How libraries are creating community through food, and a new five-day music festival

Things I Saw This Week — Friday, Sept. 12

Sep 12, 2025

Art

From artnet: “Her Husband Made Her Give Up Painting. Now This Overlooked Impressionist’s Market Is Soaring.”

Both Claude Monet and Edgar Degas admired Bracquemond’s talents and she became one of very few women who participated in landmark Impressionist exhibitions in 1879, 1880, and 1886. These historic events elevated a style that had been thoroughly rejected by the establishment, helping it to have a transformative impact on art in Paris and beyond.
In 1886, Bracquemond met the post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, who gave her advice on how to prime her canvases to enhance her colors. The introduction had been made by Bracquemond’s husband, the printmaker Félix Bracquemond, who she had married in 1869. Though the couple initially enjoyed a mutually creative union, an unpublished biography written by their son Pierre revealed Félix’s growing resentment of Marie. He noted how his father concealed his mother’s achievements so that “none of their artist friends paid attention to her works or spoke of her efforts, and when she revealed hopes for success, Félix put her ambition down to ‘incurable vanity’.”
Eventually discouraged, Bracquemond ceased painting professionally in 1890, more than two decades before her death in 1916.

Meet Kerin Rose Gold, the artist who bedazzles Naomi Osaka’s Labubus.

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Each custom Labubu requires 8 to 12 hours of work, Ms. Gold said: five hours to 3-D print and assemble the 14 components that make up their bodies, followed by at least three hours of hand-gluing crystals. Ms. Gold calls the finished product a “Lablingbling” and sells similar ones on her website for $495.
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Ms. Gold started her eyewear and accessories studio, A-Morir, in 2008, after a job in music marketing and a stint working in the costume designer Patricia Field’s downtown boutique. Her crystal-encrusted sunglasses took off after being worn by stars including Rihanna and Katy Perry.
Today, it seems that Ms. Gold has cornered the market on high-profile bedazzling. She’s made a pacifier for Lady Gaga, a Yankees hat for Jennifer Lopez, a crystallized cane for Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour. Tattooed on her middle fingers are the words “razzle” and “dazzle.”

Cities

Dwell chronicles Altadena, California, homeowners who are rebuilding by moving a house across town.

Food

A roundup:

To come up with our list, we sought out restaurants with dining rooms where a server comes to your table. We excluded counter-service restaurants, takeout joints and places with chef’s counters or walk-up windows, and we didn’t factor in outdoor seating.

“Two iconic Chicago restaurateurs are teaming up with the Pope for a new Vatican restaurant”
What Southern chefs order at Waffle House.
From Civil Eats: “How Libraries Are Creating Community Through Food”

Events have generally centered on cookbook or food memoir discussions, perhaps sharing dishes connected to the title, but libraries are increasingly expanding this concept.
For example, some libraries in New York’s Hudson Valley are hosting cider and cheese tastings in a nod to the area’s prolific agricultural scene and experimenting with family-friendly supper clubs. Many are offering programs that help people fight food insecurity and learn wellness and life skills.
Others may give out seeds and spices, lend out kitchen equipment, or host free pantries or grocery stores.

“The Chefs Behind New York’s Vietnamese Food Boom”

New York’s Vietnamese food scene began auspiciously: In 1961, what was billed as the first restaurant in America devoted to the cuisine, called simply Viet Nam, opened in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood. But when hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees arrived in the United States in the 1970s and ’80s, most settled elsewhere. As a result, while places like Houston and California’s Orange County have long abounded with bún bò Huế (spicy beef noodle soup) and bánh xèo (savory, crispy stuffed crepes), the options here were somewhat limited. In recent years, however, the city’s Vietnamese population has grown — up almost 9 percent between 2015 and 2020, a much faster increase than for the city’s overall population — and so, too, has the cuisine’s presence.

“Hori Is an Invite-Only Izakaya. Midnight Diner is an inspiration, and nothing on the menu costs more than $10.”

Hori is possibly the only restaurant in New York that operates with the Japanese system of ichigensan okotowari — which means first-time diners must be guests of a regular. Once someone has dined and adhered to the strict “no social media” rule, they can register themselves and unlock access to the otherwise invisible reservations.
The restaurant is inside Studio Calmplex, which informed the policy, says chef Tsuyoshi Hori. “You have to go through several tenants to get here,” he explains. “We needed to find a way to be friendly with our neighbors and not be bothersome, but also find our guests. And so that’s why we started off with, ‘Oh, you can bring your friend, but make sure they understand the rules and are respectful to our neighbors.’” It worked: “It’s really the vibe of this place and the air that flows in this restaurant,” Hori adds. “The overall experience is very special.”
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Oku says the model helps build a foundation of loyal customers instead of chasing customers who might only visit one or two times. “What we are trying to focus on is a sustainable business, meaning that we want customers to feel comfortable and have a great experience so that they come back and they feel they want to bring somebody,” he says.

Music

A Pitchfork Music Festival co-founder has created a new five-day music festival.

Sound & Gravity will feature 48 acts playing shows across five days at six different venues, which range in capacity from 80 to 800 people. Whereas Pitchfork’s final iteration brought acts as radio-friendly as Alanis Morissette and Black Pumas to Chicago, the Sound & Gravity lineup is oriented toward jazz, experimental and world music, among an expansive range of genres.
The festival was born out of an idea Reed had several years ago but never acted on. Once his summer opened up after pulling the plug on Pitchfork, he dusted off the idea and went to work making it happen.
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Sound & Gravity’s lineup features esteemed artists in indie circles, including Austin-based singer-songwriter Bill Callahan, Nigerian guitarist Mdou Moctar, Ecuadorian-American artist Helado Negro and Los Angeles harpist Mary Lattimore. Other highlights include free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements, ambient-oriented L.A. composer and producer Julianna Barwick, British musician Nabihah Iqbal and the Wilco-collaborating drummer Glenn Kotche.

Policy

New Mexico will become the first state to make childcare free, regardless of income.

The state also established a fund in 2020 with money earmarked for early childhood education. Thanks to tax collections from the oil and gas industries, the fund has grown from $320 million to $10 billion. Latinas in New Mexico led the charge in 2022 to help pass a constitutional amendment in 2022 that ensured a portion of that fund went specifically to universal child care. Funding for the new initiative will come at least in part from there, and Lujan Grisham will also be requesting an additional $120 million in state funding next year, a spokesperson for the governor said.
The news also comes with improvements for child care facilities and, potentially, raises for their staff. As part of the rollout, the state will establish a $13 million loan fund to construct and expand facilities, launch a recruitment campaign for home-based providers and incentivize programs to pay staff a minimum of $18 an hour.
The state hopes the initiative will lead to the creation of 55 new child care centers and 1,120 home-based child care options.

KQED traces how a “Chinese laundryman shaped US Civil Rights from San Francisco.”