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The article offers news briefs. The William Gropper papers which are considered as the largest among the collections in William Gropper papers are included in the different papers that came to the Archives through the New York Office. Arnold Friedman's papers were also given to the Archives. The illustrated envelope and letter written by Alexander Calder to Andrew Gagarin is one of the added acquisitions of the Archives.

Focuses on the political activism and educational innovations of Lucile Spence, Gertrude Elise McDougald Ayer and Layle Lane, the three African American educators who worked in the New York City public school system. Observation on Harlem, New York during the 1930s; Career highlights of Spence; Educational background of Ayer; Information on Program for Improving the Harlem Schools, established by Lane.

The article features papers acquired and received by the New York regional center of the "Archives of American Art Journal." Among the acquired and received records include papers by Nat Werner, Lillian Olinsey Kiesler, Ronald G. Pisano, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, Oliver Ingraham Lay and Charles Downing Lay, and Richard Hurst. The journal also received papers of John Caldwell, a curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art, and a curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The collection includes engagement calendars, notebooks, correspondence, photographers, and bills and receipts from art purchased.

Presents the history of the Metropolitan New York Section of the History of Science Society. Founding and early history; Its speakers and programs; Its officers and finances.

This paper develops a model for estimating the costs associated with the institutional and legal restrictions related to the states' abortion statutes. A travel-cost demand model is estimated with data for legal abortions obtained in New York State. The purpose is to determine the value--for women seeking abortions--of the 1973 Supreme Court ruling which liberalized abortion codes. The estimated benefits foregone in the absence of liberalization, over a 10-year period with a 10 percent discount rate, range from $12 million to $30 million in present value. It is important to note that this study makes no attempt to measure the losses to certain groups in society as a result of the liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years many public outcries and expressions of indignation have focused on the claim that the poor pay more for the goods and services they buy than do their wealthier neighbors. A number of empirical studies have been undertaken to examine the specific question of the relative cost of food to low- and high-income consumers. Federal agencies, local governments, civic groups ad hoc consumer groups, the news media, and academic researchers have pursued these studies. This paper analyzes a comprehensive survey of food prices conducted in New York City during the summer of 1967 by the New York City Council on Consumer Affairs. The regression results of this study suggest that commodity-by-commodity with few exceptions, the prices of food items on retail merchants' shelves do not rise with decreases in neighborhood income. The cost of food may, in fact, be greatest to the poor, but a complete investigation of this issue will require data and discussion that go beyond the level of relative shelf prices in stores serving areas with different incomes.

The article presents New York news briefs. Betty Parsons established her place in the history of twentieth-century American art with her connection to the rise of abstracts of expressionism. A portion of the Clement Greenberg Papers, which represents A-L, were given this quarter of the year. A group of papers by Stuart Davis was donated by his son, Earl.

The paper presents comments of the author on the article "Equity and the Finance of Higher Education," by Lee Hansen. Hansen has dome a through job of laying out a smorgasbord of schemes for finding college education and highlighting some of the main equity considerations. He observes that efficiency arguments based upon external benefits lack empirical footing and than proceeds to the analytically less ambiguous but equally unsustained equity issues. Here the very range of his discussion serves to emphasize the diversity of objectives and the lack of factual knowledge. Frankly, the author finds it hard to criticize the paper for sins of commission to given the state of data, for sins of omission. Alternatives are reported generally without taking sides and the author cannot fault the report. Instead of serving as critic in the traditional sense, let the author summarize a few points and then add to the speculation. Further, the distribution of attendance viewed as attendance probabilities by parental-income class is more equal than it would be in a system of full charge without accompanying loan programs.

This study seeks to establish the empirical importance of price dispersion due to costly consumer search by examining retail prices for prescription drugs. Posted prices in two geographically distinct markets are shown to vary considerably across pharmacies within the same market, even after one controls for variation due to pharmacy differences. Pharmacy heterogeneity accounts for at most one-third of the observed price dispersion. The empirical analysis hinges on the observation that consumers' incentives to price-shop depend on characteristics of the drug therapy. Cross-sectional patterns in price distributions across drugs are consistent with the predictions of a search model: prices for repeatedly purchased prescriptions (for which the expected benefits of search are highest) exhibit significant reductions in both dispersion and price-cost margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional mode! of collective bargaining confines unions to settlements constrained by the employer's labor demand curve, but an alternative model places wage-employment outcomes on a contract curve that extends beyond the labor demand curve. This paper derives a multidimensional (hedonic) contract-curve model in which employment-security provisions are used to maintain efficient bar- gains outside the employer's demand curve and distinguishes empirically between the contract-curve and demand-constraint models using data for public school teachers in New York State. Estimates clearly support the contract-curve model over the demand-constraint model by linking the gap between compensation and the value of the marginal product to the strength of employment-security provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 1664 Charles II of England granted to his brother James, Duke of York, the territory from New England to Delaware. The grant specifically mentions the area in New Netherland named "Matowacks or Long Island," an island that "could produce yearly several thousand pounds sterling"—the Duke had learned in February, perhaps as much as £3,000. In June Englishmen informed Governor Peter Stuyvesant that they intended to take possession of Long Island, the "key of the North [Hudson] River," as it was then called. Finally, by August 1664 ships and forces serving the Duke of York entered New York Bay and, without exchange of fire, Nieu Amsterdam along with Lange Eylant became New York. Among the explanations Stuyvesant gave to Dutch authorities in 1665 for the surrender were the continuing encroachment of the English and the Dutch lack of supplies due to "want of credit or ready money." The reasons for the English encroachment and final conquest of the Dutch colony, for the special profitableness of Long Island, and for the fiscal instability of the Dutch all relate to currency control—in this case, the tiny purple and white shell bead known as wampum. How this native commodity came to play so great a role in the economy of the early colonists, and how its manipulation led to New York's first fiscal crisis, is the subject of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the relationship between average return and risk for New York Stock Exchange common stocks. The theoretical basis of the tests is the "two-parameter" portfolio model and models of market equilibrium derived from the two-parameter portfolio model. We cannot reject the hypothesis of these models that the pricing of common stocks reflects the attempts of risk-averse investors to hold portfolios that are "efficient" in terms of expected value and dispersion of return. Moreover, the observed "fair game" properties of the coefficients and residuals of the risk-return regressions are consistent with an "efficient capital market"--that is, a market where prices of securities fully reflect available information. In the two-parameter portfolio model of Tobin (1958), Markowitz (1959), and Fama (1965b), the capital market is assumed to be perfect in the sense that investors are price takers and there are neither transactions costs nor information costs. Distributions of one-period percentage returns on all assets and portfolios are assumed to be normal or to conform to some other two-parameter member of the symmetric stable class. Investors are assumed to be risk averse and to behave as if they choose among portfolios on the basis of maximum expected utility. A perfect capital market, investor risk aversion, and two-parameter return distributions imply the important "efficient set theorem": The optimal portfolio for any investor must be efficient in the sense that no other portfolio with the same or higher expected return has lower dispersion of return.[1]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better understand health information provision in the public library setting, two cooperative library systems that serve primarily rural populations in upstate New York were studied. The central library in one of those systems established a consumer health information center (CHIC) in 1999. In the other system, the central library does not have such a center. Visits were made to ten randomly selected libraries in each of the two systems (n = 20), and the query "Do vaccines cause autism?" was posed to library staff. Print resources were provided more often than online resources in both systems. Utilization of the CHIC as a health information resource was inconsistent among libraries. Follow-up phone interviews found none of the twenty libraries had reference policies. Reported practice matched actual practice 60 percent of the time in the system without the CHIC and 40 percent of the time in the system with the CHIC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that The Archives of American Art has acquired papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton Blake and Gordon Kelly which reveal the artists' devotion to their respective mentors, Cecilia Beaux and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Portrait painter Kelly was a protege of Hayes Miller at the Art Students League of New York in the mid-1940s. Blake organized "The Portrait Class" in New York City to get Beaux's instruction in portrait painting. The article provides a detailed description of the Blake and Kelly papers acquired by the Archives.

In the early 1920s, the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, under the leadership of Ernestine Rose, played a significant role in the Harlem Renaissance movement. By drawing on the resources of the community, the library staff facilitated connections between writers and their readers with literary gatherings; between artists and their viewers with art exhibitions; and between playwrights, performers, and their audiences with theatrical productions. But the library's most significant legacy was its book collection, now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which has provided a permanent connection between a people and their history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the contributions of Bolton Coit Brown and John Stephen's papers in the growth of 1987 arts. Brown, known as a graduate of Syracuse University in 1885, decided to go and organize the drawing and painting department of Stanford University, California in 1891. His luck as a lithographer, technical writer and lithography teacher wherein George Bellows and John Taylor became his pupils, started when Ralph Radcliffe-Whitehead hired him as an assistant and let him stay in Woodstock, New York. Though prominent in his career, Brown was timid on proclaiming his virtues as writer and this was testified by the manuscripts in his "Lithography Since Whistler (1933)." In addition, the photographs of works of New York's publisher, Stephen, are being exhibited at the Archives.

The article discusses a collection of papers donated in the third quarter of 1983 to the Archives of American Art documenting the career of landscape painter Sidney Laufman. Among the topics discussed are Laufman’s studies at the Cleveland School of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, and under Robert Henri at the Art Students League in New York City, his participation in the easel painting program of the U.S. Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Woodstock Artists Association, and a letter written by Laufman to the National Academy concerning the rejection of the work of Ethel Magafan.

Publicly funded social services are an increasingly important component of social provision spending, accounting for approximately one-fifth of today's welfare state expenditures. These funds are often allocated through purchase of service contracts between state and municipal agencies and third-party providers, usually nonprofit organizations. This study uses a unique dataset of government contracts with nonprofit organizations in New York City between 1997 and 2001 to study the relationship between the allocation of social services funding across neighborhoods and neighborhood need. We distinguish between local organizations serving their immediate neighborhoods and distributive organizations serving multiple neighborhoods. Overall, contract dollars allocated to both organizational types are positively associated with socioeconomic disadvantage, although distributive organizations are less likely to be physically located in needy neighborhoods. However, contract dollars for services targeted to specific populations are sometimes negatively associated with the prevalence of these targeted populations, especially when those contracts go to distributive organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of school choice research has shown that when school choice policies are not designed to racially or socioeconomically integrate schools, that is, are "colorblind" policies, they generally manage to do the opposite, leading to greater stratification and separation of students by race and ethnicity across schools and programs. Since white, advantaged parents are more likely to get their children into the highest-status schools regardless of the school choice policy in place, we believed that more research was needed on how those parents interact with school choice policies and whether they would support changes to those policies that would lead to less segregation across schools. Our interviews with advantaged New York City parents suggest that many are bothered by the segregation but that they are concerned that their children gain access to the "best" (mostly white) schools. The contradictions inherent in their choices are reconcilable, we argue, by offering more diverse and undivided school options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the photography of U.S. photographer Alfred Stieglitz, primarily focusing on an analysis of his photographs of clouds. Emphasis is given to such photographs taken at Lake George in New York. More broadly, the author is concerned with developments in Stieglitz's landscape photography, which also included a photograph of rain-covered grass at Lake George. The use of clouds as a form of photographic subject matter in and of themselves is also explained by the author. Stieglitz's view that his photographic images were related to music is discussed.

The article presents an in-depth examination into the history of the 1939 New York World's Fair and its artistic culture. Focus is given to the prominence of the modernist movement and its aesthetics within its featured mural art exhibitions. Contextual information is given regarding the planning of the World's Fair between 1935 and its launch in 1939. Analysis is offered regarding the abstract techniques used in several murals, highlighting their thematic connections to the ideologies of the Works Progress Administration which commissioned them. Specific works and artists profiled include Philip Guston, Byron Browne, and Louis Schanker.

The article discusses public memorials to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City, which killed 146 young, mostly female, Jewish and Italian workers. The fire was believed to be the result of the company's undermining of garment union attempts to improve working conditions. The city refused to release the unidentified bodies for a public procession, fearing expressions of outrage, and instead buried the bodies quietly in Brooklyn. A large parade organized by the union took place on the same day with almost 400,000 people attending. A memorial statue appeared at the graves in December 1912. Possible sculptors, including Evelyn Beatrice Longman and Henry Bacon, are discussed. Class differences in the approach to memorials are discussed.

This essay presents a historical epistemology of the nineteenth-century controversy concerning a scientific hoax, the Cardiff giant. My focus is on the shifting meanings given to the giant, which were based on epistemologies derived from scientific authority, religious belief, and market relations. In 1869 a farmer in Cardiff, New York, claimed to have discovered the fossilized remains of a prehistoric, perhaps biblical, giant on his property. While some scientists stressed the need to cooperate with commercial showmen, enthusiasm for the giant incited the ire of others, who sought to debunk it and the culture that sustained it. Drawing on local newspaper reports, memoirs, nineteenth-century expose's, and publicity materials associated with the giant's display, I link the episode to the history of popular and scientific observation. The giant was a particularly troubling spectacle because as an object of inquiry it blurred the modern boundaries separating nature, society, and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catchy slogans such as "Girls and Gags!" or "Fillies and Fun!" embellished the facades of burlesque theaters and the covers of girlie magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. In magazines with titles such as Giggles and Titter, the captions beneath photographic spreads of voluptuous pinups interspersed expressions of desire with one-liners. Urban regionalist Reginald Marsh created his etching Irving Place Burlesk during this era. Deemed "America's Hogarth" by contemporary critics, Marsh is best known for his depictions of Coney Island amusement parks, crowded New York Streets, and gaudy, run-down burlesque houses.

In a May 1914 article in "Forum" magazine, John Cournos wrote admiringly of American painter Arthur B. Davies as a symbolist, a romantic, and "above all" an extraordinary colorist. In 1916 Davies decorated the interior of the new Sunwise Turn bookshop based on "harmonic color law." One of the two proprietors, Madge Jenison, wrote, "Our shop was the first experiment in a very bold color treatment in this country — before the Washington Square Players or any of the others who have changed the whole aspect of New York.

This study examines the prevalence and associated factors of New York City public shelter use among young adults with histories of out-of-home care or nonplacement preventive services as teenagers. The study finds that 19 percent of former child welfare service users entered public shelters within 10 years of exit from child welfare. Persons with out-of-home placement histories are twice as likely to enter public shelters (22 percent) as those who received nonplacement preventive services only (11 percent). Persons exiting child welfare through absconding from child welfare have the highest rate of shelter use, followed by those discharged to independent living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the issues involved in the Student Afro-American Society (SAS) activism in 1968 regarding a plan of Columbia University in New York City to build a gymnasium in Morningside Park. Goals of the student-led protest; Role of African American students protesters at Columbia in 1968; Influence of the Black Power politics on the protest strategies of SAS; Relevance of the integration of reform on the demonstrations that took place the university.

In October of 2001 the author participated in an enlightening conference at Colgate University called “ Laying Claim: (Re) Considering Artists of African Descent in the Americas,” which was organized by Mary Ann Calo and Helen Shannon. The conference and the virtual conversation that followed helped him to rethink an essay he wrote in 1994 and to consider further the resistance by many scholars in the field to the application of contemporary critical theory to African American art.He found it interesting and exciting that you utilized critical theory in your approach to African American art. It seems that many African American art historians write off discourses such as psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, queer theory, and social theory as irrelevant to black life. The author is disturbed by the focus placedon Harlem Renaissance works, while there is a tendency to negateor marginalize contemporaneous black art production.

Features the launching of American art in postwar France. Role of New York, New York-based Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in the international promotion of American art. MoMA director Jean Cassou's implementation of a systematic program of acquisitions that exemplify the artistic revolutions in France; Cassou's autobiography in 1981.

The article reports on the Archives of American Art activities and acquisitions in New York, United States. The acquisition of retrospective films including biographical information and catalog of work of postwar photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt. The Archives also acquired the papers of Ralph Rosenborg that includes twenty audio interviews by Colette Roberts, Irving Sandler, and Sam Roberts as well as photographs, scrapbooks and clippings. The donation of gallery records of Virginia Zabrieskie of the Zabrieskie Gallery which includes information on the artists who exhibited at the gallery. An interview of Gail Stavitsky with Mary Gruskin in October 27, 1992 regarding the founding of the Midtown Gallery in 1932 with her husband Alan is also acquired.

We examine the effects of the closing of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on volatility and price changes in the Standard & Poor's (S&P) futures market, which trades for 15 more minutes each day. When the NYSE closes, volatility in the futures market drops significantly, only to increase at the close of the futures market, thus exhibiting a U-shaped pattern after the NYSE closes. We also find that Friday's close is the period of highest volatility in the futures market. Also, in the final minutes on Friday, the S&P futures price anticipates the well-known weekend effect found in equities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decline in the variability of the market factor over the period 1926 to 1960 has been noted in various studies. A number of hypotheses have been advanced to explain this decline in the variability of returns. The formation of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by the Securities Act of 1933 has been suggested as an important cause. Another suggested cause is the effect of margin requirements, which were first, instituted in 1934. Still another is the fact that the number of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange has more than doubled since 1926: thus we might expect the market factor to reflect a more diversified range of activities, and this could account for a decline in its variability. Finally, another hypothesis is that since the market factor reflects general economic conditions, any decline in its variability might be related to a decline in business fluctuations. This article examines these hypotheses. The major finding of the study, obtained from an examination of market-factor variability over the period of 1897 to 1969, is that the decline in variability observed by other studies is better described as a return to the "normal'' level of variability that existed before the great depression of the 1930's.

A number of empirical studies have been undertaken in recent years on food-price differentials across stores in metropolitan areas and have shed considerable light on this question. To date, the most detailed statistical analysis on whether the urban poor pay more for food than do urban residents with higher incomes is the study of food prices in New York City, New York. On the basis of their statistical-regression results for 37 commodities, they conclude that the price of a given commodity in a particular type of store tends to be unaffected by, or even rises with, an increase in the level of neighborhood income. They also point out, however, that the mean price of each of the items studied is higher in the small independent stores than in the chain stores. To the extent that poor people shop at these smaller stores, they pay higher prices for the same quality food than if they had purchased their groceries at a chain store. This article should be viewed as a first effort to develop a formal framework for understanding consumer purchasing decisions. The questionnaire administered in New Haven, Connecticut, uncovered a number of other factors, which appear to play an important role in the choice of store and package size.

This article profiles artist Ibram Lassaw. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, to Jewish parents who had fled pogroms in their native Russia, Ibram Lassaw immigrated with his family to New York City in 1921. He was eight years old and rapidly absorbed the new language and culture, growing up with a passionate interest in visual art. By the age of sixteen Lassaw had already studied sculpture for several years and was producing highly stylized plaster nudes composed of varied spiral forms. Although they were different from his mature work, these early sculptures addressed many of the aesthetic principles that would occupy Lassaw for the rest of his life: implied motion, sensuous surfaces, and multiple views.

Presents the article "From the 'Good Ol' Days' 'til Now," by Chester A. Smith, tracing the evolution of different types of fishing, hunting, and trapping licenses and the regulations requiring them in New York, published in the August 2003 issue of the journal "Conservationist."