| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value | |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 132 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned |  Kaisik Wong’s spacey, glam 1970s fashions look like costumes from a very trippy sci-fi film. The opposite of most of the counterculture fashion on display, and yet they fit in somehow, too. |
New York City is lucky to boast not one but two extremely fine design museums — the Museum of Arts and Design and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Augmented by the estimable design collections at MoMA and The Met.
Does it really need two design museums, though? I think it does. The Cooper Hewitt and the Museum of Arts and Design (“MAD”) feel extremely different. MAD’s collection starts at midcentury, shaping its outlook and sensibilities. Cooper goes deeper and can do more with historical context. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that the one is like MoMA and the other is like The Met. But it’s not necessarily unfair to make that comparison, either.
The publisher Harper Brothers proposed to seal Mark Twain’s memoirs until 2000. Then they would be published by subscription (quoting the exhibit’s text) “in whatever mode should then be prevalent, that is by printing as at present, or by use of phonographic cylinders, or by electrical methods or by any other method which may then be in use.” The show has Twain’s 1900 letter agreeing to these terms. No doubt he didn’t want his meeting with the crew of the Starship Enterprise to mess with the timeline too much.
The Harper brothers started out as printers, but with their 1817 publication of an edition of Seneca’s Morals, they launched one of the most famous publishing concerns in American history.
The octagonal gallery had an exhibit documenting the history of gay student life at Columbia, from the time when homosexuality violated the law, through the AIDS crisis, to today. I’m proud to say Columbia was home to the first gay student group on a college campus — the Student Homophile League — dating to 1967. Second most interesting thing I learned there.
Maxine Henryson’s beautiful, long, accordion-folded photobooks. Stretched out on a table, they reward much slow, close viewing.
I’m not sure Art in General belongs on a list of museums. It’s really an art gallery (in the sense of a place to buy art), albeit a nonprofit one. I’ve been giving nonprofits a pass so far, so there I went.
When they laid the cornerstone for the Music Hall, Andrew Carnegie himself said that “here all good causes may find a platform.” Remarkably, that statement evolved into a policy of openness to anyone who wanted to take the stage (and could afford to rent it). So even in times when many venues were closed to, say, African American performers, Carnegie was open.
The Rose Museum is a small space telling the story of Carnegie Hall, twice actually: once from a building/Carnegie perspective, the other more from an artistic perspective. But they run together and get a little redundant. It is indeed between the auditorium and the First Tier restrooms, as well as the patrons’ lounge.
The Cooper Hewitt Museum is the Smithsonian Institution’s branch devoted to design. It started out under the guardianship of Cooper Union, which closed it in the 1960s. The Smithsonian then adopted it and it opened in its current location in the 1970s. (There’s a second Smithsonian branch in New York: the Museum of the American Indian, in Lower Manhattan.) 
The digital tables appeal, too, inviting visitors to “grab” random objects with their pens and trace their way through the museum’s collection by material, theme, function, or era. Visitors can also use the pen to take a stab at designing something of their own.
Housed in a tiny storefront in Willamsburg, City Reliquary started as a hobby for its founder, who first created it as a display in a window in his apartment. It has grown from there as New Yorkers with collections of, well, whatever, occupied the space for exhibitions, and the Reliquary’s own collections multiplied.
The current temporary show features perhaps the most under-appreciated of the city’s street foods, the humble knish. I learned things I never thought to wonder about knishes. Where they come from (the Eastern European knish belt extends from Latvia through Moldova); who makes them (there are six “Heroes of the Knish” who are the main local manufacturers); and what it means in Yiddish slang (lady parts). Also, back in 2013 Joan Rivers tweeted that Kim an Kanye should name their baby Knish because “who doesn’t love one?” Who knew?
The current church is Gothic Revival, in brownstone, which always seems to me a striking and unlikely choice. Until this visit I never wondered what the surrounding area was like when it was built — if it was all brownstone rowhouses, it would’ve fit in nicely I suppose. Now it stands out, even as the surrounding skyscrapers far overtop it.
Trinity’s history goes back to 1697, but this is the third church on this site. The first Trinity Church burned down in the Great Fire during the revolution in 1776. The second revealed structural problems following a severe snowstorm in 1838 that led to its replacement with the current building in 1846. So while it’s old, it’s not as old as it might want you to believe. St. Paul’s Chapel, a Trinity offshoot a short stroll north on Broadway, dates to 1766. I strongly recommend visiting both if you have time.
The interior of Trinity is pretty, but not especially noteworthy. It’s on a par with most other gothic revival churches in the U.S. or U.K.
Anyone who likes old churches or cemeteries or Hamilton (or Robert Fulton) must visit Trinity. Moreover, the graveyard is an oasis of green in a part of the city that doesn’t have a lot of that. For those frantically visiting all of Lower Manhattan’s many historic sites, museums, and other landmarks, it represents a chance to catch one’s breath in the midst of a jam-packed day. Trinity also has a fine music program–definitely take a look at their website. Even for a casual visitor, Trinity is worth a special trip.
Federal Hall is not what it seems. In fact, it’s not Federal Hall at all. From the outside a passer-by might easily believe that it was the first capitol of the U.S., and the building where George Washington took the oath as president. I thought that for years; only recently did I realize: right location, wrong building.
But I couldn’t help get the sense that the National Park Service would trade today’s building if they could get the “real” Federal Hall back again.
Grey Art Gallery is the public art museum of New York University. It consists of a small ground floor space and another subterranean gallery across the street from Washington Square Park.
