Susan L Berger
Two Pages Before My Yearbook Entry (Boys and Girls), 2017

White Columns Online : “Wise Child” curated by Zhoe Granger runs to 12/21/19.

Visit the Gallery and see Susan Berger’s work HERE

The theme is based on Monica Furlong of her book: Traveling In and for her thoughts on exploring a more spiritual of consciousness.

Monica Furlong states on the inside cover of Traveling In – part diary, part rambling LSD trip, “the religious man is the one who believes that life is about making some kind of journey”. Throughout Traveling In Furlong explores how a (widely) varying spectrum of Poets, Artists and Philosophers have metaphysically asked, “what is the journey and where does it take us”.

Transformation is an overarching theme throughout Furlongs’ oeuvre. Her biographies include the medieval Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and the 60’s counter culture revolutionary Alan Watts. Her book Visions & Longings: Medieval Women Mystics revolts against a biblical legacy on women. Later in Furlongs life she wrote the Wise Child trilogy – a fantasy world set in medieval Scotland. Not only does transformation take place within her books through subject matter, but on a wider level, the reader feels part of her internal transformation.

What stood out about each of the selected artworks chosen for this project was a resonance with Furlongs’ thoughts on exploring a more spiritual level of consciousness. Each work feels like an inquiry or a break “mid-journey”, not a neatly completed thesis. What I love so much about each work is the courage to Travel Inwards when most of us are constantly trying to distract ourselves with stuff, the consumerist journey through activity.

Boy with Knife photo by Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of of Daniel Cooney Fine Art

Arlene Gottfried’s Mesmerizing Photographs of New York in the 1970’s

by Miss Rosen
Feature Shoot
Nov 5, 2019

…. the ragged, jagged edges of the city didn’t frighten Gottfried. Rather, like a moth to the flame she found herself drawn to the people living on the margins, whose lives often fell between the cracks, and made it her business to create some of the most sensitive, compelling portraits of an era that has all but vanished.

“New York City street photography is genre of photography itself. How many photographs of New York have been made?” gallerist Daniel Cooney asks. “What makes Arlene’s work special is Arlene herself. We see New York as Arlene sees it. It is not the subject matter, because the subject matter is not new. It is Arlene. She was an original.”

Cooney organized Arlene Gottfried: After Dark, which was recently on view at the gallery, spotlighting the artist’s work made in some of the most legendary outposts of the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Whether hanging out at Studio 54, cruising through Times Square, kicking it at Empire Roller Disco, lounging in the ladies room at the Roseland Ballroom, or walking down Christopher Street during Gay Pride, Gottfried captures the beauty of people who persevere against the odds, defying state-sponsored oppression by simply remaining alive.

Read full article HERE

Don’t Act Your Age
by Kate Walter
Oct 26, 2019

Actor/director/teacher Nancy Gabor, 78, has devoted her life to theater. Now she’s sharing her wisdom with fellow seniors through teaching an acting class called “You’re Never Too Old to Play.”

Now in its third year, the three hour class meets weekly in the community room at Westbeth Artists Housing, in Manhattan’s West Village, where Gabor is a resident. The 23 current participants range in age from 60 to 95. The multi-cultural members come from all over New York City– the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, Upper West Side, Greenwich Village, and even New Jersey.

Classes with a theater professional
Gabor received training as an actress at Carnegie Mellon and has directed more than 50 off Broadway productions, from new original plays to the classics.

Read entire article Here

Image by Abby Walsh

Beth Soll presents Beth Soll & Company, an ensemble of dancers and musicians, in Dances of Passion and Peace, A Concert of New Dance, Music, and Poetry. This evening of dance premieres will also feature new music by composers Thomas Addison, Nuria Divi, Wendy Griffiths, Josh Rosen, and Stan Strickland, and poetry, both sung and spoken, of Robert Frost, Lin Haire-Sargeant, Langston Hughes, Rumi, and Walt Whitman. Poems will be recited in English, French, Catalan, German, French, and American Sign Language. The 11 dances will be performed by Janet Aisawa, Abby Dias, Kristen Hedberg, Lindsey Miller, Hannah McClean, Marisa Post, and Beth Soll. Singer Eliana Berrean and pianists Wendy Griffiths, Elizabeth Rodgers, and Alex Wu will also perform. Lighting Designer James Kolditz will illuminate the event.

PERFORMANCES
November 22 & 23, 8 PM, at University Settlement, 184 Eldridge Street.
General Admission: $18
Tickets at https://passionandpeace.brownpapertickets.com, 1.800.838.3006 or at the door.

Presented by Dance Projects, Inc and co-presented by The Performance Project @ University Settlement

Inspiration for Dances of Passion and Peace came from Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, and his interest in spiritual enlightenment within the context of contrasting, potentially transcendent ways of life: in this case, a life of power, love, and conflict versus a life of supremely quiet meditation.

“Gentle, unusual, luminous…iconic purity…thoughtful, beguiling dance.”
Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice

“This is dance at its most magical, mystical, mysterious.”
Cerina Survant, Chicago Reader
Beth Soll founded Beth Soll & Company in Boston in 1977, presenting regular concerts there and in other US venues (including Westbeth) and internationally, while directing the dance program at MIT for 20 years. After earning a Ph.D in the History and Theory of Modern Dance from the University Professors Program at Boston University in 1999, and a teaching stint at UCSanta Barbara, Soll moved to New York. Now in her seventies and still dancing, Soll’s very individual style has earned enthusiastic praise throughout the years. After 17 years on the waiting list, Soll happily joined the Westbeth community.

More information: bethsollandcompany.org

Mindy Belloff’s newest work is prominently featured at the Peabody Essex Museum. “The Creative Legacy of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selections from the Phillips Library Collection,” is on view from September 28, 2019 through March 29, 2020.

This is the first exhibition in a new gallery dedicated to showcasing works from the museum’s research library. Nathaniel Hawthorne is integral to Salem’s rich history, and PEM’s Phillips Library collection includes over 3,000 individual volumes by the author.

The library’s recent acquisition of Mindy Belloff‘s A Golden Thread, a contemporary reinterpretation of Hawthorne’s short story “The Minotaur,” considers the links between past and present, visual and verbal, and how artists have drawn on one another’s work throughout time. Focusing on the visual artistry of bookmaking and printing, from cover designs to typography, this exhibition highlights the full creativity present in books as art objects.

Mindy Belloff is the proprietor of the only private fine press in Manhattan. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the oldest continuously operating museum in the United States, ranks in the top 20 art museums in the country. Web: Peabody Essex Museum

The artist Hans Haacke in his home. He covered his face with his artwork entitled, “We (All) Are the People,” from his retrospective at the New Museum.CreditCreditHans Haacke/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Cole Wilson for The New York Times

NY Times
October 11, 2019

Anyone who knows much about the defiantly political art of Hans Haacke, filling the New Museum in New York later this month, is bound to feel anxious before meeting the famous firebrand. But when Mr. Haacke showed up for an interview at his dealer’s gallery in Manhattan, what was shocking was his quietude: In sensible sandals, roomy jeans and a staid plaid shirt, the 83-year-old New Yorker answered questions with an amiable, unflappable calm.

Asked about what seems to have been almost an embargo against him among American curators, despite his huge reputation in Europe, he replied, “before they make a move — one that is not quite the norm — they need to consider (and I don’t blame them for that) whether this is good for their personal career.”

Queried on the power of museum donors, a group he has unflinchingly confronted in his art, he replied merely that he “suspects” — and in person, Mr. Haacke never does more than “suspect”— that the power of art to affect viewers’ thinking leaves museum benefactors with “an interest in what is being shown there, and what is not going to be shown there.” And the art some donors would prefer not to see exhibited includes Mr. Haacke’s own.

“He’s just a really nice guy,” said Andrea Fraser, a peer of Mr. Haacke’s known for equally hard-nosed work. “I’ve never seen him be aggressive” — at least not in the flesh, she clarified, acknowledging the aggression in his art.

Read full article by Blake Gopnik HERE

SUNDAY SERIES WORKS IN PROGRESS
When: Sunday Oct. 13th at 4PM
Where: University Settlement, 184 Eldridge Street.
Reservations: 212 924 7822
Tickets: $10

“Inspired to create and dance a solo in tribute to her father on the tenth anniversary of his death, JUDITH MOSS, honors the legacy of her parents who were born in Berlin and fled Nazi-occupied Europe during WW 11. Crossing borders illegally, living in the shadows, undocumented… dangerous times now and then.”

As an independent choreographer Judith Moss has been a guest artist at numerous colleges and universities including Muhlenberg College, Dickinson College, University of Nevada among others. Moss has been an invited adjudicator and panelist for numerous arts boards and since 2014 she has been asked to conduct an annual assessment of the SUNY Purchase College dance program. She is a recipient of fellowship awards in choreography from the National Endowment for the Arts, State Arts Councils in New York, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the Arts Council of Great Britain, and Turks & Caicos Friends of the Arts Foundation.

Vanessa Ruta, daughter of Westbeth painter Peter Ruta and author Suzanne Ruta, received the grant for her work in neuroscience tackling one of the fundamental questions of neuroscience: how the brain processes sensory information and generates behavioral responses.

Animal behavior consists of the interplay of innate (or instinctual) and learned behaviors that arise from sensory experience. Ruta draws on a breadth of scientific training, spanning molecular biophysics to systems neuroscience, and uses the model system of Drosophila (fruit fly) to glean cross-disciplinary insights that advance the science of innate and learned behaviors.

Her facility with and imaginative deployment of sophisticated techniques such as optical labeling, intracellular electrophysiology, and chemical imaging have allowed her to visualize and probe neural circuits, including the function of individual synapses within the brain of an awake, behaving fly responding to stimulus from the physical world. By mapping a pheromone sensing circuit, one synaptic link at a time, from the sensory input to behavioral output during Drosophila courtship, Ruta has discovered key divergence points in sensory processing pathways in male and female brains, indicating a mechanism by which the same pheromone input is processed in a gender-specific manner to elicit the unique behaviors of male and female flies. She then traced how the male fly reacts to receiving both positive and negative mating sensory cues simultaneously. Ruta and her lab expanded on this work in investigations of how the fly’s internal state, learning, and experience interact with sensory information in the Drosophila mushroom body, a key region of the brain for associative learning.

Recently, using cryo-electron microscopy, Ruta and colleagues elucidated the protein structure of an insect odorant receptor and presented the first structural understanding of how the chemical world is detected. In another line of work, they developed genetic reagents to directly compare the same pheromone processing neural pathways in recently diverged Drosophila species, providing explicit insight into how evolution shapes neural circuits to generate species-specific mate preferences. Through her multidisciplinary approach and unique understanding of the correlation among anatomy, synaptic activity, and behavior, Ruta is shedding light on how sensory stimuli can elicit profoundly different behavioral responses as a result of neural circuits being modified through evolution or individual experience.