Sunday Review: Really? You’re Not in a Book Club?

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By James Atlas

NEW YORK---“WHAT’S your book group reading?” By some estimates, five million Americans gather every few weeks in someone’s living room or in a bar or bookstore or local library to discuss the finer points of “Middlemarch” or “The Brothers Karamazov.” I used to think that the popularity of this institution was a quirk of life in New York, like restaurants where you can get a reservation only by calling a month in advance or parties where every single person you meet is smarter than you are. But the book-club boom is nationwide. But the most prevalent way of conducting a book club is still in someone’s living room. It may be social, but it’s also serious; members devote long hours over many weeks to getting to the last page. For most of them, it’s all about the book. [link]

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Katie Longmyer Connects Young Artists to Corporate Types

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Jennifer Miller

NEW YORK---On a chilly night not long ago, Katie Longmyer sat behind the D.J. in the Living Room Bar at the W New York Downtown hotel and surveyed her creation: fashion-industry denizens, purveyors of high art and Lower East Side hipsters, all dancing with gleeful abandon. That’s tricky. She calls herself a “business artist,” a title she made up. As she explains it, companies are eager to harness the “authenticity” of young artists, but they lack access to those subcultures. Artists, meanwhile, want a platform for their work, but they don’t want to be co-opted or accused of selling out. [link]

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Gertrude Stein’s Legacy Lives On in Pop-Up Art Salons

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Marisa Meltzer

NEW YORK---On a Saturday afternoon in Chelsea, a group of a few dozen people milled around the International Print Center New York, drinking Champagne and making small talk about the show New Prints 2014/Winter. But this wasn’t a gallery opening, nor was it an artist’s talk. Rather it was a salon by Gertrude, a new company organizing events to discuss art. The company is named for the writer and art collector Gertrude Stein, who was well known for the gatherings of artists and writers she organized in her apartment on the Left Bank of Paris. [link]

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Gertrude Stein’s Legacy Lives On in Pop-Up Art Salons

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Marisa Meltzer

NEW YORK---On a Saturday afternoon in Chelsea, a group of a few dozen people milled around the International Print Center New York, drinking Champagne and making small talk about the show New Prints 2014/Winter. But this wasn’t a gallery opening, nor was it an artist’s talk. Rather it was a salon by Gertrude, a new company organizing events to discuss art. “If you do a high-level description of what the art world is, you have the commercial side of the art world, which is about selling art work, and then you have institutions on the other end of the spectrum, with education as the main goal,” said Kenneth Schlenker, 26, the founder of Gertrude. “What we want to offer is something in the middle that’s an educational experience and a social one,” said Mr. Schlenker.  [link]

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