Podcast appearances and mentions of michael kimmelman

As our centennial series continues, Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times and the author of The Intimate City: Walking New York (Penguin Press, 2022), talks about the major changes to the NYC skyline across the past century.

On Sunday, after a fire that many feared would destroy it, and a swift renovation that defied all predictions, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame reopened to the public.Michael Kimmelman, the chief architecture critic at The Times, tells the story of the miracle on the Seine.Guest: Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic of The New York Times and the founder and editor-at-large of Headway.Background reading: Critic's Notebook: Notre-Dame's astonishing rebirth from the ashes.The rebuilding took about 250 companies, 2,000 workers, about $900 million, a tight deadline and a lot of national pride.See photos from the reopening.For more information on today's episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic for the New York Times. He writes on design, housing and homelessness, neighborhood development, cities, the environment,  and civil society. Then it's a delightful visit with returning musical guest Monika Ryan.

This week David and Marina of FAME Architecture & Design are joined by architecture critic of The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman, to discuss his background; the role of a critic; New York City; the evolution of the profession; the housing crisis; social housing; the value of architecture; and more! Check out Michael's latest book: The Intimate City: Walking New York This episode is supported by Monograph • Enscape • Autodesk • Programa • Graphisoft SUBSCRIBE  • Apple Podcasts  • YouTube  • Spotify CONNECT  • Website: www.secondstudiopod.com • Office  • Instagram • Facebook  • Call or text questions to 213-222-6950 SUPPORT Leave a review  EPISODE CATEGORIES  •  Interviews: Interviews with industry leaders.  •  Project Companion: Informative talks for clients.    •  Fellow Designer: Tips for designers.  •  After Hours: Casual conversations about everyday life. •  Design Reviews: Reviews of creative projects and buildings.

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic, founder of New York Times initiative Headway, which is focused on big global challenges and paths to progress, and the author of The Intimate City: Walking New York (Penguin Press, 2022), talks about the work Hoboken has done since the flooding during Sandy to handle storm surges and heavy downpours.

Three of our favorite segments from the week, in case you missed them. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issues a warning about the lack of data on social media's effects on developing brains (First) | Ken Burns and Michael Kimmelman celebrate the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, which opened to the public 140 years ago (Starts at 21:45) | Stephen Vladeck, author of The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic (Basic Books, 2023) (Starts at 38:15) If you don't subscribe to the Brian Lehrer Show on iTunes, you can do that here.

The 95th episode of Mathematica's On the Evidence podcast features author Tina Rosenberg discussing the role of data and other evidence in supporting solutions journalism. In 2013, Rosenberg co-founded the Solutions Journalism Network, which challenges journalists to show whether a solution they are covering is effective using available data or qualitative results. The episode explores the nature of solutions journalism and how researchers who evaluate policies and programs can contribute to evidence-based reporting about solutions. A video recording and related transcript from the LinkedIn Live event on May 2, 2023 is available at mathematica.org/blogs/tina-rosenberg-on-the-role-of-evidence-in-solutions-journalism Read the last installment of the Fixes column that Rosenberg and David Bornstein co-wrote for 11 years at The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/opinion/fixes-solutions-journalism-lessons.html Learn how to implement the principles of solutions journalism in your work by taking free online courses offered by the Solutions Journalism Network's Learning Lab: https://learninglab.solutionsjournalism.org/ Explore the Solutions Journalism Network's Story Tracker, a curated database of rigorous reporting on responses to social problems: https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/storytracker Read about the impact of solutions stories through the Solutions Journalism Network's Impact Tracker: https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/impact Read a solutions story by Rosenberg about how to triple voter turnout: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/opinion/voter-turnout-2020-election.html Read a solutions story by Michael Kimmelman about housing people who were living on the streets of Houston: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html

It has been 140 years since the Brooklyn Bridge opened to the public. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who made his first film about it back in the 1980s, and Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times and the author of The Intimate City: Walking New York (Penguin Press, 2022), talk about walking across the iconic bridge, the history of who built it and the "why" behind beautiful infrastructure.

The city has plans to fix a crumbling section of the BQE known as the "triple cantilever" in Brooklyn Heights, but many say the problems with the expressway are bigger than just that section. Allen Swerdlowe, architect and fellow at the American Institute of Architects, specialist at the Fulbright Foundation, and founding trustee of Brooklyn Bridge Park, Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times and the author of The Intimate City: Walking New York (Penguin Press, 2022), and Sam Schwartz, former longtime "Gridlock Sam" columnist at the Daily News, former NYC Traffic Commissioner, president and CEO of Sam Schwartz Engineering, a transportation planning and engineering firm, and author of No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future (Public Affairs, 2018), talk about the BQE's history, the urgency of the situation, and how solutions need to look beyond Brooklyn Heights.  

Happy St. Patrick's Day! On today's "Best-of" show, some recent favorites: Philip Bump, national columnist for The Washington Post and the author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America (Viking, 2023), talks about his new book that digs into the data on the baby boom generation and what to expect as its influence wanes. Colette Coleman, a writer focused on race and equity, talks about her reporting for the New York Times article "Selling Houses While Black" about the challenges faced, and strategies adopted, by Black real estate agents, who are underrepresented in the profession and earn less than their white counterparts. Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times and the author of The Intimate City: Walking New York (Penguin Press, 2022), talks about his book that grew from a series of walks around NYC he took during the COVID lockdown, exploring the history, architecture, and challenges facing the many neighborhoods he visited. Alana Casanova-Burgess, co-creator, host and producer of the podcast La Brega, from WNYC Studios and Futuro Studios, talks about season two of the podcast, exploring the music of Puerto Rico, as listeners call in and share their essential songs from 'home.'   These interviews were lightly edited for time and clarity; the original web versions are available here:  Post-Boomer America (Jan 24, 2023) Challenges Faced by Black Real Estate Agents (Jan 19, 2023) Walking With Michael Kimmelman (Nov 29, 2022) Introducing La Brega: Season Two (Jan 27, 2023)

Have you ever thought about what New York City was like before Europeans settled the area? This is just one of the many questions answered by Michael Kimmelman's latest small gem of a book, The Intimate City: Walking New York. The book combines Michael's own knowledge of the city with other points of view. He invited planners, professors, and architects to join him on walks around the quiet streets of pandemic New York. Kimmelman is the architecture critic for the New York Times and was previously the chief art critic based in Berlin. He's also a two time Pulitzer finalist and the founder of a new project from the Times called Headway which focuses on Global affairs. Today we'll talk about Michael's book, his work for the Times, and his own upbringing as the son of a leftist doctor in Greenwich Village. Ezra --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/newsnerds/message

What do a nonfiction tale of a couple's daring escape from slavery, a mystery novel set in an elite Vermont boarding school, the history of cemeteries, and walking tours of New York City have in common? These are the topics for new books recommended by Lily Bartels from the Open Door Bookstore in Schenectady in her first interview for Hudson Mohawk Magazine. Books discussed: "Master, Slave, Husband, Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom" (Ilyon Woo, 2023); "I Have Some Questions for You" (Rebecca Makkai, 2023); "Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries" (Greg Melville, 2022); and "The Intimate City: Walking New York" (Michael Kimmelman, NY Times architecture critic, 2022). And what's this about Mel Blanc's tombstone? For more information, visit www.opendoor-bookstore.com or stop by the store at 128 Jay Street in Schenectady. Produced by Brea Barthel for Hudson Mohawk Magazine.

Vanessa has admired the New York Times' architecture critic Michael Kimmelman ever since she was a starry-eyed youngster starting her urban journalism career. Now that his latest book The Intimate City is out, it was the perfect excuse to have him on the show. She and Adaam ask Michael what it was like at the Times in the late ‘80s when he started out, continue the conversation they started with Vishaan Chakrabarti about Progressives' urban failings, discuss the non-profit journalism division that he helped spawn, and contemplate the importance of time when it comes to making (and appreciating) great cities.   Check out our ‘Inscrutable' blog and ‘Uncertainty' newsletter for thoughts and rants. To support us and gain access to exclusive content, consider becoming a paid member of Uncertain on Substack. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:-Criticism, Community, and other Pet Topics [0:00-10:05]-The New York Times, from Shabby Palace to Citadel [10:06-26:12]-Anacostia, the High Line, and Gentrification [26:13-36:07]-What's Community (and Preservation) Anyway? [36:08-47:56]-A Culture of Fear of Change [47:57-56:20]-The Role of the Critic [56:21-1:09:59]-The Pragmatism of Houston [1:10:00-1:18:51]-Walking Through the City [1:18:52-1:23:50]Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

As you might have heard, Sidewalk Labs became a part of Google at the beginning of 2022. So City of the Future has been on hiatus...BUT I'm still creating podcasts that I think CotF listeners would like. And I'd like to share them with you all! Urban Roots. If you enjoyed City of the Future season 4, which was all about equitable development, then you should definitely check out Urban Roots. We not only tell the histories of women and people of color that you probably don't know, we also draw the throughline from the past to the present, and talk to folks who are doing equitable, preservation-based development that takes those histories into account. Our two-part series on Indianapolis is a great place to start, but we have episodes on Brooklyn, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles, too. Learn more about it by visiting urbanistmedia.org or emailing urbanrootspodcast@gmail.com. Uncertain things. Less for the urbanist than for the person who is seeking to pop their media bubble, my journalist roommate and I created this interview show back in 2020. We purposely seek out academics, writers, journalists, thinkers across the political spectrum — people who actually want to enter into conversation and debate and leave their silos behind. The nice thing about Uncertain things is that I get to talk with whomever I find interesting and insightful, like evolutionary biologist Nicholas Christakis, historian Niall Ferguson, and journalist Caitlin Flanagan. We do sometimes talk to urbanists, too — like Vishaan Chakrabarti, Justin Davidson, and Michael Kimmelman (coming soon). You can subscribe to it at uncertain.substack.com and email us theuncertaintimes@gmail.com. Last two things — I'd love to hear from City of the Future fans! Reach me via vanessaquirk.com. And if you're an urbanism company who would like to hire me for my podcasting/comms expertise, reach out! Again, at vanessaquirk.com I hope you all have a very happy, safe holiday season. Hopefully I'll be seeing you — in the future!

Michael Kimmelman, author of The Intimate City: Walking New York, joins THE CITY's Alyssa Katz in the latest installment of her series asking the big question: What Is New York For?

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world's leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. In this episode, Andrew is joined by Michael Kimmelman, author of The Intimate City: Walking New York. Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic of The New York Times. He was the paper's chief art critic and, from Berlin, created the Abroad column, covering politics and culture across Europe and the Middle East. He has reported from more than forty countries and founded Headway, a nonprofit journalistic initiative focused on global challenges and paths to progress. A native New Yorker, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, he is the author of The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa and Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre and Elsewhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Intimate City: Walking New York by Michael Kimmelman As New York came to a halt with COVID, Michael Kimmelman composed an email to a group of architects, historians, writers, and friends, inviting them to take a walk. Wherever they liked, he wrote—preferably someplace meaningful to them, someplace that illuminated the city and what they loved about it. At first, the goal was distraction. At a scary moment when everything seemed uncertain, walking around New York served as a reminder of all the ways the city was still a rock, joy, and inspiration. What began with a lighthearted trip to explore Broadway's shuttered theater district and a stroll along Museum Mile when the museums were closed soon took on a much larger meaning and ambition. These intimate, funny, richly detailed conversations between Kimmelman and his companions became anchors for millions of Times readers during the pandemic. The walks unpacked the essence of urban life and its social fabric—the history, plans, laws, feats of structural engineering, architectural highlights, and everyday realities that make up a place Kimmelman calls “humanity's greatest achievement.” Filled with stunning photographs documenting the city during the era of COVID, The Intimate City is the ultimate insider's guide. The book includes new walks through LGBTQ Greenwich Village, through Forest Hills, Queens, and Mott Haven, in the Bronx. All the walks can be walked, or just be read for pleasure, by know-it-all New Yorkers or anyone else. They take readers back to an age when Times Square was still a beaver pond and Yankee Stadium a salt marsh; across the Brooklyn Bridge, for green tea ice cream in Chinatown, for momos and samosas in Jackson Heights, to explore historic Black churches in Harlem and midcentury Mad Men skyscrapers on Park Avenue. A kaleidoscopic portrait of an enduring metropolis, The Intimate City reveals why New York, despite COVID and a long history of other calamities, continues to inspire and to mean so much to those who call it home and to countless others.

This New York Times Book Review podcast, hosted by Nora Ami, delves into 'The Intimate City: Walking New York' by Michael Kimmelman, a collection depicting journeys across New York City reflecting history, architecture, and urban life; and 'Aesthetica' by Allie Rowbottom, a novel illuminating the obsessive pursuit of beauty in the age of cosmetic surgery and social media.

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times and the author of The Intimate City: Walking New York (Penguin Press, 2022), talks about his new book that grew from a series of walks around NYC he took during the COVID lockdown, exploring the history, architecture, and challenges facing the many neighborhoods he visited.

In A is for Architecture's seventh episode in 2022/3's offer, I speak with Professor Gwendolyn Wright of Colombia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation (GSAPP), New York and presenter of PBS' History Detectives. We met on Zoom to talk about her 2008 book, USA, part of Reaktion Book's Modern Architectures in History series, a book which ‘traces a history that spans from early skyscrapers and suburbs in the aftermath of the American Civil War up to the museums, schools and ‘green architecture' of today [describing] diverse interests that affected design, ranging from politicians and developers to ambitious immigrants and middle-class citizens […] Wright reframes the history of American architecture as one of constantly evolving and volatile sensibilities, engaged with commerce, attuned to new media, exploring multiple concepts of freedom.' You can get the book via The University of Chicago Press' website here. You can also hear Gwen talk at GSAPP with Michael Kimmelman about architecture's public, in a presentation entitled Who's Listening? Also, here she is speaking when accepting the Society of Architectural Historian's Award for Excellence in Architectural Media in 2012, and here about History Detectives as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Gwen's website is here; her LinkedIn is here. Gwen is an amazing communicator, a seriously insightful analyser of modern architecture and a delightful person to listen to. The book is marvellous, of course, as you shall hear… Happy listening! + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com

Michael Kimmelman has been the architecture critic of The New York Times since 2011, writing about cities, public space, infrastructure, community development, public housing, equity, and the environment. He joins to talk about his extraordinary career in journalism and his new book, “The Intimate City: Walking New York.”

Canadian comedy titan Seth Rogen discusses his debut book, Yearbook, his famous use of cannabis and why he thinks comedy is undervalued. Journalist Lauren Orsini walks us through how cosplay became a global phenomenon. New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman tells us why Michael Heizer's monumental project City defies easy description. Iqaluit-based multidisciplinary artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory discusses how climate change permeates all aspects of her art and life in the North.

Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic of The New York Times, traveled to Houston to observe an approach to chronic homelessness that has won widespread praise.Houston, the nation's fourth-most populous city, has moved more than 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses in the past decade, an overwhelming majority of whom remain housed after two years.This has been achieved through a “housing first” practice: moving the most vulnerable from the streets directly into apartments, instead of shelters, without individuals being required to do a 12-step program, or to find a job.Delving into the finer details of the process, Kimmelman considers the different logic “housing first” involves. After all, “when you're drowning, it doesn't help if your rescuer insists you learn to swim before returning you to shore,” he writes. “You can address your issues once you're on land. Or not. Either way, you join the wider population of people battling demons behind closed doors.”This story was written and narrated by Michael Kimmelman. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Nearly a decade after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed piers and damaged riverside social housing projects, residents of Lower Manhattan are still vulnerable to floods.Michael Kimmelman, The Times's architecture critic, explores the nine-year effort to redesign Lower Manhattan in the wake of the hurricane, and the design and planning challenges that have made progress incremental. He goes inside a fight over how to protect the neighborhood in the future — revealing why renewal in the face of climate disaster is so complicated.This story was narrated by Michael Kimmelman. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.The Headway initiative is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a fiscal sponsor. The Woodcock Foundation is a funder of Headway's public square.The New York Times works with philanthropic organizations that share its belief that editorial independence is crucial to the power and value of its journalism. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control of the Headway initiative. 

Bob speaks with “The Outsider” co-director Steve Rosenbaum about his film documenting the fraught creation of the National September 11 Memorial & MuseumTEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt, I'm Bob Garfield. Episode 8: The Outsider.It has been twenty years since the bloody horrors of September 11th, 2001 scarred lower Manhattan and the American psyche. Within three years of the terror acts that claimed nearly 3,000 innocent lives, plans were underway to commemorate the fateful day and its events for posterity. The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum would be constructed on the hallowed footprint of the atrocity. A decade later, the half-billion dollar project would be opened to the public. Here was President Barack Obama at the dedication ceremony:OBAMA: A nation that stands tall and united and unafraid -- because no act of terror can match the strength or the character of our country. Like the great wall and bedrock that embrace us today, nothing can ever break us; nothing can change who we are as Americans.GARFIELD: That was perhaps a fitting tribute to a new national shrine, the memorial part of the project that must necessarily dwell in the grief, the sacrifice, the heroism that so dominate the 9/11 narrative. But what Obama left out was the museum part and its role of exploration, illumination and inquiry, such as where do those acts of terror and their bloody toll fit into the broader sweep of history, into America's story, into our understanding of human events before and since? If the dedication ceremony was appropriately a moment for communion and remembrance and resolve, surely the ongoing work of the museum would go beyond the heroism and sacrifice to the complex history and geopolitics that led to 9/11 evil.SHULAN: One of the key meta narratives of this exhibition, one of the most important things about this exhibition, is to say to people, “Use your eyes, look around you, look at the world and understand what you're seeing.” And if we don't do that with the material that we're presenting to people, then how can we give them that message? How will that message ever get through?GARFIELD: A new documentary by husband and wife filmmakers Pam Yoder and Steve Rosenbaum offers an inside view of the creation of the 9/11 Museum. It tells the story of the storytellers as they labor for a decade, collecting artifacts, designing exhibits, and editing the narratives flowing from that fateful day. And its protagonist was a relatively minor character who was propelled by internal conflict among the museum's planners into a central role in this story. The film is called “The Outsider,” available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Vudu, Facebook and other platforms. Steve Rosenbaum joins me now. Steve, welcome to Bully Pulpit.ROSENBAUM: I am so glad to be here, because I've always wanted to be on a bully pulpit.GARFIELD: Uh huh. Well, congratulations. You have achieved your dream, perhaps your destiny. OK, first, a whole lot of disclosure. You and I have been friends for most of our adult lives, so about 100 years, and I've been following your progress in getting this movie made for a long time. And furthermore, at more or less the last minute this summer, I stepped in to help write the narration and ended up voicing it in your movie. So I'm not exactly bringing critical distance into this conversation, but I still have a lot of questions. You ready?ROSENBAUM: I am ready indeed.GARFIELD: OK, so not only have you made a feature length movie about a process, it is a feature length movie about the process of museum curation with most of the action taking place around conference tables. So what I'm saying is Fast and Furious, it isn't.ROSENBAUM: You know, the Blue Room, which is the conference room you're referring to, was both the magical place where the magic happened and also a bit of our albatross because it is, in fact, a conference.GARFIELD: So in the end, though, you do manage to capture quite a bit of drama, quite a bit of drama, but there is no way you could have anticipated, when you got started, what would emerge over these years and -- how many hours of film?ROSENBAUM: 670. GARFIELD: Over how long a period of time?ROSENBAUM: Six and a half years.GARFIELD: How did you come to be a fly on the wall for six and a half years as they undertook this project?ROSENBAUM: So we negotiated with a then non-existent museum to trade them a very precious, valuable archive that my wife and I had lovingly gathered over many years in exchange for access to the construction, design, and development of the museum. And I think at the beginning, everyone thought it was fairly harmless. Like, what could go wrong? I mean, the museum will be fantastic and they'll record all of its fantasticalness, and that will be a film.GARFIELD: When you went in there for those six and a half years, it was purely as a matter of documentation, right? You didn't walk in with a premise or a hypothesis or a scenario or an angle, much less an agenda. But there must have been some sort of core interest, some focus when you undertook this project.ROSENBAUM: You have to remember that in the weeks after 9/11, particularly in New York, there was this extraordinary feeling of camaraderie and connectedness, both among New Yorkers and also around the world. And the sense that maybe what would come of this terrible day is some real goodness, that people would understand each other, that we'd be part of a global community. And so, we brought that, what now seems like naive optimism, to the museum. And they, at least in the early days, fueled that. I mean, they said to us, “We're going to build a different kind of museum. It's going to be open and participatory. It's going to be democratic.” And, you know, that worked for us as filmmakers. We thought a different kind of museum in a country that's gone through a terrible day and hopefully will come out of it stronger and wiser and, you know, more introspection--GARFIELD: But as of at least a year ago, you really didn't know what your film was going to be about. You didn't really have a movie scenario.ROSENBAUM: Well, you have to start with the problem that we had as a filmmaker, as filmmakers, which was a) No one gives a s**t about museums and how they're made. There's zero public interest in that. And then secondly, as it turned out, no one really gave a s**t about the museum. Nobody went to it other than tourists. Thoughtful people, historians, scholars, New Yorkers, media people didn't go there in droves. So, we're like, “How do we make a movie about a museum nobody cares about?” And in fact, the museum opened in 2014 and we spent three or four years fumfering around trying to get our arms around a movie we could make and pretty much gave up. And then Pam, my filmmaking partner and life partner and smarter person than I am, came to me one day and she said, “You know, I think there's a scene that might help.” And she came out with this little -- in her hand, this little Hi 8 tape, she handed it to me, said, “Put it in the deck.”And it was this exhibit in Soho. It was a photo exhibit, which I actually remember going to and some of your listeners may remember as well. It was called “Here is New York,” and it was literally the first crowdsourced photo exhibit in history. All of these people with little mini cameras made pictures of 9/11. And this character, a guy named Michael Shulan, who is a kind of a failed author, owned a little storefront gallery that had been essentially empty, put a picture on the window. And what exploded there was this spectacular collection of real person pictures. And so, the scene that Pam found was of this guy, who we had at that point never met -- one of our camera people had recorded him -- telling the story of why they gathered these pictures.SHULAN: We've asked basically that anyone bring us their pictures and we will display them. And to date we've probably had sixty or seventy people who've brought in pictures in the past two days.GARFIELD: So two things. One, this clip Pam found was from video you guys had shot twenty years ago for a previous movie about 9/11's aftermath called “Seven Days in September.” And you watch it and you're like, “Holy hell, that's Michael.” He is one of the guys who wound up on the museum planning staff, and you have been filming for six and a half years.ROSENBAUM: You know, we have 500 hours of the day of 9/11 and 670 hours shot at the museum construction. It is the definition, the filmmaking definition, of a needle in a haystack. We literally didn't know we had the Shulan scene until Pam magically pulled it out of -- the rabbit out of the hat. And Shulan was one of the five people we had chosen to follow for all six and a half years. And so, the combination of that -- and “Here is New York” is a wonderful kind of mile marker for where the film began because Michael talks about democracy and openness and sharing and letting people kind of find their own story in the photos. And that's exactly what the museum began as.GARFIELD: You say it was a needle in a haystack, finding this film of one of your characters surface. It was also very serendipitous because Shulan, who had the title of museum creative director and who is the “outsider” of the title -- of your title -- is not a professional museum executive or even a professional curator. He had this storefront where he crowdsourced this enormous collection of, you know, amateur images of the day and its aftermath.SHULAN: I live in this little building on Prince Street in Soho, which was inside of the World Trade Center. On the storefront of the empty shop, someone had taped up a copy of the 9/11 morning's newspaper and people were touching this thing and seeming to take some solace in this. And I suddenly remembered I had an old picture of the World Trade Center. So I ran upstairs and I got this picture and I taped it up. And as the day wore on, I noticed that people now came by and were starting to take pictures of the picture. And that was how the whole thing started.GARFIELD: And he was kind of thrust by events into the spotlight, which is how he got hired by the museum to begin with, right?ROSENBAUM: That's exactly correct. But I don't want to, you know, sell him short. I mean, he's quite brilliant in the way that lots of thoughtful New Yorkers are about images and sound and picture. He's just not a museum person in that he doesn't play by the rules. And I think it's important to foreshadow that because, you know, nobody who hired him could have had any confusion about what his behavior was going to be. I mean, he wore his heart on his sleeve.SHULAN: 9/11 was about seeing. 9/11 was about understanding that the world was a different place than you thought it was. It didn't start on the morning of 9/11. It started twenty or thirty or forty or fifty years before that, and we didn't see it.GARFIELD: You know, I've seen this movie now a number of times. He is clearly, as you say, a smart and interesting guy. He is a very thoughtful guy. He is a man of principle. What he isn't exactly, is a charmer.SPEAKER: Robert--SHULAN: Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you care what this project looks like?SPEAKER: Michael, I care very much what this project looks like, but we are in a process that makes decisions and moves forward.SHULAN: But the process makes the decision. You made a check, but is it the right decision?ROSENBAUM: No, he's abrasive. But, you know, I'm personally very fond of him, both as a character and as a human being, because I don't think 9/11 needs lots of people patting it on the head and telling it how heroic that day is. I think we need more of him, not less of him.GARFIELD: And this will ultimately coalesce into the thematic basis of the film, because Shulan was not only abrasive, but he's a man with a point of view. And his point of view was very specific. He believed that a museum documenting 9/11 should not be pedantic and definitive, it should be open ended and inquiring -- well, I'll let him say it:SHULAN: One of the conditions I laid down both explicitly to Alice and to myself when I took the job was that if we were going to make this museum, that we had to tell the history of what actually happened.GARFIELD: Which is not categorically a bad way of approaching museum curation, is it?ROSENBAUM: No. In fact, if you think about your journeys to museums and the ones that you remember, if you've ever gone to one -- I mean, you know, if you go to the Met or to MoMA or the Whitney, there'll be some art in those museums that you like very much and there'll be some other art that you'll look at and go, “Why in God's name did anybody put this thing in this building?” And museum curators don't do that accidentally. They want to challenge your comfort zone. They want to show you things you may not like, and then they want you to think about why you don't like them. So, I don't think museums succeed by being simplistic or pedantic.GARFIELD: Well, as we shall see, there were those who wished not to have this sacred space marred by uncomfortable questions. So you got this guy as your protagonist, a not particularly warm and fuzzy one. And from a dramatic perspective, I guess, the story requires a villain or at least a foil, someone whose philosophy of museuming is very different from Shulan's, providing you the conflict you need as a storyteller, right? And that role fell to the museum's big boss, the CEO, Alice Greenwald.GREENWALD: The politics are the terrain we're in. And it's the, you know -- the World Trade Center has always been a complicated site. You know, it's a bi-state agency that operates, you know, an entity that, an authority that deals with transportation, but it's also building commercial buildings and, you know, a transportation center. It's going to be complicated. It's just going to be complicated.ROSENBAUM: So, Alice is charming. She's warm. She's approachable. She answers questions. She doesn't get caught up in her knitting. And from the day that we met, you know, I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. I said to her, “You're going to be the magnetic north of this story. All people on the planet that want to come and explore it are going to come here.” And she said, “We understand that. We understand that's our responsibility.”GARFIELD: And yet, she is also clearly not as keen as Shulan is in exploring, let's just say, the geopolitical nuance of 9/11. And this has something to do with curatorial philosophy, but it also has to do with this museum being both a memorial and a museum and there being a lot of stakeholders, including the families of the 2,900 plus victims of the attacks. She was politically in an awkward position because there was no way that whatever decision she made, that everybody was going to be delighted.ROSENBAUM: Well, let's go back just half a step. She came from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. So that was the bulk of her career and that was her experience. And so, you know, she's used to demanding stakeholders and people who want the story told a certain way. But the Holocaust Museum is also quite open, and in fact, allows lots of different points of views, some of which they find abhorrent. And so, I don't think she -- I don't think she brought to the museum any sense of shutting down debate or dialogue. I think that happened in an evolutionary process over time.GARFIELD: But as we see the design and construction and planning and curatorial decisions play out, there did seem to be -- you know, I hesitate to use the word whitewash, but it was there seemed to be no great effort to do what Shulan wanted, which is to ask difficult questions, even if you could not come up with a definitive answer. When did it become clear to you as a filmmaker looking at the footage that you had found the conflict that I previously described?ROSENBAUM: So, you said it exactly right. I mean, you know, people say to me, “Well, you know, did you know when you were at the museum, there was a change? Did you feel like it was shift--?” The answer is no, we didn't. And it wasn't until Pam handed me that first tape and we then took the 14 hours of Michael Shulan and laid it out end to end and watched it, that you could feel the tone changing and his kind of quizzical nature become more frustrated and then more angry by about year three. And one of the things I think that's important to remember here is there were some things that Alice was facing that are now lost in history a little bit. So, you know, they began construction in 2005, 2006. By 2008, Wall Street had collapsed. And all these people that had committed donations to build this thing took their money back. And the mayor of the city of New York, who is also the museum's chairman at that point, was Michael Bloomberg. And, you know, Michael's got no shortage of cash, but I don't think there was ever an intention that this museum was going to be a perennial money suck for him or other donors. And so, part of the drumbeat that you start to feel is, “How do we make this private museum” -- not a public museum -- “without government funding, something that people will come and buy a ticket for?” And that's, I think, where some of the rub was.GARFIELD: A twenty three dollar ticket, if I recall correctly.ROSENBAUM: They raised the price. It's now twenty six.GARFIELD: So at that point, you know, apart from any political or philosophical considerations, there becomes the problem of needing, in order to meet expenses, to have not just a shrine and not just a museum, but an attraction which changes the calculus altogether. And what you were able to do when you were combing through your footage was find some pretty upsetting scenes of museum staff trying to figure out what would make the customers react.ROSENBAUM: Yes, there was definitely a series of debates about what would be impactful. And they were always careful to never say immersive. But there definitely became a bit of a schism on the team between people that wanted the museum to be welcoming and complicated and people who wanted the museum to be intense and dramatic. And there are some good examples of that, in particular, some particular scenes that I think the museum wasn't happy to see recorded. But, you know, we had them on tape.SPEAKER 1: Do you have any interest in developing ties? You can do whatever you want on it.SPEAKER 2: I think a tie is a really — you know what's nice to give away is a tie and a scarf.NEWS REPORTER: Just days away from the public opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, there's growing criticism of high admission fees. Twenty four dollars to get in and the sale of souvenirs at the gift shop. SPEAKER 3: I think it's a revenue generating tourist attraction. NEWS REPORTER: Jim Riches shares the same sentiment shown in this New York Post headline titled “Little Shop of Horror.” ROSENBAUM: But I also think it's important for your audience to understand people don't want to re-experience 9/11. Certainly New Yorkers don't, and probably Americans as a class.GARFIELD: There was the question, and this was a word you ended up not using in your film, of whether you going through that footage were witnessing the “Disneyfication” of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, yet you ended up pulling that punch up. Why? ROSENBAUM: It made people so staggeringly angry that -- I mean, I don't think it was inaccurate or untrue. It was just we were picking our battles a little bit at that point with the museum and like, they -- because we didn't have any of our characters raising the word “Disneyfication,” although we'd heard it, we decided it was harder to defend than some other challenges that we made that were on tape.GARFIELD: You got a lot of good press for this film, but you also ran into a couple of buzzsaws, notably The New York Times Review, which was pretty scathing. And, although the critic was kind enough to single out my performance as a narrator -- what word did he use?ROSENBAUM: I believe the word was “amateurish.”GARFIELD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that was unfortunately true because I did it for nothing. But his central complaint is why you and Pam, as filmmakers, would privilege the creative vision of this novice outsider, Shulan, over the consensus of the team and the museum that they together crafted. Why did you, in the end, apart for reasons of just dramatic conflict, focus on Shulan?ROSENBAUM: Well, let me answer that question. So a couple of things: in the review, his criticism is that we're somehow promoting Shulan's career as a museum curator. And, you know, I watched the film not objectively, but I don't think anyone's going to be hiring Michael as a result of this. I also don't think that that was his intention or ours. I think, you know, what we liked was that Michael said, “Let's make a museum that's open and democratic.” And that that was the same thing Alice told us on day one. And then, as we slipped away from that, we slipped to an institution that felt to us heavy-handed and pedantic. And so, you know, Michael certainly represents a point of view that the filmmakers share about the museum. But I also think that, you know, the questions he raised about the museum, he's not alone. I mean, Tom Hennes, who's the head of Exhibits, feels very much the same way. And, you know, Philip Kennicott from The Washington Post feels very much the same way. And the head architecture critic from The New York Times, oddly, feels very much the same way. But it wasn't meant to put Shulan on any kind of a pedestal. It was simply that he was a really good lens through which to focus the question.GARFIELD: Speaking of Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic at The Times, you have some tape of him commenting on a sign that is erected, you know, in the plaza area of the museum, the above ground portion of the museum. Most of the exhibit space is below ground, which was jaw dropping for him and for, I think, any viewer of the film.KIMMELMAN: The list of don'ts on the site is astonishing. You can't sing, much less stage a protest or a demonstration. And I think that does raise some very profound questions. You know, I have to keep coming back to say, I think the ability of New York, and by extension, America, to return again to life and return this place to life would have been a very remarkable and powerful statement.GARFIELD: If one bookmark of the movie was Michael Shulan, at his open source photo exhibit in Soho, this was the other bookend: the opposite of open source democratic anything, this closing down of protest or comment or debate on this site. I mean, it's not to be believed.ROSENBAUM: You have to think about where it sits in the arc of the last twenty years in American history. I mean, you know, you got the Patriot Act, you got renditions, you've got drone strikes, you've got police being heavily armored and turning into military units. The museum's fear of terrorism was the reason why they controlled the site so closely, but it also was part of this larger shift over the last twenty years toward a nationalistic heavy-handed kind of militaristic control. And I don't think that they were out on their own when they were limiting the fact that you couldn't sing or, you know, bring a guitar or read a piece of poetry on the site. I also think, by the way, it's worth remembering that the site is private property. So there's really nowhere else in New York -- I mean, if I want to go to Central Park and read a poem, no one, no cop is going to come up and say, “I'm sorry, sir, no poetry reading here.” The only place where that's going to happen is at the September 11th Museum.GARFIELD: Now, let me ask you this final thing. You have documented what I think could be characterized as the denaturing of the 9/11 Museum, the slowly evolving whitewashing of what we described in the very beginning of this thing, which was the search for meaning in the events of that day twenty years ago. As a museum goer, will I come away with the sense that something is being withheld, or does what they have come up with provide the raw material I need as a member of the society and a citizen to ask these questions myself?ROSENBAUM: You know, I've come to be able to answer that question after a couple of months of talking to other people. I think the best answer is, you know, that they're in a really tough box at this point because the thing about, you know, Afghanistan is it's not going to go away and it will be the bookend on this twenty years that will raise questions about, “Wait a minute, is the museum not going to talk about Afghanistan and the war, the twenty year failed -- our failed war in Afghanistan?” Well, of course they have to. And then the question is, what about the twenty years between the “never forget moment” that they hit like a drum beat and now? Because lots of things happened. And theoretically, at some point, the material about Saudi Arabia that has been hidden by the government will make its way into the light and then that will raise questions about, “Oh wait, who did 9/11?” So, when you really look at what the museum has chosen to put on a pedestal, it's essentially those two towers and they're falling down and all of the horrible human pain and suffering that comes from that. But I'm not sure that counts as the appropriate historic take on that day.GARFIELD: Steve, I want to thank you very much for doing this. I'm sorry Pam couldn't join us, but thank her for me as well. And I wish you all best of luck with the film.ROSENBAUM: We love people to watch it and send us, you know, notes, criticism, feedback. We think it's the beginning of a conversation, not the end.GARFIELD: Just as Michael Shulan would have preferred. Steve, thank you. ROSENBAUM: Thanks. GARFIELD: Steve Rosenbaum with his wife, Pam Yoder, directed the new documentary “The Outsider,” available now on Apple TV, Prime Video, Vudu, Xbox, Facebook, and other digital platforms. All right, we're done here. We encourage you to become a paid subscriber to Booksmart Studios so you can get extra content, including my weekly text column from Bully Pulpit, Lexicon Valley and Banished. Meantime, do please review Bully Pulpit on iTunes. Amid a cacophonous glut of podcasts, we depend on you to bring news of us to the world. We are trying to bring unapologetic scrutiny to the world of ideas and we cannot do that without you. Thanks in advance. Bully Pulpit is produced by Mike Vuolo and Matthew Schwartz. Our theme was composed by Julie Miller and the team at Harvest Creative Services in Lansing, Michigan. Bully Pulpit is a production of Booksmart Studios. I'm Bob Garfield. Get full access to Bully Pulpit at bullypulpit.substack.com/subscribe

Tony Perry, mayor of Middletown New Jersey, which lost more residents on 9/11 than any municipality outside of New York City, and Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times, talk about how two communities at the epicenter of the terrorist attacks were changed forever, and how they have moved on. →"Middletown Remembers 9/11/01" →"Rebuilding Ground Zero Was a Mess. Lower Manhattan Bloomed Anyway." by Michael Kimmelman (NYT, Sept. 8. 2021)

Visionary American developer Jonathan Rose, author of The Well-Tempered City, offers us his vision for the ‘City of Opportunity' in the wake of Covid-19 and the practical approach he applies to creating developments which embody that vision. Full of wit and wisdom, Jonathan describes the inclusive values he seeks to promote in the affordable housing communities from The Rose Companies, where good homes are located near to mass transit and close to jobs – often comprising educational and health facilities. One such project is Via Verde, his first collaboration with Grimshaw, on a brownfield site in the Bronx. When it opened, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg described it as “one of the most environmentally advanced affordable housing developments in the nation”. The famous architectural critic, Michael Kimmelman chose Via Verde as the subject of his front page New York Times debut, writing that the development “makes as good an argument as any new building in the City for the cultural and civic value of architecture”. Jonathan's enlightening conversation with Tim Williams ends with an excerpt from “Summertime” by Jog Blues, Rose's excellent band that fuses Jazz, Blues and Indian Classical Music, a rare treat. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic at The New York Times. Prior to this role, he created the Abroad column while based in Berlin and was the chief art critic. He's also the founder and editor-at-large of Headway, a new venture focused on global challenges and progress. In this conversation, Jarrett and Michael talk about how he transitioned from writing about art to architecture, the role of the critic at a place like The New York Times, and how architecture discourse has changed over the last decade. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm/190-michael-kimmelman. — If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting us on Patreon and get bonus content, transcripts, and our monthly newsletter! www.patreon.com/surfacepodcast

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 10, 2020 is: bailiwick • BAY-lih-wik • noun 1 law enforcement : the office or jurisdiction of a bailiff 2 : the sphere in which one has superior knowledge or authority : a special domain Examples: "Until his death in 1764, at 67, [William Hogarth's] soul resided in Drury Lane and Grub Street, the bailiwick of actors, tradesmen and engravers like himself." — Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, 30 Nov. 1997 "Staging theater in unusual but thematically appropriate locations is nothing new to Seghers, who once … seated theatergoers in a barn to watch a young man's obsession with horses play out in 'Equus.' 'This is right in his bailiwick,' said John DiDonna, who chairs the theater department at Valencia College. 'Jeremy lives to do shows that are site-specific or environmental.'" — Matthew J. Palm, The Orlando Sentinel, 6 Aug. 2020 Did you know? The first half of the word bailiwick comes from the Middle English word for "bailiff"—in this case, a term referring to a sheriff or chief officer of a town in medieval England, not the officer who assists today in U.S. courtrooms. Bailiff derives, via Anglo-French, from Latin bajulare, meaning "to carry a burden." The second half of bailiwick comes from wik, a Middle English word for "dwelling place" or "village," which ultimately derives from Latin vicus, meaning "village." (This root also gave us -wich and -wick, suffixes used in place names like Norwich and Warwick.) Although bailiwick dates from the 15th century, the "special domain" sense did not appear in English until the middle of the 19th century.

This week features two conversations. In the first, Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic for The New York Times, speaks to Julián Castro, former mayor of San Antonio, Texas and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, about the housing crisis and the role cities play in national politics. Then Michael speaks with Janette Sadik-Khan, former Commissioner of New York City Department of Transportation, about how public transit can drive economic recovery in cities.  JULIAN CASTRO was the mayor of San Antonio, Texas from 2009 - 2014. He also served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2014 - 2017. JANETTE SADIK-KHAN was Commissioner of New York City Department of Transportation from 2007 - 2013 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg she is now a principal at Bloomberg Associates.   You can find a transcript of this episode at Aventine.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can find links to each of Sean's analysis pieces here. This article covers the week beginning June 14.

In the first segment [1:50-12:55], hosts Eric Jaffe and Vanessa Quirk discuss this week's top stories: Taiwan’s digital minister Audrey Tang leverages open data in the fight against Covid (Andrew Leonard, WIRED) https://bit.ly/39opznI / (Eric Jaffe, Sidewalk Talk) https://bit.ly/39paL8p The most important bike technology is … street design (Eric Jaffe / Sidewalk Talk) https://bit.ly/2CDgonE In the second segment [13:15-21:55], the hosts talk to architect and accessibility consultant Karen Braitmayer about the state of accessible architecture 30 years after the passing of the ADA. (Michael Kimmelman, NYT) https://nyti.ms/32RaVEr And in the final segment [22:00-24:30], the hosts share what made them smile this week. Real-Time Crowding Info Helps Boston’s Bus Riders (Transit Center) https://bit.ly/2CYkjuV Engineer makes robot to cut his hair (Digg) https://bit.ly/3eWPdkA

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic of The New York Times, argues that with all that's horrible about the pandemic, there is a potential bright spot: New York City officials could finally take biking, and bike safety, seriously. @BrianLehrer It's worth noting that what this city calls "protected bike lanes" are hardly protected. Parked cars are lousy protection. It often amounts to extra parking, storage space for unloading delivery vehicles, space pedestrians decide to chill in.. Not protected enough! — Alexander (@alexandertlane) July 13, 2020 "Not so many New Yorkers own cars -- more than half of New Yorkers don't," @kimmelman tells @BrianLehrer. "I'm not sure we need to make more room for cars." https://t.co/bDIMvhplBk — Transportation Alternatives (@TransAlt) July 13, 2020 @BrianLehrer but the roads are bring taken over by restaraunts! — suzie.redhed (@LandMerSuz) July 13, 2020

Architecture critic for the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman, gives us a virtual tour of the Brooklyn Bridge, an icon of a great metropolis and the promise of modern urban life.

Architecture critic for the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman, gives us a virtual tour of the Brooklyn Bridge, an icon of a great metropolis and the promise of modern urban life.

In the first segment [1:20-15:36], hosts Eric Jaffe and Vanessa Quirk discuss this week's top stories: The Pandemic Will Change American Retail Forever (Derek Thompson, Atlantic) https://bit.ly/2xoTyxe  The case for putting restaurants outside (Henry Grabar, Slate) https://bit.ly/2yhnko9 Retail Covid-19 testing is failing black communities (Aaron Ross Coleman, Vox) https://bit.ly/35lU37X In the second segment [15:58-21:39], the hosts interview Olga Stella, the host of the Detroit City of Design podcast and the executive director of Design Core Detroit, who wrote about an innovative, affordable leasing program that attracted creative-sector entrepreneurs to an underutilized landmark in Detroit. (Brookings) https://brook.gs/3fcnMo6 And in the final segment [22:02-24:10], the hosts share what made them smile this week. Discover the history of your neighborhood, without leaving home (Ariel Aberg-Riger, CityLab) https://bit.ly/2VUuqIc The hidden history of some NYC skyscrapers (Michael Kimmelman, NYT) https://nyti.ms/2xmPu0q And a BONUS this week: a parrot singing Stairway to Heaven (Facebook) https://bit.ly/2KSUYTL

Michael Kimmelman does nothing in half measures. For more than 30 years, he has brought his assertive, culturally astute, historically sensitive perspective to The New York Times, which he has been contributing to since 1987 and joined full-time in 1990. During his tenure, he has written more than 2,000 articles, ranging from art criticism (he was its chief art critic from 1990 to 2007); to reporting from Europe and the Middle East (from 2007 to mid-2011, he was based in Berlin, where he was the “Abroad” columnist); to civically minded coverage of the built world, which has been his focus as the paper’s architecture critic the past seven years. Throughout Kimmelman has displayed the rare ability to balance his writing in a way that shows him to be more far more level-headed than hot-headed. He is a classically trained pianist who plays with the well-rounded, even-keeled temperament and gentle skill of someone who clearly has done the work and put the hours in, and the same is true of his pieces in The New York Times. Consider his judicious take—note: not takedown—on a 1992 Julian Schnabel show at Pace gallery: “Mr. Schnabel's ambition and ego continue to outstrip his ability to paint. But there's something impressive about his sheer audacity, and just enough talent in him to make it impossible to dismiss his work out of hand. One wants to ignore it but can't.” Or, more recently, in 2014, his view on David Adjaye’s Sugar Hill social-housing complex in Harlem: “Sugar Hill is something of an extravagance and not easily replicable. But it posits a goal for what subsidized housing might look like, how it could lift a neighborhood and mold a generation.” Kimmelman more often than not sees the bigger picture and, at the same time, injects his own shrewd, deeply studied understanding of the subject at hand. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Spencer Bailey speaks with Kimmelman about his lesser-known talents as a pianist, his three-plus-decade path at The New York Times, and his goal as architecture critic to build a greater discourse around designing cities that are better, healthier, and simply fairer for all.

Raised in the lovely winding streets of Greenwich Village, the architecture critic for the Times also admires the city’s street grid: “New York makes itself so comprehensible and available to people, partly through the grid.” Urban design as a force for democracy. A conversation at the Center for Architecture with music from Stephanie Jenkins.

Jon Batiste and from New York Times, journalist Michael Kimmelman; Artist Pippin Frisbie-Calder and Gallery Director Christy Wood give ART!

Why do people collect art? I’ve wondered what inspires people to spend time and money filling their homes, and sometimes private galleries and even warehouses, with works of art. Is it prestige? A desire to be a part of a creative endeavor? An effort to engage with a community of artists? Is it an obsession? An investment? Or something else all together? The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman wrote that the consolation of art comes in many forms. For some, it is making; for others it is having. Collecting art can be a creative act, when done with thought, curiosity and passion, and maybe with a little bit of obsession thrown in. This week, we visited the home of Ted Elmore to talk about what inspires him to collect art.

Why do people collect art? We have talked with a lot of artists about why they make art and what that work means to them. But collecting art can also be a creative act, when done with thought, curiosity and passion, maybe with a little bit of obsession thrown in. The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman wrote that the consolation of art comes in many forms. For some, it is making; for others it is having. I've wondered what inspires people to spend time and money filling their homes, and sometimes private galleries and even warehouses, with works of art. Is it prestige? A desire to be a part of a creative endeavor? An effort to engage with a community of artists? Is it an obsession? An investment? Or something else all together? This week, we visited the home of Ted Elmore to talk about what inspires him to collect art. He is a passionate collector of art, mostly the work of Richmond artists. We talked about why he collects.

We're taking a break from One-to-One this week to set off fireworks and contemplate the potential future of a Trump Presidential Center. In the meantime, we present some of our favorite episodes related to this big ol' hot mess of a nation. We've got it all:   "Traditional" architecture, not necessarily just like Jefferson would have wanted: Building Our Best Nature: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #8 with Scott Merrill, winner of this year's Driehaus Prize The too-common tragedy of mass shootings: Queer Space, After Pulse: Archinect Sessions #69 ft. special guests James Rojas and S. Surface Seeing through anti-LGBTQ legislation: Due Protest: pushing back against HB-2 and fighting for interns on Archinect Sessions #64, ft. special guest Gregory Walker Gun-control in the classroom: Guns in the Studio: Texas' new campus carry law prompted Architecture Dean Fritz Steiner to resign. He joins us to discuss the law's effect on architecture education, on Archinect Sessions #55 Public health crises from compromised infrastructure: Dispatch from Flint: How architects can help, on Archinect Sessions #54 Good ol' American architecture institutions: Inside the Institute: Archinect Sessions goes to the AIA National Convention on Episode #30 Interview with the architects who would become the designers for Obama's Presidential Center: "Starts with me, ends with us": A conversation with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien on Archinect Sessions Episode #22 and, of course, hot dogs: Hot Dogs Around the World: James Biber, architect of US Pavilion "American Food 2.0" at EXPO Milan, joins us for Episode #31 of Archinect Sessions I (Amelia) also personally recommend you check out these prior One-to-One's: The "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard Kim, on One-to-One #17 The Ascendancy of Theory: writer and theorist Sylvia Lavin on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #13 The Art of Architecture Criticism: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #7 with Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times Our brand new interview podcast "Archinect Sessions One-to-One" premieres today! Listen to episode #1 with Neil Denari  

One-to-One is taking a break this week – we've been super busy these last few weeks, getting together more interviews and doing some spring cleaning for the podcasts. We'll be back next week with a new One-to-One, featuring Oana Stanescu and Dong-Ping Wong of Family New York, the designers behind Kanye's volcano and the + Pool project. Until then, we'd recommend checking out these recent interviews: The Ascendancy of Theory: writer and theorist Sylvia Lavin on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #13 Architecture for Humanity's Next Chapter: Garrett Jacobs, executive director of AFH-offshoot the Chapter Network, on One-to-One #11 The Art of Architecture Criticism: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #7 with Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times As always you can share your thoughts on the podcast through @archsessions or #archinectsessions, or through connect@archinect.com. Until next week!

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, joins me for our first One-to-One interview of 2016. I wanted to talk with Kimmelman specifically about a piece he had published just at the end of last year, called “Dear Architects: Sound Matters”. The piece considers how an architectural space’s unique audio atmosphere helps create its overall personality, invariably affecting us as we experience it. Alongside Kimmelman’s writing in the piece are looped videos of different spaces – the New York Times’ office, a restaurant, the High Line, Penn Station, a penthouse – meant to be viewed while wearing headphones, to get to know that space’s sonic portrait, of sorts. Too often, says Kimmelman, architects don’t think of sound as a material like they would concrete, glass or wood, when it can have a profound effect on the design’s overall impact. In our interview, Kimmelman shares how the piece came to be, and how it fits into the Times’ overall push into more multimedia journalism. We also discuss how Kimmelman’s role as former chief art critic for the Times has influenced his architecture criticism, and how multimedia and VR may affect the discipline.

Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic for the New York Times, but his work doesn't just focus on the way buildings look. Kimmelman writes about a wide range of urban issues and about how we build cities, and he sees his role as helping people understand those processes so they can play a part in making their cities better. Kimmelman visited SPUR on June 1, 2015, to talk about some of the issues he's covered for the Times with SPUR Editorial Director Allison Arieff. Generously sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Music by Podington Bear (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/podington_bear/), licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/).

Who's listening, and what's being said? This conversation between New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and PBS History Detectives co-host and GSAPP faculty member Gwendolyn Wright will cover audiences, reception, architecture, media, and the difficult processes of getting to know a place.

Sales are important, as well as investigation, orientation, discussion, and, in particular, building up good contacts. A discussion with Edek Bartz, the artistic director of Vienna Fair.

Weekly JourneywithJesus.net postings, read by Daniel B. Clendenin. Essay: *Correcting the Correction: Reformation Day 2005 (October 31)*, for 30 October 2005; book review: *The Accidental Masterpiece; On the Art of Life and Vice Versa* by Michael Kimmelman (2005); film review: *Everest* (1998); poem review: *In Memoriam A.H.H.* by Alfred Lord Tennyson.