Andrew Berman, indefatigable head of GVSHPI attended the Frank O’Hara plaque unveiling at 441 East 9th Street where O’Hara had lived. It was sponsored by GVSHP, a wonderful organization with the unwieldy name Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. Its head, Andrew Berman, opened the ceremony, shouting above the fire engines, buses and barking dogs that provided a typical 9th street chorus. Frank O’Hara was a dynamo: a poet, a MOMA curator and an openly gay man. Tony Towle reminisced about O’Hara and read from his “Lunch Poems” collection. Edward Berrigan, son of Ted Berrigan, the poet and a close O’Hara friend, also read.Go to GVSHP Program Encore 6-10-14 to read Towle’s amusing description of the apartment he inherited from O’Hara. If O’Hara did a Rip Van Winkle, what would he think of the computer revolution and the AIDS epidemic?
Off to the Frick Collection to hear Curator Xavier F. Salomon describe two paintings by Veronesi and the Parmigianino painting, Schiva Turca. Although her origins are mysterious, she’s neither a slave nor a Turk. In an early inventory that’s how the painting was identified and the name has remained.
Finally, I finished reading Simon Schama’s LANDSCAPE AND MEMORY. His thesis is that every landscape is a combination of the memories and beliefs of the viewer. It was great fun discussing it with gardeners and landscape designers. Did you know there were dragon myths in the Alps? You would if you’d waded through Schama’s fascinating but too long book.
