Curiosity Cabinet

Art is probably the most broad adjective I can think of. It’s a question that plagues university classrooms everywhere: what is art? How art is defined excludes a lot of work that could be considered art but also includes a lot of work that could be considered “not art.” I’ve got a thing for art, the arts, not really for Art Garfunkel but that is a different gig.

• Art Note #1

Art actually has a birthday. Apparently in 1963 Robert Filliou decided that a million years ago (1,000,049 this past year) someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water and art was born. Every January 17 groups of art lovers who have heard of art’s birthday celebrate with games, sometimes fortune telling, frequently free art lessons, and cake. Quickdraw Animation and EMMEDIA usually host something for art’s birthday, just so you know. Click here to see the website for art’s birthday.

This is Robert Filliou celebrating art’s birthday

Raining Cats and Dogs 1964-1969

7 Childlike Uses of Warlike Material1971

• Art Note #2

This handy website called the Story of Art holds many pieces of work from different modern art movements. It’s pretty handy when you need a quick idea of what a movement was about, who contributed, and some samples of art from the movement. 

Here is a sample of a piece from the Futurism movement:

Dynamism of a Dog on  Leash (1912) by Giacomo Balla

Alas I have already posted a full-length ramble on Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield websites but I have found one more.

There is another whole website devoted to Katherine Mansfield I failed to mention. It has pictures of all the places she lived (from New Zealand to everywhere she lived in England), information on her new biography, links to other Katherine Mansfield websites, as well as a large portion of her works online (alongside the periodicals they were first published in). This is more of a a Katherine Mansfield groupie website (so to speak) so if you’re not 100% keen, it won’t be your gig.

The National Archives are, indeed, fantastic but searching through to find a golden nugget of information can be a bit tedious if you’re casually perusing. Introducing the National Archives blog! It’s a quick daily update on something neat someone found in the Archives and wants to share. Posts range from management of information via music to biodiversity to academic articles. Click here to see the National Archives blog. Bonus points to the Archives for the fantastic design of their blog.

Muriel Rekeyser was born to a Jewish family in New York, New York in 1913 and became a poet and avid social activist. Her earlier work demonstrates intricate rhyme scheme and regular meter, qualities that indicate her influence by W.H. Auden on her earlier works. She is best known for her poetic works on equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism, and her 1968 poetic manifesto “No more masks! No more mythologies!” She was very much involved in the anti-war and feminist movements of the 1960s and 70s, along with rights for the disadvantaged. Her interests also included science and this can be seen in some of her poetic works. She died in 1980 of a stroke with diabetes as a contributing factor. Click here for most poems by Muriel Rekeyser.

Song for Dead Children

On a gander through the internet I came upon some societies for authors I am quite fond of, notably Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf.

The Katherina Mansfield Society holds a conference every year on her birthday as well as a another conference held typically in in the spring/summer part of the year. The location of the latter conference changes yearly and her birthday conference is typically held in London.

                          

Click here to visit the website devoted to her birthplace in Te Puakitanga, New Zealand.

Click here (or on the logo beside her portrait above) to visit the Katherine Mansfield Society’s webpage.

And now Virginia Woolf.

On a short perusal of Virginia Woolf societies I found three that were of interest to me: The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, Blogging Woolf, and La société d’études Woolfiennes (literally the society of female study of Woolf). Apparently Virginia Woolf is quite the popular writer.

Click here or on the picture above to go to the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain. This society has been around since 1998 and publishes the Virginia Woolf Bulletin three times yearly. Their focus is on Virginia Woolf’s work and life and desire to bring together Woolf lovers and new information on Virginia Woolf’s life. Some benefits of being a member include invitation to their AGM in April, access to their reading club, birthday lecture, and study holidays.

Click here or on the picture of A Room of One’s Own above to go to the La société d’études Woolfiennes. La société welcomes scholars of any ranking (PhD, MA, students, profs, teachers, etc.) to join them in advancing knowledge on Virginia Woolf but more broadly, knowledge on Modernism and the Bloomsbury Group. They host an international conference every two years and have been around since 1996.

Click here or on the Mrs. Dalloway cover above to go to the Blogging Woolf website. Blogging Woolf aims to compile information on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. This is the more casual of the Woolf websites, with a section for “Woolf Sightings” telling members where Virginia Woolf’s work has been sighted in plays, reading clubs, the news etc. Their focus is really on the contemporary version of Virginia Woolf although they do host an annual international conference on Virginia Woolf.