I am branching out into new collaborations! Anyone who can suggest some good contemporary opera librettos to look at, please email me!
Saturday, April 17, 2004
This message came to my in-box via ZoneZero, concerning a very important museum of photography in my home town in So Cal that is endangered. I grew up going to shows at this museum and it occupies a fond place in my heart. Please take a moment to read this post and consider emailing the university concerning recent budget cuts. Thanks.
Dear Friends,
Today I sent the following letter to Chancellor Córdova. I urge you to take
a minute to also write to her asking her to review and reverse the announced
cuts which will essentially close down the museum. Her email is
france.cordova@ucr.edu.
I know that over the years UCR/CMP has enriched the community and the
university and has been a strong component in the intellectual and cultural
life of Riverside and Southern California.
I ask you to voice your support and help retain this important institution.
Cheers,
Jonathan
=================================================
Sent April 13, 2004:
Dear France,
Since its beginning over 30 years ago UCR/California Museum of Photography
has provided students at the university and scholars from around the world
with a world class academic and exhibition program, has reached out to the
community with a model public education program, and has assembled an
extraordinary collection of photographs, historical objects and artifacts to
form an institution that has become one of America's outstanding small art
museums.
Because of the university's belief in the museum, the generous support of
the citizens of Riverside, and strong support from national and federal
foundations and agencies, UCR/CMP is now known the world-over as a research and exhibition facility and workshop where students, artists, scholars, faculty, and the public can work, experiment and interact. Its presence at UCR has provided a professional environment for student and faculty research, brought the world©ˆs most important photographic artists to the university, and promoted and advanced artistic, visual and humanistic
discourse. The museum has become an integral part of the university©ˆs and
community's intellectual life.
During the last decade, the museum has achieved the university's goal of
world-class excellence and visibility. The museum has curated exhibitions
seen by millions of people around the globe in over 15 countries, has
collaborated with Sony IMAX on films that have promoted the university's
name worldwide, established a web site that receives over 350,000 hits each
day, regularly garnered commentary in the national press ranging from the
Los Angeles Times to the New York Times, and drawn close to $3 million in
outside support.
But if the cuts announced to us last week are implemented, the California
Museum of Photography will have to essentially close its doors to both the
academic program and to the community. Over the last decade, because of a
series of ongoing budget cuts that began in the early 90s the museum--which
once had a staff of 12--has achieved its prominence with an exceedingly
small but dedicated staff of 8: a staff smaller than any comparable
University of California museum. As of January 2004, the full compliment of
museum staff of 8 has been reduced to 6. The announcement last week that we would be cut another 3 positions or 40% from our current budget makes it
impossible for the museum program as it is now known to continue.
The museum has been extraordinarily successful in fundraising. Indeed, as a
facility that receives no UCR program funds, the museum has raised all funds
needed to cover projects and exhibitions. But raising funds takes people.
And awards are based on the strength of programs. With the announced cuts
the museum will have neither the programs nor the staff to continue.
More than this, because our current $230,000 in Federal awards (not
including the $500,000 Save America's Treasures award) is matched against
current staff, letting key staff go will mean our inability to match these
funds, and the museum will be forced to forfeit these grants. Further, it is
difficult to imagine that the fundraising for the Culver Center will be
successful when its neighboring UCR institution, UCR/CMP, will be closed
except for very limited hours.
The University has a societal, legal and moral obligation to protect and
conserve its collections: particularly the inestimable Keystone-Mast Stereo
Glass Plate Collection; and the University of California's Ansel Adam's Fiat
Lux Collection. However, under the new budget the collections will no longer
be open to the public and will only be accessible to scholars on a very
limited basis. Enough funding remains in the museum's accounts to provide a
limited exhibition program next year for shows to which the museum has made previous commitments. These exhibitions would be opened to the public only two days a week. Because of lack of staff and lack of a curator, no further
exhibitions will be planned, neither will faculty have access to the facility for exhibitions or programs. Considering the safety of the collections and the limited staff, all non-museum use of the building, such as hosting other academic functions, university events and public activities, will cease. The museum's public and community programs will cease, the Digital Studio will close, and the museum's forthcoming summer commitment to the city's Upward Bound program will be eliminated. Because the museum's web site is the most visited photography web site in the world and a rich resource of visual practices, material and curriculum, an attempt will be made to continue this web site's presence.
It is indeed alarming that the most prominent jewel in the UCR's cultural
and artistic presence should be so diminished. I most respectfully ask you
to review and reverse this plan. The pull back in state funds has certainly
produced a very difficult situation for the university. The museum is more
than willing to take its fair share of the 7.5% cut. But a 40% cut will be
catastrophic.
I know that you recognize the museum's importance to students and to the UCR community. I hope you will to find a way to ensure the continuation of this key UCR facility and national treasure.
Sincerely,
Jonathan
~~~~
Jonathan Green, Director
UCR/California Museum of Photography
University of California, Riverside
Riverside CA 92521
Dear Friends,
Today I sent the following letter to Chancellor Córdova. I urge you to take
a minute to also write to her asking her to review and reverse the announced
cuts which will essentially close down the museum. Her email is
france.cordova@ucr.edu.
I know that over the years UCR/CMP has enriched the community and the
university and has been a strong component in the intellectual and cultural
life of Riverside and Southern California.
I ask you to voice your support and help retain this important institution.
Cheers,
Jonathan
=================================================
Sent April 13, 2004:
Dear France,
Since its beginning over 30 years ago UCR/California Museum of Photography
has provided students at the university and scholars from around the world
with a world class academic and exhibition program, has reached out to the
community with a model public education program, and has assembled an
extraordinary collection of photographs, historical objects and artifacts to
form an institution that has become one of America's outstanding small art
museums.
Because of the university's belief in the museum, the generous support of
the citizens of Riverside, and strong support from national and federal
foundations and agencies, UCR/CMP is now known the world-over as a research and exhibition facility and workshop where students, artists, scholars, faculty, and the public can work, experiment and interact. Its presence at UCR has provided a professional environment for student and faculty research, brought the world©ˆs most important photographic artists to the university, and promoted and advanced artistic, visual and humanistic
discourse. The museum has become an integral part of the university©ˆs and
community's intellectual life.
During the last decade, the museum has achieved the university's goal of
world-class excellence and visibility. The museum has curated exhibitions
seen by millions of people around the globe in over 15 countries, has
collaborated with Sony IMAX on films that have promoted the university's
name worldwide, established a web site that receives over 350,000 hits each
day, regularly garnered commentary in the national press ranging from the
Los Angeles Times to the New York Times, and drawn close to $3 million in
outside support.
But if the cuts announced to us last week are implemented, the California
Museum of Photography will have to essentially close its doors to both the
academic program and to the community. Over the last decade, because of a
series of ongoing budget cuts that began in the early 90s the museum--which
once had a staff of 12--has achieved its prominence with an exceedingly
small but dedicated staff of 8: a staff smaller than any comparable
University of California museum. As of January 2004, the full compliment of
museum staff of 8 has been reduced to 6. The announcement last week that we would be cut another 3 positions or 40% from our current budget makes it
impossible for the museum program as it is now known to continue.
The museum has been extraordinarily successful in fundraising. Indeed, as a
facility that receives no UCR program funds, the museum has raised all funds
needed to cover projects and exhibitions. But raising funds takes people.
And awards are based on the strength of programs. With the announced cuts
the museum will have neither the programs nor the staff to continue.
More than this, because our current $230,000 in Federal awards (not
including the $500,000 Save America's Treasures award) is matched against
current staff, letting key staff go will mean our inability to match these
funds, and the museum will be forced to forfeit these grants. Further, it is
difficult to imagine that the fundraising for the Culver Center will be
successful when its neighboring UCR institution, UCR/CMP, will be closed
except for very limited hours.
The University has a societal, legal and moral obligation to protect and
conserve its collections: particularly the inestimable Keystone-Mast Stereo
Glass Plate Collection; and the University of California's Ansel Adam's Fiat
Lux Collection. However, under the new budget the collections will no longer
be open to the public and will only be accessible to scholars on a very
limited basis. Enough funding remains in the museum's accounts to provide a
limited exhibition program next year for shows to which the museum has made previous commitments. These exhibitions would be opened to the public only two days a week. Because of lack of staff and lack of a curator, no further
exhibitions will be planned, neither will faculty have access to the facility for exhibitions or programs. Considering the safety of the collections and the limited staff, all non-museum use of the building, such as hosting other academic functions, university events and public activities, will cease. The museum's public and community programs will cease, the Digital Studio will close, and the museum's forthcoming summer commitment to the city's Upward Bound program will be eliminated. Because the museum's web site is the most visited photography web site in the world and a rich resource of visual practices, material and curriculum, an attempt will be made to continue this web site's presence.
It is indeed alarming that the most prominent jewel in the UCR's cultural
and artistic presence should be so diminished. I most respectfully ask you
to review and reverse this plan. The pull back in state funds has certainly
produced a very difficult situation for the university. The museum is more
than willing to take its fair share of the 7.5% cut. But a 40% cut will be
catastrophic.
I know that you recognize the museum's importance to students and to the UCR community. I hope you will to find a way to ensure the continuation of this key UCR facility and national treasure.
Sincerely,
Jonathan
~~~~
Jonathan Green, Director
UCR/California Museum of Photography
University of California, Riverside
Riverside CA 92521
Friday, April 02, 2004
Today at 12 noon my identity will once again shift as I enter the ranks of the unemployed. I have been looking forward to this moment with both great excitement and fear for as long as I have been in Boston. One can only hope that better things are in store for the short and long-term future.
Many years ago, an immigrant from Ireland of my parents' generation said to me while talking about why people leave their homelands,
"One cannot live on beauty alone."
At the time, I had just finished my graduate program and was working about 3 different jobs in Chicago, none of which provided health insurance. Simultaneously my immune system was crashing and I was very very sick. Downtrodden worker bee that I was, I accepted that statement without any argument and thought, gee, maybe you better settle down and accept a full-time job in every sense of "acceptance". It is the practical thing to do. Beauty? Beauty doesn't pay the medical bills or rent.
Recently, I mentioned this statement to my partner and asked rather plaintively, what do you think, can one live on beauty alone? Kort's response, what are you talking about? Of course you can! Coming from him, I was filled with a great confidence about the future. There are compromises and sacrifices made with every decision, but as Gen-X'ers, and as products of a Naropan education, our decisions are based on something outside of our parents' and our predecessors' value systems. In the end what is there really, what reason to live, but Beauty, and Love, and the Path.
I have been reflective recently of the cursed blessings I have been the recipient of over the years. More than one semi angry/confused person in various break-up contexts has said, "I hope you find what you're looking for," or "I hope you find what brings you happiness," as if it didn't or wouldn't exist out there, as if I am blinded in some utopian and delusional search. Life, in all of its painfulness and its joys is an exploration, the end point ultimately just a guide post. As a Libran and a wood rabbit, I would certainly feel more confident if I had a clearer glimpse of the adventures ahead, and yet this is the moment to leap, to simply receive what is given.
I leave you with this poem by Michael Ondaatje from his poetry collection, Handwriting (Vintage 1998):
Last Ink
In certain countries aromas pierce the heart and one dies
half waking in the night as an owl and a murderer's cart go by
the way someone in your life will talk out love and grief
then leave your company laughing.
In certain languages the calligraphy celebrates
where you met the plum blossom and moon by chance
-the dusk light, the cloud pattern,
recorded always in your heart
and the rest of the world- chaos,
circling your winter boat.
Night of the Plum and Moon.
Years later you shared it
on a scroll or nudged
the ink onto stone
to hold the vista of a life.
A condensary of time in the mountains
-your rain-swollen gate, a summer
scarce with human meeting.
Just bells from another village.
The memory of a woman walking down stairs.
*
Life on an ancient leaf
or a crowded 5th-century seal
this mirror-world of art
-lying on it as if a bed.
When you first saw her,
the night of moon and plum,
you could speak of this to no one.
You cut your desire
against a river stone.
You caught yourself
in a cicada-wing rubbing,
lightly inked.
The indelible darker self.
A seal, the Masters said,
must contain bowing and leaping,
"and that which hides in waters."
Yellow, drunk with ink,
the scroll unrolls to the west
a river journey, each story
an owl in the dark, its child-howl
unreachable now
-that father and daughter,
that lover walking naked down blue stairs
each step jarring the humming from her mouth.
I want to die on your chest but not yet,
she wrote, sometime in the 13th century
of our love
before the yellow age of paper
before her story became a song,
lost in imprecise reproductions
until caught in jade,
whose spectrum could hold the black greens
the chalk-blue of her eyes in daylight.
*
Out altering love, our moonless faith.
Last ink in pen.
My body on this hard bed.
The moment in the heart
where I roam restless, searching
for the thin border of the fence
to break through or leap.
Leaping and bowing.
Many years ago, an immigrant from Ireland of my parents' generation said to me while talking about why people leave their homelands,
"One cannot live on beauty alone."
At the time, I had just finished my graduate program and was working about 3 different jobs in Chicago, none of which provided health insurance. Simultaneously my immune system was crashing and I was very very sick. Downtrodden worker bee that I was, I accepted that statement without any argument and thought, gee, maybe you better settle down and accept a full-time job in every sense of "acceptance". It is the practical thing to do. Beauty? Beauty doesn't pay the medical bills or rent.
Recently, I mentioned this statement to my partner and asked rather plaintively, what do you think, can one live on beauty alone? Kort's response, what are you talking about? Of course you can! Coming from him, I was filled with a great confidence about the future. There are compromises and sacrifices made with every decision, but as Gen-X'ers, and as products of a Naropan education, our decisions are based on something outside of our parents' and our predecessors' value systems. In the end what is there really, what reason to live, but Beauty, and Love, and the Path.
I have been reflective recently of the cursed blessings I have been the recipient of over the years. More than one semi angry/confused person in various break-up contexts has said, "I hope you find what you're looking for," or "I hope you find what brings you happiness," as if it didn't or wouldn't exist out there, as if I am blinded in some utopian and delusional search. Life, in all of its painfulness and its joys is an exploration, the end point ultimately just a guide post. As a Libran and a wood rabbit, I would certainly feel more confident if I had a clearer glimpse of the adventures ahead, and yet this is the moment to leap, to simply receive what is given.
I leave you with this poem by Michael Ondaatje from his poetry collection, Handwriting (Vintage 1998):
Last Ink
In certain countries aromas pierce the heart and one dies
half waking in the night as an owl and a murderer's cart go by
the way someone in your life will talk out love and grief
then leave your company laughing.
In certain languages the calligraphy celebrates
where you met the plum blossom and moon by chance
-the dusk light, the cloud pattern,
recorded always in your heart
and the rest of the world- chaos,
circling your winter boat.
Night of the Plum and Moon.
Years later you shared it
on a scroll or nudged
the ink onto stone
to hold the vista of a life.
A condensary of time in the mountains
-your rain-swollen gate, a summer
scarce with human meeting.
Just bells from another village.
The memory of a woman walking down stairs.
*
Life on an ancient leaf
or a crowded 5th-century seal
this mirror-world of art
-lying on it as if a bed.
When you first saw her,
the night of moon and plum,
you could speak of this to no one.
You cut your desire
against a river stone.
You caught yourself
in a cicada-wing rubbing,
lightly inked.
The indelible darker self.
A seal, the Masters said,
must contain bowing and leaping,
"and that which hides in waters."
Yellow, drunk with ink,
the scroll unrolls to the west
a river journey, each story
an owl in the dark, its child-howl
unreachable now
-that father and daughter,
that lover walking naked down blue stairs
each step jarring the humming from her mouth.
I want to die on your chest but not yet,
she wrote, sometime in the 13th century
of our love
before the yellow age of paper
before her story became a song,
lost in imprecise reproductions
until caught in jade,
whose spectrum could hold the black greens
the chalk-blue of her eyes in daylight.
*
Out altering love, our moonless faith.
Last ink in pen.
My body on this hard bed.
The moment in the heart
where I roam restless, searching
for the thin border of the fence
to break through or leap.
Leaping and bowing.
Thanks to Barbara Jane for the eloquent write-up on Equivalence which can be found here.
Thanks also to Adam Smith of Sampan for this piece.
Look for more press forthcoming in the April 15th print edition of EW.
Thanks also to Adam Smith of Sampan for this piece.
Look for more press forthcoming in the April 15th print edition of EW.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)