Tag Archives: J. Pierpont Morgan

NYMysteries Aug. 6 – Aug. 11

It’s been a busy week in hot and humid NYC. 

The annual Frick Staff Education Day was held on Monday.  Emma Capron, the 2016–18 Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow and an authority on Netherlandish art, gave a talk and slide show on The Charterhouse at Bruges: Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christius and Jan Vos. It was a tasty preview of the special exhibition opening on September 18. There were a variety of activities for Staff Education Day: a discussion about the future of the Boucher Room, a demonstration of sun printing and painting faux marble. Shadow profile portraiture was a popular activity in George Washington’s time. This activity ties in with the current Canova’s George Washington exhibit. Participants created their own examples.  There was also bowling. Let us not forget that in the early 20th century no mansion was complete without a bowling alley. The Frick’s is a beauty – all polished wood. The Staff Art Exhibition, Exquisite Corpse, was a knock out.

A friend and I visited the Morgan Library. After a very tasty lunch of cold soup, deviled eggs and delicious pinot grigio, we went to Morgan’s wonderful library on the first floor.

J. P. Morgan’s Library

On Friday I went to the first of three days of the Writers Digest 2018 Conference. Today was  dedicated to query letters. Janet Reid has been educating and terrorizing writers for years. QueryShark.blogspot.com. is where she lays down the law about writing in general and query letters in particular. Her talk was witty, biting and cogent. Paula Munier gave an interesting session on Beginnings: Your first 10 pages. There was lots of talk about pitching i.e. selling your story to an agent in 90 seconds. Tomorrow, I do it. Groan. 

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned a murder case at the  prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

Graphic Lessons: What do a teacher, a nine-year-old and an eighteen year old have in common? Murder. Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old, the only witness to the stabbing and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man..

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Mary Jo Robertiello

http://www.nymysteries.com

NewYork Mysteries May 28 – June 3

At the IFC, Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary is playing. What a documentary. Coltrane’s ability as a composer, musician and good husband and father are celebrated by family and friends. He absorbed Christianity and practiced charity. His music reflected this. “Alabama” was his piece written to honor four black girls killed by racists. He travelled to Japan to play for the Japanese. What a guy. He’s been declared a saint by a  San Francisco Church. I find the concept creepy but who cares?

On Memorial Day a friend and I walked around the beautiful, deserted, rainy Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. We were in the Japanese Gardens and Shakespeare’s Garden.

 

 

The Japanese Garden, Brooklyn Botanical Garden
The Japanese Garden,  Brooklyn Botanical Garden

The Met’s exhibit of Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 B. C. – A. D. 22) wasn’t crowded but it was dark. The lack of light added to the mysterious, foreign atmosphere. How did the farm animal ceramics survive? Military figures and their chariots abound. Since it’s on the second floor I walked down the stairs to the Great Hall. For the first time I noticed the benefactors plaques that hang on the stairway walls. Each plaque is dated in Roman numerals The first: MDCCCLXX-MCMXX (1870-1920) has a list of the rich and powerful men of that era: Joseph Pulitzer, Benjamin Altman, among others. Other luminaries on other plaques include Junius S. Morgan, J. Pierpont Morgan, John Jacob Astor and Ira Gershwin.

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears three people fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Something’s eating at NYPD Det. Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.