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This fall, The Morgan Library & Museum is hosting an extraordinary exhibition of rarely seen master drawings from the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, one of Europe’s most distinguished drawings collections. On view October 12, 2012– January 6, 2013, Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich marks the first time such a comprehensive and prestigious selection of works has been lent to a single exhibition. Dürer to de Kooning was conceived in exchange for a show of one hundred drawings that the Morgan sent to Munich in celebration of the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung’s 250th anniversary in 2008. The Morgan’s organizing curators were granted unprecedented access to the Graphische Sammlung’s vast holdings, ultimately choosing one hundred masterworks that represent the breadth, depth, and vitality of the collection.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789–1869) Italia and Germania, 1815–28 Inv. 2001:12 Z © Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München

The exhibition includes drawings by Italian, German, French, Dutch, and Flemish artists of the Renaissance and baroque periods; German draftsmen of the nineteenth century; and an international contingent of modern and contemporary draftsmen. Dürer to de Kooning will occupy the Morgan’s two principal galleries. One gallery will contain more than sixty Italian, German, Dutch, and French drawings of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries. Represented here will be such celebrated artists as Mantegna, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Raphael, Titian, Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Bellange, and Friedrich. The second gallery features nearly forty late-nineteenth century and modern and contemporary works, including drawings by Vincent van Gogh, Emil Nolde, Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, David Hockney, Georg Baselitz, and Sigmar Polke.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) Nude Girl in an Interior, ca. 1910 Inv. 1978:1 Z © Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München

ITALY

The Staaliche Graphische Sammlung is home to some 3,500 Italian drawings. The collection’s strength is sixteenth-century drawings by the most celebrated artists of the period: Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolommeo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, and Pontormo, all of whom are represented in the exhibition. Sheets by Benvenuto Cellini, Annibale Carracci, and Pietro da Cortona are also of particular note.

Highlights

Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557) Two Standing Women, after 1530(?)

An outstanding example of Pontormo’s Mannerist style, this drawing is remarkable for its dynamism. It may be preparatory for one of the artist’s enigmatic depictions of the Visitation, envisioning the meeting of the pregnant Virgin Mary with her cousin Elizabeth. The abstraction of form, bold linearity, and tension between the figures contribute to the powerful appeal of this sheet.

Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) Dancing Muse, ca. 1495

Recognized in his lifetime as the leading painter in Italy, Mantegna spent the latter part of his career working for the Gonzaga court in Mantua. This is likely the final study for one of the main figures in Mantegna’s Parnassus in the ducal palace of Mantua. It is especially notable for the artist’s masterful handling of the folds in the muse’s clothing. The figure’s face and hairstyle—both rendered in a sculptural style typical of the artist—appear in slightly different form in the finished painting.

Pietro da Cortona (1596–1669) The Age of Bronze: Design for a Mural in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, ca. 1641

In celebration of his marriage, Ferdinand II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, commissioned Cortona to decorate Florence’s Palazzo Pitti with frescoes representing the Four Ages of Man, a theme drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This preparatory study for the Age of Bronze is notable for its lively energy, fluidity of the draftsmanship, and the broad, painterly pools of wash that signal its exploratory and inventive character.

GERMANY

Germany is the school most richly represented in Munich’s graphics collection, and many examples are included in the exhibition. An impressive variety of works is on display, including Hans Burgkmair the Elder’s Christ with the Crown of Thorns, the earliest red chalk drawing by any German artist; a fragment of a highly finished procession scene by Hans Holbein the Younger; window designs by Hans Schäufelin and Jörg Breu the Elder; fresco painter Melchior Steidl’s watercolor design for a monumental ceiling painting; landscapes by Joseph Anton Koch, Caspar David Friedrich, and Carl Rottmann; and a bold graphite-and-charcoal self-portrait by Wilhelm Leibl, a major figure in German art during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Highlights

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) Portrait of Kaspar Nützel, 1517

Dürer, the most important artist of the German Renaissance, returned to large-format portraiture in 1514 after an absence of more than ten years. This striking portrait of Kaspar Nützel, the artist’s friend and an important Nuremberg diplomat, has a storied provenance; once part of Paulus Praun’s celebrated collection of some ten thousand objects, the drawing was likely purchased by Crown Prince Ludwig, who later became King Ludwig I of Bavaria, in 1809.

Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1470/80–1528) Study of a Woman with Her Head Raised in Prayer

Few drawings by Grünewald survive, but those that do exhibit the haunting quality associated with his work that impressed twentieth-century artists as diverse as Otto Dix and Francis Bacon. This study and another on the reverse of the same sheet have been connected with the figures of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene on the crucifixion panel of the artist’s Isenheim Altarpiece.

THE NETHERLANDS

Of the Graphische Sammlung’s approximately 1,700 works by artists from the northern and southern Netherlands, fourteen of the finest were selected for the exhibition. Dutch drawings on view include important examples from sixteenth-century artists Hendrick Goltzius, Jacques de Gheyn, and Jan Harmensz Muller; and seventeenth-century drawings by Rembrandt, Ferdinand Bol, and Aelbert Cuyp. Outstanding seventeenth-century Flemish works by Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens are also on display.

Highlights

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–1669) Saskia Lying in Bed, a Woman Sitting at Her Feet, ca. 1638

The exhibition includes three works from Munich’s collection of drawings by Rembrandt. The bedridden woman in this study, the most personal by the artist that is on view in the show, is most likely his wife Saskia, who was often ill or sapped of energy by her four pregnancies. Saskia’s precisely observed likeness, rendered by a fine pen, is juxtaposed to that of her maid in the foreground, whose figure was added in a rather cursory fashion with broad strokes of the brush. The contrast between these two drawing techniques sharpens the focus of the composition on Saskia’s pensive face.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Study for the Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma, 1603

Rubens was just beginning his career when he completed this study for a larger-than-life equestrian portrait of the Duke of Lerma, commander-in-chief of the Spanish cavalry. The artist invested significant time and effort in perfecting the details of this, his largest known drawing, which is vividly worked with pen and brush. The resulting dynamic new approach to equestrian portraits would soon inspire imitations by the artist’s many followers.

FRANCE

Dürer to de Kooning features five examples from Munich’s select but impressive group of French drawings. On view is a stylistically diverse group of drawings by Antoine Caron, Jacques Bellange, Simon Vouet, and Laurent de la Hyre.

Highlights

Simon Vouet (1590–1649) Man Bending Over in Three-Quarter View, Two Heads with Turbans, ca. 1636

This luminous drawing likely served as preparation for one of Vouet’s most ambitious and lauded fresco commissions. Depicting the Adoration of the Magi, the frescoes adorned the chapel of the Hôtel Séguier, the private residence of Pierre Séguier, chancellor of France under Louis XIII and a preeminent patron of the arts. The chapel, now destroyed, was described by the eighteenth-century collector Dézallier d’Argenville as meriting “the attention of connoisseurs [because of] the beauty of his paintings and…the clarity of its gilding as fresh as if they were newly painted.”

Jacques Bellange (before 1575–1616) Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1610

Bellange is best known as a printmaker, although a small group of elegant Mannerist drawings reveal his talents as a draftsman. He used quick long lines in this first conceptual sketch for his largest etching, Adoration of the Magi. This work is remarkable for its bold approach to the composition and its exceptionally free handling, which exhibits a powerful use of line comparable to that later used in the etching.

MODERN

The Graphische Sammlung has become a top-ranking museum for modern European and American drawings and its holdings in this field now number some 7,000 sheets. Dürer to de Kooning includes twenty-six outstanding works by Vincent van Gogh, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, Erich Heckel, Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann, Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, Jean Dubuffet, and David Hockney, among many others.

Highlights

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Standing Man, ca. 1951

The mask-like face of the figure in this study became one of the hallmarks of de Kooning’s Woman series, which laid the groundwork for a style—essentially a synthesis of abstraction and figuration—that revolutionized abstract art. The stylized ribs of the figure in this drawing were to reappear later in the artist’s crucifixion scenes of the early 1950s.

A. R. Penck (Ralf Winkler) (b. 1939) I and the Cosmos (Figure with Starry Sky), 1968

Penck was born in what became the German Democratic Republic, and remained behind the Iron Curtain until 1980. In order to elude the authorities and exhibit internationally, the largely self-taught artist—who was born Ralf Winkler—took on various aliases, the first and most lasting being A. R. Penck. In this striking sheet, a dramatically simplified solitary figure, identified in the title as the artist himself, faces a starry sky. The combination of red and black holds political connotations for its associations with anarchism and socialism.

ABOUT THE STAALICHE GRAPHISCHE SAMMLUNG

The Staaliche Graphische Sammlung houses roughly 400,000 works covering the entire spectrum of drawing. Although the origins of the collection likely date to the sixteenth century, its documented history begins with Elector Carl Theodor (1724–1799) of the Palatinate who commissioned the creation of a kabinett of copperplate engravings and drawings for his palace at Mannheim in 1758. This collection, enlarged over time through continual acquisition, was moved to Munich in 1794–5 in order to safeguard it from approaching French revolutionary forces, forming the basis of the Staaliche Graphische Sammlung. The collection opened to the public in 1823 and became an independent museum in 1874.

ARTISTS ON VIEW

Egid Quirin Asam
Hans Baldung Grien
Federico Barocci
Fra Bartolommeo
Georg Baselitz
Johann Wolfgang
Baumgartner
Max Beckmann
Jacques Bellange
Johann Georg Bergmüller
Ferdinand Bol
Jörg the Elder Breu
Hans the Elder Burgkmair
Peter Candid
Antoine Caron
Annibale Carracci
Benvenuto Cellini
Giorgio de Chirico
Lovis Corinth
Pietro da Cortona
Aelbert Cuyp
Leonardo da Vinci
Johann Georg von Dillis
Jean Dubuffet
Albrecht Dürer
Adam Elsheimer
Caspar David Friedrich
Alessandro Galli-Bibiena
Jacques (Jacob) de Gheyn
Domenico Ghirlandaio
Vincent van Gogh
Hendrick Goltzius
George Grosz
Matthias Grünewald
Erich Heckel
Michael Heizer
David Hockney
Hans Holbein the Younger
Wolf Huber
Jacob Jordaens
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Wilhelm von Kobell
Joseph Anton Koch
Käthe Kollwitz
Willem de Kooning
Hans Süss von Kulmbach
Laurent de La Hyre
Wilhelm Leibl
Max Liebermann
Andrea Mantegna
Franz Marc
Hans von Marées
Jacob Matham
Adolph von Menzel
Michelangelo
Jan Harmensz. Muller
Bruce Nauman
Emil Nolde
Barent van Orley
Lelio Orsi
Johann Friedrich Overbeck
Palermo
Jules Pascin
Crispijn de Passe the Elder
A. R. Penck
Luca Penni
Francis Picabia
Pablo Picasso
Sigmar Polke
Antonio del Pollaiuolo
Jacopo Pontormo
Raphael
Arnulf Rainer
Rembrandt
Larry Rivers
Carl Rottmann
Peter Paul Rubens
Hans Schäufelin
Rudolf Schlichter
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Melchior Steidl
Jacopo Tintoretto
Titian
Trometta
Perino del Vaga
Paulus Willemsz. van Vianen
Simon Vouet
Marco Zoppoxx

More Images here and here

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Rosso Fiorentino (1494–1540)
Holy Family with the Young Saint John the
Baptist, ca. 1520
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Photo © The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

The emergence of Mannerism in Florentine Renaissance art as exemplified by the brilliant painter Rosso Fiorentino is the subject of a new exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum, that opened on November 16, 2012. The show includes the artist’s extraordinary painting, Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist, as well a selection of drawings, printed books, letters, and manuscripts by other Florentine masters. The Holy Family, on loan from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, is one of only three paintings by Rosso in the United States. Fantasy and Invention: Rosso Fiorentino and Sixteenth-Century Florentine Drawing will remain on view at the Morgan through February 3, 2013.

Born Giovanni Battista di Jacopo di Guaspare in Florence, Rosso Fiorentino (1494–1540) — so known because of his distinctive red hair — was one of the foremost exponents of the late Renaissance style known as Mannerism, or the maniera. Characterized by extreme artifice, effortless grace, and refinement, and given to displays of inventive fantasy, spatial ambiguity, and strange beauty, this style developed about 1520 simultaneously in Rome (in the circle of Raphael) and in Florence (in the work of artists associated with Andrea del Sarto). Using the Holy Family as a starting point, Fantasy and Invention traces the Florentine iteration of Mannerism through some twenty drawings from the Morgan’s collection; five autograph documents and letters from leading artists of the day, including Michelangelo; two printed books; and a rare drawing by Rosso, on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Together, these works speak to the fundamental role of disegno—the Italian word for drawing that carries broader, theoretical connotations of artistic skill and invention—in the formulation of Mannerism.

The exhibition begins with the style’s antecedents in the High Renaissance as seen in major examples by Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto. It then moves on to Mannerism’s early stirrings in the art of Rosso and Jacopo Pontormo and its elaboration by their younger contemporaries Francesco Salviati and Giorgio Vasari. Finally, Mannerism’s more formal, frozen codification later in the century is explored through the work of Agnolo Bronzino, Giovanni Battista Naldini, Alessandro Allori and others, many of whom were employed by the Medici rulers of Florence. “Fantasy and Invention offers museum-goers a sharply focused look at the development of Florentine Mannerism,” said William M.Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum.

“With Rosso’s brilliant Holy Family as its centerpiece, supplemented by a carefully chosen selection of drawings and related material, the exhibition explores how the artist and his contemporaries approached the discipline of drawing, creating some of the most extraordinary and beautiful works of the Italian Renaissance.”

In his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1568), Giorgio Vasari described Rosso as always showing “the invention of a poet in the grouping of his figures, besides being bold and well-grounded in draftsmanship, graceful in manner, sublime in the highest flights of imagination, and a master of beautiful composition.” The artist’s drawings, Vasari went on, “were held to be marvelous, for Rosso drew divinely well.”

A gifted painter, draftsman, print designer, and master of stucco, Rosso was also a notoriously quirky and difficult individual—he kept a pet monkey; had trouble with patrons; acknowledged his own arrogance; ran afoul of and was blacklisted by the powerful cabal of artists in Rome who had worked with the recently deceased and revered Raphael; and may have committed suicide by poison. Something of that personality seems to have left an imprint in the disturbing undercurrents of his style, resulting in highly original, emotionally expressive, and at times bizarre works of art—including one altarpiece that the patron judged so unsettling upon first seeing it that he fled the room in horror.

Affluent bankers, merchants, and patricians in Renaissance Florence frequently commissioned paintings of the Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist (the city’s patron saint) to hang in their palaces. For his early, unfinished Holy Family, painted for an unknown patron, Rosso cast the subject in his distinctive Mannerist style. The figures of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and John the Baptist are confined within a tight, claustrophobic space, yet they lack any psychological interaction, each gazing in a different direction. The young John the Baptist wears a grapevine crown, an attribute of the ancient god Bacchus and a uniquely Florentine iconographic convention that fused pagan and Christian imagery. The strangely submissive figure of Saint Joseph at left of the ensemble adds to the mystery and emotional complexity of the painting—both defining features of Rosso’s work.

Rosso Fiorentino (1494–1540) Bust of a Woman with an Elaborate Coiffure, 1530s
Black chalk, pen and brown ink; brown wash in background added by a later hand
Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY,
U.S.A.

Michelangelo, Raphael, and ancient sculpture were the canonic models from which sixteenth-century artists drew inspiration. Rosso’s depiction of a woman with curling braids and a fanciful headdress harks back to similar female heads in Michelangelo’s frescoes and sculptures. Elaborate, finished drawings such as this were not preparatory studies for paintings, but rather stand-alone creations intended to display an artist’s creative prowess and powers of invention.

Fra Bartolommeo (1472–1517)
View of the Ospizio della Madonna del Lecceto from the West, ca. 1504–1508
Pen and brown ink
The Morgan Library & Museum
Purchased as the Gift of the Fellows

Fra Bartolommeo was one of the first Italian artists to create pure landscape drawings directly observed from nature. Not all the sites he depicted can be identified, but this example shows a convent in the Florentine countryside belonging to the Dominicans, the monastic order to which the artist professed his vows in 1500. The edifice seen here was completed around 1504, but whether the artist was drawing for pleasure or to create a visual record of Dominican real estate holdings cannot be determined.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564)
Studies of David and Goliath, 1550s
Black chalk
The Morgan Library & Museum

In the mid-sixteenth century in literary and cultural circles in Florence, a debate known as the paragone (“comparison”) was waged over the relative merits of painting versus sculpture, the practitioners of each discipline arguing for the superiority of their chosen pursuit. Michelangelo advocated for sculpture, but his follower Daniele da Volterra used these small yet powerful drawings of David beheading Goliath for a painting of the same subject, thereby championing the opposing side of this theoretical disputation. The poet and historian Benedetto Varchi published the written responses of some artists—among them Michelangelo and Bronzino—to the paragone question in a volume also on view in the exhibition.

Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530)
Young Man with a Basket and a Sack on his Head, 1524
Black chalk
The Morgan Library & Museum

The preeminent painter in Florence in the 1510s and 1520s, Andrea del Sarto oversaw a productive and industrious workshop whose ranks included Rosso, Pontormo, Vasari, and Salviati. This is a study for a figure gracefully mounting the stairs in a fresco of the Visitation in the Chiostro dello Scalzo—one of the most important undertakings of Sarto’s career, and one of the major artistic campaigns of the Florentine High Renaissance.

Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1556)
Male Nudes, ca. 1520
Red Chalk
The Morgan Library & Museum

See this image here

Like Rosso, Pontormo worked in the studio of Andrea del Sarto in the 1510s, and by the end of the decade he had become one of the leading proponents of Florentine Mannerism. The artist frequently favored red chalk when creating the vacant-eyed, elongated, and muscular but weightless figures that characterize his style. This striking, vaguely mysterious study of three nudes may have been executed in connection with a fresco that Pontormo painted in the Medici Villa of Poggio a Caiano outside Florence around 1521.

Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1573)
Rearing Horse, ca 1546–48
Black chalk
The Morgan Library & Museum

See this image here

The horse in this drawing—previously attributed to the sixteenth-century Florentine painter Alessandro Allori but recently recognized as the work of his teacher and adoptive father, Agnolo Bronzino—derives from one of the most influential sculptures of classical antiquity, the monumental Dioscuri, or Horse Tamers, on the Quirinal Hill, Rome. Bronzino must have made this study, which constitutes a highly important addition to the artist’s small oeuvre, during a trip to Rome in the later 1540s. He subsequently used it as a model for the horse that appears in a tapestry he designed for Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence.

Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572)
Autograph Letter to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici,
April 15, 1564
The Morgan Library & Museum

Fantasy and Invention includes several letters and autograph documents written by some of the leading artists of the period on matters of artistic creation and production. Agnolo Bronzino sent this letter in his elegant script to his patron, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, thanking him for his salary. At the time, Bronzino was at work in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and the church of S. Stefano in Pisa—both Medici commissions.

Francesco Salviati (1510–1563)
Study of a Bearded Man, 1540s
Black chalk
The Morgan Library & Museum

A prolific and inventive draftsman, the ill-tempered Francesco Salviati divided his career between Florence and Rome where he worked for some of the most powerful patrons in both cities, among them the Medici and the Farnese. This striking work has long been thought to be an artistic invention—an example of a “type” that appears in the artist’s frescoes and other narrative compositions for which he would have used such a study as a model. However, the rather specific and descriptive physiognomy suggests that it may be a portrait, or at least based on the features of an actual sitter.

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574)
Design for a Ceiling in the Palazzo Vecchio,
Florence, ca. 1558–62
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk
The Morgan Library & Museum

Best known as the author of the The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (a copy of which is on view in the exhibition) Giorgio Vasari was also a painter and architect retained as court artist by Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. He oversaw a large workshop and was engaged in the extensive decoration and refurbishment of the vast Palazzo Vecchio, the medieval town hall of Florence that was converted into a palace by Duke Cosimo. This carefully rendered and elaborate design—one of Vasari’s most celebrated drawings—is a study for a ceiling illustrating scenes from the life of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the de facto head of the Florentine government in the late fifteenth century. Lorenzo appears in the design’s center compartment, receiving gifts from the ambassadors of Naples, Milan, and Constantinople.

Naldini Colosseum in Rome, 1600

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As students of color and diverse ethnicities rapidly become the leading population of public school systems in numerous states, closing educational achievement gaps and providing a quality education to all students can secure the United State’s future economic prosperity, according to a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education. Noting that two-thirds of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending, the report, Inseparable Imperatives: Equity in Education and the Future of the American Economy, argues that raising individuals’ education levels will boost their purchasing power and increase the national economy.

“Historically, the country’s moral failure to provide all children with an adequate and equal education did not incur a noticeable economic cost,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “This is no longer the case. Today, the moral imperative to equitably provide all students with a quality education is now a critical factor in maintaining the United States’s national economic strength.

“Thanksgiving weekend is the year’s busiest shopping period,” Wise continued. “Ask any retailer whether their future depends on consumers earning a high school dropout’s $9 per hour or the $20 per hour of postsecondary achievement.”

As shown in the map above—taken from the report—students of color make up more than half of the K–12 population in twelve states (dark green) and comprise between 40 and 50 percent of the student population in an additional ten states (light green).

At the same time, however, the high school graduation rates of students of color trail those of their white peers by an average of more than 20 percentage points.

Educational disparities continue into higher education where, in 2011, 31 percent of whites age twenty-five and older held at least a bachelor’s degree compared to just 20 percent and 14 percent of blacks and Hispanics, respectively.

According to the report, individuals lacking a quality education will struggle to compete in today’s knowledge-driven economy where 60 percent of jobs require some education after high school. Based on the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , high school dropouts are more than three times as likely to be unemployed than are college graduates. Even when employed and at the peak of their earnings career, high school dropouts average about $9 per hour compared to high school graduates and those with bachelor’s degrees, who earn $13 and $25 per hour, respectively, according to an economic model developed by the Alliance for Excellent Education with the support of State Farm®.

As the report notes, individuals earning $9 per hour will face difficulty supporting themselves, much less a family. Making rent and car payments would be even more challenging. And a down payment and a monthly home mortgage payment—the bedrock of family and community stability—would be completely out of reach.

“Two-thirds of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending,” said Wise. “A dropout’s subsistence level is a tough situation for any individual and a disaster for any economy based on growing numbers of consumers living this reality,” said Wise. “To be prosperous in this century, the United States must have more than a $9-per-hour economy. As students of color fast become the largest group of consumers, their ability to be major drivers of individual and national economic growth depends upon the quality of their education.”

For example, if every state had reached America’s Promise Alliance’s goal of graduating 90 percent of its students, many of whom are students of color, for just the Class of 2011, America would have more than 750,000 additional high school graduates. These “new graduates”—many of whom would have likely pursued postsecondary education—would earn more during their lifetimes, and in turn, they would spend more with a high school diploma than without, thus driving America’s economic productivity and growth.

Specifically, the additional graduates from just one high school class would likely earn an additional $9 billion each year compared to their earnings without a high school diploma, the report notes. With this additional income, these students would spend more money in their communities. This increased economic activity would create a ripple effect, supporting the creation of as many as 47,000 additional new jobs and $2 billion of increased tax revenue by the time these new graduates reach the midpoint of their careers.

Wise also noted that previous economic research by the Alliance demonstrates that raising the graduation rates for the growing numbers of African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American students would produce an increasingly significant boost for the economy. “Achieving a 90 percent graduation rate for students of color or ethnicity for just the Class of 2011,” Wise stated, “means an annual gain of as much as $6.4 billion in increased earnings, additional spending creating as many as 34,000 new jobs, and as much as $1.5 billion in increased tax revenues.

“As federal and state policymakers wrestle these next months with how to improve a slow economy,” Wise continued, “this report conclusively demonstrates that in this information age, achieving a successful economy is now directly linked to achieving educational equity.”

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More Chips For Tax Reform By STEVEN RATTNER

…(T)he proper rate for capital gains and dividends(:)

It was the absurdly low rate on those forms of income — just 15 percent — that yielded Mitt Romney’s embarrassingly small tax payments. And that’s what also led to Warren E. Buffett’s lament that his tax rate was lower than his secretary’s…

President Obama has proposed much of the needed adjustment, including eliminating the special treatment of dividends and raising the tax on capital gains to 20 percent for the rich.

Personally, I would go further and raise the capital gains rate to 28 percent, right where it was during the strong recovery of Bill Clinton’s first term, and grab hold of a total of $300 billion of new revenues over the next decade…

Another important step toward tax fairness would be to address the indefensibly low 15 percent tax rate on the famous “carried interest,” the fee received by private equity and certain hedge fund investors…

Another productive area for raising revenue would be limiting deductions available to the wealthy. The highest-income Americans don’t need tax-free health insurance, mortgage interest deductions or deferred taxation on retirement funds.

Mitt Romney himself proposed an efficient and effective approach: just limit the total amount of deductions. Even excluding charitable deductions from this limitation — as I would personally advocate — capping deductions at $25,000 would raise large amounts of revenue, an estimated $885 billion over the next 10 years…

And while we are at it, taxing all FICA income, rather than just the first $110,000, will save Social Security for decades.

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by Jon Pelto from Wait, What

For 31 years, students at Bridgeport’s Bassick High School have been participating in the high school’s indoor track program. That was until Team Vallas, under the direction of John Fabrizi, recently eliminated the program this fall.

When Superintendent of Schools Paul Vallas blew into town with his $229,000 salary and his team of out-of-state consultants (most of whom worked for his private consulting company, The Vallas Group), former Bridgeport mayor John Fabrizi, whose tenure in office ended in 2007 following a drug scandal, was serving as the Director of Adult Services.

Today, Fabrizi is one of the most powerful players in Vallas’ “education reform” operation.

According to a recent Connecticut Post article, apparently one of Fabrizi’s newest duties is to be “in charge of helping rebuild a middle school sports program for the district.”

So, without the input of the Bridgeport Board of Education, Fabrizi eliminated the high school’s historic in-door track team and transferred the money to supplement the Bridgeport Parks and Recreation’s Middle School Basketball program.

As quoted in the CT Post, Frabrizi said, “Part of the thinking is to rebuild a solid foundation by creating a feeder program for high school sports.” And no doubt, creating “a solid foundation by creating a feeder program for high school sports” is definitely a laudable and important goal.

But what about the destruction of the in-door track program.

Call it ironic…

Just two weeks ago, Governor Malloy was just down RT. 95, right there in Fairfield County, lamenting the fact that Connecticut’s urban high schools seem unable to keep up to 50 percent of their students between the 9th and 12th grades.

At Bassick High School, for example, the class of 2010 lost 32 percent of its students between 9th and 12th grade. Compare that number to the fact that 13 percent of the middle school students down the street at the Curiale School left that school between 4th and 8th grade.

So, faced with an unprecedented dropout rate, what does Team Vallas do keep their high school students in school, they eliminate the popular indoor track team that serves 100 to 200 Bridgeport high school students, a program that is successfully keeping high school students in school and on track – literally and figuratively.

Retired teacher and coach of the girl’s in-door track team, Andrew Kennedy, was rightfully upset and wrote to the Connecticut Post reporting, “Approximately 180 to 200 students from the city’s high schools participate…Both the Boys and Girls teams take the same bus, there is only one meet a week, and when it comes to the FCIAC championships the coaches provide their own transportation for themselves and the participating athletes. There are no police to hire, no ambulance or doctors, no uniforms to buy (I bought tee shirts and sweats for the Girls myself), and the coaches are the lowest paid public coaches in the FCIAC!”

Coach Kennedy goes on to point out that’ “It’s too bad Bridgeport can’t take a clue from New Haven. Both high schools have outdoor track facilities. The lucky students from Hillhouse can step out of their school into the “world-class” Floyd Little Athletic Center. It’s no wonder that the Hillhouse girls have dominated Girls Track in the state recently! How does New Haven do it? It seems that Bridgeport just doesn’t think it’s that important to provide for its athletes…To lose the Indoor Track Program would be a shame. It’s vital to keep the athletes engaged.”

But instead, a Vallas political operative cuts the program that is helping some of the very students most at risk.

And perhaps the most amazing piece of all is that a decision of this nature was made without the approval, or apparently even the knowledge, of the Bridgeport School Board.

Cutting out this low-cost, popular program is just another sad reminder of the damage Team Vallas is doing to Bridgeport and its school students.

There is no question that Connecticut’s urban schools are being inadequately funded and short-changed. Without sufficient resources, good programs get cut.

However, above all else, successful schools need leaders who have the compassion and skills necessary to help schools overcome the challenges they face.

When the Bridgeport business community wanted a nationally known “education reformer” to take over the schools, a small group of Fairfield County’s wealthiest individuals dropped $400,000 to help pay for Vallas’ salary and related costs.

If those business executives really cared about Bridgeport and its students, they’d be there right now to cover the costs of Bridgeport’s in-door track team.

In the meantime, the Board of Education should step in and force Mr. Vallas and his “team” to stop talking about helping Bridgeport’s schools and start working to keep high school students in school.

And one of the first things they can do is undo Mr. Fabrizi’s bad decision.

The Bridgeport Board of Education has a meeting tonight, November 26, 2012.

Let’s see whether Mr. Vallas reverses this bad move. If not, the Bridgeport Board of Education should instruct him to solve the problem.

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On tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts and cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?

Let’s look at cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid first:

Here’s what he was quoted as saying yesterday:

He said he hoped negotiations in the remaining weeks of the lame-duck session could produce agreement on “top line numbers” for spending cuts and new revenue and “some big ideas to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

Now I don’t know about you but I don’t think those big ideas to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid Jim Himes is looking for include making those programs more generous. It’s pretty clear he wants to cut them back – after all, he is looking for “spending cuts.”

He is on record as a big supporter of Simpson-Bowles.

Here’s what Paul Krugman says about Simpson-Bowles:

So, a public service reminder: Simpson-Bowles is terrible. It mucks around with taxes, but is obsessed with lowering marginal rates despite a complete absence of evidence that this is important. It offers nothing on Medicare that isn’t already in the Affordable Care Act. And it raises the Social Security retirement age because life expectancy has risen — completely ignoring the fact that life expectancy has only gone up for the well-off and well-educated, while stagnating or even declining among the people who need the program most.

Now let’s look at tax cuts for the rich:

In the same article, Himes is quoted as hoping that an agreement could be worked out that would “encourage Congress to continue the Bush tax cuts currently in effect.”

And remember, Simpson-Bowles, which he so ardently supports, wants to cut marginal rates!

Himes does say some of theright words but remains conveniently vague about the details: /

Himes said he supports extending the tax cuts for the middle class and agrees the wealthy should contribute to deficit reduction, but he won’t say where he would specifically draw the line. He said he disagrees with the approach of simply allowing rates to rise, favoring a comprehensive tax code overhaul instead.

So he doesn’t agree with President Obama and Nancy Pelosi on raising taxes for the rich. He wants to wait for an overhaul of the tax code. This is the ultimate example of kicking the can down the road. And it fits in perfectly as a tactic to avoid offending rich friends and supporters.

As for “spending cuts” that Jim Himes is hoping for, let me quote Robert Reich:

…The best way to generate jobs and growth is for the government to spend more, not less…

Deficit hawks routinely warn unless the deficit is trimmed we’ll fall prey to inflation and rising interest rates. But there’s no sign of inflation anywhere. The world is awash in underutilized capacity As for interest rates, the yield on the ten-year Treasury bill is now around 1.26 percent – lower than it’s been in living memory.

In fact, if there was ever a time for America to borrow more in order to put our people back to work repairing our crumbling infrastructure and rebuilding our schools, it’s now.

Public investments that spur future job-growth and productivity shouldn’t even be included in measures of government spending to begin with. They’re justifiable as long as the return on those investments – a more educated and productive workforce, and a more efficient infrastructure, both generating more and better goods and services with fewer scarce resources – is higher than the cost of those investments..

So can we please stop obsessing about future budget deficits? They’re distracting our attention from what we should be obsessing about — jobs and growth.

Response from Jim Himes’ spokesperson:

In the Congressman’s advocacy for balanced deficit reduction, he has been very clear about two things: 1) We absolutely must reform Medicare and Social Security to make them sustainable and do so in an equitable and fair way. He won’t support a plan that hurts current beneficiaries or doesn’t protect the most vulnerable recipients from cuts. In fact, the Simpson-Bowles plan the Congressman supports contains a specific increase in Social Security benefits for the most vulnerable seniors. 2) The wealthy should contribute more to deficit reduction. He thinks it is probably smarter to eliminate loopholes before increasing rates, but he’s willing to consider a variety of proposals.

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by Jon Pelto from Wait, What

At last week’s ConnCAN Block Party (it took place in Greenwich – go figure), Governor Malloy “spoke about the dismal graduation rate in urban districts. He told the crowd that on average, four in 10 students never receive a diploma. ”We cannot compete as a state with the other 49 states, or the rest of the world, when we’re willing to throw away year after year after year, 40 percent of our students in the urban environment,” Malloy said.

Surrounded by charter school supporters, owners and operators, Malloy explained that Connecticut has 31 low-performing school districts that educate 41 percent of the state’s students.

Malloy’s solution, according to a story in the Stamford Advocate, is to “replicate” what the charter schools are doing when it comes to keeping high school students in school.

Do what the charter schools are doing?

Well here are the facts when it comes enrollment decline and dropping out:

New Haven’s public high schools lose 46% of their students between 9th and 12th grade

Amistad Academy, a New Haven high school run by the charter management company, Achievement First, loses 51% of their students between 9th and 12th grade.

And Elm City Prep, another New Haven high school run by Achievement First, will have its first graduating class this year. It looks like it will have lost about 53% of its students between 9th and 12th grade.

The fact that we lose half the students in Connecticut’s urban high schools is a major problem that deserves a lot more attention, but having a Governor who fails to tell the truth in his effort to pander to the charter school industry is hardly the answer.

School Enrollment Decline
New Haven 46%
Amistad (charter) 51%
Elm City (charter) 53%* projected
Wilbur Cross High 49%
Hillhouse 49%
Cooperative High 23%
Hill Regional Career 28%

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Hospice Care Research

Mayo Clinic Expert Describes Evolving Roles of Hospice and Palliative Care

Many people think hospice and palliative care come at the end of life, and while both often play a key role then, palliative care also can provide pain relief, symptom control, emotional comfort and spiritual support as patients recover from serious illnesses. National Hospice Palliative Care Month is held in November to educate physicians and patients and their families about hospice care, palliative care and their similarities and differences. Donna Kamann, a palliative care nurse practitioner at Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, explains these growing and evolving medical s… more »

Earlier End of Life Care Discussions are Linked to Less Aggressive Care in Final Days of Life

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Renaissance Faires

MERCURY POISONING RULED OUT AS CAUSE OF TYCHO BRAHE’S DEATH

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The science of the search for Richard III

DNA testing, environmental sampling and radiocarbon dating are some of the tests being undertaken to determine whether the skeleton found in Leicester was once Richard III – and there are also plans to do a facial reconstruction.xxLead archaeologist Richard Buckley,… more »

American Mating Habits

Monogamy may not always be the best policy

Monogamy may not always be the best policy, according to a new review paper on the topic. Researchers explored the many long-believed benefits of monogamy, including sexual health and satisfaction, children’s well-being, and relational adjustment and found no evidence to date to suggest the superiority of monogamy in those areas. They did, however, see a benefit for monogamy for avoiding stigma. Overall, they found that while monogamy may be an ideal choice for many individuals, consensual non-monogamy may be a viable alternative for those who choose it. “A Critical Examination of P… more »

Oxytocin keeps flirting folks at arm’s length

A team of researchers under the aegis of the University of Bonn tested the ‘love hormone’ on men Flirting brings women and men closer. But the “social distance” ensures that they will keep a certain spatial distance from each other. Researchers under the leadership of the University of Bonn studied whether this distance can be diminished by the so-called love hormone, oxytocin. The exact opposite turned out to be true – men who were in a committed relationship even maintained a greater distance from an attractive woman when under the influence of oxytocin than their control group. T… more »

Prostate Cancer Research Report

Resveratrol Could Be Key to Fighting Prostate Cancer

Resveratrol, a compound found commonly in grape skins and red wine, has been shown to have several beneficial effects on human health, including cardiovascular health and stroke prevention. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has discovered that the compound can make prostate tumor cells more susceptible to radiation treatment, increasing the chances of a full recovery from all types of prostate cancer, including aggressive tumors. “Other studies have noted that resveratrol made tumor cells more susceptible to chemotherapy, and we wanted to see if it had the same effect for ra… more »