The city of Milan, in conjunction with its fiber optic company Metroweb, has 
commissioned street artists to create 20 original manhole covers. The series, titled Over the Under, is made-up of four covers each from Rendo, Shepard Fairey, the London Police, Flying Fortress and Space Invader. The artwork will be displayed on Via Monte Napolene from November 2010 through December 2011.
Is this the future of London? A compelling exhibit at the Museum of London offers a series of thought provoking digital “postcards from London’s future”. Created by illustrators Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones, the images suggest a tragic vision of London dramatically altered by climate change.
Some of the more striking images from the show include Buckingham Palace surrounded by an enormous shanty town, ice skaters on the Thames and Parliament Square transformed into rice paddies.
The show runs until March 6, 2011.
All images © Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones
London’s The Victoria and Albert Museum has sent out a public plea for funds to preserve the original manuscripts of three novels by Charles Dickens.
It’s seeking a total of £25,000, of which half has already been raised, to properly conserve the low-grade blue writing paper Dickens used to write A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
These are the manuscripts that Dickens would have sent in to the printers for typesetting before receiving the galley proofs for correction in return. The V&A also has some of those proofs too, and so it will be possible for visitors to trace the editing process that went on.Though the pages are blotched and splattered with ink, Dickens’ original writing is still legible
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The funds raised will go toward paying a specialist to remount each leaf on non-acidic backing paper and then steaming out the creases. The pages will then be put into protective boxes and units that have safe levels of humidity.
The V&A, one of many British art institutions suffering from recent cuts to funding by the U.K. government, says it wants to be able to display the manuscripts in time for 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens’s birth. The author died in 1870 at age 58.By then, the museum hopes to exhibit the papers at the National Art Library as part of the celebrations.
Ironically, these manuscripts were subject to a botched conservation effort in the 1960s, but the “experts” utilized backing paper that was too acidic.
Dickens fans can make a donation on the V&A website.
With its imposing neo-Gothic facade and Art Nouveau interiors,Livraria Lello has been Oporto, Portugal’s leading bookseller since 1881. Livraria Lello is the epitome of the old-world bookstore. The jawdroppingly beautiful interior is decorated with bronze bas-reliefs, glass enclosed bookcases, soaring stained glass skylight and a staircase fit for a palace.
The shop is conveniently located at Rua Carmelitas 144.
This guest post and the accompanying photographs were provided by the acclaimed Minnesota photographer Valérie Jardin. For more information on Valerie’s marvelous work, visit her website and blog on our links list.
St Paul, Minnesota: The Fitzgerald Theater is celebrating its 100th birthday with a gigantic mural! Built in 1910, the theater, originally named the Sam S. Shubert Theater, is the oldest remaining theater space in the capital city of Minnesota. The opening of this new theater was widely anticipated. The Shubert Theater was considered a very sophisticated and modern architectural structure at the time. Built of concrete and steel, it housed 16 dressing rooms for performers. Its stage could be raised and lowered by two feet, it also featured a state of the art built in vacuum cleaning system and thousands of electric lights.
More recently, in the 1980s, the theater became the home of Garrison Keillorʼs “A Prairie Home Companion”. Keillor also started a campaign to rename the theater after the St Paul native and great American author F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In August 2010 the theater was finally entered in the National Registry of Historic Places. A few weeks later, a mural was started on the south side of the theater. The image painted was inspired by a photograph of F. Scott Fitzgerald taken in the nearby White Bear Yacht Club in 1921 The 50 foot-high mural, often referred to as The Face of the Fitz, is now completed. The elegant portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald overlooks a busy street corner of downtown St Paul, just a few blocks away from the author’s birth place.
Libreria Acqua Alta, Calle Longa Sante Maria Formosa (Corte Senza Nome),open daily.
ICORN, the International Cities of Refuge Network, is an independent, international organisation of member cities offering long term refuge for persecuted writers. As of mid-2010, ICORN has 31 member cities in Europe and beyond, inviting persecuted writers to dwell in a safe haven where they can write and express themselves freely without fear of being censored or silenced.
Any persecuted writer (being it novelists, non-fiction writers, playwrights, poets, editors, translators, publishers, journalists or cartoonists) can apply for placement in an ICORN member city. The applications are reviewed by International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee in accordance with the criteria of the ICORN Charter. It is the task of the ICORN Administration Centre based in Stavanger, Norway, to look for placement for the qualified writer applicant in an ICORN member city.
ICORN is working together with its guest writers and its member cities to promote the writers and their work in multiple ways and through diverse channels. The ICORN member cities of Barcelona, Brussels, Frankfurt, Norwich, Stavanger and Stockholm are from 2008 to 2012 running an EU Culture 2007 project titled Shahrazad — stories for life, bringing new, diverse and challenging stories from all over the world into Europe.
ICORN is an open, flexible and participatory organisation, connecting its member cities and guest writers in a global network of solidarity, creativity and mutual interaction. The organization is growing and welcoming new member cities around the world. Cooperating with sister networks world wide, our aim is to make a real difference in the ongoing global struggle for freedom of expression.
More than ever, many major cities are relying on the financial boost that tourists bring to the local economy. But local residents are driven bonkers by window shopping, suitcase dragging, sightseeing tourists who clog sidewalks and cause sidewalk gridlock. It looks like London is now ready to do something about it.
Specifically, the New West End Company, an influential business group in the Oxford Street shopping district, is proposing a virtual shopping lane along the neighborhood store fronts in order to free up a fast track outside sidewalk lane for local residents and workers.
The scheme—part of a wider effort to spruce up London for the 2012 Olympics—would deploy a team of mobile Red Caps—who already provide information and guidance to visitors in the district—to diplomatically sort pedestrians by speed.
If the plan is successful in London, can NYC be far behind ?
Many thanks to Brittany at We Love DC for letting us know about Books for America–A Bookstore With a Purpose. This Dupont Circle neighborhood shop is not simply a used bookstore, it’s the headquarters for an amazing nonprofit organization that provides books to schools, literacy programs, community centers, nursing homes and correctional facilities.
This innovative social entrepreneurship organization has donated nearly $500,000 dollars worth of books in 2010 alone. Books for America is largely run by volunteers and depends on sales from their bookshop and book donations to support their projects.
Travel Between The Pages 