Bwog’s resident Portraiture Enthusiast Mahima Chablani returns with a second edition of Dead White Guys. This time, she’s here to provide the captions for the paintings surrounding the main stairs in Butler—no one is physically tall enough to come close to reading them. Next time you walk in, stop moaning about bed bugs and Redbull and give your eyes some visual stimuli.

Nicholas Murray Butler (surprise!) (1862-1947) by Augustus Vincent Tack in 1944: Butler served as twelfth president of Columbia from 1902-1945 (yes, that’s 43 years!). On the scale of Columbia overachiever-ness, Butler has outdone us all: from the years 1882 to 1887, Butler earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D.; joined the Philosophy department; and co-founded the New York College for the Training of Teachers (now Teachers College). And his snazzy abilities didn’t just stop there. In the years 1920 and 1928, Butler ran for office with the campaign slogan “Pick Nick for a Picnic in November.” Many students regarded Butler as arrogant and controversial, like the ballsy Alan Ginsberg, who wrote “Butler has No Balls” on the window of his dorm in Hartley.

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The term “Old Master” encompasses a lot more tacky artwork than you would have guessed. (NY1)

Remember that time over the summer when Republicans took control of the state Senate? Yeah, well, it might happen again. (LI Press)

Another attorney general wants to run for governor, hopefully with better results. (Daily News)

Speaking of infidelity, cheating on your spouse is the newest way to get your name in lights on Broadway. (NY Post)

This must be the reason you don’t see more homeless decked out in hipster tchotchkies. (Gothamist)

During summer, students may be slaving away at an unpaid resume bullet point internship, scrambling to find something after said internship failed to materialize, or lounging around on the couch (lucky…). Professors and fortunate grad students, though, are still releasing their reports in hopes of gaining a tiny bit of recognition from a conference, providing a useful link for future users of JSTOR, or building their resume to get a better job/their precious tenure. Mostly the last one. And while the newswires are mostly dead in the middle of July, most of Columbia’s headlines are coming from these projects.

• Sleeping light? According to Medical Center researchers, that makes you more likely to be fat.
• Researchers find that a coronary calcium scan might cause cancer in itself.
• Thought art history majors would be left out? Of course not:  a sociology doctoral student claims French modernists who bloomed later were also productive for longer.
• There’s no conclusion yet, but Columbia is partnering with the University of Michigan and Harvard (among others) to study suicide and mental health in the military.
• This last study is more than a month old, but there’s no time like the present for the obvious: abstinence-only education will stop contraceptives, but kids’ll keep on having sex.
  

Now go outside and feel enlightened!

-Photo courtesy of CityRoom

Every ArtHum student knows that St. John the Divine is a goldmine for statues, painting, and generally beautiful stuff. But even if you’re not an old hand at looking at old pretty things, it’s certainly worth taking a walk down the street to see St. John’s new additions to the displayed collection.

The two newcomers, both 16 ft. long 17th century tapestries, now hang above eye level in the North and South transepts. They are both part of the Barberini collection, named for the cardinal who commissioned them as a gift for Pope Urban VIII.

The tapestries, titled “Agony in the Garden” and “The Crucifixion” are meant to convey a theme of struggle, relating to both the season of Lent, which ends in a few weeks, and the fire of 2001 that left the church and its art under the wraps of renovation for seven years.

But even if you don’t feel the pain and penitence welling up, the fine detail and expertly restored colors of the tapestries, particularly in “The Crucifixion” will strike you immediately. And for such a Met-like experience, you won’t even have to use a MetroCard ride.

Here are some more activities to keep Mom and Dad busy because Bwog loves you and your parents and because Bwog has secret tour guide aspirations….

Wallach Art Gallery

Columbia has its own mini-museum in Schermerhorn! Who knew? The Wallach Gallery’s classy digs will undoubtedly impress your parents. Maybe you’ll even impress them with your Art Hum skills. Except the gallery is currently exhibiting Delight in Design: Indian Silver for the Raj, which doesn’t fall into the masterpieces of Western Art category. But it’s free and that’s always a crowd pleaser.

 

Inwood Park 

If you’re going to the Baker Field for the football game, be sure to pass through Inwood Park on your way back.  Located just beyond the stadium, Inwood Park is a lovely copse-filled plot of land on the very tip of Manhattan island.  The northern edge of the park offers views of both the Hudson and Harlem Rivers and makes a great place for a picnic.  For additional fun, try to spot the Columbia boathouse and the big ‘C’ rock.

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Leonard and Louise Riggo has given $5 million to the Department of Art History and Archaeology. $3 million will establish two professors in the department, one in African Art, and the other of the department’s choice. The rest is divided evenly between undergrads and grads for internships, thesis research, traveling expenses, and etc.

Leonard is no John Kluge–and $5 million is no $400–but at least he likes books. 

In which an anonymous Bwog contributor tells us what else happened the evening of October 4th.

As protestors marched around Lerner Hall last Wednesday evening, a very different showdown was taking shape across campus in Schermerhorn Hall.  The Art History Underground, Columbia’s nascent (and, judging by their president’s introduction, quite enthusiastic) art history club had invited four of the department’s biggest guns to square off over the question “What Is Art History?” in a roundtable discussion moderated by Gothic architecture professor Stephen Murray.   

Murray, a specialist in the use of digital media in art historical research (he’s responsible for the dramatic – some students sporting a hangover have claimed vomit-inducing – 360º views of Amiens Cathedral in Art Humanities, beseeched the audience to turn the evening’s festivities into electronic communication, “blogging, if you will.”  Stirred by his exhortations, Bwog, ever the art history fan, could not resist the will to share what transpired over the next ninety minutes.  

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Free biscuits and beans on Schermerhorn plaza for “Friends of the Art History Department.” Bwog is a friend of Art History. Are you?

While the curators of the hallowed Metropolitan Museum of Art felt pretty confident when they dropped $45 million on a Renaissance Masterpiece, CU art history professor James Beck just called them suckers: he’s convinced that this painting’s a fake.

Read the full story in the Times.