Back from Hawaii, and finalizing the press release, invites, and guest list for the Souvenir screening on the 19th. Drop a line if you'd like to be added to my guest list, otherwise, check out MoMA's site for times, etc. I'll obviously post more about this.
Some quotes that caught my attention, except where noted, from the NY Times (Sun. Times in HI: $7.50)
"Design demands observation," Mr. Castiglioni would explain, Ms. [Paola] Antonelli said, as though there was easily a life's work in seeing, in the commonplace, what others couldn't.
- William Hamilton's obituary for Achille Castiglioni
...Even Americans of modest means have had a tradition of keeping an unused room as a carefully decorated stage set for a play that is rarely, perhaps never, performed.
- Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners), quoted in the review of her new book
It was sort of like one of those moments when it seems like a good idea to invite a hillbilly to dinner. Then the hillbilly comes and ends up ruining the carpet.
- Although it's so good it could be from anywhere, it's an anonymous celebrity aghast at Richard "Survivor" Hatch's horrible behavior at a Broadway show. Quoted in the NY Observer 15th anniversary edition.
We all have opinions about almost everything, and the temptation to toss them in is great. To air ones view gratuitously, however, is to imply that the demand for them is brisk, which may not be the case, and which, in any event, may not be relevant to the discussion. Opinions scattered indiscriminately about leave the mark of egotism at work. Similarly, to air one's view at an improper time may be in bad taste. If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation, does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at cats.
- William Strunk and E. B. White's Elements of Style, excerpted in Jack Spade Quarterly, which, with two issues in two+ years, would be more appropriately titled Jack Spade Nonchalantly
Usually, the magazine Architecture observed in 1903, "the engineer makes the design, hands it to the architect to add a lantern or two, makes it fancy, and the artistic conscience of the interested community is at rest."
- Christopher Gray's Nov. 24 article on building the Queensboro Bridge
...Stanton Eckstut, a principal of the firm hired by the Port Authority, said that while the development corporation's seven teams of architects might be working on pretty building designs, he alone was preparing substantive plans for the site's streets, transportation facilities and underground infrastructure.
- plus Áa change. Edward Wyatt's Dec. 1 article on the WTC site rebuilding process.
