This week: A Renaissance collection, a Riverdale exhibition & more.

Nonfiction:


Pietro Bembo and the Intellectual Pleasures of a Renaissance Writer and Art Collector, by Susan Nalezyty (Yale University Press): Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), Italian Renaissance scholar and one of the premier theorists on Italian prose and verse, was deeply involved throughout his life in the artistic, literary, and intellectual circles of the cities in which he lived (among them Venice, Urbino, Padua, and Rome). His intellectual curiosity prompted an interest in collecting that was abetted by his social connections as well as his considerable inherited wealth. His collection of art and artifacts from antiquity to his day quickly became famous around Italy, but was soon dispersed after his death by his son (and against his own wishes, as expressed in his will). From Yale University Press this month comes a critical history by Susan Nalezyty on the creation and legacy of Bembo’s collection: a fascinating as well as visually alluring publication.—AS

Art:

Amy Cheng, Into the Breach, 2014, Oil on canvas, courtesy of the artist

Flora Fantastica! at Wave Hill, the Bronx, through August 27: If the flora isn’t reason enough to visit Wave Hill, the transporting public garden on a historic estate in the Riverdale neighborhood of The Bronx, then the “fantastica” surely is. That’s the title of the garden’s newest art exhibition in its Glyndor Gallery. Plant-based, but in unexpected ways, Wave Hill’s arts programming can be as eye-opening as its views of The Palisades. For this latest show, Nancy Blum, Amy Cheng, Elisabeth Condon, and Jill Parisi draw on the patterns of nature for an exhibition that celebrates summer in full bloom.—JP

Music:

Andrè Schuen. Photo: bso.org

Schubert’s Summer Journey concert series, Tanglewood Music Festival, July 20: If you can’t wait for the start of New York’s summer season, drive north to Tanglewood, one of America’s great summer festivals. The summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the festival campus is beautifully situated in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts and draws top performers from around the world for concerts and recitals. This Thursday will feature the second installment in a summer-long series entitled “Schubert’s Summer Journey,” a nod to his immortal cycle Winterreise. Thomas Adès, best known as a composer but no less accomplished as a pianist, accompanies Andrè Schuen in a selection of lieder and joins the Emerson String Quartet for the “Trout” Quintet.ECS

Architecture:

The campus of Columbia University. Photo: cs.columbia.edu

Architectural Walking Tour of Columbia University, 92nd Street Y, July 22: When Seth Low, the eleventh President of Columbia University (1890–1901), led that institution’s move from Midtown to Morningside Heights, he advocated for a university campus that emphasized classicist civic ideals architecturally linked to its urban environment. In choosing McKim, Mead & White, America’s premier Beaux-Arts architectural firm, to design Columbia’s Morningside campus, Low rejected the standard vision of cloister and seclusion for college campuses marked by the Gothic Revival aesthetic. Since then, the university has expanded, adding numerous, more contemporary buildings of varying success. This Saturday, the 92nd Street Y is holding an architectural walking tour of Columbia that will chart the university’s architectural history from its origins in the center of Morningside Heights to its decidedly more industrial expansion campus in progress north of one hundred twenty-fifth street in Manhattanville.—AS

From the archive: “Everybody draws Mohammed” On cartooning for freedom of speech. Notes & Comments.

From the current issue: “Matisse in Montclair & Boston” by Karen Wilkin.

Broadcast: Bruce Cole: The museum as “town hall.”

Sign up to receive “Critic’s Notebook” in your inbox every week—it only takes a few seconds and it’s completely free! 

Harlem Renaissance

A Message from the Editors

Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.