Tiny Little Jars Contain Big, Bold Colors In The Forbes Pigment Collection - NPR

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Looks like your spice rack on steroids? Nope. Although the colors are a feast for the eyes. Caitlin Cunningham Photography/Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums

Caitlin Cunningham Photography/Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums

Do you have a shrine? Religious, maybe, but not necessarily. A place where you are filled with awe?

I have several. One (you won't believe this) was the former Liberace Museum. Liberace, who died in 1987, was a fabulous musician with a collection of pianos, including one that once belonged to George Gershwin. (You must take a moment to watch this video of the understated, dignified Wladziu Valentino Liberace playing Gershwin on another piano in his collection.)

George Gershwin is my favorite composer. Seeing his piano at the Liberace Museum was such a thrill I simply could not resist touching the keys. Lightly. But verboten. Awed and still guilty, years later I confessed my transgression on the air to a curator there. "Don't feel badly," she said. "Every visitor does that."

Shrine No. 2 is the library at Princeton University. There for a story on F. Scott Fitzgerald, I asked the librarian to see some of the great author's papers. From a carton, he pulled out the manuscript of The Great Gatsby.

"Would you like a look at it?" Oh, old sport!

I actually held the page in my hands. No curator's gloves. The paper so brittle that edges flaked off at my touch (he was writing it in 1924). Guilty again, I reluctantly handed it back. But the thrill, the awe, remains.

All of which brings me to Ann Hoenigswald, retired conservator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Asked about the Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums, Hoenigswald said, "to a conservator, to see the display in Cambridge, it's really awe-inspiring .... almost like a shrine."

The Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums. Caitlin Cunningham Photography/Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums

Caitlin Cunningham Photography/Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums

Those glass vials contain some of the more than 2,700 samples of pigments — colored particles mixed with material that binds them together — linseed or walnut or safflower oil, or eggs. Tada! Colored paint.

The Forbes Pigment Collection gives conservators, preservationists, artists, art historians and serious art fans a chance to see, analyze, imitate the precise colors used by various painters. Collection curator Narayan Khandekar says it's a chance to "have a conversation with the artist" even though he or she has been dead for centuries.

Van Gogh's 1888 Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin (left) and Emerald Green in the Forbes Pigment Collection. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Harvard Art Museums/Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Harvard Art Museums/Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies

Van Gogh used emerald green for this self-portrait. Bright, great to look at. "The trouble is that it's toxic," says conservation scientist Khandekar. "It's made from arsenic." Mixed with copper, it produces this gorgeous color.

Khandekar says there's speculation that when the British exiled Napoleon to Saint Helena, they covered the walls with emerald green wallpaper, perhaps to slowly poison him when humidity released particles into the island air. Nobody knows for sure. But as we say in journalism, never let facts get in the way of a good story.

It's remarkable how many nasty ingredients go into making some of the most beautiful colors: bugs, urine, manure.

Bugs first. The cochineal insect. Lives on cacti in Mexico and South America. Ground up, its shell makes an incredible bright red color. Your lipstick, your makeup, your Ferrari has cochineal dye in it.

The deep red color carmine is derived from an acid that cochineal insects produce to fend off predators. Desiree Martin/AFP via Getty Images

Desiree Martin/AFP via Getty Images

According to Khandekar, "it was the second largest source of wealth (after silver) for the Spanish empire."

Urine from Indian cows (yes, you read it right) was pay dirt for painters like J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough and Georges Seurat.

Harvard Art Museums/Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies

They and so many others used Indian Yellow — thanks to Asian cows that were only given mango leaves to eat. The color's not made this way these days. Mercifully.

Which brings us to manure. Again from cows. "They do pigments a great service, don't they?" observes Khandekar. There wouldn't be Lead White without them. Again, toxic. Again, used in cosmetics. Again, not made this way now. You'll have to listen to this link on the Forbes' new audio tour, to hear where the manure comes in.

Look (as Joe Biden would say), we can't just end with unpleasantries. So here's a perfectly proper blue in a Botticelli from the Harvard Art Museums' collection.

Botticelli's The Virgin and Child (left) and Ultramarine #4 (Lapis Lazuli; Genuine) in the Forbes Pigment Collection. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Harvard Art Museums/Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum; Harvard Art Museums/Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies

That Ultramarine Blue was made with crushed lapis lazuli, probably mined in Afghanistan. Botticelli used it six centuries ago. Old, but not that ancient as pigments go. The cavemen used charcoal and ochre pigments. Which shows how important creating art has always been to who we are as humans.

"These guys were out there hunting, gathering, trying to stay alive," Khandekar says. "And yet they still found time to make art."

Art Where You're At is an informal series showcasing lively online offerings at museums closed due to COVID-19, or at re-opening museums you may not be able to visit.

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October 29, 2020 at 07:00PM
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/29/927463499/tiny-little-jars-contain-big-bold-colors-in-the-forbes-pigment-collection

Tiny Little Jars Contain Big, Bold Colors In The Forbes Pigment Collection - NPR

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Warner Bros UK Acquires Creature Feature ‘The Little People’ Starring Hannah John-Kamen & Douglas Booth - Deadline

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Production has wrapped in London on director Jon Wright’s (Grabbers) creature feature The Little People, whose under-the-radar cast is revealed today as fast-rising Brit actress Hannah John-Kamen (Resident Evil) and Douglas Booth (The Dirt) as a couple who escape their urban nightmare to the tranquility of rural Ireland only to discover malevolent, murderous goblins lurking in wood at the foot of their new garden.

Additonal cast include Colm Meaney (The Banker), Jamie-Lee O’Donnell (Derry Girls), Chris Walley (The Young Offenders) and Kristian Nairn (Game of Thrones). Above is a first look at the production.

The film is based on an original screenplay by Mark Stay (Robot Overlords) and Wright.

Warner Bros. has acquired UK rights and is planning to release the film in 2021. Cornerstone Films is handling worldwide sales and distribution and negotiated the deal with Warner Bros. on behalf of the filmmakers.

The Little People is being funded by Ingenious Media and is produced by Piers Tempest (Military Wives) and Peter Touche (Unhinged) as a Tempo Production in association with Automatik VFX.

Tempo’s Jo Bamford, Alison Thompson and Mark Gooder of Cornerstone Films and Janine Modder, who has worked on the Bond franchise since 1997, are executive producing. Additional executive producers include Matt Williams, Jamie Jessop, Andrea Scarso, Michael Reuter, Seb Barker and Doris Pfardrescher.

Brave New World and Ant-Man And The Wasp star John-Kamen is currently in production on the latest instalment in the Resident Evil franchise in which she will play lead Jill Valentine.

John-Kamen is represented by Scott Marshall Partners, Paradigm and manager Luber Roklin. Booth is represented by Curtis Brown Group, UTA and Sherpa Talent, Walley by B-Side Management, Nairn by APA and the Coalition Agency, Meaney by ICM, Liebman Entertainment and 42, and O’Donnell by The Artists Partnership, The Gersh Agency and Grandview.

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October 29, 2020 at 08:41PM
https://deadline.com/2020/10/warner-bros-uk-acquires-creature-feature-the-little-people-starring-hannah-john-kamen-douglas-booth-1234605581/

Warner Bros UK Acquires Creature Feature ‘The Little People’ Starring Hannah John-Kamen & Douglas Booth - Deadline

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LVMH Saves Face but Little Money - The Wall Street Journal

Little things and simple gifts | | bedfordgazette.com - bedfordgazette.com

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October 29, 2020 at 04:00PM
https://www.bedfordgazette.com/little-things-and-simple-gifts/article_4b3435a5-7c73-5a43-93fb-825d5402460b.html

Little things and simple gifts | | bedfordgazette.com - bedfordgazette.com

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We Have A Lot Of New Polls But There’s Little Sign Of The Presidential Race Tightening - FiveThirtyEight

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After a surprisingly sluggish weekend for polling, the floodgates have opened, with a mix of high-quality polls, low-quality polls and pretty much everything in between. And although there are some outliers in both directions, they tell a fairly consistent story, overall: A steady race nationally, perhaps with some gains for Joe Biden in the Midwest.

Let’s dive right in. Following our rules from my colleague Geoffrey Skelley’s post earlier this week, we’re going to look at every poll where at least half of the survey took place after last week’s debate, with a comparison to the most recent pre-debate survey by the same firm. If the pollster hasn’t surveyed a state before, we’ll make the comparison based on what the FiveThirtyEight polling average said in that state as of the night of the debate (Oct. 22) instead.

As an aside, I set a cutoff for polls as of 7 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday. (More will probably have filtered into the averages by the time that you’re reading this.) We’ll rotate through the four major regions of the country — the South, the West, the Midwest and the Northeast. But first, here are the post-debate national polls:

		Biden lead
	Pollster	Now	Before	change
US	Change Research	+8.0	+10.0	-2.0
US	CNN/SSRS	+12.0	+16.0	-4.0
US	Economist/YouGov	+11.0	+9.0	+2.0
US	Global Marketing Reserch Services	+14.0	+16.0	-2.0
US	Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies	+11.0	+9.0	+2.0
US	IBD/TIPP	+5.0	+5.0	+0.0
US	J.L. Parnters	+14.0	+10.0	+4.0
US	Leger	+8.0	+9.0	-1.0
US	Morning Consult	+9.0	+9.0	+0.0
US	Qriously	+10.0	+12.0	-2.0
US	Rasmussen Reports	-1.0	+3.0	-4.0
US	Redfield & Wilton Strategies	+10.0	+11.0	-1.0
US	Reuters/Ipsos	+10.0	+8.0	+2.0
US	RMG Research	+7.0	+8.0	-1.0
US	SurveyMonkey	+4.0	+6.0	-2.0
US	Yahoo News/YouGov	+12.0	+11.0	+1.0
US	Average	+9.0	+9.5	-0.5

Source: polls

On average, Biden leads by 9 percentage points using a simple average of post-debate national polls, which matches his 9 point lead in our fancy-schmancy official FiveThirtyEight national average.

It’s a bit of a weird mix of polls, though, with more quantity than quality. The only two fully live-caller national polls in here are from CNN and CNBC/Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies, which show Biden leading by 12 points and 11 points, respectively. On the one hand, the trendlines aren’t so bad for Trump in those live-caller polls. He trailed by 16 points in CNN’s previous national poll, and by 9 points in the past Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies poll (or by 11 if you prefer to compare it to the prior NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll, which uses the same polling team).

On the other hand, the higher-quality national polls are showing worse results for Trump than the lower quality polls, which is rarely a good sign. More highly-rated online firms, such as YouGov, Morning Consult, and Ipsos, show Trump trailing by margins ranging from 9 to 12 points.

At least some of the fluctuations in our national polling average seem to reflect shifts in the ratio of high-quality and low-quality surveys. This can go through cycles, and recently the higher-quality firms have mostly been concentrating on state polling. Most of them will release their final national polls soon, though, and it wouldn’t be surprising if, following CNN and CNBC’s example, a few more of them show double-digit leads for Biden.

Something else to note: Although there’s been a slight decline in Biden’s national polls since the debate, a majority of state polls show his position improving. To be more precise, Biden has gained 0.7 percentage points in the average state poll since the debate, while he’s lost 0.5 points in the average national poll. That brings the national and state polls into better alignment after a period where national polls suggested that Biden led by 10 to 11 points but state polls were more consistent with a lead of about 9 points instead.

Let’s start our review of the regions with the South, where there’s been a lot of polling over the past couple of days:

		Biden lead
	Pollster	Now	Before	change
FL	Florida Atlantic	+2.0	+4.0	-2.0
FL	Reuters/Ipsos	+1.5	+4.5	-3.0
FL	Susquehanna Polling & Research	-5.0	+4.0	-9.0
GA	Civiqs	+5.0	+3.0	+2.0
GA	Monmouth University	+3.0	-3.5	+6.5
MS	Civiqs*	-14.0	-15.0	+1.0
NC	Gravis Marketing	+3.0	-3.0	+6.0
NC	Harper Polling	+1.0	-1.0	+2.0
NC	Public Policy Polling	+4.0	+4.0	+0.0
NC	Reuters/Ipsos	+1.0	+2.5	-1.5
NC	RMG Research	+1.0	+2.0	-1.0
NC	SurveyUSA	+0.0	+5.0	-5.0
SC	East Carolina University	-8.0	-12.0	+4.0
SC	Starboard Communications*	-7.0	-7.0	+0.0
TX	Data for Progress	+1.0	+1.0	+0.0
TX	NYT Upshot/Siena	-4.0	-3.0	-1.0
	Average	-1.0	-0.9	-0.1

* The firm had not previously polled the state and the change is based on the FiveThirtyEight average as of the Oct. 22 debate.

Source: polls

It’s hard to tell a coherent story here because every state in the region seems to be marching to its own fight song. Biden’s gotten some great numbers in Georgia since the debate, but he’s had some terrible ones in Florida. North Carolina is somewhere in between, with polls variously suggesting that he’s gaining or losing ground.

Do I buy that there are these microfluctations between neighboring states? I’m not sure that I do, particularly since you have a different mix of pollsters from state to state. Florida and Georgia could use one or two more high-quality polls.

For the time being, though, Biden’s small lead in our Georgia polling average (+1.4) nearly equals his lead in Florida (also +1.4) and North Carolina (+2.1). That means Georgia needs to be taken seriously as a plausible — if unlikely — tipping-point state. It’s going to be the focus of a lot of resource expenditures over the final few days of the campaign, especially since it also has two competitive Senate races. Texas is a step or two away from the rest of the Southern group, meanwhile, as Trump leads in our polling average by 1.8 points there.

Next up on our whirlwind tour of America … the West:

		Biden lead
	Pollster	Now	Before	change
AZ	Gravis Marketing	+4.0	+2.0	+2.0
AZ	Ipsos	+1.0	+3.5	-2.5
AZ	Justice Collaborative Institute*	+6.0	+4.0	+2.0
AZ	OH Predictive Insights	+3.0	+3.5	-0.5
AZ	Patinkin Research Strategies*	+7.0	+4.0	+3.0
MT	Public Policy Polling	-2.0	-6.0	+4.0
NV	NYT/Siena College	+6.0	+6.0	+0.0
	Average	+3.6	+2.4	+1.1

* The firm had not previously polled the state and the change is based on the FiveThirtyEight average as of the Oct. 22 debate.

Source: Polls

This is a decent set of polls for Biden, including in Arizona, where Biden’s lead has oscillated between 3 and 5 points in our polling average for most of the year. It’s in the lower-to-mid part of that range now, at 3.5 points in our official polling average, although the raw average of post-debate Arizona polls is slightly better for him at +4.2.

I realize this might seem like splitting hairs, but Arizona is an important state for Biden, insofar as it’s probably his best backup option if he loses Pennsylvania. (If Biden loses Pennsylvania but wins Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, he’d also need to find one more electoral vote somewhere to break a 269-269 Electoral College tie, but he’d probably get that in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, where he’s favored.)

In a world where Arizona is polling at Biden +5, it’s really almost as though he has a Plan A1 (Pennsylvania) and Plan A2 (Arizona plus NE-2). That would make his map more robust. In a world where Arizona is Biden +2 or Biden +3, conversely, it doesn’t really stand out from his other backup options, such as North Carolina and Florida, so it would be as though Biden has one Plan A (Pennsylvania) and a bunch of Plan Cs.

Now to the Midwest:

		Biden lead
	Pollster	Now	Before	change
IA	RABA Research	+4.0	+2.0	+2.0
MI	ABC News/Washington Post*	+7.0	+8.0	-1.0
MI	Glengariff Group	+8.0	+9.0	-1.0
MI	Gravis Marketing	+13.0	+9.0	+4.0
MI	NYT Upshot/Siena	+8.0	+8.0	+0.0
MI	Reuters/Ipsos	+9.5	+8.0	+1.5
MN	Gravis Marketing	+14.0	+16.0	-2.0
WI	ABC News/Washington Post	+17.0	+6.0	+11.0
WI	Gravis Marketing	+11.0	+8.0	+3.0
WI	Marquette Law School	+5.0	+5.0	+0.0
	Average	+9.6	+7.9	+1.7

* The firm had not previously polled the state and the change is based on the FiveThirtyEight average as of the Oct. 22 debate.

Source: polls

FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich covered this region this morning, so I’ll be brief here. This is the one part of the country where you can’t really say the race is steady; instead, this has been a strong set of polling for Biden, and he’s gained an average of 1.7 points in surveys in this region versus the pre-debate polls.

No, Trump probably doesn’t trail in Wisconsin by 17 points, as he does in the ABC News/Washington Post poll. (Good pollsters publish their outliers instead of sitting on them, and sometimes they turn out not to be outliers at all.) But average the ABC News poll with the three other post-debate polls of Wisconsin, and Biden is still ahead by 10.5 points there.

Biden’s polling gains may reflect that the COVID-19 outbreak in the Upper Midwest is bad right now, especially in Wisconsin. There is some evidence that the polls tend to shift against Trump following spikes in COVID-19 cases in a state, potentially a foreboding indicator for Trump as COVID-19 cases are also now rising sharply in many other states.

Finally, to the Northeast:

		Biden lead
	Pollster	Now	Before	change
ME	Colby College	+13.0	+11.0	+2.0
PA	Civiqs	+7.0	+6.0	+1.0
PA	Gravis Marketing	+7.0	+3.0	+4.0
PA	InsiderAdvantage	-3.0	+3.0	-6.0
PA	Reuters/Ipsos	+5.0	+4.0	+1.0
	Average	+5.8	+5.4	+0.4

Source: polls

By the Northeast, as you can see from the chart above, I really just mean … Pennsylvania, plus one stray poll of Maine. This region has been underpolled. There haven’t been any live caller polls of Pennsylvania since the debate, and the online and IVR polls show highly disparate results there. New Hampshire has had no post-debate polling at all, meanwhile.

We go back and forth here at FiveThirtyEight about whether Pennsylvania counts as part of the Northeast or the Midwest. I’ve usually been a proponent of the theory that for political purposes, Pennsylvania behaves like a Midwestern state. There are some important geographic, demographic and cultural differences between Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest, however, and this year, the polling in Pennsylvania hasn’t tracked the numbers in Wisconsin and Michigan that well. Pennsylvania is also not currently experiencing as bad of a COVID-19 outbreak as those other states. So it may be less correlated with them than usual.

But one way or another, the final round of high-quality, live-caller polls in Pennsylvania are likely to make a big difference to our model. Pennsylvania is by far the most likely tipping-point state. If Biden gets up to, say, a 6- or 7-point lead there, he’ll be in a much safer position overall in the Electoral College than if he gets knocked down to a 4-point lead here instead. More polling of the Keystone State is surely to come soon.

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October 29, 2020 at 06:59AM
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/we-have-a-lot-of-new-polls-but-theres-little-sign-of-the-presidential-race-tightening/

We Have A Lot Of New Polls But There’s Little Sign Of The Presidential Race Tightening - FiveThirtyEight

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Sen. Betty Little being treated for breast cancer - North Country Public Radio

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NY State Sen. Betty Little. File photo: Mark Kurtz

Oct 28, 2020 — North Country Senator Betty Little was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer this summer, according to State Senate Republicans.

In a statement, State Senator Rob Ort disclosed that Little has completed radiation. “We’re praying for a full and expected recovery,” he said.

Little told Albany station WNYT a mammogram detected a small cancerous lump in July.

Little is retiring this year after almost twenty years in state politics.

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October 28, 2020 at 08:43AM
https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/42573/20201028/sen-betty-little-being-treated-for-breast-cancer

Sen. Betty Little being treated for breast cancer - North Country Public Radio

https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Sen. Betty Little being treated for breast cancer - North Country Public Radio

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NY State Sen. Betty Little. File photo: Mark Kurtz

Oct 28, 2020 — North Country Senator Betty Little was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer this summer, according to State Senate Republicans.

In a statement, State Senator Rob Ort disclosed that Little has completed radiation. “We’re praying for a full and expected recovery,” he said.

Little told Albany station WNYT a mammogram detected a small cancerous lump in July.

Little is retiring this year after almost twenty years in state politics.

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October 28, 2020 at 08:43AM
https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/42573/20201027/sen-betty-little-being-treated-for-breast-cancer

Sen. Betty Little being treated for breast cancer - North Country Public Radio

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