Review: New York, New Music, 1980-1986, Museum of the City of New York
Reviewed by Jeffrey Escoffier
The Museum of the City of New York has opened an ongoing exhibition, New York, New Music, 1980-1986, covering the full range of new music from modernist avant-garde to rock — punk, new wave, no wave & noise — to salsa, hip hop, and pop. The exhibit not only commemorates the numerous musical pioneers and performers that thrived in New York during this period, celebrates the dozens of venues that provided stages for the musical performances, and shows the interaction between musicians, visual artists, designers, and cultural entrepreneurs, it also situates the music of 1980s New York in time and place.
Site and Sounds: TWA Terminal, JFK International Airport
By Nicholas D. Bloom
This year marks the fourth season of Sites and Sounds, a podcast series by the Gotham Center for Open House New York’s annual OHNY Weekend. All this week Gotham will bring you new episodes of this award-winning podcast. Check out more about OHNY Weekend, happening October 16-17. In today’s episode of Sites and Sounds, Nicholas D. Bloom talks about the TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport.
Percy Loomis Sperr and the Total Photographic Documentation of New York City, 1924-45
By Susan Smith-Peter
Using crutches because of an early bout with meningitis, Percy Loomis Sperr managed to photograph nearly all of New York City from the 1920s to the 1940s. Sperr sought to document and preserve the city as fully as possible. He was interested in telling the story of New York through the lives and environments of everyday people. This work brought him into contact with important photographers such as Berenice Abbott and, to a lesser extent, Walker Evans. And his work has deeply shaped our vision of this New York City during the Jazz Age and Depression era.
The Journalism of Style: How New York’s Fashion Editors Set The Stage For Fashion Reporting
By Kimberly Wilmot Voss
New York City’s deep fashion history created the foundation for the American fashion industry, though often missing from that story is the influence of newspaper fashion editors. Within the first few decades of the 20th century, these editors began to forge important shifts on how the fashion industry was reported on and who got to do that very reporting. For example, in the 1930s, when only fashion magazine reporters and store buyers were permitted in fashion shows, Milwaukee Journal fashion editor Aileen Ryan elbowed her way into New York City shows by simply ignoring the rule.
