Architecture
An $84 million subsidized housing complex in New York City, already notable for its avant-garde architecture, is also set to feature a children’s museum. The Sugar Hill Development, at 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue located in Upper Manhattan, was designed by marquee British architect David Adjaye. New York Magazine describes the building as an “arty fortress,” which appropriately captures its jaunty angles, modern interior and inclusion of a preschool operating in conjunction with a children’s museum of art and storytelling.
Radio
Big changes have come to National Public Radio (NPR) in the last few months, starting with the installment of their new chief executive Jarl Mohn. Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s chief content officer, will leave at the end of the week. Wilson was responsible for NPR’s digital strategy, including overseeing new programs like the midday show “Here and Now,” developing the NPR One mobile app and putting together a deal that made NPR the first news service on Apple’s iTunes Radio, among many other initiatives over the last six years. Despite Wilson’s popularity among those who had feared NPR would be left behind as its audience switched to digital media, he will not be replaced in his position.
Poetry
Since 1964, the U.S. government has decreed that, with the exception of truly extraordinary circumstances, unnamed features in federal wilderness areas will remain so, indefinitely. However, that did not stop a group of 11 writers, printmakers, poets and wilderness devotees from scaling a mountain between the Wonder Lakes Basin and Mount Emerson, in the Sierra Nevada Range, in order to hold a ceremony to name it Mount Thoreau. Attendees included the Zen Buddhist poet Gary Snyder and the science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. While many writers have mountains named after them, Henry David Thoreau has none. Therefore, it seems only fitting that his mountain, right next to another peak named for fellow transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, should be named in an act of civil disobedience. It is unlikely that the U.S. government will accept the new name.
MUseums
On Tuesday, Oct. 7, the Louvre kicked off its crowd-funding campaign with an appeal for a million euros to help fund the purchase of a 12.5 million euro piece of 18th century furniture. The table, known as the “Table of Peace,” belonged to a French diplomat who negotiated the end of a Bavarian war. The Louvre is the second major French institution to turn to crowd-sourcing for projects and acquisitions. Last week, the Musée d’Orsay called for 30,000 euros in order to help finance the 600,000 euro restoration of Gustave Courbet’s massive painting, “L’Atelier du Peintre.” As of Tuesday, it had collected over 20,000 euros.
