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Image: Silhouette depicting a game of chess between Athenaeum Librarian William
McIlhenney Jr. and George Spackman, his fellow alumnus from the University of
Pennsylvania. Probably by Auguste Edouart, c.1840-1850.
New Books for December
The
Decorated
Book Symposium and Exhibition
 The Athenaeum presents a symposium and exhibition
focusing on the creation of decorated book covers in the past and present. The
symposium will feature talks by Richard Minsky, Barbara Adams Hebard, and J.
Susan Isaacs, each undertaking a presentation regarding either the history of
book design or the contemporary scene for book arts. In the Haas Gallery works
produced in response to the Athenaeum’s collections of decorated book covers
by Margaret Armstrong, the Decorative Designers Studio, Alice Morse, Olive
Lothrop Grover, and Frank Berkeley Smith are displayed. See the work of
responding contemporary artists Libby Barrett/Jeff Raymond, Leslie Farber, Karen
Hanmer, Marilyn MacGregor, John Magnan, Nancy Nitzberg, Claire Owen, Johanne
Renbeck, and Lynn Skordal.
Symposium: December 2, 2011: Check in at 12:00 PM, Papers begin at 1:00PM
Registration is required. Free to Athenaeum members, students and non-profit
staff; RSVP to Susan Gallo at 215-925-2688
Paid Registration and more information at http://web3.philaathenaeum.org/symposium.html
Exhibition: December 2, 2011-March 9, 2012
Opening reception: December 2, 5:00-7:00PM (First Friday)
Above:
"Elephants Battle Aggressive Vegetation in Ancient Egypt" by Karen
Hanmer.
 Originally
published in 2002, American Splendor: The Residential Architecture of Horace
Trumbauer, is the first and only extensive study of this master creator of
the American Great House. This revised edition features three new chapters and
over 50 new color photographs, with an introduction by Athenaeum member Barbara
Eberlein. Co-sponsored by the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.
Wednesday,
December 7, 2011, 5:30 PM
Free for Athenaeum members. RSVP to Susan
Gallo at 215-925-2688 or sgallo@philaathenaeum.org,
All others $10 Register
here.
Support
the Athenaeum by using Goodshop
 Next
time you shop online, think GOODSHOP. Your purchase through Goodshop will result
in a donation to the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. Goodshop is a website that
connects you with online shopping sites and, in the process, donates a
percentage of your purchase to your favorite cause. Hundreds of great stores,
including Nordstrom, Gap, Best Buy, North Face & eBay have teamed up with GoodShop.
Goodshop
Another in an ongoing series of profiles of artist customers of the Athenaeum’s Regional Digital Imaging Center
(RDIC)...
 Charles Cushing has lived and worked in center city Philadelphia for over 30 years and is well-known locally primarily for his landscapes and city-scapes of Philadelphia and the surrounding region. He is a graduate of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1988) and over 500 of his original oil paintings are in public and private collections in the area including The Union League of Philadelphia, which purchased his painting
Lincoln Funeral Cortege, South Broad Street, Philadelphia, 1865. He also painted a life-size copy of
The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins, during the fund-raising campaign to keep that painting in Philadelphia,
for which he received the Samuel G. Gross/Thomas Eakins Award for Outstanding
Contribution from The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. He is also familiar to many Philadelphians through his prints of iconic Philadelphia views, such as the Avenue of the Arts and Boathouse Row.
In addition to
"plein-air" landscapes, Charles also works in the classic genres of portrait, still-life, and the human figure. Recent work includes a series of "capriccios" that combine "painterly realism" with imagination. These paintings, inspired by a genre of 17th-century Italian art that was a forerunner to Surrealism, juxtapose observed reality with memory and invention, using disparate objects and/or time periods in an attempt to evoke the strange logic of a dream. These "studio productions" are the fruit of years of representational painting and study of the old masters and other traditions of painting.
 Charles says, "I discovered the Regional Digital Imaging Center a few years ago and it is unequaled in my experience for quality and level of service. Having my paintings scanned here provides me with a permanent high-resolution image of the work, suitable for printing as well as for website display and other forms of promotion. I highly recommend the services here for artists wanting to preserve a faithful record of their work."
www.charlescushing.com
Top: "Lincoln Funeral Cortege, South Broad Street, Philadelphia, 1865," (Oil on canvas).
Bottom: "Pony Express" (Oil on canvas).
Member Critics
 Kenneth
Slawenski, J. D. Salinger, A Life. New York: Random House, 2010.
Jerry
Salinger was born in New York in 1919, died in Cornish, NH, in 2010, married
three times, had two children, wrote few novels but many short stories and was
marvelously successful as a writer of fiction. Basically he wrote about
ordinary people in ordinary situations, displaying ordinary emotions, and
expressing ordinary ideas. By choice he was mostly self-educated,
disdainful of pretense and elaborate displays of wealth or power. He had
no deep, enduring relationships; his friends generally were related to
publishing, where he distinguished himself as extremely demanding of what he saw
as his rights. He was very hard-working in his professional life. He
did not do well in his marriages but seems to have enjoyed his children.
The characters in his fiction are a good though limited guide to his own
character and personality. He "put everything into his writing,"
and thrived in his twenties and thirties. In his forties he began to
decompensate physically and emotionally. When he died at 91, he seems to
have been a burned-out shell.
Submitted
by Dr. Harold Rashkis.
Do
you have a book that you loved (or hated), and would you be willing to share
that opinion on the Athenaeum e-newsletter? If so, please send your short
essay to sltatman@philaathenaeum.org.
Save
the date:
December 2: The
Decorated Book Symposium.
December 2: Opening reception for The Decorated Book: Continuing A
Tradition exhibition, 5:00pm.
December 3:
First
Saturday, Athenaeum open, 11:00am-3:00pm.
December
7: Michael Kathrens, American Splendor, The Residential Architecture of
Horace Trumbauer, 5:30pm.
December
12: Mah Jong for beginners, 2:00pm.
See
the Event
Calendar for details and additional
events.
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