Lost Generation
Rachel Monroe’s piece about the booming market for celebrity ephemera was an interesting read (“Bid for the Stars,” March 25th). Yet I was surprised when Darren Julien, the founder of Julien’s Auctions, explained that there was such a high demand for Kurt Cobain memorabilia because “Nirvana’s music appeals both to baby boomers and to wealthy millennials.” Does Gen X not even exist?
Martin Kennedy
Edmonton, Alberta
Grab and Go
As the owner of an independent bookshop, I very much related to the events described in Paige Williams’s article about retail theft in Los Angeles (“City of Thieves,” March 25th). Though my business has not been the target of mass shoplifting (presumably because of what I sell), many of my neighbors have fallen prey to large groups of people who come in and steal not only merchandise but also cash from the registers. The police either get to the scene late or do not show up at all.
This new wave of crime points to socioeconomic failings in our society, but it should be dealt with using appropriate measures, rather than with an increased police presence that would only further agitate local communities. Why are the prices of food and other goods so high? How can we prevent people from resorting to crime in order to survive? Williams touches on these systemic issues, but I would have liked to see them explored further.
Dot Amesbury
Oakland, Calif.
In Memoriam
Having visited both the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Alabama, I appreciated Doreen St. Félix’s thorough and thoughtful article on the civil-rights attorney Bryan Stevenson’s Legacy Sites (“The Art of Memory,” April 1st). I would add only two things.
First, after one descends the ramp under the rusting metal blocks inscribed with the names of people who were lynched, one comes across detailed accounts of some of the “crimes” that led to their lynchings—a moving way to make the abstract personal. Second, the blocks that lie on the ground outside the building, according to the accompanying signage, are invitations for people in the counties where lynchings happened to set up their own memorials. St. Félix does real justice to the work of Stevenson, whose energy and vision have led to these crucial additions to our landscape and our collective memory.
Chuck Jones
Washington, D.C.
Sound of Silence
Jackson Arn, in his review of the new Whitney Biennial, describes a work by Nikita Gale—“Stolen Time,” an installation consisting of a player piano modified to play without a melody, so that a viewer can hear the keys thunking as they move up and down—as a “heftier version of ‘4'33",’ running where John Cage crawled” (The Art World, April 1st). This left me a bit perplexed. Gale’s work produces something. Cage’s “4'33" ” famously consists of absolutely nothing; the title refers to the piece’s four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. Maybe a better comparison would have been to Rebecca Horn’s “Concert for Anarchy,” in which a grand piano hangs upside down from the ceiling and is rigged to thrust out its keys and open its lid at intervals, producing a cacophony.
Nathaniel Drake
Philmont, N.Y.
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