The botanical gardens in Brooklyn were a pure enchantment with their cherry trees in bloom
I had not returned to the city since the pandemic and went to attend the Memorial for writer and Pulitzer Prize winner, Ted Morganwho died last December. It took place at the Century Club and was mostly a family affair, with his daughter Amber de Gramont (who recently retrieved her family name) and his son Gabriel Morgan, both speaking in a very sensitive and literary way of him as a father. His wife Eileen Bresnahan read a beautiful poem and his grandchildren and nephews, the artist George and his twin, film director Michel Negroponte, added to the glamour. Another niece, the author Nina de Gramont was there with her husband, David Gessner, also a writer, and Clement Wood son of the Paris Review International editor, brought some of the literary French past with him. The cultural event of the week was “the Harlem Renaissance” exhibition at the Metropolitan museum which I saw just after learning of Faith Ringgold‘s death at 93. The extraordinary artist, who was exhibited at Musée Picasso exactly a year ago, was born in Harlem in 1930, just at the time of the Renaissance… The show is a mix of fabulous portraits by Winold Reiss, Laura Wheeler Waring, Archibald J. Motley. Jr and Jacob Lawrence or William H. Johnson. But there were also very mediocre ones mixed among the excellent photos by James Van Der Zee. I would call the exhibition unedited or wanting to show too much?Read More