Blog Posts by Subject: Organizations and Museums

With my hand, I touch the outside, or contour, of a small ceramic jug, a container for cream. I slowly trace the curve of the rim, continuing to the pointed lip. I put down the jug, and pick up a piece of charcoal or a soft pastel. I draw round curves, recreating what I see in my mind's eye, moving my hand across the paper, keeping pace with my inner vision.

"Jug and Green Glass," iPad drawing by Dana SimonI return to the small jug and begin again; tracing the contours of the round, squat body. But alas, when I try to return to the spot on the paper to begin 

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has an extensive dance collection. I love the kinesthetic artistry of physical movement. I was curious about dance libraries and museums, and below are some that I found.

Special Libraries

from the Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers, 40th ed., 2012

Cross-Cultural Dance Resources 

photo via flickr by tuppusWe here at AskNYPL get regular requests for digital images on different topics and we're always happy to share the New York Public Library's very own Digital Gallery. While the NYPL Digital Gallery does a wonderful job with its collection, making things easy to find and accessible, we don't always have the content folks are 

As the holidays are upon us, many teens and their families start thinking about fulfilling community service requirements for school. Winter break is coming up and it might be a good time to get some volunteer hours completed. It sounds simple, but finding volunteer opportunities for kids is not always that easy.

Most schools only require a small number of hours per student each year; 10–20 hours of community service. Many organizations will not accept short–term volunteers. They'll accept 

My sister just took some amazing photos of me on my aunt's horse, which reminds me just how awesome photography is. I visited the International Center of Photography library near Bryant Park, which has amazing photography books. I have always loved the composition design aspect of photographs, and I took well over 100 photos of my queen and her three orange kittens that I had this spring. Below are some photography libraries and museums that I found.

Special Libraries

from the

photo courtesy of Art Beyond SightIn October, museums and other cultural organizations throughout the U.S. and the world celebrate the 10th annual Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month. The goal: "making pictorial literacy and access to the world of art a reality for all blind people."

Elisabeth Salzhauer Axel, photo courtesy of Art Beyond SightThe organization Art Education for the Blind was founded by museum educator 

Brahms manuscripts on display in the Music DivisionBeginning March 21, 2012, the American Brahms Society, in conjunction with the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will present Brahms in the New Century. This three-day conference will bring some of the most important Brahms scholars to New York to share their latest research and analytical insights.

In conjunction with this conference, the Music Division at 

Here at Dongan Hills Library, we have formed a #WUSEUM... a collection of material relating to all things Wu-Tang Clan. The collection of CDs, DVDs, and books associated with the Staten Island rap group is curated by Dongan Hills Library staff members Imer Ardolic and Steve Herman. Many of the items in our #WUSEUM are highlighted in this list!

In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to avoid the typical horror films of vampires, zombies, ghosts,

In 1947, a Life magazine headline read: “New York Lamasery: a new Tibetan temple bewilders Staten Island.”

An American woman, Jacques Marchais -- a pioneer collector and respected expert on Tibetan art -- had created a uniquely peaceful museum. Nestled into the side of Lighthouse Hill, one of the highest points on the eastern seaboard, Marchais had designed a small complex of fieldstone buildings and gardens resembling a rustic Tibetan mountain monastery; she 

Katarina Bishop grew up all over Europe, but she isn’t an heiress. She has a Faberge egg, but she isn’t a Romanov. Kat is used to looking at a room and seeing all the angles, but that was before she stole a whole other life at the Colgan School only to walk away from it months later without a trace.

That was before everything went sideways.

While Kat was busy trying to steal a new, legit, life the family business prospered. When a powerful mobster’s priceless art collection goes missing it isn’t all that surprising that 

Self-Portrait, 1967.(1)He came from my hometown. As a teenager, he collected photographs of movie stars. A few years later, I clipped fan zines featuring Hayley Mills and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark 5 and

A class field trip to El Museo del Barrio inspires the students' creativity.

The largest cultural institutions of New York City like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Museum of Natural History and New York Public Library, were established in the latter half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. There was a major push among the wealthiest Americans to establish a cultural identity of our own. We were a young country, bereft of the cultural lineage that existed in Europe. Despite America’s youth we showed ourselves to be a vast country, devoted to the dollar, with seemingly room for little else. But men, like J.P. Morgan 

On quitting his classes at Harvard in 1927, Edwin Land moved to New York and became a regular user of the library’s Science Division. His goal: the manufacture of a polarizing light filter, the basic idea behind Polaroid sunglasses. Between the library and a variety of makeshift labs, he eventually figured out how to embed microscopic crystals of “herapathite” in molten sheets of plastic and align them all in one direction. He named the invention Polaroid, and used the name again when he invented his instant photography. Land had discovered the identity of the crucial 

Chances are, if you spend any time online you've come across Flickr. Flickr is a wonderful site for storing, sharing and building community around photographs. It's similar to online photo services like Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly except with a greater social focus and tools and features reminiscent of Facebook. About a year ago Flickr launched the Flickr Commons, a project dedicated to sharing and describing the public photo collections of the world's leading cultural heritage 

The Vancouver Public LibraryArchitectural Record has a recurring section called "Building Types Study". The February 2008 issue’s section is dedicated to library design and one of the three libraries discussed is NYPL’s Mulberry Street Branch. The Record commends the architectural firm Roger Marvel Architects for allowing diffused light to penetrate “into both subterranean levels via the central stair”, which it calls “an important psychological 

The Morgan Library

One of the gems of the city is the Morgan Library located on Madison and 36th Street, literally just around the corner and down the block. I fell in love with the place 26 years ago and I have never stopped loving it. To me it is the one of the most intimate spots in the city, more so before the Renzo Piano reconstruction but still really wonderful.

I like it for a couple reasons: first because the shows are never big; they can’t be. It is always a one-room experience and that is just about right for my 

“No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue…”

— Samuel Johnson Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751)

I’m a little less than halfway through George Gissing’s New Grub Street (1891), a delightfully