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THE 1619 PROJECT - NEW YORK TIMES

America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others.

By Jamelle Bouie

AUG. 14, 2019

If you want to understand American politics in 2019 and the strain of reactionary extremism that has taken over the Republican Party, a good place to start is 2011: the year after a backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency swept Tea Party insurgents into Congress, flipping control of the House.

It was clear, at the start of that year, that Congress would have to lift the debt ceiling — the limit on bonds and other debt instruments the government issues when it doesn’t have the revenues to fulfill spending obligations. These votes were often opportunities for grandstanding and occasionally brinkmanship by politicians from both parties. But it was understood that, when push came to shove, Congress would lift the limit and the government would pay its obligations.

2011 was different. Congressional Republicans, led by the new Tea Party conservatives, wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and make other sharp cuts to the social safety net. But Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House. So House Republicans decided to take a hostage. “I’m asking you to look at a potential increase in the debt limit as a leverage moment when the White House and President Obama will have to deal with us,” said the incoming majority leader, Eric Cantor, at a closed-door retreat days before the session began, according to The Washington Post. Either the White House would agree to harsh austerity measures or Republicans would force the United States to default on its debt obligations, precipitating an economic crisis just as the country, and the world, was beginning to recover from the Great Recession.

The debt-limit standoff was a case study of a fundamental change within the Republican Party after Obama took office in 2009. Republicans would either win total victory or they would wreck the system itself. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, used a variety of procedural tactics to effectively nullify the president’s ability to nominate federal judges and fill vacancies in the executive branch. In the minority, he used the filibuster to an unprecedented degree. In the majority, after Republicans won the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, he led an extraordinary blockade of the Supreme Court, stopping the Senate from even considering the president’s nominee for the bench.

Where did this destructive, sectarian style of partisan politics come from? Conventional wisdom traces its roots to the “Gingrich Revolution” of the 1990s, whose architect pioneered a hardball, insurgent style of political combat, undermining norms and dismantling congressional institutions for the sake of power. This is true enough, but the Republican Party of the Obama years didn’t just recycle its Gingrich-era excesses; it also pursued a policy of total opposition, not just blocking Obama but also casting him as fundamentally illegitimate and un-American. He may have been elected by a majority of the voting public, but that majority didn’t count. It didn’t represent the “real” America.

John C. Calhoun, perhaps the most prominent political theorist of the slaveholding South and an influence on modern right-wing thinking. From the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Obama’s election reignited a fight about democratic legitimacy — about who can claim the country as their own, and who has the right to act as a citizen — that is as old as American democracy itself. And the reactionary position in this conflict, which seeks to narrow the scope of participation and arrest the power of majorities beyond the limits of the Constitution, has its own peculiar history: not just in the ideological battles of the founding but also in the institution that defined the early American republic as much as any other.

The plantations that dotted the landscape of the antebellum South produced the commodities that fueled the nation’s early growth. Enslaved people working in glorified labor camps picked cotton, grew indigo, harvested resin from trees for turpentine and generated additional capital in the form of their children, bought, sold and securitized on the open market. But plantations didn’t just produce goods; they produced ideas too. Enslaved laborers developed an understanding of the society in which they lived. The people who enslaved them, likewise, constructed elaborate sets of beliefs, customs and ideologies meant to justify their positions in this economic and social hierarchy. Those ideas permeated the entire South, taking deepest root in places where slavery was most entrenched.

South Carolina was a paradigmatic slave state. Although the majority of enslavers resided in the “low country,” with its large rice and cotton plantations, nearly the entire state participated in plantation agriculture and the slave economy. By 1820 most South Carolinians were enslaved Africans. By midcentury, the historian Manisha Sinha notes in “The Counterrevolution of Slavery,” it was the first Southern state where a majority of the white population held slaves.

Not surprisingly, enslavers dominated the state’s political class. “Carolinian rice aristocrats and the cotton planters from the hinterland,” Sinha writes, “formed an intersectional ruling class, bound together by kinship, economic, political and cultural ties.” The government they built was the most undemocratic in the Union. The slave-rich districts of the coasts enjoyed nearly as much representation in the Legislature as more populous regions in the interior of the state. Statewide office was restricted to wealthy property owners. To even qualify for the governorship, you needed a large, debt-free estate. Rich enslavers were essentially the only people who could participate in the highest levels of government. To the extent that there were popular elections, they were for the lowest levels of government, because the State Legislature tended to decide most high-level offices.

But immense power at home could not compensate for declining power in national politics. The growth of the free Northwest threatened Southern dominance in Congress. And the slaveholding planter class would witness the rise of an organized movement to stop the expansion of slavery and curb the power enslavers held over key institutions like the Senate and the Supreme Court.

Out of this atmosphere of fear and insecurity came a number of thinkers and politicians who set their minds to protecting South Carolina and the rest of the slaveholding South from a hostile North. Arguably the most prominent and accomplished of these planter-politicians was John C. Calhoun. Vice president under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, secretary of state under John Tyler and eventually a United States senator representing the state, Calhoun was a deep believer in the system of slavery — which he called a “positive good” that “forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable institutions”— and a committed advocate for the slave-owning planter class. He was an astute politician, but he made his most important mark as a theoretician of reaction: a man who, realizing that democracy could not protect slavery in perpetuity, set out to limit democracy.

Calhoun popularized the concept of “nullification”: the theory that any state subject to federal law was entitled to invalidate it. He first advanced the idea in an anonymous letter, written when he was vice president, protesting the Tariff of 1828, which sought to protect Northern industry and agriculture from foreign competitors. Calhoun condemned it as an unconstitutional piece of regional favoritism.

The South may have been part of the pro-Andrew Jackson majorities in Congress, but that wasn’t enough for Calhoun, who wanted absolute security for the region and its economic interests. Demographic and political change doomed it to be a “permanent minority”: “Our geographical position, our industry, pursuits and institutions are all peculiar.” Against a domineering North, he argued, “representation affords not the slightest protection.”

“It is, indeed, high time for the people of the South to be roused to a sense of impending calamities — on an early and full knowledge of which their safety depends,” Calhoun wrote in an 1831 report to the South Carolina Legislature. “It is time that they should see and feel that ... they are in a permanent and hopeless minority on the great and vital connected questions.”

His solution lay in the states. To Calhoun, there was no “union” per se. Instead, the United States was simply a compact among sovereigns with distinct, and often competing, sectional interests. This compact could only survive if all sides had equal say on the meaning of the Constitution and the shape and structure of the law. Individual states, Calhoun thought, should be able to veto federal laws if they thought the federal government was favoring one state or section over another. The union could only act with the assent of the entire whole — what Calhoun called “the concurrent majority” — as opposed to the Madisonian idea of rule by numerical majority, albeit mediated by compromise and consensus.

Southern college students at the Southern Democratic Convention in 1948, the year that segregationists began to break with the national Democratic Party over civil rights. From Bettmann/Getty Images

Calhoun initially lost the tariff fight, which pitted him against an obstinate Andrew Jackson, but he did not give up on nullification. He expanded on the theory at the end of his life, proposing an alternative system of government that gave political minorities a final say over majority action. In this “concurrent government,” each “interest or portion of the community” has an equal say in approving the actions of the state. Full agreement would be necessary to “put the government in motion.” Only through this, Calhoun argued, would the “different interests, orders, classes, or portions, into which the community may be divided, can be protected.”

The government Calhoun envisioned would protect “liberty”: not the liberty of the citizen but the liberty of the master, the liberty of those who claimed a right to property and a position at the top of a racial and economic hierarchy. This liberty, Calhoun stated, was “a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike — a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving — and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it.” It is striking how much this echoes contemporary arguments against the expansion of democracy. In 2012, for example, a Tea Party congressional candidate from Florida said that voting is a “privilege” and seemed to endorse property requirements for participation.

Calhoun died in 1850. Ten years later, following the idea of nullification to its conclusion, the South seceded from the Union after Abraham Lincoln won the White House without a single Southern state. War came a few months later, and four years of fighting destroyed the system of slavery Calhoun fought to protect. But parts of his legacy survived. His deep suspicion of majoritarian democracy — his view that government must protect interests, defined by their unique geographic and economic characteristics, more than people — would inform the sectional politics of the South in the 20th century, where solid blocs of Southern lawmakers worked collectively to stifle any attempt to regulate the region.

Despite insurgencies at home — the Populist Party, for example, swept through Georgia and North Carolina in the 1890s — reactionary white leaders were able to maintain an iron grip on federal offices until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And even then, the last generation of segregationist senators held on through the 1960s into the early 2000s. United, like their predecessors, by geography and their stake in Jim Crow segregation, they were a powerful force in national politics, a bloc that vetoed anything that touched their regional prerogatives.

Anti-lynching laws and some pro-labor legislation died at the hands of lawmakers from the “Solid South” who took advantage of Senate rules like the filibuster to effectively enact Calhoun’s idea of a concurrent majority against legislation that threatened the Southern racial status quo; the spirit of nullification lived on. When Northern liberal Democrats added a civil rights plank to the party platform at the 1948 presidential convention, in an effort to break the Southern conservatives’ hold on the party, 35 delegates from Mississippi and Alabama walked out in protest: the prologue to the “Dixiecrat Revolt” that began the conservative migration into the eventual embrace of the Republican Party.

Calhoun’s idea that states could veto the federal government would return as well following the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, as segregationists announced “massive resistance” to federal desegregation mandates and sympathizers defended white Southern actions with ideas and arguments that cribbed from Calhoun and recapitulated enslaver ideology for modern American politics. “The central question that emerges,” the National Review founding editor William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in 1957, amid congressional debate over the first Civil Rights Act, “is whether the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is yes — the white community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.” He continued: “It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.”

It is a strikingly blunt defense of Jim Crow and affirmation of white supremacy from the father of the conservative movement. Conservatives drove the groundswell that made Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, an opponent of the Civil Rights Act, the 1964 Republican Party nominee for president. He lost in a landslide but won the Deep South (except for Florida), where the white people of the region — among the most conservative in the country, a direct legacy of slavery and the society it built — flocked to the candidate who stood against the constitutional demands of the black-freedom movement. Goldwater may have insisted that there are “some rights that are clearly protected by valid laws and are therefore ‘civil rights,’ ” but he also declared that “states’ rights” were “disappearing under the piling sands of absolutism” and called Brown v. Board an “unconstitutional trespass into the legislative sphere of government.” “I therefore support all efforts by the States, excluding violence, of course,” Goldwater wrote in “The Conscience of a Conservative,” “to preserve their rightful powers over education.”

Later, when key civil rights questions had been settled by law, Buckley would essentially renounce these views, praising the movement and criticizing race-baiting demagogues like George C. Wallace. Still, his initial impulse — to give political minorities a veto not just over policy but over democracy itself — reflected a tendency that would express itself again and again in the conservative politics he ushered into the mainstream, emerging when political, cultural and demographic change threatened a narrow, exclusionary vision of American democracy. Writing in the 1980s and ’90s, Samuel Francis — a polemicist who would eventually migrate to the very far right of American conservatism — identified this dynamic in the context of David Duke’s campaign for governor of Louisiana:

“Reagan conservatism, in its innermost meaning, had little to do with supply-side economics and spreading democracy. It had to do with the awakening of a people who face political, cultural and economic dispossession, who are slowly beginning to glimpse the fact of dispossession and what dispossession will mean for them and their descendants, and who also are starting to think about reversing the processes and powers responsible for their dispossession.”

There is a homegrown ideology of reaction in the United States, inextricably tied to our system of slavery. And while the racial content of that ideology has attenuated over time, the basic framework remains: fear of rival political majorities; of demographic “replacement”; of a government that threatens privilege and hierarchy.

Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican who was then the House majority leader, speaks to reporters in April 2011 during the lead-up to a standoff with President Obama over raising the debt ceiling. Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images

The past 10 years of Republican extremism is emblematic. The Tea Party billed itself as a reaction to debt and spending, but a close look shows it was actually a reaction to an ascendant majority of black people, Latinos, Asian-Americans and liberal white people. In their survey-based study of the movement, the political scientists Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto show that Tea Party Republicans were motivated “by the fear and anxiety associated with the perception that ‘real’ Americans are losing their country.”

The scholars Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson came to a similar conclusion in their contemporaneous study of the movement, based on an ethnographic study of Tea Party activists across the country. “Tea Party resistance to giving more to categories of people deemed undeserving is more than just an argument about taxes and spending,” they note in “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”; “it is a heartfelt cry about where they fear ‘their country’ may be headed.” And Tea Party adherents’ “worries about racial and ethnic minorities and overly entitled young people,” they write, “signal a larger fear about generational social change in America.”

To stop this change and its political consequences, right-wing conservatives have embarked on a project to nullify opponents and restrict the scope of democracy. Mitch McConnell’s hyper-obstructionist rule in the Senate is the most high-profile example of this strategy, but it’s far from the most egregious.

In 2012, North Carolina Republicans won legislative and executive power for the first time in more than a century. They used it to gerrymander the electoral map and impose new restrictions on voting, specifically aimed at the state’s African-American voters. One such restriction, a strict voter-identification law, was designed to target black North Carolinians with “almost surgical precision,” according to the federal judges who struck the law down. When, in 2016, Democrats overcame these obstacles to take back the governor’s mansion, the Republican-controlled Legislature tried to strip power from the office, to prevent Democrats from reversing their efforts to rig the game.

A similar thing happened in Wisconsin. Under Scott Walker, the governor at the time, Wisconsin Republicans gave themselves a structural advantage in the State Legislature through aggressive gerrymandering. After the Democratic candidate toppled Walker in the 2018 governor’s race, the Republican majority in the Legislature rapidly moved to limit the new governor’s power and weaken other statewide offices won by Democrats. They restricted the governor’s ability to run public-benefit programs and set rules on the implementation of state laws. And they robbed the governor and the attorney general of the power to continue, or end, legal action against the Affordable Care Act.

Michigan Republicans took an almost identical course of action after Democrats in that state managed to win executive office, using their gerrymandered legislative majority to weaken the new Democratic governor and attorney general. One proposed bill, for example, would have shifted oversight of campaign-finance law from the secretary of state to a six-person commission with members nominated by the state Republican and Democratic parties, a move designed to produce deadlock and keep elected Democrats from reversing previous decisions.

The Republican rationale for tilting the field in their permanent favor or, failing that, nullifying the results and limiting Democrats’ power as much as possible, has a familiar ring to it. “Citizens from every corner of Wisconsin deserve a strong legislative branch that stands on equal footing with an incoming administration that is based almost solely in Madison,” one Wisconsin Republican said following the party’s lame-duck power grab. The speaker of the State Assembly, Robin Vos, made his point more explicit. “If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority — we would have all five constitutional officers, and we would probably have many more seats in the Legislature.” The argument is straightforward: Some voters, their voters, count. Others — the liberals, black people and other people of color who live in cities — don’t.

Senate Republicans played with similar ideas just before the 2016 election, openly announcing their plans to block Hillary Clinton from nominating anyone to the Supreme Court, should she become president. “I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up,” declared Senator John McCain of Arizona just weeks before voting. And President Trump, of course, has repeatedly and falsely denounced Clinton’s popular-vote victory as illegitimate, the product of fraud and illegal voting. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide,” he declared on Twitter weeks after the election, “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

The larger implication is clear enough: A majority made up of liberals and people of color isn’t a real majority. And the solution is clear, too: to write those people out of the polity, to use every available tool to weaken their influence on American politics. The recent attempt to place a citizenship question on the census was an important part of this effort. By asking for this information, the administration would suppress the number of immigrant respondents, worsening their representation in the House and the Electoral College, reweighting power to the white, rural areas that back the president and the Republican Party.

You could make the case that none of this has anything to do with slavery and slaveholder ideology. You could argue that it has nothing to do with race at all, that it’s simply an aggressive effort to secure conservative victories. But the tenor of an argument, the shape and nature of an opposition movement — these things matter. The goals may be colorblind, but the methods of action — the attacks on the legitimacy of nonwhite political actors, the casting of rival political majorities as unrepresentative, the drive to nullify democratically elected governing coalitions — are clearly downstream of a style of extreme political combat that came to fruition in the defense of human bondage.

#republican #democrat #politcs #new york times #slavery #racism #1619project #news media #twitter #american history

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sciencespies · 4 years ago

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An Evening with Martin Sheen and 24 Other Smithsonian Programs Streaming in January

https://sciencespies.com/history/an-evening-with-martin-sheen-and-24-other-smithsonian-programs-streaming-in-january/

An Evening with Martin Sheen and 24 Other Smithsonian Programs Streaming in January

Smithsonian Voices Smithsonian Associates

An Evening with Martin Sheen and 24 Other Smithsonian Programs Streaming in January

December 31st, 2020, 11:30AM / BY

Lauren Lyons

Smithsonian Associates Streaming presents “Mr. President: An Evening with Martin Sheen” on January 19.

Kick off the New Year with Smithsonian Associates Streaming and enjoy individual programs, multi-part courses, studio arts classes and virtual study tours produced by the world’s largest museum-based educational program.

Wednesday, January 6

You Must Remember This: Favorite Movies and Their Times: Some moments in movies never leave us: a snappy line of dialogue, a dance in the rain or by the Seine, a timeless love song, a great last line. Documentary filmmaker and writer Sara Lukinson revisits some of our favorite movies, setting them against the backdrop of their times, the people who dreamed them up and the America they reflected—or asked us to imagine. This session focuses on Casablanca. 12 p.m. $20-$25

Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Suspense: Over a career that spanned six decades, Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s films never failed in bringing audiences to the edge of their seats. Join playwright and screenwriter Marc Lapadula as he peels back the layers of meaning beneath this grandmaster’s bold intentions and dazzling techniques that made him one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of world cinema. 6:30 p.m. $20-$25

Thursday, January 7

The Female Spies of WWII: They were the least likely of spies—and their exploits have often remained in the shadows of WWII’s espionage lore. Brent Geary and Randy Burkett, career officers in the CIA, share the stories of remarkable women who fought both the Nazis and gender stereotypes to help win the war and create the foundation for the modern CIA and U.S. military special forces. 6:30 p.m. $20-$25

Saturday, January 9

The Real Revolution: America, 1775-1783: The story of the American Revolution is more than a catalog of deeds by famous men. Historian Richard Bell explores this tumultuous period from the perspective of ordinary Americans by looking at military recruitment, the wars on the home front and in Native American territory, the struggles of people of color and the experiences of loyalists. 10 a.m. $70-$80

Tuesday, January 12

Eat Well, Be Well: Whole Food as Everyday Medicine: Food sustains us, gives us comfort, brings us together and has a huge impact on our health. Carly Knowles, a registered dietitian nutritionist, and physician Michael Roizen, chief wellness officer emeritus at the Cleveland Clinic, discuss a science-based approach to support optimal health and wellness through everyday meals based on sound nutrition. 6:45 p.m. $20-$25

Wednesday, January 13

Becoming Frank Lloyd Wright: In a richly illustrated program, lecturer Bill Keene delves into the backstory and lesser-known aspects of the life and career of one of the most famous of American architects. He traces his formative years in rural Wisconsin, the ups and downs of both his personal and professional life and the influences that shaped a creative philosophy from which some of the 20th century’s most remarkable and innovative structures arose. 12 p.m. $25-$30

Aviation writer and filmmaker Paul Glenshaw examines how the intertwined stories of jazz and flight reveal the arc of 20th-century history in a Smithsonian Associates Streaming program on January 13. (Louis Armstrong; Library of Congress).

Jazz and Flight: An All-American Duet: Jazz and powered flight are cousins, born and raised at the same time in surprising parallel paths. With film and music, aviation writer and filmmaker Paul Glenshaw takes off on a journey infused with truly American style and innovation as he examines how the intertwined stories of jazz and flight reveal the arc of 20th-century history. 6:45 p.m. $20-$25

Thursday, January 14

Surrealism: The Canvas of Dreams: Artist and art historian Joseph Cassar leads a fascinating journey through the landscape of the imagination as reflected in the distinctive work of artists including Ernst, Arp, Miro, Magritte and Dali. Smithsonian World Art History Certificate enrollees receive 1/2 credit. 6:30 p.m. $20-$25

The Post-election Blues: How Can Americans Regain Common Ground?: After one of the most polarized presidential campaign seasons in recent history, will it be possible to resurrect the very American notion of E Pluribus Unum or “out of many, one”? A frank panel conversation moderated by civility expert and Washington Post columnist Steven Petrow looks at the challenges before us, as well as some reasons to be optimistic. 6:45 p.m. $20-$25

Friday, January 15

Lunchtime with a Curator: Decorative Arts Design Series: Join curator Elizabeth Lay, a regular lecturer on the topics of fashion, textiles and American furniture, for an image-rich lunchtime lecture series focusing on decorative arts and design topics. The first session focuses on Midcentury Modern design. 12 p.m. $20-$25

Saturday, January 16

Shenandoah National Park: Natural History Highlights: The ancient mountains of Shenandoah National Park harbor many secrets, encompassing geology, diverse native forests, wildlife and a rich human history. Naturalist Keith Tomlinson covers its geological origins to present-day conservation efforts, providing an intimate appreciation for its unique natural history. 10 a.m. $25-$30

Tuesday, January 19

Techniques in Modernist Painting: Experiment with a variety of painting styles such as cubism, suprematism and abstract expressionism to learn practical applications of the concepts and techniques of modernism. Smithsonian World Art History Certificate enrollees receive 1/2 credit. 10:30 a.m. $245-$275

Linoleum-Block Printmaking Without a Press: This class introduces students to the materials and techniques of one-color relief printmaking, from design and carving of the block, through inking, printing and presentation of the finished linocut. 10:30 a.m. $195-$225

Mr. President: An Evening with Martin Sheen: In a conversation with journalist Ken Walsh, actor Martin Sheen discusses his iconic role in The West Wing, as well as its impact on television’s depiction of government and how we view our real-life national leaders. 6:30 p.m. $20-$25

Thursday, January 21

Mozart: The Reign of Love: The inexplicable force of nature that was Wolfgang Mozart seemed to live onstage and off simultaneously, a character in life’s tragicomedy but also outside of it, watching, studying, and gathering material for the fabric of his art. Biographer Jan Swafford examines how those dual lives converged in the creation of works that shaped classical music for all time. 12 p.m. $20-$21

A Lab of One’s Own: Rita Colwell, a pioneering microbiologist and the first woman to lead the National Science Foundation, has long known that her profession is not always welcoming to women. Yet she and others excelled despite the obstacles they faced. Colwell examines how women successfully pushed back against the status quo—and what science gained in the process. 6:45 p.m. $20-$25

How to Succeed in 2021: A new year is a chance to begin again. We all make resolutions to eat better, exercise more or learn a new skill. What’s going to be different for you in 2021—other than everything? Join Karen Mangia, TEDx presenter and best-selling author of Success with Less, and Listen Up! How to Tune in to Customers, and Turn Down the Noise, to learn strategies designed to help move you from intentions to actions, acceptance to acceleration and resolutions to results. 6:45 p.m. $20-$25

Wilderness guide and wildlife photographer Russell Gammon presents a Smithsonian Associates Streaming virtual safari on January 23.

Saturday, January 23

Russell Gammon’s Africa: f you’ve dreamed of glancing across a dry African savannah or standing beneath a jungle canopy, hoping to get a fleeting glimpse of a wild creature you’ve only seen in a zoo, follow veteran wilderness guide and wildlife photographer Russell Gammon on a virtual safari to his favorite wild places. 10 a.m. $60-$70

Gyotaku: The Japanese Art of Printing with Fish: Delightful and detailed prints on paper can be made using real fish. Using direct printing and water-based printing inks, create realistic looking schools of fish or a single artistic print simply by inking a whole fish and pressing it to paper. The result is a gyotaku, a term derived from the Japanese words for fish (gyo) and print (taku). Learn how to paint realistic fish eyes to bring your print to life, and cut masks to create realistic compositions. 10 a.m. $75-$85

Sunday, January 24

Introduction to Watercolor: Beginning students as well as experienced painters explore watercolor techniques and learn new approaches to painting through demonstration, discussion and experimentation in an 8-session course. 10:15 a.m. $245-$275

Classical Sounds of the Cinema: Magnificent Movie Music: Whether it’s Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, Puccini or Bach, opuses of almost every famous composer have added emotional depth to hundreds of films ever since talkies emerged. In a session discussing 20th-century composers, concert pianist and movie fanatic Rachel Franklin delves into the magic of some of the greatest film music ever composed (even when it was unintentional). 3 p.m. $25-$30

Wednesday, January 27

Creativity Boosters: Are you in a rut? Would you like to think more creatively? This fun class is full of ideas to help boost your brain and spark your creativity. Award winning artist Lori VanKirk Schue will get your creative juices flowing again with the help of everyday materials and easy ideas. 10:30 a.m. $45-$55

The Dawn of Flight in Washington, DC: Think of the invention of the airplane and places like Kitty Hawk, North Carolina or Dayton, Ohio, come to mind. How about Washington, D.C.? You’d likely be surprised that the nation’s capital is home to several significant sites connected to the beginnings of the airplane. Together, they tell a story of large and small moments that helped launch flight as we know it today. Join Wright scholar Paul Glenshaw for an interactive virtual tour that visits locations across the area to discover the crucial role Washington played in the earliest days of powered flight. 12 p.m. $25-$30

Thank You for the Laughs! Comedians at the Kennedy Center Honors: Mel Brooks, Johnny Carson and Carol Burnett—all recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors—made it look easy, but nothing is harder than comedy that seems effortless. Join Sara Lukinson, filmmaker and writer for the Kennedy Center Honors for 38 years, for an evening full of laughs as she covers the remarkable lives of these legendary entertainers and screens clips of their hilarious performances. 6:45 p.m. $20-$25

Friday, January 29

The Lost Art of Scripture: According to religious scholar Karen Armstrong, the misunderstanding of scripture is perhaps the root cause of many of today’s controversies. She shines fresh light on the world’s major religions to examine how a creative and spiritual engagement with holy texts can build bridges between faiths. 12 p.m. $20-$25

To view Smithsonian Associates digital program guide, visit www.smithsonianassociates.org.

#History

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wallpaperpainting · 5 years ago

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jeetustuff · 5 years ago

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Dorm Room Ideas, Dorm Room Decor, Dorm Decor, Tumblr Room Decor DIY, Boho Chic Decor, White Aesthetic, Modern Vintage, Midcentury Modern, Interior Decorating, Scandinavian Interior, Nordic Interior, Home Office Ideas, Workspace, Desk Ideas, Bathroom, Kitchen, fall decor ideas

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webbygraphic001 · 5 years ago

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10 Spooky Designs to Get You Inspired This Halloween

Is the eerie spirit of Halloween haunting your designs? Find spooky inspiration in these ten ghoulish illustrations, videos, and photos.

From Polish artist Piotr Jabłoński’s off-kilter and unnerving fantasy paintings to Caley Hicks’ cutesy take on Halloween themes, you’re sure to find something here to get you in the spooky mood.

Looking for spine-chilling photos, graphics, and video clips to use in your projects? Don’t miss our ultimate curated Halloween collection.

1. Día de los Muertos by Shutterstock contributors

Taking place just after Halloween on November 2nd, 2019, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a Mexican holiday held to remember the deceased.

Viewed by Mexicans as a day of celebration rather than sadness, colorful costumes, parades, and sugar skulls are prominent features of the holiday. Families gather at the grave of the departed to leave offerings and say prayers, aiding their loved one in their spiritual journey.

Imagery surrounding Día de los Muertos is vibrant and theatrical, giving Day of the Dead-themed designs an otherworldly feel.

Explore the Shutterstock contributors’ Día de los Muertos video collection.

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Celebrando a nuestros amados (celebrating our loved ones) • #DíaDeLosMuertos #ItsShutterstock _ [Link in Bio] _ #sugarskulls #dayofthedead #tradicionesmexicanas #cultura

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2. Fantasy Dreamscapes by Tithi Luadthong

Inspired by horror, fantasy, and science fiction, illustrator Tithi Luadthong conjures up immersive and deeply compelling dreamscapes that tell intriguing stories.

The digital impressionist injects his images with a sense of dynamism and movement, transporting the viewer to a multitude of action-packed horror-themed scenarios, from a zombie apocalypse to a cave inhabited by a horned demon.

Read more about Tithi’s creative process in this interview with the Bangkok-based artist.

Explore the artist’s full collection of horror- and Halloween-themed content here.

Image by contributor Tithi Luadthong.

3. Halloween-Themed Curated Collection by Shutterstock

Whether you’re planning a Halloween party, creating a seasonal social media post, or designing a hair-raising webpage, the Shutterstock Halloween curated collection features everything you could need to realize your petrifying project.

From trick-or-treat portraits to ghostly collages, discover a wide range of images to suit every mood and every design this autumn.

4. Animal Halloween Portraits by Kimberly Petts

Horror isn’t for everyone when Halloween rolls around. The holiday is just as much an excuse for indulging in some fun and frivolity.

Shutterstock contributor Kimberley Petts loves to give her animal portraits a spooky yet light-hearted twist. With an air of old-world painting styles, her images manage to balance a somber setting with witty subjects. We especially love her Rembrandt-influenced portraits of her two German Shorthaired Pointers, Branston and Twiglet.

Discover more portraits of pets getting into the Halloween spirit.

Image by contributor Kimberly Petts.

5. Supernatural Concept Art by Piotr Jabłoński

Polish concept artist and digital painter Piotr Jabłoński has a cult following for his beautiful yet often disturbing images. His expertly executed digital illustrations see him turn his hand to depicting dark forests filled with mystical creatures, fantastical battle scenes, and freakish humanoid characters.

With a meticulous eye for detail, Jabłoński’s images explore themes of horror, the supernatural, and general weirdness. His ability to blur the lines between normality and fantasy in his subject matter makes his images not only unnervingly beautiful to look at, but unforgettable too.

Images by Piotr Jabłoński.

6. Cutesy Spooks by Caley Hicks

Florida-based illustrator Caley Hicks, aka There Will Be Cute, looks to vintage children’s illustrations to inform her adorable, retro-tinted drawings and patterns. Influenced by the golden age of Disney, Hicks applies her cute and perky drawing style to a range of seasonal subjects. With Halloween a favorite subject, Hicks depicts black cats, pumpkins, and headless horsemen in a midcentury-inspired palette of burnt orange, cream, and charcoal black.

With fans able to purchase cushions, phone covers, and even shower curtains from her online shop, this talented artist has honed a versatile style that works just as well in the home as it does on screen.

Images by Caley Hicks.

7. High Fashion Halloween by SunCity

Halloween is a great excuse for getting dressed up and transforming yourself into a vampire, witch, or black cat. For the more fashionably-inclined, it’s also the perfect occasion to showcase your fabulous makeup skills.

Shutterstock contributor SunCity takes an ultra-stylish approach to the Halloween theme, casting his subject in dramatic colored lighting and experimenting with skeletal makeup, shadows, and blurring. The final result is a high-fashion take on the spooky holiday. These photos would be perfect for giving a Halloween-themed magazine layout or poster a high-fashion twist.

Image by contributor SunCity.

8. Carved Vegetables by Tough Slate Design

Who knew a fig could be so frightening? Kiev-based creatives Tough Slate Design gave this Halloween promo campaign for Le Silpo Specialty Grocery store a quirky twist using that most humble of foods — fruit and vegetables.

Carving frightening faces into turnips, peppers, and olives, then photographing them against a seasonal orange background, created a foundation for their “Treat-or-treat!” campaign. The idea behind the posters? With Le Silpo offering a wide range of delicacies in-store, it seemed bland and unoriginal to use a traditional Halloween pumpkin.

Striking the perfect balance between cute and creepy, the final poster is a lesson in discovering an unusual and offbeat angle for a seasonal campaign.

Poster design by Tough Slate Design for Le Silpo Specialty Grocery store.

9. Wall Art by Syda Productions

Simple cut-out shapes made from paper or card can be transformed into stylish and striking works of art with the right concept in mind. Here, Shutterstock contributor Syda Productions turns his hand to collage-style displays of swarming bats. Set against a minimal backdrop, the result is perfect inspiration for style-conscious decorators looking to add a touch of seasonal spirit to a home or office setting.

Why not try creating and photographing your own Halloween collage creations? Decorate a lonely wall with a flock of black crows or flurry of spider webs to conjure a spooky spirit on a budget.

Image by contributor Syda Productions.

10. Contemporary Tarot Cards by Theo Boquet

Fortune-telling is deeply connected with the Halloween season. A display of tarot cards across a dining table at a Halloween party is not only a decorative flourish, but is a lovely way of bringing a touch of mystery and spirituality to your event.

These modern and minimal tarot cards by Lille-based graphic designer Theo Boquet offer an ultra-stylish alternative to traditional tarot cards. The collage style mixes black-and-white figures from popular culture and artistic masterpieces with pops of vivid blue and yellow ink.

Boquet’s design is a great example of applying contemporary style to traditional subject matter, to create a hip fusion of old and new.

‘Tarot de Marseille’ card designs by Theo Boquet.

Creating a Halloween-Themed Design?

Discover frightening photos, kooky graphics, and supernatural video clips to use in your projects with the Shutterstock curated Halloween collection.

This post originally appeared on the Shutterstock blog.

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of Shutterstock –]

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nightmare-afton-cosplay · 4 years ago

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Famous Pacific Palisades Compound With Case Study Home Is Listed for $20M

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In 2015, one of the most interesting properties to hit the market in Southern California was a Pacific Palisades compound owned by Sam Simon, the late co-creator of “The Simpsons” and a prominent philanthropist.

The two-home compound included Richard Neutra‘s Case Study House #20 from 1948, as well as a contemporary mansion built in 2010, and lush private gardens.

Priced at $18 million five years ago, the proceeds from the sale of the one-of-a-kind property were to be distributed to Simon’s favorite charities.

Lorna Jane Clarkson and Bill Clarkson, co-founders of the activewear brand Lorna Jane, wound up paying $12.5 million for the property in May 2016. Now, after putting their stylish stamp on it, they’ve put it back on the market for $20 million.

Overhead view

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Nighttime view

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Although they’ve only owned it for four years, the couple weren’t thinking upscale flip when they bought the property after a three-year SoCal search.

Lorna Jane hails from Brisbane and still spends plenty of time in Australia. They intended this luxe spread to be their California home base, and they say they’ve enjoyed every minute they’ve spent on the estate.

But their plans and priorities have shifted.

“We are spending less time in the U.S.A., so we’re looking for something a little easier to leave vacant for longer periods of time,” says Lorna Jane.

Besides the beautiful homes, she tells us that the foliage was a huge draw.

“One of the reasons we fell in love with the property was because of the well-established and beautifully serene gardens.”

Those green gardens act as a shield against prying eyes.

“The houses are completely hidden from the road and surrounded by lush foliage, ranging from California palms to Australian gum trees—another reason to love the house, because it felt like it had a little bit of Australia,” she says.

Lush gardens

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The Clarksons also loved the abundance of natural light, the classic architecture, and the idea of “having a separate space (the Bailey House) for a home office and guesthouse,” Lorna Jane says.

Neutra’s Bailey House was built as part of the Case Study House program, commissioned by Arts and Architecture magazine to challenge architects to create low-cost, experimental prototypes using modern materials.

Of the 36 model homes that were designed, only 24 were built. The structure standing on this property is one of the finest examples still standing.

When he owned the property, Simon hired the famous architectural design firm Marmol Radziner to update the Bailey House, while preserving its original glory.

The Bailey House

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Richard Neutra’s Bailey House

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So how did the Clarksons improve on an already premium property?

“When we first moved in, the main house had been empty for a year and had a very modern and masculine feel, with a lot of brushed steel, busy tiles, and terrazzo countertops,” Lorna Jane explains.

“While the look had worked for the previous owner, it wasn’t the kind of aesthetic that Bill and I were looking for.”

Lorna Jane told us the couple divided and conquered. Bill focused on the garden and outdoor spaces, while she took on the interior design.

“The Bailey House had been decorated in a traditional midcentury way … so together with the girls from Twofold LA, I gave that a more organic and modern makeover.”

Studio space in the Bailey House

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Bedroom in the Bailey guesthouse

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To tone down the main home’s masculine feel, she replaced the home’s entry tiles, remodeled the powder room, and updated the kitchen.

For the main living spaces, she says, “We shipped some of our favorite pieces from our Sunshine Coast beach house in Australia, and we used that to furnish the main living area, dining, and study. We then bought complementary pieces from local merchants.”

Living room space in the main house

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Renovated kitchen

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Office/studio

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Because the home is surrounded by mature foliage, Simon had foregone window treatments. The Clarksons softened the prominent arched windows with the addition of sheer drapery throughout.

“We chose iron hardware and delicate mother-of-pearl and wooden bead trimming, for some bohemian touches,” says Lorna Jane.

Great room

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The couple wanted the house to have a West Coast beachy vibe, she says, since they were looking for “a sanctuary where we could recharge and unwind.”

So their updates made use of natural materials like oiled white oak, wool, nubby linens, jute, and aged limestone. They kept the color palette understated.

“There is so much light and color from the surrounding gardens that floods into both homes. We decided to stick to neutrals and soft muted tones, to complement the views of the gardens,” Lorna Jane says.

Arched windows

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An added perk for the new buyers? All the sumptuous furnishings, with the exclusion of select personal pieces, are included in the asking price.

The property’s total living space is now 8,959 square feet, with seven bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms, and multiple rooms that could be used for workspace. The immaculate, manicured grounds include an infinity pool, koi pond, and a fire pit.

“The gardens are the perfect backdrop for yoga, meditation, and informal dining, without disrupting everyday life in the main residence,” says Lorna Jane.

There’s also ample room for another home to be built on the premises, if a buyer is feeling ambitious.

Jacqueline Chernov of the Jacqueline Chernov Team at Compass has the listing.

Grottolike spa

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Just a few minutes from the beach

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The post Famous Pacific Palisades Compound With Case Study Home Is Listed for $20M appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/pacific-palisades-compound-with-neutra-case-study-home-back-on-market/

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biofunmy · 6 years ago

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A Connecticut Retreat Designed to Attract Houseguests

When Manhattanites Matt Rappoport and Beno Varela began looking for a new home in Connecticut, they had mixed feelings about making the move.

Mr. Rappoport, an attorney, was ready to leave his job at a large law firm, and Dr. Varela, a gastroenterologist, had found a practice he planned to join in Hamden, Conn. But their friends and social lives were in New York, even though Mr. Rappoport had grown up in Fairfield, Conn.

“We were moving out of the city to a neighborhood where we had no social ties, other than Matt’s family,” said Dr. Varela, 35.

“There were nerves, as a gay couple, without kids, moving to the suburbs,” said Mr. Rappoport, 31, who is now the chief executive of a finance start-up.

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Matt Rappoport and Beno Varela bought and renovated a 19th-century house in Fairfield, Conn., with help from J.P. Franzen Associates Architects and RC Studio.CreditAlexandra Rowley

But they had an idea about how to calm those nerves: Find a charming house and transform it into a destination so compelling that it would lure their friends for regular visits.

“It was really important to us to create a beautiful space,” Dr. Varela said. “I wanted to feel like we could host and welcome people from the city.”

When they began hunting for a house in late 2016, they realized there was another issue: Most homes on lots with the leafy, country feeling they wanted were far too large — between 4,000 and 6,000 square feet.

“Coming from a 1,200-square-foot apartment, which was really big for the city, to a house that was 4,000 square feet seemed crazy to us,” Mr. Rappoport said.

Finally, they found a 2,500-square-foot, three-bedroom home in Fairfield, dating to the 1830s. It was far from perfect: The main entrance opened directly into the kitchen; it didn’t have the home office Mr. Rappoport needed; and an oddly placed powder room made the ground floor seem dark and chopped up. But they bought it for $937,500 in March 2017 with the intention of making some changes.

The house had originally been built a short distance away, serving as a general store in the 19th century. It was moved to its present location and converted into a home in 1929. A renovation in 2011 produced the kitchen that Mr. Rappoport and Dr. Varela liked and planned to keep.

To overhaul the rest, they turned to Jack Franzen, of J.P. Franzen Associates Architects, and Rena Cherny, an interior designer who owns RC Studio, who developed plans to reconfigure the ground floor by demolishing the powder room — which sat at one end of the living room, blocking light from two windows — and create a single, bright living-and-dining area. Then they used the footprint of the old formal dining room to create a new powder room and home office.

The objective was “to clean it up, but to keep the charm of it, while making better use of the spaces,” Mr. Franzen said.

“We wanted it to be cozy for entertaining, but definitely modern and fresh, while maintaining all the elements of an old home: the original windows, doors, hardware and shutters,” Ms. Cherny said. “The vibe of a country home, but with fresh furnishings.”

Achieving that took about a year and $250,000, as Ms. Cherny delicately negotiated the purchase of furniture and accessories that suited Mr. Rappoport’s preference for midcentury-modern design and Dr. Varela’s desire for softness and a touch of the traditional.

“Part of what we needed her for was to mediate between us,” Mr. Rappoport said. “To understand both of us, and find things that worked.”

Added Dr. Varela, “She was really our therapist for that entire year.”

Ms. Cherny furnished the living room with a carefully chosen mix of clean-lined, comfortable furniture, including a cushy Montauk sectional sofa, a corduroy wool Tibetano rug and a large custom-upholstered ottoman.

The dining area has harder, more angular elements, including steel-and-wood Standard chairs from Vitra, an Agnes chandelier from Roll & Hill and a slender concrete dining table from ABC Carpet & Home, as well as a moody Jenny Boot photograph that the couple bought at the New York Affordable Art Fair.

Beyond a Dutch door, Ms. Cherny also designed a patio with a lounging area around a firepit, and a separate outdoor dining area with a long table that can seat eight, to take advantage of the bucolic, one-acre lot.

This spring, Mr. Rappoport and Dr. Varela are rerouting the driveway, to bring guests to the proper front door of the house rather than the kitchen door. But since finishing the majority of the renovation last summer, they have been pleased to discover that their house is already having the desired effect on friends.

“They enjoy it,” Dr. Varela said. “People actually do want to get out of the city more than I thought they would.”

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