Capital New York

Editor John Summers says he hopes the new 'Baffler' 'doesn't sound like Cambridge,' and it doesn't

The Baffler loves to poke holes in over-inflated egos; if some member of the media declares you (or your TED talk) The Next Big Thing, you’re likely The Baffler’s next target. As Lehmann put it during his talk, the magazine sought not to be a “thought leader,” but rather a “thought provoker,” or better yet, “thought destroyer.” More

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By Lauren Kirchner

A biologist who spent a year studying a square meter of forest puts a new spin on 'exploration' at The Explorers Club

David Haskell was reading and signing from his new book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature, about his close—very close—examination of one patch of forest in particular. If William Blake wrote of his desire “To see a world in a grain of sand/ And a heaven in a wildflower,” Haskell said, he felt as though he could see the entire planet’s delicate network of flora and fauna in one square meter of old-growth forest in Tennessee. Haskell is an explorer who looks in rather than out, but what he found in a year observing that square meter reveals just how ripe the world still is for exploration if we just know where, and how, to look. More

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By Lauren Kirchner

Susan Orlean talks about animals - the cuddly, the comforting and the kooky - at the Morgan Library

Susan Orlean was giving a lecture entitled “Animalish,” in conjunction with the Morgan Library's latest exhibit, In the Company of Animals: Art, Literature, and Music at the Morgan. It is a relatively small but surprising collection of drawings, prints, manuscripts, and other objects that explore different roles that animals have played in our lives and in art through time. It explores how and why animals are so often used as muses for art and literature, symbols of human characteristics and experiences, and teachers of moral lessons. More

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By Lauren Kirchner

At Columbia, Edward Gorey art, books and ephemera, collected by an admirer who was his friend until death

Andrew Alpern’s four-decade-long pursuit of writer and artist Edward Gorey's books and ephemera began during his frequent trips to the Gotham Book Mart across from his Midtown office, where he was working as an architect. Near the sales counter, a stack of small, clearly self-printed books and drawings caught his eye.

“It was fascinating, it was exquisitely drawn, and it was a little weird!” Alpern remembered. More

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By Lauren Kirchner

Making of a modernist: Djuna Barnes' newspaper days on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

Djuna Barnes' long and varied career, in which her worked ranged from news and illustration to plays and novels, was kicked off working at various New York newspapers. This exhibit focuses on just one small sliver of her career, but the works hint at the confident and experimental artist she would become. More

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By Lauren Kirchner