When I first stumbled across this letter, I thought I’d found the pronunciation key to the name “Rosenbach.” Here at the Rosenbach Museum & Library we pronounce our founders’ surname “Rosenback,” rhyming it with smack. The lore around here states that Philip and Abraham pronounced it that way. Most everyone else, though, tends to rhyme …
Or perhaps I should say “buckarü.”Answer to be posted soon. UPDATE: Marlene Dietrich. This undated photo resides in the Papers of Mercedes de Acosta here at the Rosenbach. Dietrich looks pretty young in this photo — it was probably taken before she moved to Hollywood in 1930. Given the effort she and Josef von Sternberg …
Our Librarian, Elizabeth E. Fuller, recently wrote up these notes about the upcoming sale of one of the last Shakespeare First Folios left in private hands: [Note-the image here is of the Rosenbach’s copy of the third folio!] ************* Sotheby’s recently announced that it will offer a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio at auction in …
Truman Capote is in the air these days. (I really liked Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, though I do have a small gripe with the Academy giving Oscars to actors playing celebrities — e.g. Hoffman, Reese Witherspoon, Jamie Foxx, Cate Blanchett, etc. — but that’s another post on another blog.) Forty years ago this November …
The Sunday New York Times will have another Rosenbach-associated piece, this time about Ben Katchor’s opera The Rosenbach Company. The opera was commissioned by the Rosenbach in 2003, and performed at the Philly Live Arts/Fringe in 2004. If you missed it then, it’s being performed at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre in New York …
The news gods smile upon us today with this fantastic NYT Escapes piece by Curtis Sittenfeld. For a museum that has serious “visibility issues,” this is very welcome coverage. Thank you news gods! …and yes, there will be corrections. Most significantly–the Sendak collection is not an “acquisition.” We don’t own it. Mr. Sendak’s drawings are …
Check out this stunning movie still from James Sibley Watson’s and Melville Webber’s Lot in Sodom found in the Marianne Moore papers. The 1933 short film tells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis, Ch. 19) in what appears to be fine avant-garde style. When not making experimental films (his only other film, also made …
The following is an article published in the New York Times:EssayBooks to Chew OnBy BLAKE ESKINPublished: March 26, 2006 FOR certain voracious readers, April 1 has become a red-letter day: It’s the one time of the year when they get to eat books. They won’t eat just any book, only those prepared especially for the …
Did you know the Highlights Gallery features a drawing from Maurice Sendak’s book Brundibar? An adaptation of the story was recently revived for the stage and will be performed in New York City beginning in late April at the New Victory Theater. For the book and the new production of the opera, Sendak has teamed …
On February 28th, 2005, Bill Adair, Director of Education and Catherine Parmar, Associate Director of Education, traveled to the Swann Galleries in New York City for the auction of an issue of The Essex Gazette dated October 1770 that contains an advertisement for an elegiac poem written by Phillis Wheatley on the death of the …