Recent Acquisitions to the Resource Center @ Lincoln Center Institute

More than 10,000 and growing! Click here to see a list of resources added to our collection during November.

November Highlight
Slash: Paper Under the Knife
Museum of Arts and Design: New York

Slash: Paper Under the Knife is a new publication by the Museum of Art and Design (MAD), which explores paper as it is transformed and manipulated—cut, sliced, carved, and shredded—into contemporary works of art. Slash is the third exhibition and accompanying catalog in MAD’s series examining “traditional, unusual, and overlooked materials and techniques through the lens of contemporary art” (6). Some of my personal favorites from the catalog are Su Blackwell’s fantastical pop-up books, the life-size photosculptures by Oliver Herring, Carlos Amorales’s looming black butterflies, and Béatrice Coron’s stenciled cityscapes. Slash: Paper Under the Knife is on view at MAD’s new space at 2 Columbus Circle until April 4, 2010.

Click here to purchase this book.

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Authorized to borrow resources from LCI’s Resource Center? Click here to send an e-mail request (please include your name, address, relationship to the Institute, and title of the resource you would like to borrow).

Consciousness Outside and In: From Perception to Imagination and Beyond

Sartre, Jean-Paul
The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination
New York: Routledge, 2004

Try this. Observe an object and gather in as much detail as you can, mentally noting what you are doing as you observe. One thing you will have done is move your eyes in their sockets to gather details. Now imagine in your mind’s eye a pendulum. Return to your object and choose something specific to observe while simultaneously imagining the pendulum. You can’t really see the object in reality and the pendulum in your imagination simultaneously. I tried this experiment many times and not once could I fully picture the pendulum moving without moving my eyes from the object I was observing. This series of acts is compiled from experiments cited in The Imaginary in part to illustrate the kinesthetic nature of, and the connection of movement to, observation and imagination.

The “Too Cool for School” Syndrome and Story Hour

De Vos, Gail
Storytelling for Young Adults: A Guide to Tales for Teens
Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2003

It is my deep belief that every tree on this earth has a story to tell. To my mind, every young person has, as well. If honest communication is achieved then growth and imagination flourish. In a time where hands under the desk can mean either that a pencil is being reached for or that a text message is being sent, read, returned and/or forwarded, the question becomes, how might we engage young people through the ancient art of story? It is for this reason that Gail de Vos’s book Storytelling for Young Adults: A Guide to Tales for Teens is such a great resource for helping educators, parents, librarians, and artists connect with the most complicated beasts on the planet, “young adults.” She brings years of experience to the table, enlivening the idea of oral storytelling, arguing for its value to the learning process—and not just for little kids, but also for young adults.

Humans Are a Musical Species

Sacks, Oliver
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain
New York: Random House Inc. 2007

Do you find it peculiar to see an entire species spend much of their time listening to, playing with, or experiencing those “meaningless tonal patterns” (ix) which we call music? Have you ever wondered why music can have such a profound and powerful impact on practically all of us at some point in our lives?

Dr. Oliver Sacks (The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Awakenings), a chronicler of modern medicine who has seen widespread critical and commercial success, takes on the mysteries and potential healing power of music in his 2008 book, Musicophillia. By presenting a series of medical case studies and reviewing his own personal observations of patients, musicians, and everyday people, Sacks carefully examines the extraordinary effects of music on the human brain and its ability to transform lives. The goal of these observations is to understand, embrace, and ultimately celebrate myriad aspects of the human body’s experience of music.

Broadening the Study of Creativity

Feldman, David Henry, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Howard Gardner
Changing the World: A Framework for the Study of Creativity
Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994

The bulk of previous research in creativity takes an individualistic approach, examining the life, work, habits, and thought processes, if possible, of people that society has deemed particularly creative in an area or field. While this provides insight about that particular person, which is interesting and intriguing, what this method fails to do is examine the person at the moment and location of the creative act. Many people are recognized for their creativity after the results of their efforts have manifested themselves, which is at times post-mortem or at least long past the point of creation. In Changing the World, David Henry Feldman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Howard Gardner propose a framework that broadens the scope of focus of creativity research, in the process elaborating an active model of change.

Imaginative Feast

Bauby, Jean-Dominique
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
New York: Vintage, 1997

I don’t switch off my aesthetic brain at 7:05 p.m. when I leave the computer and settle on the sofa to watch the Yankees throw out the first pitch. I notice the conceptual choices behind each pitch, the players’ highly evolved gesture language, the graceful arc of the ball in flight. Aesthetics, as I understand them through LCI’s Capacities for Imaginative Learning, enhances my love of the game, my appreciation of the body in motion, my articulation of why these things matter so deeply to me. I am daily fueled and invigorated by these concepts.

As a part of my purely-for-pleasure summer reading, I read the memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Dominique Bauby. After suffering a massive stroke, Bauby, editor-in-chief of French Elle and father of two young children, found himself completely paralyzed and speechless—it is called “locked-in syndrome.” Taking in his story with my aesthetic sensibility in full operational mode, I was struck by the way inquiry into art through the ongoing life of the imagination literally sustained him through the cruelest of personal and physical trials.

Holding Court in the Telling of Tales

Lipman, Doug
Improving Your Storytelling: Beyond the Basics for All Who Tell Stories in Work or Play
Atlanta: August House, 1999

I wonder about the first story told on earth. Did it convey a dire need, an imminent danger, or was it intended to make another tribesman laugh? One of the most skilled storytellers I know is my Uncle Raymond. He conveys family history in a way that keeps all the nieces and nephews on edges of their seats. I would like to believe that every family has an elder who holds court at family gatherings. As I read Doug Lipman’s Improving Your Storytelling: Beyond the Basics for All Who Tell Stories in Work or Play, I found myself reflecting on the best experiences I have had with solo artists, comedians, puppeteers, politicians, class clowns, mimes, dancers, collage artists, and relatives raising a glass to family misadventures at gatherings and celebrations. Storytelling is an ancient art that will never be lost. But Lipman, who has been telling stories for over 25 years, focuses in on various formulas and techniques that create a good story.

The Workings of the Imagination: Full of Contradictions

Egan, Kieran, Maureen Stout, and Keiichi Takaya, eds.
Teaching and Learning Outside the Box: Inspiring Imagination Across the Curriculum
New York: Teachers College Press, 2007

Much to the vexation of my friends and family, I love to play devil’s advocate, arguing an opposing side just for the sake of considering it and as a way to expand the dialogue around a topic. (One downside of this is that it can convey false information about my beliefs to those who don’t understand my compulsion.) In Teaching and Learning Outside the Box, a team of editors satisfyingly lays out multiple sides of the conversation on imagination and education from nine voices, while contradicting some of my previous reading and thoughts. For me, it provided a thought provoking and supremely rewarding journey.

LCI’s Professional Development Articles Collection

Photo by Jane Hoffer

Are you curious about how LCI’s practice is related to the ideas of Maxine Greene, John Dewey, Elliot Eisner, and others? Check out the 22 articles that make up the Professional Development Articles Collection of LCI’s Electronic Library.

The PDA Collection is a collection of articles that are key to the Institute’s philosophy. They are available to LCI active participants, when logged in, at www.lcinsitute.org > Resource Center Online > LCI’s Electronic Library > Professional Development Articles Collection. These articles may be downloaded by LCI active participants for personal reference, or photocopied for use in LCI courses and workshops.

The articles included in the PDA Collection should be available to individuals who are not active LCI participants through the services of local public or academic libraries. You can print out a list of these articles.

Trans-Atlantic Music

Wynn, Neil A., ed.
Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe
Mississippi: The University Press, 2007

A unique collection of essays, Cross the Water Blues is a volume of conference proceedings that examine the influence of African American music on European audiences from the late 19th century to the present. Although the contributors range vastly across disciplines, together they offer interpretations of this music from an historical, analytical, social, and philosophical perspective. While the essays focus primarily on the blues, other genres, such as jazz, orchestral music, and the British blues-rock movement are also explored. This book provides an impressive, unique, and at times fascinating examination of cross-cultural relationships in music authored by scholars who are both knowledgeable and engaging.