Fluctuart claims that its Centre D’Art Urbain Flottant will be the first floating urban arts museum in the world. I don’t know if that’s an accurate statement, but the soon to be launched waterfront gallery is a welcome component of the “Reinventing the Seine” project championed by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
The floating art center will be docked at the base of the Pont Invalides across from the Grand Palais. Admission to the tri-level gallery devoted to urban arts will be free.
Paris’ newest museum will be displaying both permanent and temporary exhibitions of street art and graffiti. Its premiere show will feature works by Swoon and Caledonia Curry at the May opening. Watch this space for more information.
In 1927, Italian Futurist artist and designer Fortunato Depero published his groundbreaking monograph Depero Futurista, or “Depero the Futurist,” which became commonly known as “The Bolted Book” because of its large aluminum fasteners. The avant-garde masterpiece had an imaginative layout, experimental typography, brilliantly colored inks, and an entirely novel design. Many consider it to be the original artist’s book.
There’s a Kickstarter project currently offering an exact replica facsimile of the book along with an excellent reader’s guide. You can check it out right here.
This week the two-time Poet Laureat of the U.S. and two-time Pulitzer prizewinning poet W.S. Merwin died at the age of 91. One of America’s best known and loved writers, Merwin managed to weave themes of spirituality, politics, relationships, and the environment into his dozens of volumes of poetry. “When you look back there is always the past/ Even when it has vanished.”
“For the Anniversary of My Death”
by
W.S. Merwin
Once again, Chicago-based cartographer and artist Sasha Trubetskoy has created an amazing transit-themed map based on the ancient Roman road network. This terrific example, Roman Roads of Iberia, is based on historic sources and covers the period of the First Century BC through the Fourth Century AD. If you would like to see more of Sasha’s very cool maps and even buy high quality versions for yourself, check out his website.
Hub City Books and the Hub City Writers Project in Sparatanburg, S.C., have launched Free Books for Travelers, a new community outreach project. Travelers passing through the Sparta Passenger Center are encouraged to take a free book along for the ride next time they hop on a bus.
The bookshelf, topped with an eye-catching sign featuring a Dr. Seuss quote (“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”), is stocked with a rotating selection of post-publication ARCs as well as new and gently used books donated by customers of the Hub City Bookshop.
“We are gratified to be able to offer books to travelers, whether they are headed across town or across the country,” said HCWP’s Anne Waters. “For years we have distributed free children’s books through our ‘Growing Great Readers’ program and this enables us to extend our outreach to adults.”
She added: “Every day we receive ARCs of books that will be released in the coming months. Once the finished books are published, the ARCS are destined for the recycling bin. We determined it was far better to share them. If this initiative ignites or rekindles a passion for reading we have furthered our mission to ‘Nurture Writers and Cultivate Readers.’ ”
Don Quixote of the Mancha
re-told by Judge Parry
Illustrated by Walter Crane
London Blackie & Son Limited 1900 First Edition thus
One of my guilty pleasures is checking in periodically with this hilarious website dedicated to really terrible books. The Awful Library Books blog is the passion project of two professional librarians from the State of Michigan. Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner collect some of the worst examples of books that have been mercifully culled from U.S. public library collections.
Unless you are a skier or a public transit geek, it’s not likely that you have ever heard of, or visited, the Austrian village of Serfaus. The lovely little town with a population of around 1,200 is renowned for its ski runs and alpine charm, but it’s also the site of the world’s highest and shortest underground metro system, the Dorfbahn.
Located on a plateau nearly 1,500 meters above the Inn Valley just west of Innsbruck, Serfaus was an early adopter of the car-free, pedestrian-friendly town center concept. But the massive popularity with alpine skiers required a novel way to move visitors around town.
In 1985, Serfaus began construction of the Dorfbahn by building a 1.3 kilometer-long tunnel beneath the village’s main street. Today, the four stop metro system operates a three car hovertrain year-round for free. The carriages use an air-cushion system and the entire metro is remotely operated.
As is often the case in the antiquarian book trade, we can search for a title for weeks with no avail and then years later stumble across a copy when we are not even looking. Many years ago I had a client who collected early travel books on Constantinople—only before it became Istanbul. He was primarily interested in travel narratives with illustrations in English and French. One of the books that he always hoped to find was The Beauties of the Bosphorus written by Julia Pardoe and published in 1838 by George Virtue, London. Needless to say, I never found a copy of the title. But earlier this week I stumbled upon a university library blog post about the chance discovery of a first edition of the title in the stacks.
The Beauties of the Bosphorus, contains dozens of illustrations by the English traveler and artist William Henry Bartlett, engraved in steel for this edition. The text is written by the prolific Julia Pardoe who was an English poet, novelist, and traveler, whose work drew extensively on her travel experience. In 1835 she traveled to Turkey with her father, and soon after came a series of publications inspired by that experience: The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1837; The Beauties of the Bosphorus in 1838; Romance of the Harem in 1839. Beauties of the Bosphorus was published by George Virtue, a London publisher especially well known for his travel literature and his production of steel-plate engravings, and printed by Richard Clay. The frontispiece portrait of Pardoe is by the English portrait painter Henry Room, engraved in steel by James Thomson.
Obviously the book is not for sale, but it’s nice to know that there are still copies out there to be seen.
Travel Between The Pages 