During a recent exhibition at the New York City Transit Museum, Antonio Masi was interviewed about his painting approach and ideas. Here is a link to the interview and  a brief painting demo. Video Link

New York Golden Age of Bridges
Paintings by Antonio Masi
Essays by Joan Marans Dim

Visit www.antoniomasi.com to read more about Antonio Masi and his work.

MTA President, Bridges & Tunnels, James Ferrara

Earlier this week, the NY Transit Museum, celebrated the opening of their latest exhibition, titled “New York’s Golden Age of Bridges: Paintings by Antonio Masi.” The exhibit officially opened on May 12th and will run through September 30th.  The exhibit features 18 massive paintings of nine city bridges.

Masi’s paintings are often distinguished by his anomalous use of watercolor, generally considered a light and airy medium. “I discovered that watercolor can also be used in a thick manner,” he explains, “and it can express the heaviest subjects imaginable. With watercolor, I contrast the mass, power and delicacy of my subjects.”

In 2011, the critically acclaimed book New York’s Golden Age of Bridges was published by Fordham University Press, combining Masi’s paintings with insightful essays by author and New York City historian Joan Marans Dim. The book describes an age that was a testament to human ingenuity, where architectural innovation, consummate determination and daring vision came together in uniting the five boroughs.

The exhibition at the New York Transit Museum features eighteen of Masi’s paintings – two of each of his subjects: the Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Queensboro, Manhattan, George Washington, Triborough, Bronx-Whitestone, Throgs-Neck and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges. The accompanying exhibition text, written by Joan Dim, provides a concise history of these masterpieces of engineering.

Masi’s works serve to celebrate an era of achievement – from the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886 to the Verrazano-Narrows in 1964 – which has provided the foundation for the modern age of transit. A gallery talk and book signing with the artist and author is planned.

Funding for New York’s Golden Age of Bridges: Paintings by Antonio Masi is provided, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

While Walter and Betsy highlighted the family history of the Washingtons in the area, Jim Johnston took a slightly different approach.

Betsy Washington Wells

Through this historical account, Jim has reconstructed a unique narrative of black struggle and achievement from paintings, photographs, books, diaries, court records, legal documents, and oral histories. From Slave Ship to Harvard traces the family from the colonial period and the American Revolution through the Civil War to Harvard and finally today.

Walter Washington

Yarrow Mamout, the first of the family in America, was an educated Muslim from Guinea. He was brought to Maryland on the slave ship Elijah and gained his freedom forty-four years later. By then, Yarrow had become so well known in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., that he attracted the attention of the eminent American portrait painter Charles Willson Peale, who captured Yarrow’s visage in one of his paintings.

Recently, the portrait of Yarrow Mamout has been sold by the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, showing the continual impact that the past is continually brought into the present. The era of the Washingtons, Bealls, and Mamouts continues to stay with us.

For more information on the seminar, please click here.

Gay Talese, author of A Writer’s Life says, “This book pays artistic tribute to the existence of great bridges—a wonderful achievement.”

We may be biased, but we’re certain this beautiful book is on everyone’s holiday wish list!

By the time he painted Yarrow, Peale was more than just a portrait painter. He was also a businessman, operating a combination natural history museum and art gallery in Philadelphia. In it were copies of Peale’s portraits of the first four presidents, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. In 1818, the artist went in Washington, D.C. to get a painting of James Monroe to add to the presidential gallery in the museum. That is when he heard about Yarrow. Thus, Peale returned to Philadelphia with paintings of both president and former slave.

James H. Johnston’s book, From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family is forthcoming in May 2012. It will provide a great deal more about Yarrow and Peale and the friendship that developed between the two, which the Philadelphia Museum of Art suggests in its new exhibit. Johnston is also giving a talk December 4, 2011 on the Beall Family who owned Yarrow. It will be given at Claymont Court, Claymont Society, 667 Huyett Road, Charles Town, WV 25414.

In a city of over 8 million people, this is not surprising. What is surprising is that there is often little time for contemplation on the history of our roads and bridges and the cultural changes they have created. But today, the George Washington Bridge celebrates 80 years. To honor the engineering feats that created bridges and revolutionized the commerce of New York, the country, and the world, I will offer a short meditation on the “bridge.”

Bridge [brij] noun, verb, bridged, bridg•ing, adjective*

noun
1. A structure spanning and providing passage over a river, chasm, road, or the like.

The best part of the Henry Hudson Parkway is the view. Leading up to the George Washington Bridge is a winding view of trees and river. The Hudson river, which the GWB spans, is breathtaking in all seasons. From the summer when the palisades are ruddy and dry to the fall when the trees burst forth in colors, the sight is not to be missed. As a small child I would strain to see the river itself, full of tugboats and sailboats as we crossed over the bridge.

2. Connecting, transitional, or intermediate route or phase between two adjacent elements, activities, conditions, or the like: Working at the hospital was a bridge between medical school and private practice.

Even though the lives we lead can seem harried or fast-paced, we sometimes need to take time out to focus internally on our well-being. The yoga pose of Setu Bandha Sarvangasana or “Bridge Pose” helps me form an actual bridge of my body to wind down my yoga practice and metaphorically gives me a “bridge” into a calmer place. In our lives, it is just as important for reflection, as well as action.

3. Nautical
a. a raised transverse platform from which a power vessel is navigated: often includes a pilot house and a chart house.
b. any of various other raised platforms from which the navigation or docking of a vessel is supervised.
c. a bridge house or bridge superstructure.
d.a raised walkway running fore-and-aft.

A bridge can refer to the power center of the boat. It is a place to chart and set a course. Often these types of bridges are present on war ships. Not too far from the George Washington Bridge is one of New York’s unique museums. Housed on the aircraft carrier Intrepid, The Intrepid, Sea, Air, and Space Museum has a range of activities, exhibits, and events. The museum also hosts the annual Fleet Week in Manhattan.

4. Anatomy. the ridge or upper line of the nose.

I find this definition applicable to the George Washington Bridge because my mind makes the leap from the George Washington Bridge to another inspiring engineering feat where George Washington is present—Mount Rushmore. The same engineers that made bridges had to have the imagination to see what could be created in a space that nature fully inhabited.

5. Dentistry. an artificial replacement, fixed or removable, of a missing tooth or teeth, supported by natural teeth or roots adjacent to the space.

While this meaning of the word “bridge” does not seem applicable to the bridge that lends itself to transporting the masses, I think it is necessary to note the second half of the definition “supported by …roots adjacent to the space.” It is the roots of immigrant history that have in fact made bridges like the GWB and the Tappan Zee possible.

New York’s Golden Age of Bridges by Antonio Masi and Joan Marans Dim traces the roots of New York’s bridges, but also the stories behind the people who made them possible. Antonio’s grandfather, Francesco Masi, an Italian immigrant helped build the 59th Street (the recently renamed Ed Koch Queensboro) Bridge. Fascinated with bridges his entire life, Antonio has been capturing bridges with his brush for over a decade. Antonio’s work speaks to me, as it may speak to many others. Growing up, I was taught that my great-great grandfather, an Italian immigrant went to Cooper Union and became a painter. His paintings hung in our home, a constant reminder of the roots we have. I think Antonio and Joan’s narrative, accompanied by striking paintings will resonate with many others whose roots lie in a unique, yet collective American experience.

–Katie Sweeney

*Courtesy of Dictionary.com

Peale’s striking portrait captured the imagination of James H. Johnston, an attorney and journalist in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Johnston went on to research Yarrow and his descendants, finding that his relatives were notable in their own right. Yarrow’s son married into the Turner family, and the farm community in western Maryland called Yarrowsburg was named for Yarrow Mahmout’s daughter-in-law Mary “Polly” Turner Yarrow. The Turner line ultimately produced Robert Turner Ford, who graduated from Harvard University in 1927. Their fascinating stories are told in Johnston’s forthcoming book, From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family.

The portrait was painted by Peale in 1819 and is the earliest known portrait of a practicing American Muslim.

Besides reconstructing the true story of an African American family in Maryland over six generations, Johnston puts a face on slavery and paints the history of race in America. Still fascinating Americans today, the portrait of Yarrow Mahmout is not just an historical artifact, but a journey that continues.

For more on Yarrow Mahmout’s journey, look for From Slave Ship to Harvard by James H. Johnston / 9780823239504 / $29.95 / MAY 2012

Nicolai Ouroussoff, in a review published yesterday in the NY Times, says, “When you step back out onto the Grand Concourse after visiting the Bronx Museum show, you see the neighborhood with fresh eyes and a clearer understanding of its history and how it could be revived.”

“Intersections: The Grand Concourse Beyond 100” runs through Jan. 3 at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, at 165th Street, Morrisania; (718) 681-6000, bronxmuseum.org. Museum Program Director Sergio Bessa is the editor of Intersections: The Grand Concourse at 100, from Fordham University Press.