Sightings, September 2003

Michael Newberry—who is familiar to TOC members from his talks and exhibits at several summer seminars—has announced the establishment of a new art organization: The Foundation for the Advancement of Art. The mission of this nonprofit foundation, he writes, "is to establish innovative representational painting and sculpture as the alternative to postmodern art in the world's leading contemporary art museums." The foundation hopes to influence decision-makers in the art world via three tactics: "1. The examination of the philosophical and aesthetic arguments that support the viability of representational art. 2. The re-evaluation of postmodern aesthetics. 3. The recognition of living representational artists who are making historical advancements through their innovations."

On October 6, the Foundation for the Advancement of Art will convene its first conference. It will be held at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan, and the speakers will include David Kelley of The Objectivist Center and Stephen R.C. Hicks of Rockford College, as well as Newberry, sculptor Martine Vaugel, and Jan Koenderink, a scientist who has published widely on the nature of vision. The program is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. Those seeking additional information about the foundation or the conference should go to the Web site www.ArtAdvancement.org. Those who would like to learn more about Michael Newberry and his art may wish to consult Susan McCloskey's Navigator interview with him.

Michelle Marder Kamhi, of the Objectivist art Web journal www.aristos.org, has written to inform Navigator of a major addition to the Library of Congress's Rand papers. According to a letter from Alice L. Birney, manuscript historian for the library's American literature collection, the addition consists of seventy-two handwritten essays by Ayn Rand, totals 1,281 pages, and comprises all the nonfiction Rand wrote between 1971 and 1974 for the Ayn Rand Letter. Birney states that the papers, donated to the Library of Congress after having been bought at a recent auction, have extensive corrections. As Kamhi remarks, the study of these papers should prove a boon to scholars.

At The Objectivist Center's 2001 Summer Seminar, R. Paul Drake delivered an incisive talk about the difficult problem of government funding for science, in light of the role that advanced technology plays in national defense. TOC is pleased to report that a version of this talk has now been included as a chapter in a book published by the Hoover Institution Press: Liberty and Research and Development: Science Funding in a Free Society, edited by Tibor Machan.

Much has been written about the new design of the World Trade Center site and the mindset of the free verse written by its architect, Daniel Libeskind. His "poetry" includes such insights as "America turns its mass-produced urine antennae toward Caesar's arrogant ganglion . . ." Fortunately, those choosing designs for the Washington memorial found an architect with quite different aesthetic tastes. She is Julie Beckman, only thirty years of age. (Her partner in the project is Keith Kaseman, only 31.) According to an article in the Washington Post last May: "In the summer before 10th grade, she was assigned to read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Beckman read the phone-book-thick novel almost nonstop, finishing it in two weeks. Beckman was inspired by the novel's main character, Howard Roark, a counterintuitive [yes, counterintuitive] architect who fights for his ideals. She wanted to be the female Howard Roark, fighting for what she believed in and creating things in a way no one has thought of."

Though it may be unintentional, the Beckman-Kaseman memorial seems to offer an echo of Howard Roark's Monadnock project, for it employs individualized tributes to each person who died at the Pentagon or on the plane that was crashed into it.

The staff of The Objectivist Center notes with sadness the death of E.G. Ross on April 10. He was best known as the publisher and (largely) author of three newsletters: The Objective American, The Positive Economist Bulletin, and Understanding Defense. All were read here at the center with great interest. Full Context published an interview with Ross in its January 1997 issue, and a substantial excerpt is still available online.