One of Calvin Tompkins' Bachelors has shuffled off stage left. As the New York Times obituary makes clear, Rauschenberg's impact on the Visual and Performing Arts is pretty much incalculable.

I can't remember when I didn't know of Rauschenberg's work, having probably been exposed to a few pieces in my teens on a weekend getaway to the Art Institute of Chicago, but one of my favorite experiences that encompasses Rauschenberg and his cadre of New York pals was seeing the Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform at Lincoln Center in 1999. There in one place--literally and figuratively--were Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Morton Feldman, Bob Rauschenberg and, as something of a weird bonus Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gavin Bryars and Jim O'Rourke.

The Library for Performing Arts actually has a DVD of one night that I attended in addition to other videos and printed material relating to Rauschenberg's work with the MCDC as well as his experiments in Performance Art. In addition, the Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs has a plethora of material outlining Rauschenberg's entire career.

Goodbye 20th century!

Architectural Record has a recurring section called "Building Types Study". The February 2008 issue’s section is dedicated to library design and one of the three libraries discussed is NYPL’s Mulberry Street Branch. The Record commends the architectural firm Roger Marvel Architects for allowing diffused light to penetrate “into both subterranean levels via the central stair”, which it calls “an important psychological feat.”

NYPL’s holdings on the architecture of libraries is fairly broad and historically focused; however Shannon Mattern’s The New Downtown Library seems to consider some of the more pressing concerns (public space, digital technologies, and modern librarianship) of the 21st century. For a more visual take on recent library projects consider Biblioteche: architetture 1995-2005, which offers a brief history lesson on libraries and then considers in some depth around 40 new libraries (renovations & reuse are included) from around the world. Very few are in the United States, which is hardly surprising given the dearth of imaginative thinking and design that goes into public works here (but that’s another post…).

That being said, Biblioteche came out too early to mention the slight redemption that is the OMA-designed Seattle Public Library, which has received accolades from just about every architectural critic (e.g, the late Herbert Muschamp) and librarian (Library Journal chimes in). Luckily, there is now a monograph devoted to the Seattle Public Library (recently brought out by the Barcelona & New York based publisher Actar); and while we don’t have it yet, consider it ordered.

Since we recently had a little dusting of snow it's probably a good time to mention photographer Ellie Ga and her current foray into the depths of the Arctic night as Artist-in-Residence aboard the Tara. The Tara is not Skowhegan, but a research vessel that has been locked in the ice of the Arctic Ocean since September 2006.

Ga, who joined the Tara in September 2007, has been keeping an online journal on the Alliance Francaise website and there is a little more information (in English) on the Tara's site regarding her Arctic projects. The Dispatch gallery (appointment only) has also been receiving audio missives from Ga that they make available to visitors.

You might remember the Tara from Pierre Huyghe's 2005 Antarctic voyage, which was the basis for a Central Park public art performance in October 2005. Also along for the ride with Huyghe was Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, who was working on project for the United Nations Environmental Program.

On a recent Saturday and with a few friends, I visited the Brooklyn Museum and the near-permanent exhibit, American Identities. Tired from the walk, we loitered around the first room and looked at the disparate paintings, furniture & objets d’art. Also in this room was a television monitor showing a loop of Thomas Edison’s films of revelers at Coney Island. These films reminded one of us of another Edison film from Coney Island that hasn’t made it onto the Library of Congress’ American Memory site: “Electrocuting an Elephant” (1903). Two grainy versions of the film are available here & here, but it’s perhaps best to start with the reported account of the execution from the New York Times.

I’m not quite sure of the aesthetic merits of this animal snuff film, but it is imprinted in my mind like Andy Warhol’s Electric Chair series. The inventor of the electric chair was, of course, Mr. Thomas Alva Edison and the elephant was named—after a little girl who ‘growed’—Topsy.