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Icons features a Hollywood photographer whose most inspiring subjects are everyday people, an organist immersed in the art of fugue, and American history as told through classic pictures.
| Robert Zuckerman, photographer |
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Robert Zuckerman spends most of his days on Hollywood film sets taking pictures that end up as posters, production stills, or any other part of the industry’s promotional arsenal. Naturally, he lives in California, but he’s a native East Coaster and his work takes him back often. State of the Arts producer Christopher Benincasa got a chance to hang out with Zuckerman on the set of this summer’s impending blockbuster Transformers 2 at Princeton University.
“Kindsight” is the other end of the spectrum – it’s a project Zuckerman has been working on for years that spins the random encounters of his life into often profound photo-essays. Zuckerman’s “Kindsight” pieces are featured in exhibitions, books, and most recently on his blog: kindsight.blogspot.com. State of the Arts visits one of Zuckerman’s “Kindsight” photography workshops for students at Ridgewood High School in New Jersey.
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| The Art of Fugue: Joan Lippincott, organist |
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A highlight of the Westminster Choir College 2008 Bach Festival was organ virtuoso Joan Lippincot’s performance of J. S. Bach’s monumental The Art of Fugue on the Paul Fritts Organ at the Princeton Theological Seminary. The eighty-minute work, comprised of twenty fugues and canons, epitomizes Bach’s contrapuntal genius. State of the Arts Eric Schultz was there for her virtuosic performance. Schultz talks to Lippincott about why she thinks Bach’s "The Art of Fugue" is such a masterpiece, and asks her to describe some of the intricacies involved in writing a fugue.
Joan Lippincott performs extensively in the United States and has toured throughout Europe and Canada. She has been a featured recitalist at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City, at the Spoleto USA Festival, at The American Bach Society Biennial, at the Dublin (Ireland) International Organ Festival, and at conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Organ Historical Society, and the Music Teachers National Association. She has performed on most of the prominent organs in churches and universities throughout the United States, and throughout Europe. Joan Lippincott is especially in demand for Bach recitals and classes, including the Alice Tully Hall Bach-Handel Tercentennial and at Bach Festivals in Arizona, Massachusetts (Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood), Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and South Carolina. In 2001-2002 she performed a highly acclaimed series of eight Bach organ concerts on outstanding organs throughout New York City, called ‘Bach in the Big Apple’.
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| Picturing America |
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“Picturing America” is the ambitious brainchild of Bruce Cole, the longest serving chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (December 2001 to January 2009). Through the largest NEH grant program ever, more than 76,000 schools, public libraries, and Head Start centers nationwide now own “Picturing America”: a set of 40 large, high-quality reproductions of great American art, accompanied by an informative teachers resource book. As Cole relates to State of the Arts producer Susan Wallner, the goal of “Picturing America” is to help tell the story of America through great art, to as many people as possible.
The “Picturing America” portfolio includes carefully selected images ranging from early American Indian artists to painters Mary Cassatt and Thomas Hart Benton; from photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to architects Frank Lloyd Wright and William Van Alen. The idea stemmed in part from a gift that Bruce Cole received as a child: his parents returned from Washington, D.C. and gave him a souvenir portfolio of illustrations from the National Gallery. “As I pondered these great works of art,” the former chairman recalls, “I had the first glimmerings of what would become a lifelong pursuit: to study and understand the form, history, and meaning of art. This was my gateway to a wider intellectual world. Through that open door, I would delve into history, philosophy, religion, architecture, and literature – the entire universe of the humanities.”
In this State of the Arts story, producer Susan Wallner visits different classes throughout New Jersey, including a high school world civilizations honors class, a middle school social studies class, and elementary art and library classes. At Larchmont Elementary School in Mt. Laurel, students use library and art time to learn about quilts, using seven 19th and 20th century quilts included in the Picturing America portfolio. At the Greater Newark Charter School, eighth grade social studies teacher Keisha Daley uses the George Caleb Bingham painting “County Election” and the James Karales photograph, “Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in 1965” in a class about the evolution of voting rights. Finally, at Dover High School, an honors humanities class brings technology into the mix – students reflect on images from Picturing America in their own video essays. Technology teacher Tim McElroy and English teacher Kathy Paterek collaborate on new ways of using words and images.
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Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936
Bruce Cole, Former Chair, NEH
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On NJN1: Thursday, November 12, 2009
@ 8:00 pm
Preview
