Downtown

Flags Fly High At Puerto Rican Festival

by | Aug 14, 2023 7:40 am | Comments (5)

Eleanor Polak Photos

The crowd on the Green at the Puerto Rican Festival.

Ramon Rivera attends the annual Puerto Rican Festival on the New Haven Green every year — and Saturday was no exception. He sells Puerto Rican flags of varying sizes and colors, each latched to a wooden dowel, making them perfect for waving in the air or propping against chairs, strollers, and even traffic cones. I like being with my people,” said Rivera, who is Puerto Rican himself. It brings us back home as a family.”

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Collage Workshop Provides Breath Of Fresh Air

by | Aug 11, 2023 8:58 am | Comments (2)

Shelley Stoehr-McCarthy and son Luca McCarthy make collages.

Inside the upstairs gallery at The Institute Library at 847 Chapel St. sat a table littered with paper, magazines, paintbrushes, glitter, scissors, stickers, and a giant jug of glue. Outside it was rainy and humid, but the room — set aside for a collage workshop entitled A Time To Breathe: an Oasis Workshop” — formed a little oasis itself. Not just a refuge from the weather, but a safe space for creativity to roam free.

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Flaming Lips Embrace College Street

by | Aug 8, 2023 8:57 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

Wayne Coyne at Monday night's show.

Giant inflatable pink robots. Enormous balls filled with confetti. And a veteran band, playing as well as ever, fronted by a singer who was all heart. Now-venerable psychedelic rockers The Flaming Lips returned to College Street Music Hall Monday night to an ecstatic, sold-out crowd ready to take in a show that delivered heaps of fun — and empathy.

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Service & "Sacred Conversations" Fill The Green

by | Aug 7, 2023 1:57 pm | Comments (2)

Jerusalem Peace Builders students Malak Swidan, Tavor Hazani, Hafeed Khalaily

If you pack survival kits for the homeless, or hammer in some boards on an affordable house in-the-making, or set upright fallen tombstones in an old Jewish cemetery that needs some love, you’ll be powerfully transformed — and that act of peace-making might just change the world.

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Noir Vintage & Co. Time Travels Downtown

by | Aug 7, 2023 12:40 pm | Comments (2)

Laura Glesby photos

Entrepreneur and stylist Kim Poole browses Noir Vintage & Co.'s back room.

Meanwhile, store owner Evelyn Massey, right, hugs supporters in a burst of emotion.

With the snip of a ribbon, Evelyn Massey opened up a portal through time in the form of a vintage shop styled after a Harlem Renaissance salon, the culmination of a long-simmering dream.

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Sound Bath Sundays Set Tone For Mindfulness

by | Aug 7, 2023 8:25 am | Comments (1)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Jim LoPresti shakes away the stress with his bamboo leaf rattle.

If asked where one might go in New Haven for a moment or two of meditative stillness, few people would suggest Crown Street, known for its bustling and crowded restaurants and bars as well as a bevy of sounds that would challenge any symphony. But one place offers, among other wellness and restorative practices, a chance to take in an hour of music made specifically to center its participants and give them a chance to remain present and thoughtful in their minds and bodies.

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Omola Studio Brings Art To The Blake

by | Jul 27, 2023 8:54 am | Comments (0)

Autumn Nelson

Self-Indulgence.

Autumn Nelson’s canvas is the first piece in The Past Pushes Forward” — an art show installed in the top floor of the Blake Hotel at 9 High St., now until August 31 — to greet viewers as they exit the elevator. It’s hung in just the right spot so that the canvas functions as a double of the subject matter. The mirror that reflects the painter is held up to the viewer as well. Do we love ourselves as much as Nelson loves herself? How much are we allowed to love ourselves? Why is it fraught to even ask that question?

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Housing Authority Details Path To More Housing

by | Jul 25, 2023 9:18 am | Comments (41)

Laura Glesby Photo

Karen DuBois-Walton: "Every night I go to bed concerned" about the housing crisis.

Pre-approve certain building plans. Eliminate parking minimums. Support single-room apartments. Implement a land tax. 

The Housing Authority of New Haven and its nonprofit affiliates recommended those city-level policies and others while delivering a message to City Hall: when it comes to the housing crisis, we can’t count on the state.”

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Ruth McInton Cogswell and Dorothy Cogswell, Silhouetted Against Time In New Museum Exhibit

by | Jul 21, 2023 9:51 am | Comments (0)

Eleanor Polak Photos

Ruth McInton Cogswell's silhouettes of New Haven characters.

Profiles: Ruth McInton Cogswell and Dorothy Cogswell” — the latest exhibition at the New Haven Museum at 144 Whitney Ave. — highlights the lives and work of two women who played an important role in the Elm City’s early 20th-century local art scene. The mother-daughter duo of artists used watercolors, pencil drawings, and silhouettes to pay tribute to the people of New Haven and commemorate their history. Through the Cogswells’ work, the show provides a tour of the city’s past, where viewers can recognize familiar figures and learn new aspects of their history.

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YUAG Takes A Closer Look

by | Jul 19, 2023 1:35 pm | Comments (0)

Yale Art Gallery

The Nautilus Cup by Jan Bellekin.

Imagine yourself peering through the large end of a telescope, looking at the world in miniature. You feel blown out of proportion, almost godlike, a giant out of Gulliver’s Travels staring down at people the size of insects going about their days. But as you look, you begin to notice details in the minute, humanity condensed to an anthill ready for your inspection. You see the big picture, made small.

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I'll Take "Columns" For $500 ...

by | Jul 18, 2023 9:51 am | Comments (8)

ASHER JOSEPH PHOTOS

Michael Waters explains different styles of columns at Monday night's Preservation Trust event at Make Haven.

Fifty homeowners and architecture enthusiasts sat stumped by the house’s sloping turret, asymmetrical facade, and spindly woodwork.

Then New Haven newcomer Madeline Altman put the pieces together: It’s a Queen Anne.”

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Beinecke Readings Examine Freedom From All Angles

by | Jul 6, 2023 9:10 am | Comments (5)

Eleanor Polak Photos

Original printing of the Declaration of Independence.

Eleanor Polak Photos

Exhibit on Frederick Douglass, William Grimes, and the Declaration of Sentiments at the Beinecke.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds one of 26 known surviving copies of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. The document, printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, has a single typographical error, an indication that the founders issued it in a hurry to declare independence from England. 

On Wednesday, a few dozen New Haveners got to hear the words of that revolutionary broadside read aloud — along with that of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 oration What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” — as part of an annual primary-source-focused tradition to celebrate the 247th anniversary of Independence Day.

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City Librarian Kicks Off Tenure With Kids & Kits

by | Jul 5, 2023 8:47 am | Comments (4)

Allan Appel photos

New top city librarian Maria Bernhey, with see-through backpacks ...

... at Monday's Ives Branch "Stay and Play."

During her first day on the job, new City Librarian Maria Bernhey made a bee line to the new Early Literacy Corner, a cozy spot on the second floor of the Ives Main Branch on Elm Street, where a dozen of the new diaphanous see-through-backpack kits — a way to expand literacy beyond the library — sat invitingly on the shelves, their first day available.

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Artists Seek The Knowledge Within

by | Jun 28, 2023 8:51 am | Comments (1)

Yige Tong's

Confluence.

The figure in Yige Tong’s Confluence connotes both safety and vulnerability. She may be at rest, sleeping comfortably. She may also be protecting herself, or recovering from hurt. The sense that both readings are in play is amplified by a closer look at the piece, where the viewer discovers that the background is made up of fragmented and interwoven images of the faces of small children and adults. Family members? Friends? Strangers? The pieces of the past surround her. Some may give comfort. Others remembrance of pain. A final part of the image lies in seeing what’s in the woman’s hand: a remote control for a camera. She has taken her own picture, put it up for others to see. The image of her body is meant to pass something along, deliver a message, maybe find connection.

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Caribbean Heritage Festival Celebrates Culture And Community

by | Jun 26, 2023 9:05 am | Comments (2)

Eleanor Polak Photos

Vendors and cultural booths at the Caribbean Heritage Festival.

Colorful booths popped up on the New Haven Green as the city celebrated the Caribbean Heritage Festival this Saturday. Attendants ambled from vendor to vendor, snacking on jerk chicken and popsicles from the food trucks. Upbeat music filled the air and flags fluttered to the rhythm of the gentle breeze. Cultural pride suffused the scene.

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Make Music Day Provides Soundtrack To College Street

by | Jun 22, 2023 8:46 am | Comments (0)

Eleanor Polak Photos

Absofunkinlutely performs at College Street Music Hall for May Music Day.

On Wednesday, Make Music New Haven sought to fill the air with something other than pollen: sound. In honor of Make Music Day, a worldwide celebration of music, the local branch organized 31 artists to perform at 17 different locations in the greater New Haven area. 

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