Samba Party at NuMu, Exhibits Close at NPL

The Newark Museum offers its second "After Hours" event, tomorrow evening from 5pm to midnite ($10; members free). In case you're not on the Museum's mailing list, this is the notice they sent out about "A Nite in Rio" (not to be confused with That Nite in Rio), which contained the graffic below.

The man dancing in the inset foto looks a lot like Newark(-area?) poet Malcolm King. Below the graffic in the emailed NuMu newsletter was this note:

ENTER TO WIN!: a vacation package to Rio courtesy
of Continental Airlines and Francine's Travel

click here for details

There were salsa dance lessons at one of the events during the Museum's 100th anniversary marathon. Many more women than men were taking those lessons. I don't think it's because the men already knew.

I've been to Rio, in about 1984 on a cheapo charter. Its crime rate then was astronomical. In six days of traveling in tourist areas I witnessed a purse-snatching and an armed robbery of a car stuck in rush hour traffic just ahead of our tourbus between two tunnels on a highway between Ipanema and Downtown. Tho I would hope things have gotten better in the quarter century since then, I'm not confident that is the case. Rio is beautiful, tho, and if you win the trip, be sure to go to the top of Corcovado, site of the magnificent 100-foot-tall concrete statue Christ the Redeemer. The views of Rio from the base of the statue are also wonderful.
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You can find Portuguese language instruction CD's at the Newark Public Library. The Van Buren Branch, in the Ironbound, has a large collection of Portuguese materials, but language instructional materials are also available at the Main Library (which we tend to call the Main Branch, which is not necessarily an oxymoron). By the way, Rio is in the North Brazilian/Rio dialect area, in which the "de" of Rio de Janeiro is pronounced like "gee" in English. So don't learn Portugal/Lisbon (nor even South Brazilian/São Paulo) Portuguese to make yourself maximally understood in Rio.

I'll have to check whether the burned-out bulb in this chandelier over Engelhard Court has been replaced. They must have a very tall ladder. Note that another chandelier is reflected in the skylite.

The Library has a lot going on this Saturday, March 20th. For kids, there's a juggling exhibition at 2pm in Centennial Hall that kids might like. It's part of the Library's "Saturday Programs for Kids and Families".

Centennial Hall during opening reception for exhibition about Peru last year.

For adults, the exhibition "Fiat Justitia, Let Justice Be Done: The History, Struggles, and Civil Rights Accomplishments of African American Lawyers and Judges" closes this Saturday too.

This year's Black History Celebration exhibition, Fiat Justitia: Let Justice Be Done, focusing on black legal history, will be on view from January 27 through March 20, 2010. The experience of early African American lawyers who were subjected to racism as they attempted to capture and deliver elusive justice for African Americans will be explored, along with the evolution of black lawyers and judges in the professional work place. The exhibition also acknowledges and celebrates little-known legal practitioners who are pioneers in the field and principal players in major legal cases that changed the landscape of America—several of whom are from the greater Newark community.

That exhibition is in the second floor gallery around the magnificent, stained-glass-roofed atrium of the Library's Renaissance palazzo HQ.
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In the third floor gallery around the atrium, another show mainly for adults, "Photographic Books and Prints from the Special Collections", also closes this Saturday:

Long before many other museums and art institutions in the United States, the Newark Public Library accepted and promoted photography as a fine art form rather than merely a mechanical means of documentation and reproduction. Since 1911, when the Library hosted Modern Pictorial Photography, ... the Newark Public Library has actively exhibited and acquired photographic books, journals, and original photographs.

The Library's collection of photographic literature spans from the late nineteenth century to the present day, and includes some of the most iconographic and seminal "photo-books" of our time.

Exhibitions on the floors around the atrium occupy walls and, as here, glass display cases.

Among the highlights of the Library's collections on view in the exhibition are select issues of Camera Work (a photography journal published and directed by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 through 1917 that features original photogravure prints by Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, among others); Man Ray: Photographs 1920-1934, Paris ...; and original photographs and photo-books by Diane Arbus, Margaret Bourke-White, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Roy DeCarava, Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Edwin Hale Lincoln, Gordon Parks, Man Ray, Sebastião Salgado, and Weegee, among others.

Looks like I should get my ... self in gear to get to the Library before these exhibitions close. Maybe I should try to get out early tomorrow, find a place to park not too far from the Library, poke my head in to see those exhibitions, and then head to the Museum for the samba party. Before I go, I must remember to print out a free-drink coupon from GlocallyNewark.com. There is also a printable discount coupon for students ($6 rather than $10) at the same GlocallyNewark page.

This foto shows a conga line returning to Engelhard Court after snaking around the corridor outside it, during the first "After Hours" dance party last October.