‘Of stones and green men’

     
Only “birds of a feather flock together,” so don’t lump the Magpie Mason with the culture vultures, but there are two events in Manhattan I must bring to your attention.

On Sunday, May 23 at 3 p.m., the Museum of Biblical Art will host the first in a series of “cross-cultural conversations... investigating questions of religious identity and meaning through the prism of Jewish and Christian art.” Titled One Stone Upon Another: The Temple of Jerusalem in Jewish and Christian Art, the lecture is open to the public.

MOBIA says:

“Robin Jensen, Luce Chancellor’s Professor of the History of Christian Art and Worship at Vanderbilt University; and Steven Fine, Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University and Director of the YU Center for Israel Studies, will look at early representations of the Temple of Jerusalem. Each a foremost expert on the ways that art was meaningful for the religious experience in antiquity, Fine and Jensen bring their cross-cultural conversation into the public domain, addressing profound questions of religious identity and meaning in late antiquity through the prisms of ancient Christian and Jewish art.

“The conversation will be guided by questions such as: How close were Christians and Jews in late antiquity? What were the borderlines that separated them, and in what ways did their shared focus upon the Bible distance and bring them closer to one another? What do ancient visual and literary sources – read together – tell us about how Jews viewed Christians; Christians viewed Jews; and each viewed Roman polytheism?”

Admission is free. To register for this event, call (212) 408-1500.

Admission to the museum also is free, and you’ll want to allow ample time to savor the exhibit titled Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians, and the Altarpieces of Medieval Spain, which closes May 30.

Again, courtesy of MOBIA:

“This exhibition discusses the last two centuries of medieval Spanish history in the Crown of Aragon (the Kingdom of Aragon, the Kingdom of Valencia, and the region of Catalonia) from the vantage point of religious art, and demonstrates the documented cooperative relationship that existed between Christians and Jews who worked either independently or together to create art both for the Church and the Jewish community. Religious art was not created solely by members of the faith community it was intended to serve, but its production in the multi-cultural society of late medieval Spain was more complicated. Jewish and Christian artists worked together in ateliers producing both retablos (large multi-paneled altarpieces) as well as Latin and Hebrew manuscripts. Jews and conversos (Jews who had converted to Christianity) were painters and framers of retablos, while Christians illuminated the pages of Hebrew manuscripts.

“The exhibition tells not only the story of this fascinating moment of artistic collaboration, it also provides a glimpse into the lives of these communities which lived side by side. Images in some retablos reflect the hardships of Jewish life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: conversions, forced sermons, disputations, the Inquisition, and charges of host desecration and blood libel. Other extraordinary paintings project a messianic view of a future in which Jews would join with Christians in one faith.

“The exhibition is accompanied by the publication edited by Vivian B. Mann, with essays by Marcus B. Burke, Carmen Laccara Ducay, Thomas F. Glick and Vivian B. Mann, which provide a fascinating study of the production of altarpieces in late medieval Spain and the artistic overlap between the Jewish and Christian communities that this industry spawned. Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians, and the Altarpieces of Medieval Spain is published by D Giles Limited in association with the Museum of Biblical Art and is available at the MOBIA online Bookstore.”

Click here to see a slideshow of images from this exhibition.



Also closing at the end of the month is the exhibition at Poet’s House titled The Green Man.

Every thinking Freemason ought to know about the Green Man. His significance in architecture and symbolism merits your consideration.

Poet’s House says:

This series of paintings by British-born poet and painter Basil King depicts the Green Man, the pre-Christian archetypal figure of creation and the earth, emerging in the guise of British historical figures, such as Guy Fawkes and Walter Raleigh.

To close on a humorous note, take a few minutes to enjoy this footage of actor Bill Murray reading poetry to the operative builders who constructed the new Poet’s House in Battery Park City:


     

‘A walk in the park’

     
Thanks to limited internet access (long story), The Magpie Mason has been mostly offline for about four weeks, so let me try to catch up. There is a lot of good news to report, from the March 29 meeting of The American Lodge of Research to a recent Rose Croix event, to the first symposium hosted by the AASR-NMJ, and more.

But first, a walk in the park.


Unseasonably warm and glorious weather embraced the New York City area at the start of the month, and so on Sunday the fourth I budgeted some time to enjoy a leisurely stroll around the campus of my alma mater, an area I frequented before and well after matriculation. Truthfully there is no campus (or at least that is how it’s explained in the annual crime statistics report), it’s called Greenwich Village.


I brought the camera, looking for sights and sites discernible to the initiated eye.


Washington Square Park now is in Phase II of a total reconstruction project that will erase the intent of its original landscape architect, and leave the Village with something that, frankly, no one asked for.

But there is still its world famous Arch. The Washington Square Arch. It has George Washington. It marks the square. It is an arch. Pretty Masonic, eh?

Dual likenesses of George Washington face the oncoming traffic headed down Fifth Avenue. At left, Washington the warrior. Right, Washington the statesman. And Washington is not the only Freemason in the park. Toward the east side, but facing the interior of the park is Giuseppe Garibaldi.

 

Grand Master Garibaldi, of course, is remembered as the George Washington of Italy. You can read a little more about him here.

Not far from that statue is a bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, an artificer in steel and other metals. Don't know if he was a Mason, and it's hard to figure out why he was honored with a statue here, but here he has stood since 1890. Some info about him and his statue can be read here. I'm including him in The Magpie mostly because this is a good shot of the bust's head:

Nearby, appropriately enough in La Guardia Gardens, is the landmark statue of Bro. Fiorello La Guardia erected in 1994 after the city decided against ruining the neighborhood by building an expressway that in effect would have extended Fifth Avenue to TriBeCa. There is irony in that, because it was Mayor La Guardia who appointed Robert Moses. Anyway, Bro. La Guardia was mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945. There is a lodge in Staten Island named for him.

Statues are not the only representations of peoples' faces in the neighborhood. A number of buildings are adorned with various Green Men, gargoyles, and assorted physiognomonic renderings in stone, wood, and even terra cotta. To wit:

As above: The Muse of Art.

So below: The Muse of Music.

Both date to approximately 1880, but were added to the frontage of one of the university's buildings on Washington Square East decades later, after being rescued by the Anonymous Arts Recovery Society from their original home before it was demolished.

Above: Around the corner, a little closer to Broadway, is this terra cotta Green Man.


Below: On Broadway, towering over Shakespeare & Co. Book Sellers, is this friendly fellow. (The bookstore had no Masonic titles on its shelves.) Sorry for the blur. I had to zoom in from the sidewalk across the street, and he is more than five stories up.

Coincidentally, the university's main bookstore displayed this book in its window. Note the Beehive. In the words of Bro. John Priede: "I will add this to my bookshelf."

A few doors to the north on Broadway is this structure, dating to 1860. Plenty of eyes staring down at you.

A close-up of the fellow near the top floor.

Note his neighbors, especially at lower right.

Columns, and arches, and keystones!

Left: The Fleur de Lis is a familiar symbol. Right: Note the Cornucopia. Both are found on university buildings on Washington Place.

Copper or bronze menorah on the front of Hebrew Union College.

The Torch of Liberty, or the Light of Knowledge? The NYU emblem's origins are somewhat obscure, but what I like is the choice of gold inlaid into granite or... New York neon!

Judson Church is fancifully adorned with complicated stonework.

Headed west, there are residential and commercial sites worth a look.

What a shade of green! 121 MacDougal Street.

Note the face in the keystone.

And across the street is perhaps the only jewelry store you could ever find me in. C'est Magnifique makes and sells all manner of silver rings and other pieces, most are highly unusual and many are symbolic. I rarely wear my Masonic rings, but when I do, it is the simple silver one I bought here in 1999. They also have antique pieces, and what I love most about the place is its dusty, pawn shop-like atmosphere. Unfortunately the place was closed today. Note the All Seeing Eye in the triangle.

Land of Buddha, at 128 MacDougal, specializes in the arts and crafts of Tibet: silver, gemstones, rugs, prayer wheels, clothing, silks, antiques, books, and more. Note the hexagram at bottom.

And now we're getting somewhere. Exiting the Washington Square Park area from the west, and headed south, we find one of my Manhattan hideouts. A favorite place to sit down with a book and a cigar on a sunny day: Sir Winston Churchill Square.

So small and cleverly situated you would never know it was there, this tiny (0.5-acre) neighborhood park  is missed by everyone except for those who live in the area. There is only one statue (or sculpture), and it is an interesting one.

An armillary is an astronomical device comprised of many moving rings and pieces that recreate the changes of the heavens. No moving parts on this sculpture, but note the astrological signs on the interior ring.

The view through its center.

A big part of the Giuliani Revolution in the 1990s was the largely successful elimination of the seedy businesses in the city, including the retailers of drug paraphernalia. The mayor didn't get them all, and needless to say nine years after he left office these stores are reappearing in numbers. There are about half a dozen of them practically next to each other on Sixth Avenue near Bleecker Street. Walking past one of them, my eye was caught by the unmistakable Square and Compasses. Halted by surprise and dread, I stopped in my tracks and took a look.

Belt buckles. Two at top left and another, upside down, at bottom right. All mixed together with glass bongs and that gas mask smoking device. Great, huh? (And no, the proprietors were not interested in removing the belt buckles.)