These works were often self-portraits, as she stated in an interview with Studs Terkel shortly before her death, the 1940s and 50s are described as her most prolific and productive period, a time when she no longer painted many portraits, but retained the themes mentioned above
Gertrude Abercrombie
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Abercrombie in 1951
Gertrude Abercrombie
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Dizzy Gillespie with Abercrombie on his birthday, 1964
28.
Peter Abrahams
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Peter Henry Abrahams Deras, commonly known as Peter Abrahams, was a South African-born Jamaican novelist, journalist and political commentator. Abrahams was born in 1919 in Vrededorp, a suburb of Johannesburg, his father was from Ethiopia, in 1939 Abrahams left South Africa, and worked first as a sailor, and then as a journalist in London. Hoping to make his way as a writer, he faced challenges as a South African, as Carol Polsgrove has shown in her history, Ending British Rule. Despite a manuscript readers recommendation against publication, in 1942 Allen & Unwin brought out his Dark Testament, publisher Dorothy Crisp published his novels Song of the City and Mine Boy. According to Nigerian scholar Kolawole Ogungbesan, Mine Boy became the first African novel written in English to attract international attention, while working in London, Abrahams lived with his wife Daphne in Loughton. In 1956, Abrahams published a roman à clef about the community of which he had been a part in London. Other identifiable fictionalized figures included George Padmore, the novel concluded with Udomos murder. Published the year before Nkrumah took the reins of independent Ghana, Abrahams settled in Jamaica in 1956. In 1994 he was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal for his writing, one of South Africas most prominent writers, his work deals with political and social issues, especially with racism. His novel Mine Boy, one of the first works to bring him to critical attention, and his memoir Tell Freedom deal in part with apartheid. His other works include the story collection Dark Testament and the novels The Path of Thunder, A Wreath for Udomo, A Night of Their Own, Abrahams was found dead at his home in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica, on 18 January 2017, aged 97. A forensic examination showed that Abrahams was a victim of foul play, a local 61-year-old man, Norman Tomlinson, was later charged with murder. Court proceedings are to start in the beginning of March after a due to a lengthy power outage in the court house. The African Activist Archive Project website includes a photograph of Peter Abrahams, the Novels of Peter Abrahams and the Rise of Nationalism in Africa
Peter Abrahams
–
Peter Abrahams (photo taken by
Carl Van Vechten, 1955)
29.
Mercedes de Acosta
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Mercedes de Acosta was an American poet, playwright, and novelist. Four of de Acostas plays were produced, and she published a novel and she was professionally unsuccessful but is known for her many lesbian affairs with famous Broadway and Hollywood personalities and numerous friendships with prominent artists of the period. She was born in New York City in 1893 and her father, Ricardo de Acosta, was of Cuban and Spanish descent and her mother, Micaela Hernández de Alba y de Alba, was Spanish and reportedly a descendant of the Spanish Dukes of Alba. De Acosta had five siblings, Aida, Ricardo Jr. Angela, Maria, Maria married socially prominent A. Robeson Sargent, the Harvard-educated landscape architect and son of Charles Sprague Sargent. Rita became a famous beauty best known as Rita Lydig and she was photographed by Adolf de Meyer, Edward Steichen, and Gertrude Käsebier, sculpted in alabaster by Malvina Hoffman, and painted by Giovanni Boldini and John Singer Sargent among others. Under the name Mrs Philip Lydig, Rita wrote a novel, Tragic Mansions, de Acosta attended elementary school at the Covenant of the Blessed Sacrement on West 79th Street in Manhattan where Dorothy Parker was a classmate. De Acosta married painter Abram Poole in 1920 and she was described in 1955 by Garbo biographer, John Bainbridge, as a woman of courtly manners, impeccable decorative taste and great personal elegance. A woman with a passionate and intense devotion to the art of living, and endowed with a high spirit, energy, eclectic curiosity and a varied interest in the arts. In 1916 she began an affair with actress Alla Nazimova and later with dancer Isadora Duncan, shortly after marrying Abram Poole in 1920, de Acosta became involved in a five-year relationship with actress Eva Le Gallienne. De Acosta wrote two plays for Le Gallienne, Sandro Botticelli and Jehanne de Arc, after the financial failures of both plays they ended their relationship. Over the next decade she was involved with several actresses and dancers including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Ona Munson. Additional unsubstantiated rumors include affairs with Pola Negri, Eleonora Duse, Katherine Cornell and it has often been said that she once stated, I can get any woman away from any man. However there is no evidence to substantiate this claim, an ardent liberal, de Acosta was committed to several political causes. Concerned about the Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936, for example, a tireless advocate for womens rights, she wrote in her memoir, I believed. in every form of independence for women and I was. an enrolled worker for womens suffrage. She also became a vegetarian and, out of respect for animals, de Acostas best-known relationship was with Greta Garbo. When Garbos close friend, author Salka Viertel, introduced them in 1931, as their relationship developed, it became erratic and volatile with Garbo always in control. The two were very close sporadically and then apart for lengthy periods when Garbo, annoyed by Mercedes obsessive behavior, coupled with her own neuroses, in any case, they remained friends for thirty years during which time Garbo wrote de Acosta 181 letters, cards, and telegrams. About their friendship, Cecil Beaton, who was close to women, recorded in his 1958 memoir, Mercedes is very best friend and for 30 years has stood by her
Mercedes de Acosta
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Poet, playwright
30.
Adele Addison
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Adele Addison is an African-American lyric soprano who was an acclaimed figure in the classical music world during the 1950s and 1960s. Although she did appear in operas, Addison spent most of her career performing in recital. Her performances spanned a wide array of literature from the Baroque period to contemporary compositions and she is best remembered today as the singing voice for Bess in the 1959 movie Porgy and Bess. Addison can be heard on recordings, of which her baroque music recording are perhaps her best work. Known for her polished and fluent tone, Addison made a desirable baroque vocal artist, many of her recordings were made with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. Addison began studying voice seriously as a teenager and, following high school, further scholarships enabled her to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University and at summer sessions at the Berkshire Music School at Tanglewood. At Tanglewood she studied with Boris Goldovsky, Addison made her professional recital debut in Boston, in 1948 while still a student at Princeton. Following graduation she moved to New York City to pursue a career as a classical soprano, following her New York debut, she continued to study voice at the Juilliard School with Beverley Peck Johnson and with Povla Frijsh. In 1955 she made her New York City Opera debut as Mimi in Puccinis La bohème, the New York Post said the following of her debut, Adele Addison is about the most appealing interpreter of the little Parisian seamstress yet to appear on the City Center stage. Small, frail looking, and pretty, Miss Addison enhanced these assets by acting and singing with moving poignancy and that same year, Addison was invited by Aaron Copland to perform the world premiere of his Dirge In Woods at a concert sponsored by the League of Composers. Although Addison was offered opera roles with several companies, she did not appear in many more opera productions as she preferred to sing in recital. She did appear in a few productions with the New York City Opera, the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company. In 1959, Addison sang the role of Bess in the version of Gershwins Porgy. The role was supposed to be sung by Urylee Leonardos. In a 1996 Opera News interview she said, Today, young singers are almost forced to make a choice, I never had to make a choice. I loved the song repertoire from the start, and as I began to sing, for even the smallest ladies clubs, etc. those inviting me expected and accepted that. Even as the years passed, and I sang all the rest of the repertoire – opera, oratorio, chamber music and my curiosity, joy and love for song never changed. Addison made numerous appearances with orchestras, such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra
Adele Addison
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Adele Addison, photographed by
Carl Van Vechten, 1955
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