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Utopia/New York
New York/UtopiaUtopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World has been organized jointly by The New York Public Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In the same spirit of collaboration, some of New York City´s most prominent cultural and performing arts organizations have joined together to expand upon the themes of the exhibition by presenting lectures, readings, film series, and performances examining some of the many forms of utopianism from October 2000 — January 2001. This consortium of institutions was convened through the courtesy and the energies of the New York Council for the Humanities and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts
The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Museum of the City of New York
The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts
18 West 86th Street, New York, NY 10024
For information: (212) 501-3011 or talbot@bgc.bard.eduLecture Series
Designing Utopia: A Feminist Perspective of the Ideal
Designing Utopia: A Feminist Perspective of the Ideal will examine the creative role of women in utopian communities and movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. By discussing the tangible contributions of women to the design of “utopias,” through Arts and Crafts associations and the Bauhaus, for example, this lecture series will shed new light on the ways that women have attempted to shape the built environment and the visual world according to their notion of the ideal. This series complements the exhibition Women Designers in the USA, 1900: Diversity and Difference, on view at the BGC from November 15, 2000 to February 25, 2001.
The Feminist City: Designs for Home, Work, and Public Life, 1840—2000
Thursday, October 26, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Lecturer Delores Hayden is a Professor of Architecture, Urbanism, and American Studies at Yale University.“What Shall We Do with Our Daughters?”: Women Reformers of the Arts and Crafts Movement
Thursday, November 16, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Wendy Kaplan is the Associate Director of Exhibitions and Curatorial Affairs at the Wolfsonian-Florida International University.From Commerce to Activism: Women and Design at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain, and Yale
Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Maud Lavin is a cultural critic and historian. She currently serves as an Instructor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.Admission: $17; $12 seniors and students; for registration: (212) 501-3011 or talbot@bgc.bard.edu
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China Institute in America
125 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10021
For information: (212) 744-8181Two-part Lecture Series
Virtual Tibet: The Tibet of the Western Imagination
Thursday, October 19, 2000 at 6:30 p.m.Shangri-La, the quintessential utopia, conjures images of eternally youthful people living amidst snow-capped mountains tucked away in the Himalayas. The focus of this talk is the West´s long-standing fascination with the idea of Shangri-La, or Tibet, as a place apart, steeped in a depth of spiritualism that is particularly seductive to the materialistic and rationalistic Occident.
Lecturer Orville Schell is Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Mandate of Heaven, Discos and Democracy, The China Reader, and Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood.
Admission: $12; $10 members
Nirvana, Heaven, Pure Land: Chinese Notions of Utopia
Thursday, October 26, 2000 at 6:30 p.m.In contrast to the Western ideal of an Asian utopia is the Chinese concept of a paradise after death. Paintings and religious texts from traditional China imagine many different kinds of utopia. This illustrated lecture examines some of the basic ideas about the afterlife in Chinese popular religion, Buddhism, and Taoism.
Lecturer Stephen Teiser is D.T. Suzuki Professor of Buddhist Studies at Princeton University, and the author of The Ghost Festival in Medieval China and the Scripture on the Ten Kings and The Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism.
Admission: $12; $10 members
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The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
For information: (212) 817-8365Lecture (Co-sponsored by the Henri Peyre French Institute and the Ph.D. Program in French)
Mapping Utopia/Dystopia
Friday, November 3, 2000 at 4 p.m.
Room To Be AnnouncedLecturer Tom Conley is on the faculty of Harvard University.
Admission: free and open to the public
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French Institute/Alliance Française
22 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022
For information: (212) 355-6100, ext. 258Play
How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients
by Matei Visniec, directed by Florinel Fatulescu
Friday and Saturday, October 20 and 21, 2000 at 8 p.m.How to Explain… takes us to The Central Hospital for Mental Disorders of Moscow in 1953, where writer Yuri Petrovski is invited to lecture about the history of Communism to enlighten, and hopefully cure, the mental patients. Matei Visniec, an emerging Romanian writer established in France, creates a stunning satire of Stalinism.
“Under the sure guidance of Fatulescu, the atmosphere of tragic absurdity permeates every moment of this well-acted world premiere.” Los Angeles Times Critic´s Choice (3/30/00)
Produced with support from the Catherine Popesco Foundation, Etants Donnés, the French American Fund for the Performing Arts, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
Florence Gould Hall
Admission: $25; $20 FIAF members
Exhibition
La République des Rêves
Tuesday, October 17 — Monday, November 20, 2000Paintings, sculpture, and three-dimensional paraphernalia — pull-out maps, enigmatic telegrams, postcards — created by G. Garfield Crimmins to illustrate The Republic of Dreams (Norton). Crimmins´s world oscillates between Madame de Scudéry and Max Ernst, in this slyly sophisticated tribute to the seductive powers of the imagination in which liberty, love, and poetry are the mottoes of the world´s most utopian and universal republic.
Admission: free
Lecture/Discussion
The Utopian World of Ants
Thursday, October 5, 2000 at 7 p.m.Philosopher, scientist, and journalist Bernard Werber is a writer of the third millennium, the author of the French bestseller Les Fourmis (The Empire of the Ants, Bantam Books), a philosophical novel and thriller about the amazingly complex society of ants. Bernard Werber has been widely translated, attracts a highly diverse audience, and has won much international praise. He will discuss the utopian world of fantasy and imagination he so beautifully writes about.
Tinker Auditorium
Admission: $10; $5 FIAF members
Staged Reading in English, produced with UBU Repertory Theater
La Citè du Sommeil (The Sleepless City)
A play by Jean Tardieu, directed by Françoise Kourilsky
Monday, December 4, 2000 at 8 p.m.In a city whose dictators have decreed general insomnia, people live nightmares and hallucinate realities.
“A musical, poetic, balletic meditation on illusion, a two-hour trance from which we emerge shaken awake, longing to dream again.” The New York Times
Jean Tardieu has published many volumes of poetry, greatly influenced by musical works. He was involved in the clandestine publishing for the Resistance during World War II.
Tinker Auditorium
Admission: $10; $5 FIAF and UBU members
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The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
For information: (212) 432-3224Conversation and Screening
A Taste of Paradise: Jewish Visions of Utopia on Film and Television
Tuesday, November 14, 2000 at 6:30 p.m.From kibbutz to kosher kitchen, from Brooklyn to Birobidjan, from the agricultural to the socio-cultural, Jewish visions of paradise on earth have been projected on film and television. Using clips from the Museum´s National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting, including scenes from “The Goldbergs” and “Brooklyn Bridge,” this program explores utopian visions including socialism, Zionism, and even urbanism.
Admission: free with Museum admission. Program tickets are required, and are available on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 4 p.m. on November 14.
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The Mercantile Library of New York
17 East 47th Street, New York, NY 10017
For information: (212) 755-6710Lecture
Oz: An American Literary Utopia
Wednesday, October 18, 2000 at 6 p.m.To commemorate the centennial of the publication of L. Frank Baum´s classic American story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Mercantile Library of New York will present an evening with Michael Patrick Hearn,
who recently edited a facsimile edition of the book, to be published this fall by W. W. Norton & Co. Mr. Hearn will speak about the book´s genesis and its utopian ideals, and sign copies of the new edition. Refreshments, suggested by Dorothy´s eating habits, will be served and the audience is welcome to attend in costume. Reservations are required and can be made by calling the Library.Admission: free to members of The Mercantile Library, senior citizens, and students; $5 to the general public
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Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10029
For information: (212) 534-1672, ext. 207 or sturtell@mcny.orgPanel Discussion/Slide Lecture
Three Bronx Utopias: The Labor Cooperative Housing Movement in the 1920s and 30s
Thursday, November 16, 2000 at 6:00 p.m. (tentative)Architect Andrew Hazelton, who teaches a course in housing history at the Boston Architectural Center, and a distinguished panel discuss three unique communities in the Bronx in the late 1920s and early 1930s, providing an in-depth examination of labor housing cooperatives and illuminating one of the most interesting subcultures (garment workers and garment unions) in one of the most interesting periods of New York City history.
Admission: $10; $5 Museum members
Symposium
An Educated Populace: CUNY in the History of NYC
Spring 2001This symposium will provide an opportunity for scholars to examine CUNY´s history and impact on New York City in the largest possible context: the actual, measurable, effects CUNY has had on many aspects of the City´s life, especially in light of the extraordinary undertaking it represents: providing higher education to the largest possible number of the City´s citizens.
Admission: free (optional meal charges)
Both programs will be held in the Museum of the City of New York Auditorium, 1220 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10029.
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The New School University
66 West 12th Street, New York, NY 10011
For information: (212) 229-5961Imagining the Future: Science Fiction and Film in the New Millennium
The New School has developed a series of thematically linked courses, readings, public programs and films for 2000 called Imagining the Future: Science Fiction in the New Millennium. These programs will explore science fiction as a medium in which some of the most interesting and innovative conceptions of the future have been imagined.Lecture Series
Science Fiction Authors Imagine the Future
Interviews by National Critics´ Circle Award-winner Jonathan Lethem, author of Amnesia Moon and Girl in Landscape,and Karen Jay Fowler, author of Sarah Canary and The Sweet-heart Season.Ursula K. Le Guin interviewed by Karen Jay Fowler
Wednesday, October 18, 2000 at 6:30 p.m.
Author of The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Word for World Is Forest, and Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin is a National Book Award winner.Admission: $7; $5 students
Haruki Murakami, interviewed by Jonathan Lethem
Friday, November 3, 2000 at 6:30 p.m.
Author of South of the Border, West of the Sun; Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; and Dance Dance Dance, Haruki Murakami will read from his work and talk with Jonathan Lethem.Admission: $7; $5 students
Samuel R. Delany, interviewed by Jonathan Lethem
Thursday, November 16, 2000 at 6:30 p.m.
Samuel R. Delany was nominated for a National Book Award, and is the winner of several literary awards. His first book, The Jewels of Aptor, was published in 1962. Since then he has published more than twenty works of fiction, three memoirs including Bread and Wine, and several collections of literary and cultural criticism.Admission: $7; $5 students
Film Series
The Cinema of Utopia
Fall 2000 (dates and times TBA)David Meyer, author of The One Hundred Best Films to Rent You´ve Never Heard Of, has selected films that reflect humanity´s desire for utopia, a world in which technology and human aspirations combine to offer redemption from conflict and want, a world in which friendly communication with other worlds, or with our own concealed interior vistas, will be a worthy and realizable goal.
All programs will be held in Tishman Hall.
Admission: $7; $5 students
Fall 2000 Courses
Francesca Slovin teaches Utopia and Philosophy.
Herbert Sussman offers Masterworks of Science Fiction.
Marcus Boon will explore The Boundaries Between Science and Fiction.
David Meyer hosts both a film series and teaches a film class, Yesterdays Tomorrows Todays: The Cinema of Utopia.
Jane Apsel teaches Heavens on Earth: Utopian Visions.
Lecture Series
Imagining the Future: World and National Policy
The World Policy Institute LecturesAmerican Identity: Contested Terrain
Tuesday, October 3, 2000 at 8:00 p.m.
Is a new, progressive sense of national identity emerging in the United States, and could it represent a sound approach to a new concept of global citizenship? Author Jim Sleeper discusses this possibility with a distinguished panel.The New Country of Europe
Thursday, October 5, 2000 at 6:00 p.m.
The voluntary integration of the European nations into a united political and economic configuration is an event unparalleled in history. What will that entity look like in fifty years? Will it overcome remaining ethnic, social, and political divisions?Is the Nuclear Age Over?
Thursday, November 30, 2000 at 6:00 p.m.
As recent international treaties — nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear test ban, Start 1 and 2, etc. — are ratified by most nations and go into effect, will the 21st century see the end of the nuclear weapons menace that haunted the last half of the 20th?Admission: for tickets, call (212) 229-5488
To receive this and other New School Special Programs information by e-mail, please send your email address to sitsa@newschool.edu.
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The New York Council for the Humanities has made utopianism a priority for grants for the fall and winter of 2000/2001.
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The New York Public Library, Humanities and Social Sciences Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018Exhibitions
Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World
Saturday, October 14, 2000 — Saturday, January 27, 2001Jointly organized by The New York Public Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World examines the various impulses — social, religious, political — that have caused people to dream of creating the ideal society. Displayed in Paris through July 9, the exhibition will be on view in the D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall and the Edna Barnes Salomon Room at The New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, from October 14 through January 27. Call (212) 869-8089 for hours. Admission free.
Dystopias and Alternate Realities: Drawings by Charles Addams
Charles Addams Gallery, Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Third Floor
September 8, 2000—January 27, 2001This display of drawings and New Yorker covers by Charles Addams features bizarre but humorous depictions of different, but not necessarily better, worlds. Included are Adam and Eve as the coming attraction in Eden, a sidewalk wheeler-dealer selling nooses, two archaeologists excavating the Chrysler Building, and, in an updated version of Gulliver's Travels, a surprised astronaut who finds himself tied to the moon and surrounded by tiny aliens.
All lecture and concert programs will take place in the Celeste Bartos Forum.
For information: (212) 930-0855 or The Public Education Program Office.Admission: Lectures: $10; $7 Library Friends and Conservators; Concerts: $12; $10 Library Friends and ConservatorsLecture Series
Futures: Bright, Dim, and OtherwiseA series of lectures co-sponsored by The New York Review of Books and The New York Public Library in which five distinguished contributors to the Review will discuss themes concerning the future of science, technology, and culture.
Ian Buruma
The Future of Language and the Dominance of EnglishMonday, October 23, 2000 at 6 p.m.Ian Buruma is an Alastair Horme fellow at St. Antony´s College, Oxford. He is currently visiting Remarque Senior Fellow at the Remarque Institute, New York University. His most recent book is Anglomania.
Richard Lewontin
Promises, Promises: The Pitfalls of Biological PredictionMonday, October 30, 2000 at 6 p.m.Richard Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University. He is the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Biology as Ideology, and It Ain´t Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions.
Charles Rosen
Music: The Future Ahead of TimeMonday, November 20, 2000 at 6 p.m.Charles Rosen is a pianist. His most recent book, Romantic Poets, Critics, and Other Madmen, received the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism.
Martin Filler
Surveying the Architectural Horizon: The Future of FuturismMonday, November 27, 2000 at 6 p.m.Martin Filler is the architecture critic of The New Republic and a contributing editor of House Beautiful. He is the co-author, with Olivier Bossière, of The Vitra Design Museum: Frank Gehry, Architect.
Steven Weinberg
Future Science and the Future UniverseMonday, January 8, 2001 at 6 p.m.Steven Weinberg holds the Josey Regental Chair in Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He has been awarded the Nobel Prize and the National Medal of Science for his work on the theory of particles and fields. His most recent book for a general audience is Dreams of a Final Theory.
The New York Public Library/Oxford University Press Lectures
The tenth in an annual lecture series presented by the Library and Oxford University Press. This year Martin Marty, Herbert Muschamp, and Edward Rothstein will each present a talk on utopianism as it relates to their respective disciplines. Oxford University Press will later publish their talks.
Edward Rothstein
Utopianism and Its DiscontentsWednesday, January 17, 2001 at 6 p.m.Edward Rothstein is cultural critic at large for The New York Times, writing on cultural politics, literature, music, the arts, and technology.Herbert Muschamp
Service Not Included
Wednesday, January 24, 2001 at 6 p.m.
Herbert Muschamp is the architecture critic of The New York Times.Martin Marty
“Even So, Look at That!”: After Utopias Fail
Wednesday, January 31, 2001 at 6 p.m.
Martin Marty is Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he was Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor at the Divinity School. An ordained minister in the Lutheran Church, he has published and edited more than fifty books on theology, religious experience, and religious history.
Concert Series
Musical UtopiasHarpsichordist Anthony Newman and flutist Eugenia Zukerman present three concerts centered on three different musical paradises.
The Court of Frederick the GreatTuesday, October 17, 2000 at 6 p.m.Although the reign of Frederick the Great of Prussia was brutal, his court was a utopia for music.
The Court of Louis XIV
Tuesday, November 14, 2000 at 6 p.m.Called the Sun King, Louis XIV spent millions in building his palace at Versailles, maintaining his brilliant court, and surrounding himself with brilliant musicians.
The Flowering of American Music
Tuesday, January 30, 2001 at 6 p.m.In 19th-century America, composers musically echoed wri-ters with utopian visions like Emerson and Thoreau, whose works explored the sounds and rhythms of their young country. Music of Stephen Fry, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Sidney Lanier, and William Henry Fry.
All lecture and concert programs will take place in the Celeste Bartos Forum. For information: (212) 930-0855 or The Public Education Program Office.
Admission: Lectures: $10; $7 Library Friends and Conservators; Concerts: $12; $10 Library Friends and Conservators
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The New York Public Library, Donnell Library Center
20 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
For information: (212) 621-0619 or 621-0609Envisioning the Future: Utopia and Dystopia on the Screen
Thursdays, November 2 — December 14, 2000 and January 4 — 25, 2001 at 2:30 P.M.Throughout the 20th century, film and video makers have used their vivid imaginations and the technology at their fingertips to provide their audiences with visions of the future. In this 10-program series, Donnell Media Center accommodates many viewpoints. Early classics (Aelita, Queen of Mars and Metropolis) alternate with independent works (Mike Kuchar´s Sins of the Fleshapoids, Nam June Paik´s Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, James Benning´s Utopia). Renowned titles (Godard´s Alphaville) are juxtaposed with works less well-known (the Senegalese film Saaraba).
Program specifics will be available in the monthly New York Public Library Events calendar (available at all branch libraries), online and in detailed flyers produced by Donnell Media Center.
Admission: free
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The New York Public Library, Mid-Manhattan Library
455 Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, New York, NY 10016
For information: (212) 340-0948Conversation
Utopian and Dystopian Views Offered in Science Fiction
Saturday, September 23, 2000 at 2 p.m.
A utopian educator and a poet and writer meet to discuss dark and light views of the future, including what education may be like.
Dr. Howard Wolf is a Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Gerald Jonas is a poet and author. He also serves as a science fiction reviewer for The New York Times.
Admission: free
Lectures
Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World
Wednesday, November 1, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Holland Goss, Research Curator of The New York Public Library´s exhibition Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World, will present a slide lecture on this landmark exhibition conceived and presented jointly by The New York Public Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Holland Goss is a research curator in the Exhibitions Program Office of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, and served as co-curator of the Library´s exhibition on the French writer Jean de La Fontaine. She has devoted the last three years to Utopia.
Admission: free
Arcadian Rhythms in the Concrete Jungle: Utopian New York from the Automat to Adam Purple and Beyond
Saturday, January 27, 2001 at 2 p.m.What impulse links the building of a new carousel atop a Harlem waste treatment plant with the perennial crowds at Coney Island beach? What ties the egalitarian culture of the Lower East Side´s now-vanished Garden Cafeteria to the flourishing urban landscape of Loisaida today? From the beginning of the industrial era, New York´s response to its crushing density and relentless pace has been to grow its own utopias. Eric Darton traces the path of ancient yearnings for equality, leisure, and limitless abundance into the heart of the 21st-century city.
Eric Darton is the author of Free City, a novel, and Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York´s World Trade Center. His most recent book is the novel Year´s Utopia, A Discovery in Seven Climes. He has taught media, technology, and cultural change at Hunter College and Fordham University, and leads two ongoing writing workshops.
Admission: free
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South Street Seaport Museum
Melville Gallery: 213 Water Street,New York, NY 10038
For information: (212) 748-8750Exhibition and Related Publication
Healing Waters: Utopian Responses to Dirt, Disease and Disorder, New York, 1890—1940
Opens Monday, November 20, 2000
This exhibit, a collaboration with the New York City Municipal Archives, draws on the archives´ rich collections to examine the important role of water in New York City´s attempts, in the years surrounding the turn of the century, to sanitize and rationalize an environment characterized by industrialization, rapid growth, overcrowding, immigration, and explosive social change. A special issue of Seaport magazine will expand on these themes.Admission: $6 Adults; $5 Seniors; $4 Students; $3 Children; Museum Members Free
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Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue, New York, NY 10003
For information: (212) 254-1109Play
The Road to Utopia
by Laurel Field
Thursday, October 12, 2000 — Saturday, October 28, 2000
This play with songs focuses on Helicon Hall in Englewood, New Jersey, a Socialist community founded by Upton Sinclair, and on Free Acres, an artists´ colony in the Watchung mountains. Directed by Crystal Field, with songs composed by Arthur Abrams.Admission: $10
Exhibition
Utopia So Dead, Long Live Utopia
A photographic exhibit of life on the Kibbutz-Hashomer Hatzair in Israel and America exploring how young people prepared for kibbutz life.Admission: free
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