Ed Sappin | Philanthropy & Community

Giving & Volunteering

Running with and for the Community

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Ed Sappin Vermont City Marathon 2005

Vermont City Marathon 2005 – a few years younger, a few pounds lighter!

 

Once upon a time, I was a marathon runner and long before that I ran everything from the 5K to half marathon here and there. After several injuries and growing into middle age, I had stopped running for many years until recently, when I tried to get back into form.

Running is a great way to engage with the community, whether it be hearing your name yelled out when you’re getting off of the 59th Street bridge and going onto 1st Avenue in the middle of the New York City Marathon (to quote American great runner Meb Keflezighi “You know the excitement is waiting for you,” Keflezighi says of crossing the Queensboro Bridge. “You always hear about it, but to experience it is wild.” in the late miles of a marathon), running for charity, or going off into the woods on a trail and experiencing nature.

On Saturday, May 6th, I lined up for the Dime McCarren 5k in Williamsburg, which supports St Nicks Alliance. St Nicks works to improve the lives of low to moderate income people, focusing on elder care, affordable housing, workforce development, and youth and education. Started in 2012, the race has become a fairly popular event, bringing out over 500 runners for a spring race to support a good cause.

While it is a far cry from the 2005 Vermont City Marathon (above), my last race, I was pleased to be able to finish the race without injury and without stopping. My time of 30:45 won’t go down in any record books (even mine), but it was good to be back on the road and crossing the finish line after 12 years. I’m looking forward to doing more races and supporting the community even more over the summer and into the fall. Whether you participate or volunteer, hopefully you can do the same!

The Giving Season

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The holidays are over, 2017 is here and it is back to work time. I hope everyone had a good break if you had time off and time with your loved ones and families. As the weather in New York enters the heart of the winter my thoughts often turn to those who are truly left out in the cold. The giving season may be over, but those in need require our help now more than ever. Here are just a few options to give of your time and/or money and help those who are less fortunate during the toughest time of the year:

1. Bowery Residents Committee (BRC). A fabulous organization that works to shelter and train the homeless so they can move to stable housing and stable lives. BRC shelters more than 1,600 people every night and they have had more than 10,000 people go through their programs. I had the privilege of attending their annual fundraiser last year and was impressed with the impact and no nonsense attitude the management team has, and the lives they have touched for the better.

2. Coalition for the Homeless. One of the longest established and most effective community organizations serving the homeless, the Coalition spends $0.89 out of every dollar received on programs across food, youth, job training, and of course shelter. One of my favorite aspects of the Coalition is their Bound for Success program, which focuses on one on one tutoring for homeless children.

3. The Times Neediest Cases. Focused to “give direct assistance to troubled children, families and elders,” the New York Times effort works with charities around the city to have as direct an impact as possible ranging from young mothers, to struggling high school students to immigrants. The campaign works through local religious and lay charities and has raised over $280 million dollars since its founding by the Times Publisher Adolph S. Ochs in 1911. This year’s campaign wraps up on February 3rd so consider helping others now.

 

Winning the White House

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We are finally here – it is election day 2016 after one of the most vicious electoral campaigns of modern times. The candidates have tried to leverage all the modern tools to win the day. In spite of this, the election of 1960 was arguably even more of a watershed for presidential candidates and their public images.

John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon participated in the first nationally televised debate on September 26, 1960. Those who listened on the radio thought Nixon won with his answers about current issues. However, the debate on television was a different story.

Nixon sported five o’clock shadow, appeared to be sweaty and didn’t look at the camera. Kennedy appeared well-groomed and confident. Kennedy looked like he was the better candidate — and won over the 70 million television viewers by a broad margin.

And that was just the beginning.

With the rise of television, the internet and social media, image has become paramount for presidential candidates, while substance has waned in importance. Winning the White House: From Press Prints to Selfies, a photography exhibit presented earlier this year by the International Center of Photography (ICP) at the Southampton Arts Center in New York, explored the complicated relationship between candidates’ personal images in visual media and their carefully created and tightly controlled campaign images over time.

The exhibit featured campaign memorabilia, posters, and video materials created for the candidates from the start of the campaign image revolution – with John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon — to current candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

In a press release issued by ICP, Assistant Curators Claartje van Dijk and Susan Carlson describe the evolution of the campaign image and the importance it has in the current election today.

“Presidential candidates have used photographic imagery in their campaigns to impact public opinion,” says van Dijk. “The delivery method has shifted from print publications to broadcast to computer and mobile phone screens.”

Carlson goes more in-depth about imagery and the presidential election today. “With the rise of smart-phone technology and the rapid rate at which images are released on social media, the 2016 campaigns are seeing an even greater demand for visual content,” she said. “This provides us with a timely opportunity to explore photography’s significant role in elections.”

The free exhibit ran from August 6, 2016 to until September 11, 2016 at The Southampton Arts Center. You can view some of the artwork on social media channels by using the hashtag #WinningtheWhiteHouse.

Nature, Technology and Humanity through the Worlds of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

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In 2007, I was living in Shanghai and decided to come back to the US for a visit to see my family in New York. I also passed through Chicago to attend the law school commencement of a cousin living there. Trudging through the winter in Chicago was actually fun (my cousin graduated midyear). I had some free time during the trip and visited the Catherine Edelman Gallery in River North, where I first saw the works of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison.

I was taken with the worlds the ParkeHarrison’s depicted in their bleak photographic works – the environment suffering greatly, often with an everyman trying to help heal some of the ills that have befallen Mother Nature.

Earth Elegies by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (from the artists’ website)

Earth Elegies by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (from the artists’ website)

The ParkeHarrisons became one of my favorites from that day onwards. Their statement is one of alarm, concern and warning of the world we live in and where it may lead:

We  create works in response to the ever-bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. These works feature an ambiguous narrative that offers insight into the dilemma posed by science and technology’s failed promise to fix our problems, provide explanations, and furnish certainty pertaining to the human condition.  Strange scenes of hybridizing forces, swarming elements, and bleeding overabundance portray Nature unleashed by technology and the human hand.  

Rich colors and surrealistic imagery merge to reveal the poetic roots of the works on display.  The use of color is intentional but abstract; proportion and space are compositional rather than natural; movement is blurred; objects and people juxtaposed as if by chance in a visual improvisation that unfolds choreographically.  At once formally arresting and immeasurably loaded with sensations—this work attempts to provide powerful impact both visually and viscerally. 

– Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (as posted on the artists’ website)

While their artistic statement expresses great concern of a potentially apocalyptic future, the ambiguity in their statement also points to the ability to correct our course and become better stewards of the land. On that day in Chicago, I was particularly taken with Gray Dawn, a dreary, contemplative work. Our everyman lays on a bed, asleep still or waking we do not know, with a dirty window in front of him and a scene outside dominated by a power plant or industrial facility. However, there are signs of life, of Mother Nature, as plant trimmings sprouting in the foreground point to another dawn.

Gray Dawn by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (from the Catherine Edeleman Gallery website)


Gray Dawn by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (from the Catherine Edeleman Gallery website)

The ParkeHarrisons are well represented by major galleries in New York, Chicago, and Colorado and their works have been included in the permanent collections of institutions including the Whitney, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC and the Museum of Arts in Boston. If you have a chance to see their creations I highly recommend it.

 

The Rubin Museum “Sacred Spaces”

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The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room [Image courtesy of RubinMuseum.org]

Sacred Spaces, which has been on display at the Rubin Museum for almost a year, is a meditation on spirituality, physical spaces, and their intersections. The exhibition showcases three environments that have been shaped by human religiosity and acts of veneration.

In a recent interview for Splacer Magazine, Rubin Museum Director of Programs and Engagement Tim McHenry explains how the idea for ‘Sacred Spaces’ came to be. McHenry describes how, after the opening of the

“Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room in an intimate, but cramped nook on the second floor gallery, there was a realization that it was inadequate…We wanted to create an environment that allowed for a durational relationship, one that builds up through exposure over time.”

When it opened in 2010, the Rubin’s Shrine Room wasn’t supposed to be permanent (it was on loan from the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian); the current iteration was supported through a crowdfunding campaign on Razoo. The exhibit explores the meaning of physical space in a couple of different ways: there is a 360-degree panoramic photograph of the Himalayan Mountains, which circumscribes the exhibit’s Shrine Room, and a video installation documenting a Jain communal ritual in which a massive stone sculpture is erected every dozen years. The video invites viewers to consider the concept of rituals–I found this aspect of the film to be particularly meaningful.

The room where Sacred Spaces is on display conveys a sense of intimacy–and also community. The two aren’t at odds with each other. Visitors are given the sense that in the personal, there is the universal. To that end, Sacred Spaces asks its visitors to consider: what spaces are sacred to you?

The Sacred Spaces exhibition is open to the public through October 17th. The beginning of autumn strikes me as a rather contemplative time of year. Make a date with yourself to catch this fascinating exhibit before it closes!

Traveling Exhibits at the ICP Museum

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The International Center for Photography, which I’ve written about before, showcases exhibitions that travel to and from venues worldwide. Because of this “traveling exhibition” feature, ICP’s exhibits are worldly and intermittent; since the photographs featured tour the world, they are viewed by people of all ages, ethnicities and nationalities. This makes it all the more impactful to get a glimpse as New York takes its turn.

At the ICP there is currently a traveling exhibition called The Mexican Suitcase, a collection gives the public a chance to experience rare images recovered from negatives from the Spanish Civil War. In 2007, three boxes of 4,500 35mm negatives considered lost since 1939 arrived at the ICP. The photographs were taken by three photographers, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and Chim (David Seymour.) These men — who lived in Paris and worked in Spain — laid the foundation for modern war photography.

Their coverage of the Spanish Civil War is considered uniquely innovative and passionate — The New York Times has a great review of the exhibit for those that want to know a bit more. The article describes the lives and struggles of the artists and the story the exhibit tells of their lives and works. Described are the three boxes, “timeworn but intact,” a tattered telegram, notebooks, and many images of everyday Spanish life during the war. Here’s an excerpt:

This total immersion, made possible by increasingly hand-held cameras, generated huge numbers of images. And that’s what you get in this show: hundreds and hundreds of tiny pictures lined up edge to edge on contact sheets to create a display of a kind that museumgoers rarely encounter but that photographers see all the time: squint-inducing, unedited, in progress.

Another traveling exhibit, which unfortunately ended on July 31, is Capa in Color, a glimpse at the famous photojournalist’s colored photography, most of which captured life postwar. The exhibit showcased over 100 contemporary color prints that demonstrate how Capa adapted to color photography and a new postwar sensibility.

Seeing as the traveling exhibits inherently change up, it’s worth checking in every so often to see what’s featured. Some exhibits are only briefly showcased, while others, like the Mexican Suitcase, span four months or more. If you’re a photography enthusiast like me, there’s a good chance you’ll be delighted. After all, photography is an artform that documents a singular moment. It makes sense that exhibits would be transient, too.

Great Philanthropic Events in New York This Summer

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There’s something to love about every season in the city, but summer is perhaps the best for events: it gets dark later, you can transition from day to night without a coat, and you’re finally free to take a vacation or two.

For the philanthropy-minded individual, summer events are an opportunity to enjoy summer days and nights in ways that also benefit important causes. If you want to enjoy yourself while contributing to a worthy organization, there are plenty of events that fit the bill.

The best way to find a philanthropic event is to subscribe to the causes and organizations you care about most and tune in to see when their fundraisers are. But for a taste of the diverse offering in New York alone, I found a few that look pretty great this summer:

Broadway in Bryant Park

Thursdays, July – August

For a sample of Broadway’s huge array of shows and talent, Broadway in Bryant Park is a recurring summer event in Midtown Manhattan right behind the New York Public Library. It’s free for guests to enjoy lunch-hour snippets from selected shows, but also benefits New York-Presbyterian for Kids and TKTS Discount Ticketing Booth.

TKTS is an affordable ticketing organization that helps sustain and share the arts and develop the audiences of the future.

Summer Camp on Fire Island

August 6, 2016

Pool parties are always a summer highlight, though for many New Yorkers they are few and far between. This annual pool party at Fire Island is presented by the Hetrick-Martin Institute, “the nation’s oldest and largest non-profit, multi-service agency dedicated to serving LGBTQ youth.”

The money raised will help ensure that youth members can return to school in September with all the supplies, clothes, and meals they need to get by.

The River Project 30th Anniversary Benefit

August 1, 2016

The River Project is a marine science field station that protects and teaches the wonders of the Hudson River ecosystem. The perfect summer event will commemorate its 30th anniversary: a river cruise and dinner party to on the Hudson River. Ticket funds will help the organization continue its important research.

Located at Pier 40 in Hudson River Park, you can also visit the River Project for interactive exhibits that show the public the wonders of the waterfront, both above and beneath.

Pushing the Boundaries of Photography: The New ICP Museum

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On Thursday, June 22, the relocated International Center of Photography opened at its new home in New York City at 250 Bowery. As a photographer, the opening of this museum has been on my radar for a while now, and from what I’ve heard it does not disappoint. That is, unless you’re expecting traditional photography. The first exhibit is decidedly much edgier than that.

Called “Public, Private, Secret,” the New York Times says that this exhibit shows how the ICP has been renovated for the so-called “selfie age.”  In its ultra-modern 11,000 square foot space, with an all-glass street-level facade (erasing any inside privacy) it would seem that the architecture matches the artwork in this respect.

Organized by Charlotte Cotton, the museum’s first curator in residence, “Public, Private, Secret” explores the way that public image collides with self identity. This, I think, is very fitting in an age where everyone with a smartphone has become a photographer and social branding expert in their own right. Rather than treating the everyday selfie as art, the work showcased is elevated and conceptual: cameras capture museumgoers and turn their images into a pixelated display, art is created out of found footage from social media, to name just two examples.

The ICP’s Bowery debut comes after a move from Midtown Manhattan, its home for many years. The museum has an interesting history: it was originally founded in 1974 by photographer Cornell Capa, who was concerned with upkeeping the legacy of what he called “concerned photography” — photography with a humanitarian impulse bent on having social impact on the world. Capa started ICP after leading the legendary Magnum Photos. Since ICP’s founding, it’s become one of the world’s leading institutions dedicated solely to photography and the visual arts.

The concerned photographer expresses “genuine human feeling predominates over commercial cynicism or disinterested formalism.” This opening exhibit is a portrayal of human feelings as they exist in a digital era, where the line between public and private is as thin as you want it to be, and sometimes erased altogether.  

But what I find especially great about ICP is that it’s more than just a museum. I took my first formal photography courses there when the museum was based on the Upper East Side. Throughout its history, ICP has engaged the surrounding community, including schools and public programs, and photography is brought to the forefront instead of treated as an afterthought as you sometimes see in art museums. I can’t wait to visit ICP in its new home, as it continues to break boundaries and impact visitors through careful curation, outreach, and innovation.