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ARTBEAT
STAMP
OF APPROVAL: It’s not everyday a museum has one of its artifacts
featured on a U.S. postage stamp. That’s why the brand spankin’
new stamp depicting a Seneca-carved, 19th-century wooden ladle
is a big deal for the New York State Museum. The stamp
depicts a ladle (pictured here) carved around 1840 on the
Seneca Tonawanda reservation. (Tonawanda is a suburb of Buffalo,
so we’re guessing it was in that general vicinity. Tonawanda
is not the Buffalo suburb where the Senecas are opening their
casino, however—that would be Cheektowaga.) This stamp is
one of a series commemorating the art of the American Indian,
and was unveiled in a special ceremony at the museum on Sunday,
Aug. 22. Albany postmaster Michael Esposito was on
hand, as was NYSM director Clifford Siegfried and Seneca
artist G. Peter Jemison. If you want the stamp, you
know where to go: the post office.
FANCY ART, FANCY MUSIC, FANCY PUNCTUATION: The University
at Albany’s University Art Museum is saying goodbye
to two exhibits on Sept. 2 with an ultra-hip (or would that
be ultra-trip) par-tay. Fresh st ART will feature “coffee,
power drinks and refreshments,” along with music by the Brian
Patneaude-Michael Campion jazz/trip-hop/electronic/trance
project Nouveau Chill. Apparently, anything stronger
should be consumed in advance. The exhibits ending on Sept.
3 are William Pope.L’s Five Ways to Say the Same
Sadness, and Phil Frost’s mALORsUDas sOlarMB.
The fun is on Sept. 2, however, from 9 to 11 PM. For more
info, call 442-4035. Set the controls for the heart of the
sun, baby.
IF YOU CAN MAKE IT THERE: Tusk, a musical which
had its premiere at the Egg as part of the New York/New Works
initiative, has been selected for the New York Musical
Theater festival, to be held in Manhattan next month.
Tusk, a collaboration between Rexford resident Norman Rea,
Berne resident Steven Yuhasz, Steven Billing,
Bryon Sommers, David Salih and Craig Strang,
is the story of family of elephants on “their journey from
the rain forest to the circus and beyond.” It was one of only
18 shows selected for the festival from over 200 submissions.
For more information, visit www.nymf.org.
WERE YOU RAISED IN A BARN? This Saturday (Aug. 28), the Shaker
Museum and Library will team up with the Columbia County
Council on the Arts to host Writers in Barns: Exploring
a rural heritage. This is a tour of a number of barns beginning
at the Great Stone Barn at the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village,
where New York Times editor-writer Verlyn Klinkenborg
will read from his book A Rural Life. (Klinkenborg,
dubbed “our modern Thoreau” by Tom Brokaw, will be signing
books after the reading.) Refreshments will be served at the
Shaker Museum, where Robert and Viola Opdahl will sign
their book, A Shaker Musical Legacy. The tour starts
at the museum at 1 PM and costs $15 in advance, $20 at the
door. For a detailed itinerary and other info, call 794-9100
ext. 218 or 671-6213.
—Shawn
Stone
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Us Slaughter Each Other Not, My Children |
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Ever
wonder who the Nott Memorial is named after? Well,
in point of fact it was Eliphalet Nott, onetime
pastor of Albany’s First Presbyterian Church and
longtime—62 years long, for heaven’s sake—president
of Schenectady’s Union College. Nott first came
to national prominence with an anti-dueling sermon
he preached after Aaron Burr fatally shot Alexander
Hamilton 200 years ago. Albany’s First Presbyterian
Church hosted an unusual commemoration of this
last Sunday (July 25), when Union professor David
Cotter (pictured) dressed in period garb and read
Nott’s words. According to the good folks at Union,
Eliphalet Nott came to be known as an advocate
for “temperance, abolition and universal education.”
(Hear that, Union students? Temperance.)
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