There's excitement in the air. In Tangier this week, an ad hoc group of cultural institutions – Moroccan, French, Spanish, and American (us), plus some very dynamic individuals on the cultural scene – is marking the Centenary of the birth of Paul Bowles with a great variety of events (Download TALIM Paul Bowles Centenary brochure). … Read more Spotlight on Paul Bowles, Musicologist
Tangier, the city where Paul Bowles' reputation as one of the Twentieth century’s most international of American authors grew during his forty-plus year residence, will mark the centenary of his birth in 2010. The Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies – TALIM – along with the Spanish Instituto Cervantes and the French Institut … Read more Paul Bowles Centenary In Tangier
RIP Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, publisher and owner of the famous City Lights Bookstore, who died yesterday at age 101 in his hometown, San Francisco. Described in his New York Times obituary as the “spiritual godfather of the Beat movement,” Ferlinghetti had some indirect links to the city of Tangier, where some Beat Generation authors found … Read more Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg: A Tangier Connection?
Sunday mornings at the Legation are usually very quiet, much like the sleepy streets of Tangier. This Sunday, however, we were honored by a special visit from Idaho Senator James E. Risch and his family. Ambassador Dwight Bush came from Rabat to meet the Risch’s and welcome them on their first visit to Morocco. The family decided to visit Tangier while on vacation in southern Spain. Vicky Risch, Senator Risch’s wife, felt drawn to the idea of visiting the Legation: “I read about the museum before coming to Spain and I just knew that I had to see it.”
New images have been added to TALIM’s Glass Negatives Collection on Archnet. Currently there are approximately 250 images in the collection, currently representing a selection from five of the eighteen boxes in the full collection. New images are added every week as they are cataloged, and scanning resumes this summer.
The collection of approximately 2,000 images is believed to be the work of photographer Paul Ruedi, a Spanish resident of the city of Tangier between 1900 to 1930. The collection of slides features more images of Tangier than any other city, but there are also numerous photographs of locations throughout Morocco, as well as sites in Algeria, France, Spain and other parts of the Mediterranean. To read more about the collection, click here.
The decision by AKDC@MIT to host the images on Archnet came out of a meeting that took place
Former Director Loftus opened the Legation to Zankat America
Thirty-one years ago last month, a group of sixty-plus Peace Corps trainees arrived in Rabat, following a nearly 24-hour trip from Philadelphia via Paris. It was already night as we drove in from the airport, and it was Ramadan. The streets were packed, but our bus eventually made its way to the Bulima Hotel in the center of Rabat. Unable to sleep, I wandered down Blvd Mohammed V to the medina, and entered a new world of sights, sounds and smells. Thus began my own “beautiful friendship” with Morocco.
After spending two years teaching English at Lycée Laymoune in Berkane (and also visiting the American Legation in 1984), I began a diplomatic career that took me from Guinea-Bissau to Singapore, Madagascar to Tunisia, Cairo to New York City, and finally Niger and New Delhi. Working subsequently for the United Nations also allowed me to work in lovely, lyrical Cape Verde. Now I’ve come full circle and will begin a new adventure as Director of the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies.
New “name cloud” exhibit listing literary & artistic friends of Paul Bowles who were drawn to Tangier
Can’t stop curating?
Well, I do have to stop – we’re getting on the ferry to Spain Friday morning! Friends have joked that I’ll still be at it tomorrow morning, mounting yet more exhibits while my wife waits in the car. Not true; I stopped this afternoon.
At the French Consulate’s 14 Juillet reception after we arrived in 2010, a Moroccan friend introduced me as the “nouveau conservateur” in what people in Tangier only knew then as the “Musée de l’Ancienne Légation Américaine.” I joked that I was no conservative… I was a Democrat!
But the point is that conservateur or curator was the way people thought of this position in this city. I thought that was a bit limiting – how about our research library? Our seminars? The Arabic literacy program? Etc. I also didn’t like that ancienne thing – made it sound like we were closed.
His Majesty King Mohammed VI Paul Bowles Library of Congress Moroccan Music Collection Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies
It was the only way I could think of to get the opus of Morocco’s traditional music, recorded in 1959 by Paul Bowles and digitized by TALIM in 2010, into the hands of King Mohammed VI: have a leather presentation case made, embossed with the TALIM logo and dedicated to His Majesty.
US Ambassador to Morocco Dwight Bush now has it, and will present it at an appropriate occasion. Morocco’s musical heritage will have been repatriated after more than fifty years in the vaults of the Library of Congress.
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