Cast Out of Eden
John Muir is widely and rightly lauded as the nature mystic who added wilderness to the United States’ vision of itself, largely through the system of national parks and wild areas his writings and public advocacy helped create. That vision, however, came at a cost: the conquest and dispossession of the tribal peoples who had […]
Also On View: Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles
Also On View: Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles celebrates LA’s most fascinating and under-appreciated collections, from the deeply culturally significant–such as the Garifuna Museum—to the highly specific and unusual, like the City of Los Angeles’s Streetlight Museum. There are more than 750 museums in the greater Los Angeles area, many of which […]
Representation, Reason and Rewilding in the State of Fire
On January 6th, best-selling author of The California Field Atlas, Obi Kaufmann, returns to the San Francisco Book Club to present his latest in the Field Atlas series, The State of Fire: Why California Burns. In his artful yet analytical work, Obi Kaufmann asks: How do we live with fire? What makes fire essential to […]
Mothers and Fathers of the Digital Archive: The Endangered Archives Programme in Iquitos, Peru
Across North American and European imaginaries, the Amazon River Basin has figured as both a region rich in “natural resources” ready for the taking, and, consequently, a geography of lands and peoples in need of saving. Both Amazonian exploration and salvation have been characterized by a hyper-masculine discourse of evangelists, explorers, and entrepreneurs seeking both […]
The Orange and the Dream of California
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program The Blinn House | 160 N Oakland Avenue | Pasadena, California 91101 The Orange and the Dream of California takes a lively, literary, and extraordinarily visual look at the symbiotic and highly symbolic relationship between the Golden State and its “golden apple.” Untold thousands of […]
The Newly Discovered Notebook of Isaac Newton
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program The Cambridge University Library recently purchased a previously unknown notebook kept by Isaac Newton’s chamber-fellow, John Wickins, in the years around 1680. It is possible to identify the contents of the notebook as being previously unknown compositions and correspondence of Isaac Newton, which shed light […]
Print Your Own Broadside Affair
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program Letterpress print your own broadside on the Book Club’s Colombian hand press with Li Jiang, Lemoncheese Press. A limited number of broadsides will be printed. Registration required.
The Life, Motto, and Library of William Walker (1570-1642), Vicar of Chiswick
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program Approximately twenty-five printed books and ten manuscripts have been located from before 1640 which bear the florid inscription: “Will and Walke aright. Will: Walker,” usually appearing on the title-page of a printed book, or on the first or last leaf of a manuscript. This talk […]
Bibliophiles Beware: The Situationist International and the Art & Politics of Cultural Hijacking
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Exhibition Opening and Remarks Active between 1957 and 1972, The Situationist International (S.I.) was a revolutionary alliance of artists, intellectuals, architects and political theorists that is hailed as the “last avant-garde” of the 20th century. One of the organization’s core concepts is that of détournement, which […]
Empress San Francisco: The Pacific Rim, The Great West, and California at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program When the more than 18 million visitors poured into the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco in 1915, they encountered a vision of the world born out of San Francisco’s particular local political and social climate. By seeking to please various constituent groups ranging […]