Francis Morrone, May-July 2021
Hello Everyone,
When I emailed the first number of this newsletter, in January, I promised I would not clog your in-box with too-frequent emails. It's now five months later, and you can see I've kept my promise. My plan was actually to send it every two months—and that's still my plan.
All the events listed here are going to be by Zoom. This is even as so many things open up for the first time in 14 months. Tourists are trickling back to New York, and some of the bus tour companies are back in operation, and I think some people have begun to lead tours on foot again. I'm leading a small private tour on foot at the end of May—my big reentry into the real world! Still, I, and the people for whom I work, believe it best to be prudent, so Zoom it remains.
For Scarsdale Adult School, I have a lecture scheduled every Wednesday afternoon through June 30. (Another batch to take us through the summer is in preparation.) From May 5 to June 16 I am doing a variation on my old NYU course "Creative Cities in History," in which I discuss cities that have been great artistic centers. I describe the nature of their accomplishments, and make some suggestions as to why those cities, at those times, rose to the top. Each one-hour lecture (1:00-2:00) is offered individually. They are all being done by Zoom. They are as follows (click on the title to register).
May 5, Florence in the 15th Century (Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, Donatello, Verrocchio, Botticelli, with a brief detour to the Marche to discuss the Duke of Urbino).
May 12 (my birthday!), Venice in the 16th Century (Aldus Manutius and the development of the printed book, the development of oil painting, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, a few words about Dürer, etc.).
May 19, Amsterdam and Delft in the 17th Century (Rembrandt, Vermeer, Saenredam, and others).
May 26, London in the Early 19th Century (Rudolph Ackermann and the marketing of books and prints, John Nash's transformation of London under the Prince Regent, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and the reaction against the Regency).
June 2, Paris in the Mid-19th Century (the gut renovation of Paris under Napoleon III and Haussmann, the war between academic painting and the realists and Impressionists, the painting of the urban scene [Manet, Degas, Caillebotte]).
June 9, Chicago in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries (the rise of the skyscraper, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Chicago Plan of 1909).
June 16, Vienna in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries (the Ringstrasse and its architects, the Secession, Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, the Wiener Werkstätte, Gustav Klimt, and more).
Following these, I have two other programs for the Scarsdale Adult School:
June 23, The Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted, in which I will discuss his works mainly outside New York City (from New England to California).
June 30, a virtual walking tour of the Marais in Paris.
I am continuing the series of Zoom tours of Fifth Avenue (every block, every building) that I began on March 21. That tour began at the foot of Fifth Avenue, at Washington Square, and got as far as 16th Street, where tour no. 2 will pick up. I make no promises for how far each tour will get. Some blocks go by quickly, some blocks go on forever. I plan to keep doing these tours until we get to the end of Fifth Avenue, at 143rd Street. Here are the installments I have scheduled. They are all on Sundays, beginning at 2:00, and each tour will last about 90 minutes.
May 30, Part 2, register through Eventbrite. This one will take us into and perhaps all the way through the 20s.
June 27, Part 3, register through Eventbrite. Into and perhaps all the way through the 30s.
July 25, Part 4, register through Eventbrite. Into the 40s.
I will be doing a series for the 92nd Street Y called "The Age of American Palaces," six one-hour lectures each on a single great house (Whitemarsh Hall in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, The Breakers in Newport, Villa Vizcaya in Miami, Biltmore in North Carolina, Ca' d'Zan in Sarasota, Florida, and the Henry E. Huntington House in San Marino, California). These have not yet been posted to the 92Y web site. When they are, I will let you know. They will be offered individually, though you will be able to get a discount by signing up for the full run.
Finally, I now in the summer teach continuing education film courses at NYU. This summer will be "The City on Film," eight classic films in which the urban settings are especially notable. The cities covered will include Tokyo, London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, and Berlin, and the tentative list of films includes Tokyo Story by Yasujirō Ozu, Rome, Open City by Roberto Rossellini, Blow-Up (London) by Michelangelo Antonioni, The Third Man (Vienna) by Carol Reed, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City by Walther Ruttmann, and Metropolis (no known city) by Fritz Lang. The way this works by Zoom is this: I will tell you how to access the films online, and you will watch them on your own. The weekly class sessions will involve my discussing the backgrounds of the cities and the films, showing stills from the films, and leading discussion. I'd like to show clips over Zoom, but it just doesn't work. Still, the format works surprisingly well. You can register here. It's an NYU course, so it ain't cheap, but I thought I'd let you know about it. It will be on Thursdays, June 10–July 29 (8 sessions), 12:00–1:40.
I've decided that in each number of this newsletter I will recommend something other than something of mine. It's a great pleasure for me to recommend a wonderful classical music blog, Sunday Classics with Ken. Those of you who are veterans of my walking tours may know Ken Furie, who has been one of my most faithful tourgoers for many years. If you don't know Ken in person, you may remember his excellent reviews from when he was a classical music critic for the New York Times in the 1990s, or his pieces for High Fidelity when it was one of the best music magazines in the world. Since I know that many of you are music lovers, I thought I'd send you to his blog, which gives me great pleasure: Ken's genial voice really comes through, and no one knows the material better.
Until next time, thanks to all of you for your support, and I hope to see you soon.
All my best, Francis