Esopus 20: Special Collections

The twentieth issue of the award-winning semiannual publication is devoted to personal and institutional archives, and features facsimile reproductions of items from the collections of Mad Men creator Matt Weiner (handwritten notes related to the series); the Museum of Modern Art Archives (curator William C. Seitz's photographs of sites painted by Claude Monet); the American Museum of Natural History photo archive (a selection of archival photographs curated by artist Mark Dion); the Jewish Museum (presented by artist Barbara Bloom and related to her 2013 exhibition As It Were ... So to Speak); the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry (never-before-seen works by the eccentric monk/concrete poet Dom Sylvester Hou dard); The Mott Collection (punk ephemera from the Thatcher era); Dean Wareham (early drafts of lyrics for Galaxy 500 songs); Christopher Knowles (a 24x38 removable poster featuring never-before-seen cassette tapes recorded by the artist and poet in the 1970s); cookbook author and culinary historian Jessica Harris (a curated selection of food-related postcards related to the African diaspora from Harris's collection); photo archivist Rich Remsberg (pages from used coloring books from the past 60 years); Stephen Sprouse (a treasure trove of sketches, diary pages, and swatchbooks recovered from a dumpster by collectors Carol McCranie and Javier Magri), and D. James Dee, a.k.a. "the SoHo Photographer," who contributes images of his archive of 250,000 photographs of contemporary artworks by Basquiat, Johns, Warhol and others. The issue concludes with a CD featuring songs inspired by objects from the personal collections of Prince Rama, Wesley Stace, Sam Phillips, and seven other musicians.