Francis Morrone February–May 2024
Hello, and Happy Spring (almost),
Here is an update on some series and individual talks I am offering in February, March, April, and May. The following programs are all by Zoom.
At the 92nd Street Y:
Edith Wharton: New York and Beyond
Link
Wednesdays, February 28–March 20, 3:00–4:00
$160
Most of you know that I love Edith Wharton and have been studying her and teaching courses about her for many years. Because I am not by trade a literary scholar, I was deeply gratified when in 2020 I was so warmly welcomed into the community of Edith Wharton scholars when I was invited to deliver the keynote lecture at the Edith Wharton Conference, the national convocation of Wharton scholars that takes place every few years. For the 92nd Street Y I will be delivering four lectures on Wharton. The first will focus on her girlhood in New York (and Newport and Europe), the second specifically on her novel The Age of Innocence, the third on her adult homes in New York, the Berkshires, and France, and the fourth on her ideas and writings about art, architecture, and gardens. After this, I expect to give writing and talking about Edith a rest for a while—though she does have this peculiar way of cropping up in almost everything I do.
You have to sign up for the whole series, as opposed to individual lectures. The talks are recorded, so you can watch them at your own convenience.
At Scarsdale Adult School:
For the Scarsdale Adult School, I am continuing my series called “Must-See Buildings.” From September to January I did “Must-See Buildings in the United States.” From now through May I am doing “Must-See Buildings in Europe.” Each lecture focuses on a single building, or small group of buildings, but in the spirit of travel advice also suggests nearby things to keep an eye open for, and even, in some cases, places to eat. My goal in the series has been to provide you with what I think is a reasonable “bucket list” of particularly exciting buildings, the kind you will want to spend an entire day, or the better part of a day, exploring.
Unlike the series at the 92nd Street Y, you can register for the individual lectures rather than the whole series. Each lecture is $28. Remember, these are recorded, and are available for a week or two (I forget which!) after the date of the talk, so if you can’t be present on Wednesday at 1:00 you will have the opportunity to watch the lecture at your own convenience.
February 28, The Doge's Palace, Venice
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March 6, The Ospedale degli Innocenti and the Basilica di San Lorenzo by Filippo Brunelleschi, Florence
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March 13, The Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio and St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome
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March 20, The Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome
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March 27, The Villa Barbaro in Maser by Andrea Palladio
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April 10, The Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and the Piazza Navona, Rome
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April 17, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London
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May 1, The City of Bath, England
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May 8, The Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and the Panthéon, Paris
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May 15, The Palais Garnier, Paris
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When the pandemic began and we all took to Zoom, I began, as most of you know, to shift my focus away from New York to other American cities and to cities in Europe. I thought I’d offer armchair travel experiences at a time when people could not travel. And it gave me the opportunity to do what I had long wanted to do: shift my focus from New York. When I started out in my career, 40 years ago, I had no notion whatever that I would become known as a New York specialist. It just happened. Let me put it this way: I happened to have a set of skills that lent itself to satisfying what, 30 or 40 years ago, was a rapidly growing interest in New York history and architecture. I got in on the ground floor of a phenomenon. Some of you have been with me from the beginning. Do you remember how few New York walking tours there were? It was so few that if someone was known to have made a specialty of, say, a particular neighborhood, other guides would defer, and not lead tours of that neighborhood. That’s certainly not the case now, when there are hundreds—thousands?—of tour guides in New York, all gleefully stepping on one another’s turfs. Anyway, after a while I’d begun to feel I’d got too wrapped up in the New York thing. It wasn’t what I started out wanting to do, and I felt I’d done it justice. From the research I’d done to establish dates and architects’ names for countless buildings, to the work I’d done to secure landmark designation for many buildings, to my being the first to lead walking tours in any number of neighborhoods in the five boroughs—it’s not as though I felt there was unfinished business, or business I couldn’t leave to other, younger people trying to establish themselves.
I have two goals for whatever life I have remaining to me. The first is to continue to broaden my scope beyond New York. Don’t worry—I won’t give up New York completely! My second goal is to streamline my schedule. I’ve always worked like a dervish. In part that was to make a decent living in fields where you have to work like a dervish to make that happen, and also because dervish has always been my default state. I’ve written 13 books (with another on the way) and 600 articles, essays, and reviews, led perhaps a thousand walking tours, and taught sixty different courses at NYU—not sixty courses, but sixty different courses, many of them repeated many times. And so on. That’s not a boast. If anything it suggests quantity over quality. What I’d like to do from now on is to stress quality over quantity. I still need—and really want—to continue to work, but I no longer need—or want—to work like a dervish. Put another way, I’m getting old. We slow down. Who knew?
So what does this mean? You can tell by looking at my offerings for this spring. One thing I will be doing more of is leading tours outside of New York—in-person tours, not Zoom tours. Some of you know that in May I will be accompanying a group to Sicily, where I will lead walking tours in Nota and Palermo. The reason I did not announce this trip in this newsletter is simply that it sold out immediately. But I hope to do more of this sort of thing, so stay tuned.
All that said, I’ve agreed to lead half a dozen New York in-person tours this summer for the Scarsdale Adult School. I haven’t decided yet what to cover (and I need to decide in the next few days). I’m having a heck of a time deciding, and I WANT YOUR HELP. Please let me know what I should do. Email me with your suggestions. Feel free to suggest anything in the five boroughs as well as Westchester and Fairfield Counties.
The other thing I very much want to do beginning in 2024 is to write more. Not books, or magazine articles—I’ve done more than enough of that for a lifetime. I want to do some sort of online writing, where I can write about whatever moves me, at whatever length seems appropriate. The whole working-like-a-dervish thing has left me feeling desperately unintegrated, with so little time for reflection. (Quantity over quality is another way of saying reaction without relfection.) I’d like, before I die (yes, getting old doesn’t just mean slowing down a bit, it also leads to a lot of this before-I-die thinking), to produce a tidy body of writing that weaves together the many and disparate strands—involving cities, buildings, art, and books—of my preceding 40 years of work. I suppose that sounds hifalutin, but it’s something I feel strongly. I don’t yet know what shape this will take. One possibility is a Substack newsletter, or something similar, where a certain percentage of the content would be freely available, and a smaller percentage would be available to those who pay a small fee. There are writers I admire—like the jazz historian and all-around man of letters Ted Gioia—who’ve made this work on a breathtaking scale. But I’m no Ted Gioia, and I won’t be taking anyone’s breath away. I’d be happy with a few subscribers, enough to cover my expenses (which include coffee). I’d like you to let me know if you think this would work.
Recommendations:
The event of 2024 for me is the reopening of the European Paintings Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (They actually reopened last November 20.) It’s not an exaggeration to say that these galleries have been, for all the time I’ve lived in New York, my favorite thing in the city. As you know, they were closed for five years (it seemed like fifty) so that leaking skylights could be replaced and other necessary housekeeping done. But they’re back—and they’re spectacular. The Met’s is not the greatest collection of European paintings in the world—London’s National Gallery and Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches are probably the best general collections, the Louvre is best for French art, the Uffizi for Italian, and Washington’s National Gallery of Art ain’t no slouch—but it’s right up there. Some of the paintings—for example, David’s portrait of Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier, and Jusepe de Ribera’s Holy Family with Saints Anne and Catherine of Alexandria—are as great as anything I’ve ever seen. And there are new things on display, such as a wonderful Portrait of a Noblewoman (c. 1560–65) by Sofonisba Anguissola, and Merry Company (c. 1629) by Judith Leyster, artists previously unrepresented at the Met. Other things worth pointing out: The lighting is better than ever, and modern works are sprinkled throughout, providing intriguing contrasts and contexts. This reopening is a big, big, big deal.
The Met currently (through May 11) has Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature, which is, astonishingly, “the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the artist held in the United States” (in the Met’s words). 2024 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the great German Romantic painter (who died in 1840), and this show brings together 75 works from more than 30 lenders around the world. Some of you may remember the Met’s spectacular exhibition German Masters of the Nineteenth Century: Paintings and Drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany back in 1981. There were eight paintings by Friedrich in that exhibition. I don’t think we’ve seen such a gathering of his works in New York since then. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea. The great Kenneth Clark did not care for Friedrich, saying he tried to do in painting what was best left to poetry. E.H. Gombrich, however, likens Friedrich’s paintings to the songs of his contemporary, Schubert. Friedrich influenced many artists: Arnold Böcklin, René Magritte, Walt Disney, even Mark Rothko cited Friedrich’s influence on their work. Friedrich is worth getting to know, especially since the 20th century sought to downgrade—even to fling into oblivion—so much of 19th-century art.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism (February 25–July 28) at the Met. This show promises to be a much-needed comprehensive overview of the visual arts of the Harlem Renaissance, and will also include works by European Modernists (including Matisse and Picasso) who portrayed “international African diasporan subjects” (in the Met’s words). The show will include works by the painters Aaron Douglas and Hale Woodruff, the sculptor Augusta Savage, the graphic artist Winold Reiss, among many others.
I’m also really looking forward to The Art of the Literary Poster: Works from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the Met (March 7–June 11), which will feature advertising posters for books and magazines from the 1890s by such great illustrators and designers as J.C. Leyendecker, Will Bradley, Edward Penfield, and, a great favorite of mine, Ethel Reed. Reed, a graphic artist and poster designer, who had studied under Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (one of my favorite architects) and who (like Goodhue!) died tragically young, was part of that great artistic ferment that took place in Boston in the 1890s. You may have seen the wonderful exhibition of Ethel Reed posters at Poster House, 123 West 23rd Street, in 2022. (Poster House, which opened in 2019, is always worth keeping on your radar.) To learn more about Ethel Reed, I recommend this lecture by Professor William Peterson at the Library of Congress in 2013.
The Morgan is giving us Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature (February 23–June 9), which I’ve heard from those who saw it at the Victoria & Albert is great—though I’ve also heard it was way too crowded at the V&A, and I suspect it will be at the Morgan as well. The great thing about the Morgan is that there’s always so much else to look at, without having to walk half a mile between exhibits as you do at the Met, as well as a delightful café (my go-to meeting place in midtown), so if there’s a too-crowded exhibit you can dip in and out to avoid fatigue.
That’s it for now. I hope to see you soon, whether online or in person.
Best,
Francis