Coming Soon to Your Inbox: the New Impact Weekly
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aynrand.org/impact Volume 20, Number 1, January 2014 Coming Soon to Your Inbox: The New Impact Weekly hese past few months have been to new acquisitions by the Ayn Rand Archives to upcoming Tan exciting time at ARI as we pre- events. Delivering this content in a way that promotes the pare to launch our Digital Initiative (to exploration of ARI’s new website furthers the mission of ARI’s learn more, see the September issue Digital Initiative—to educate the largest audience possible of Impact). Among the many changes about Ayn Rand’s ideas. Digital Initiative will bring is a new, You will start receiving Impact Weekly when our new revamped newsletter called Impact website launches early this year. In the interim, this edition of Weekly. Here’s an overview of the Impact will give you a preview of the type of content you can changes you can expect to see. expect to be enjoying every week. We are very excited about The look and feel of Impact Weekly the radical changes Digital Initiative is bringing, and we hope will be designed to reflect ARI’s new image and branding. As you are as well. Help make 2014 a pivotal year for expanding a result of our survey of Impact readers, the layout will be sim- awareness of Ayn Rand by contributing to our Digital Initia- pler and easier to read on your computer, smartphone or tablet. tive today. Furthermore, delivering Impact Weekly every week via email will bring you the Institute’s latest news as it happens, making —Yaron Brook ARI and our programs more accessible across the globe. Executive Director One of the most significant changes to Impact will be the purpose it serves. Impact Weekly will seek to educate and engage a broader audience in Ayn Rand’s philosophy and In This Issue: ARI’s many programs that aim to promote it. As part of Digital Initiative, ARI has invested in a new • Illustrated Version of Classic Article on Sculpture Now website that will serve as an advanced educational tool to power Available Online the positive change we seek in the world. Impact Weekly will • Excerpt from “Metaphysics in Marble” be the main promotional means to drive interested individuals • From the Archives: Putting “Frank” in Frankenstein to all of the life-changing content available on the new site. For example, each issue of Impact Weekly will direct readers to • The Value of Interning at ARI advance their understanding of Ayn Rand’s ideas by explaining • ARI Board Co-Chairman Retires a particular aspect of Objectivism or by highlighting a select • Ayn Rand Answers “What Is Capitalism?” at ARI Campus ARI Campus course. Impact Weekly will also point readers • ARI eStore Featured Product of the Week to articles and events featuring ARI intellectuals in order to • Upcoming Events illustrate how Objectivism can offer revolutionary solutions to • The Multimedia Corner current policy issues. Impact Weekly will address many of the topics you’ve • Recent Written Commentary come to enjoy reading about—from updates on ARI programs • New Blog Posts at Voices for Reason Illustrated Version of Classic Article on Sculpture Now Available Online etaphysics in Marble,” an her article available to a new generation of readers, and “M article on sculpture by art for including links to images that create a multimedia historian Mary Ann Sures, was pub- experience for everyone.” lished by Ayn Rand in The Objec- To access the article, click here. tivist (February–March, 1969) and Mary Ann Sures is an art historian who has lectured recommended by Rand in the revised extensively, beginning in the early 1960s, on the appli- edition of The Romantic Manifesto. cation of Objectivist esthetics to the visual arts. She did Quoting from the article: “This graduate work in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts of discussion is a brief historical survey New York University and at Hunter College, from which . to indicate the means by which she received an M.A. She taught art history at New York sculpture expresses abstractions—and to demonstrate the University (Washington Square College) and at Hunter connection between the dominant philosophy of a given College. She is co-author with her late husband, Charles, era and its sculpture.” The article was originally published of Facets of Ayn Rand, a memoir of their longtime friend- without illustrations. ship with Ayn Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor. Now, for the first time, the article is available online, supplemented by footnotes containing links to more than Note: This article will be available on the current Ayn thirty online illustrations selected by the author to enhance Rand Institute website for a limited time. The Institute’s appreciation of her text. digital strategy calls for the existing site to be replaced in “The Ayn Rand Institute thanks Mary Ann Sures,” early 2014 with a new site, on which the article will not said ARI executive director Yaron Brook, “for making be immediately available. Excerpt from “Metaphysics in Marble” (Copyright 2013 Mary Ann Sures) he potentiality of movement is evident in all Greek sculpture. TSculptors carefully articulated the joints and musculature, in rec- ognition of the fact that no body can move without them. They dis- tributed the body’s weight so that the figures were balanced, but not frozen into rigid positions. Consequently, the statues suggested the capacity to shift their weight and move easily. A quality of life was achieved also by the manner of carving the surface texture. Sculptors created the illusion of flesh that was both firm and soft, emphasizing the subtle rise and fall of the skin as it moves over the complexity of the underlying skeletal and muscular structure. In this way, they stressed the sensuous aspect of the body. When a sculptor created statues of goddesses clothed in loose gowns, he flaunted their bodies by carving the marble in the style called “wet drapery.” This term designates transparent, fragile cloth which appears to have been applied to a moist body. At every point of contact between the body and the garment, the cloth clings and reveals the body’s subtlest curves. When the Greek carved a female statue, he left no doubt of its femininity, dressed or undressed. Nike, the goddess of Victory, was a favorite of the Greek navy, and wooden statues of Nike were mounted on the prows of ships. In a marble version, the famous Winged Victory of Samothrace, the goddess stands on the prow of a ship, as an embodiment of motion. Her figure rises in an upward-sweeping curve and thrusts forward to meet the forceful winds of open seas. Wind whips her fragile gown across her Winged Victory of Samothrace (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) torso, revealing its vibrant sensuousness. Proud and courageous, she embodies the attitude with which the Greeks set out to sea. 2 From the Archives he Ayn Rand Archives contains Ayn Rand’s personal papers, photographs and mem- T orabilia, as well as other documents related to her career and life. The mission of the Ayn Rand Archives is to acquire and preserve evidence from all facets of Ayn Rand’s life for use in biographical and scholarly research. Putting “Frank” in Frankenstein Photographs of Mr. O’Connor wearing his costume from the film have long been preserved in the Ayn Rand Archives. Until now, it was unknown where these photo- graphs came from. Now it is clear that they were taken as part of Mr. O’Connor’s portfolio, which he used in seeking acting jobs. Reprinted here are Frank O’Con- nor’s acting portraits from the Models’ Bureau (c. 1930s). The Ayn Rand Archives is further investigating Frank O’Connor’s role in Frankenstein. It is reaching out to various film studios in an attempt to find photo- graphs of Mr. O’Connor from the film’s set and a signed contract for his work in the movie. Recently, Michael Paxton, ARI’s multimedia producer, accidentally discovered some new information about the career of Ayn Rand’s husband, Frank O’Connor. Mr. O’Connor appeared in a nonspeaking role in the 1931 film production of Frankenstein—a fact which was never mentioned in any of Ayn Rand’s journals, despite her consistent documentation of his work as an actor. Mr. Paxton, the writer, producer and director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, regularly uses clips from Frankenstein in the classes he teaches on film history. “Although I previously noticed a similarity between the man in the film and Frank O’Connor, I had always dismissed this thought due to there being no mention of Frankenstein in any archival materials related to Frank’s acting career. It wasn’t until I was demonstrating a point to my stu- dents,” he explains, “and happened to pause the film clip at a particular spot (where Mr. O’Connor is walking toward camera) that I finally had to accept the evidence of my senses.” You can view Frank O’Connor’s appearance in Frankenstein in this YouTube clip—he is the medical assistant wheeling the cadaver out of the room starting at 1:12 into the clip. 3 The Value of Interning at ARI RI’s summer internship program A immerses college students new to Ayn Rand’s ideas in a three-week educa- tional experience at ARI’s headquarters in Irvine, California. Each year, the program provides twenty to thirty interns with an Members of the UT Objectivism Society pose with a status of Atlas. in-depth introduction to Objectivism and careers are possible.