Americans in Paris  LAW COLLECTION DEDICATED

AGAINST THE ORNATE BACKDROP OF THE COUR DE CASSATION, France's highest criminal court, the Cornell Center for Documentation on American Law was dedicated at a ceremony in July. The collection, 13,000 volumes of American case law, is the only one of its kind in France. Those present at the ceremony included Cornell law faculty, European judges, and four U.S. Supreme Court justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg '54.

At the dedication, Cornell professor and law librarian Claire Germain was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, France's highest honor, for her efforts to forge connections between the French and American legal systems. Cornell Law School Dean Stewart Schwab was named a Chevalier de L'Ordre du Mérite. "In a world increasingly dominated by the Internet, it is important to remember that actual physical contact with books is essential to the communication of knowledge from generation to generation," said Germain. "These books are part of our international heritage." The collection will be available to French magistrates, as well as Cornell law faculty and students in Paris.

What Lies Beneath  SYNCHROTRON STUDIES WYETH WORK

A TEAM OF CORNELL RESEARCHERS AND ART CONSERVATORS are in the process of reconstituting an illustration found beneath N. C.Wyeth's 1924 unfinished oil painting "Family Portrait." The investigation was triggered when the image of a flying fist was noticed beneath layers of aged paint; an X-ray revealed that Wyeth had painted over an illustration he had done for a magazine in 1919. It was reproduced in black and white; researchers are now trying to identify and reconstruct its colors using the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) and confocal X-ray fluorescence. The painting is owned by the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

Lost & Found  CD DOCUMENTS 1964 JAZZ CONCERT

WHEN THE LATE WHITNEY BALLIETT '49, AB '51, DESCRIBED jazz as "the sound of surprise," he might have been thinking of Charles Mingus. The great bassist, bandleader, and composer was renowned for presenting music that simultaneously honored the jazz tradition and astounded his listeners. And now, twenty-eight years after Mingus's death, there's another surprise: a CD of a concert at Cornell on March 18, 1964. The sextet that took the stage has been hailed as the finest group that Mingus ever led, and they played a program that included Mingus originals such as "Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk" as well as classics like Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady." The show was recorded, but the tapes disappeared into the vaults of Fantasy Records. Years later they were unearthed by record producer Ed Michel, who sent them to the musician's widow. Sue Mingus promptly misplaced them--but when they turned up again, she took them to Blue Note Records. The resulting two-CD set, Cornell 1964, runs for just over two hours.

Harvard Bound  MOSTAFAVI TO LEAD DESIGN SCHOOL

THE DEAN OF CORNELL'S COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE, Art, and Planning will leave after the fall semester to become dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Design.Mohsen Mostafavi, who was born in Iran and trained in England, has been at Cornell since 2004.Major accomplishments during his tenure on the Hill included overseeing the appointment of architecture superstar Rem Koolhaas to design Milstein Hall, a controversial project that is now in its third incarnation. Says Provost Biddy Martin:"Mohsen's creativity and intiative have enhanced the college's national and international reputation, expanding its programs into New York City, building more international partnerships, and bringing the most innovative artists, planners, and architects to campus."

Foreign Exchange  CORNELL ART IN CHINA

CORNELL ART FACULTY SHARED THEIR WORK with an audience far beyond the Hill with an exhibit on view at two Chinese universities. The show, entitled "Critical Art: Faculty of the Cornell University Department of Art," opened at Hangzhou Normal University on June 1 and traveled to Tsinghua University in Beijing,where it remained until June 23. A delegation from Cornell attended the opening of the show, the result of a new partnership between the Cornell art department and Tsinghua's Academy of Art and Design; it was organized by Xiaowen Chen, visiting associate professor of art at Cornell.Works by Tsinghua faculty are expected to be displayed at Cornell in 2008–09.