Events

Open Book Series – Jan 25, 2020

Saturday, January 25, 2020 • 1:00 – 3:00 pm • Muzeo Carnegie Building

Muzeo Museum & Cultural Center presents Open Book Series with Distinguished Authors:

This is a free event, please RSVP to Carol Latham: [email protected]

Stephen Maitland-Lewis

Stephen Maitland-Lewis is an award-winning author, a British attorney, and a former international investment banker. He has held senior executive positions in London, Kuwait and on Wall Street prior to moving to California in 1991. He has owned a luxury hotel and a world-renowned restaurant and was also Director of Marketing of a Los Angeles daily newspaper.

Maitland-Lewis is a jazz aficionado and a Board Trustee of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York.  In 2014, he received the Museum’s prestigious Louie Award. A member of PEN, the Palm Springs Writer’s Guild and the Author’s Guild, Maitland-Lewis is also on the Executive Committee of the International Mystery Writers Festival. In addition, he is on the Advisory Board of the California Jazz Foundation and is a former Board member. His novel Hero on Three Continents has received numerous accolades, and Emeralds Never Fade won the 2012 Benjamin Franklin Award for Historical Fiction and the 2011 Written Arts Award for Best Fiction. His novel Ambition was a 2013 USA Best Book Awards finalist and won first place for General Fiction in the 2013 Rebecca’s Reads Choice Awards. Maitland-Lewis’ most recent novel Botticelli’s Bastard was a 2014 USA Best Book Awards finalist in three categories and won the Bronze Award in Best Regional Fiction (Europe) at the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards. In January of 2016, Maitland-Lewis was sworn in as a Freeman of the City of London and admitted as a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of City Solicitors. In April of 2016, he became a Fellow of The Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).

Maitland-Lewis and his wife, Joni Berry, divide their time between their homes in Beverly Hills and New Orleans and are sponsors and supporters of the annual Satchmo Summer Fest in New Orleans.

Ambition by Stephen Maitland-Lewis

Having it all will never be enough for George Tazoli, an ambitious dealer on the trading floor of a prominent California bank. He is hand-picked for a special assignment to sell off bad loans, but not because he is dating the daughter of the bank’s president, rather for his skill at working the market. The promotion sends him to New York, putting a strain on his relationship, but then a scandalous discovery lures him into the gamble of a lifetime. George must gauge the risks—his direct superior is the bank’s president and his potential father-in-law, who is married to an heiress worth billions, all the more reason for George to vow his fidelity. Back at the bank’s headquarters, the president and his father, the chairman and grandfather of George’s L.A. girlfriend, are embroiled in a long-standing feud with another family of stockholders competing for control of the bank. The boardroom tension and ultimate showdown keeps everyone busy while George makes difficult choices that will teach him a lesson learned the hard way—even wealth has a price.

Steven Deeble

Steven Deeble studied film and journalism at the University of California, Irvine.  His award-winning writing and photography have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The Los Angeles Times. His story, On the Run in the Getaway Car, appears in Lummox No. 6.

He is a writer, filmmaker, and multi-media artist. His art and photography have been shown in galleries across Southern California. He’s produced and directed short films based on original screenplays and served as associate producer on two independent feature films.

In 2017, he co-produced Representations of the Braid Groups, the winning film in Science Magazine’s ‘Dance Your Ph.D’ film competition.

Persistence of Vision by Steven Deeble

Persistence of Vision is a noir crime thriller that takes place across Southern California in the late Spring of 1929.  It follows the downward spiral of Riverside County Sheriff’s Detective Daniel Moretti as he investigates the murder of a private detective found in the Palm Springs
home of a wealthy Hollywood couple.

Moretti has reached the end of the road.  His checkered past begins to seep into his troubled present.  He wrestles with his demons as he pursues the killer, only to find a trail of death that leads to his own door.

 

John Brantingham

John Brantingham teaches composition and creative writing at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. He has had hundreds of poems and stories published in the United States and the United Kingdom in magazines such as Tears in the Fence, Pearl, Confrontation, and The Journal.

He spent the 2015-2019 summers living off grid in a tent in the High Sierra, teaching poetry and writing for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. He is the first poet laureate of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, and his work has been featured in hundreds of magazines and in Writer’s Almanac and The Best Small Fictions 2016.

He is the author of hundreds of poems, stories, and essays published in magazines in the United States and United Kingdom. His books include Mann of War, a crime novel, Let Us All Pray Now to Our Own Strange Gods, a short story collection, The Gift of Form, an instruction guide for beginning formal poetry, and East of Los Angeles, a poetry collection.

 

Carnegie Gallery

In 1906, The Anaheim City Chamber of Commerce recognized the city’s need for a formal public library building. Up to this time, the city only had a book subscription service including a small selection of books housed in the back of a local general store.By 1907, the Chamber of Commerce had acquired a $10,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie’s office. The land necessary to construct the Carnegie Library building was purchased for a fraction of its regular cost at $2,400. The money to purchase the corner lot was raised by 75 local residents who deeply believed in the benefits of a public library for the flourishing city.

The Carnegie Library was designed by Los Angeles architect John C. Austin, with the final designs approved in early 1908. These final designs presented a building in a Classic Revival Style, which was commonly chosen for Carnegie-funded buildings. The red clay tile roof however was chosen as a nod to local history and classic Spanish design.

The Anaheim Library would not have evolved as it did without the dedication of passionate Anaheim citizens. During its time as a Public Library, the Carnegie Library building was lifted up by its librarians, whose careers lasted a remarkably long time. Head librarian Elizabeth Calnon and children’s librarian Elva Haskett served the library and Anaheim community for much of their lives, supporting the Public library throughout its significant growth.

As the city of Anaheim developed and the population increased, the small Carnegie Library was no longer capable of housing the ever-growing collection of books and the demand for library services. In response to this, the city opened a new Central Library nearby in 1963. After the transfer of libraries had been completed, the Carnegie Library was left vacant for three years before housing the city’s Personnel Department.

The Carnegie Library became a historical library, research center, and museum in 1978 and was officially recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

The historic building has undergone renovations as the years passed and ADA laws were enacted. 1985 saw the addition of an elevator, support structures, new plumbing, and new electrical systems.

Mark Hall-Patton was a crucial force in the development of the Anaheim Museum, laying the groundwork for the Carnegie Library to become a thriving museum space for the community. He was the museum’s first employee in 1984 and became the Anaheim Museum’s first director. As the first director, Hall-Patton finalized the museum’s agreements with the city and raised funds to help the museum flourish.

Another driving force in the Anaheim Museum’s history is Mildred “Midge” Taggart. She worked tirelessly to acquire and preserve antiques and symbols of Anaheim’s history until they could be safely housed in a museum.

The Anaheim Museum, which had been residing in the historic Carnegie Library for decades, was replaced by Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center in 2007. The city saw this building as the perfect site for Muzeo due to the building’s rich history of community involvement and education, both core elements of Muzeo’s mission.

The Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center complex exhibits in both the historic Carnegie Library as well as a new main gallery building, built in 2007. While the majority of the galleries now primarily display artworks rather than artifacts, the Carnegie Library still exhibits a collection of artifacts rooted in Anaheim’s History, spanning from prehistoric times to the modern era.

Today, Muzeo stands as an integral part of the Anaheim community, seeking to bring together our local communities and ensure the accessibility of the arts and education.

Learn more