Uncategorized Archives - Page 17 of 22

May 8, 2017

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	107 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I wanted to own many of the things in the Jazz Age show, but none more than this 1927 Cubic Coffee Service designed by Erik Magnussen for Gorham. A Picasso-esque vision of reality brought astonishingly to life. It makes me wonder, if a Cubist painted a still life of this coffee set, would it come out looking normal?

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.)

Two features deeply distinguish the Cooper-Hewitt from all other museums in the city. First, the building, and second, the electronic pen.

The Cooper-Hewitt is another in the series of great New York museums occupying mansions of the Gilded Age robber barons. However, its mansion might just be the best of all of them. The Cooper-Hewitt’s Fifth Avenue abode started out as the 1902, 64-room abode of Andrew Carnegie. While the interior is much changed from Carnegie’s time, it retains a good deal of period detail, including yet another beautiful staircase (I should add it to my list), a glassed-in conservatory, and much ornate plaster and woodwork.

Cooper Hewitt Museum, Carnegie Mansion, New York — Crazy wisteria climb the rear of the Carnegie mansion

The jewel-like garden recently opened to the public for free — you can just walk in. If you tried that back in Mr. Carnegie’s day, it probably wouldn’t have gone so well for you. The day I went the wisteria were blooming like mad, the sun was shining, and it was almost a shame to go indoors to look at art.

Before I get to the art, though, a word on the second distinguishing thing: the electronic pen. The Cooper Hewitt underwent a major refit a few years back. When it reopened in 2014, along with a whole new floor of exhibition space and the public garden, the museum rolled out digital pens. Every visitor gets one of these gizmos, enabling them to interact with the digital tabletops throughout the museum. More importantly, visitors can also capture any object that they see with a tap of the pen.

You return the pen at the end of your visit, but you take away a unique URL that provides details and images of all the objects you tagged. It’s like a Crate & Barrel wedding registry, for things none of your friends could possibly afford.

Cooper Hewitt Pen — Cooper Hewitt Magic Pen (and my hand and iPad)

Part of me feels skeptical about the pen. What’s wrong with taking notes the old fashioned way (i.e., by snapping photos of objects and captions)? But part of me just loves it. It’s super gutsy of the Smithsonian to bridge the physical and digital worlds like this, and to zig when all other museums offer the zag of an audio guide. It works really well. It’s fun! And I imagine the pens generate a treasure trove of data for the museum. If I were them I’d map visitors’ paths through the place, identify popular items, and understand how people use the Cooper Hewitt. (I collected 47 items, 24 different types of item, associated with 9 colors and 119 tags…etc.)

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.

Finally, there’s also a space called the “Immersion Room,” which projects wallpapers lifesize on the walls, or lets you use the magical pen to design a wallpaper of your very own. Maybe more about Instagrammable moments than about learning about design, but that’s fine in moderation, and my wallpaper had crescent moons and bats.

So that’s the mansion and the tech. On top of all those, the Cooper Hewitt has a fantastic collection and the space to show it off well. The main show when I visited was “The Jazz Age,” design from the 1920s.

Jazz-Age Desk — “Skyscraper Desk” from the Jazz Age show

A few weeks back I wished there was a historic house museum from the Art Deco era. This show amplifies that wish. How amazing would it be to see these objects in actual rooms that people lived in? Many beautiful, covetable things, and I also note that the exhibition deployed music well: it wouldn’t be a Jazz Age show without jazz.

Screen, 1921, Cooper Hewitt Museum

Who should visit the Cooper Hewitt? I think almost everyone. You definitely don’t need to be a design geek to derive huge pleasure and edification from it. It combines a wonderful building from the past with interactive technology that feels like the future and a collection that spans all eras.

Deco Sofa, Cooper Hewitt Museum — Canapé Gondole, 1925, by Marcel Coard

Finally, design museums have the best gift shops. So, if nothing else has enticed you yet (that pen, though!) go for the shopping.

For Reference:

Address	2 East 91st Street, Manhattan
Website	cooperhewitt.org
Cost	General Admission: $16 in advance online, $18 at the door. Free for Smithsonian members.

May 6, 2017May 1, 2018

City Reliquary

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	46 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	In 1986, the first run of brass subway tokens with steel centers had a tiny “SJD” worked into the design. That stands for “Silvester J. Dubosz,” then Assistant Controller of the New York City Transit Authority. Mr. Dubosz ordered the tokens, and thought it would be cool to have his initials on every one. And he was fired for it. Great relic!

New York City boasts a host of institutions dedicated to preserving our history and heritage, led by the twin titans of the Museum of the City of New York and the New-York Historical Society. I described one of our history museums, the New York City Fire Museum, as the attic of the Fire Department, storing its heritage of historic treasures.

Stretching that metaphor, the quirky City Reliquary would be, not the attic of New York, but the dusty space between the attic floorboards and the downstairs ceiling, where who knows what bits and bobs find their way. Open it up and you may just find a lot of crap, but if you look from the right perspective, treasures abound.

City Reliquary, Exterior 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.

Knish Show at City Reliquary 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?

2nd Ave Deli Sign, at City Reliquary

City Reliquary Restroom — The restroom at City Reliquary

The rest of the space is crammed from floor to ceiling, and then some, with a dizzying assortment of this-and-that, bric-a-brac, and thingamabobs. Even the restroom threatens a case of sensory overload.

Some of the Reliquary’s exhibits include:

The Statue of Liberty, the city’s “secular saint.”
New York geology, including core samples of Manhattan bedrock.
Souvenirs and memorabilia from both the World’s Fairs.
Seltzer and other native soft drinks.
“Little Egypt,” a burlesque dancer.
Jackie Robinson.
A quilt commemorating the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

The Reliquary is dense. Every time you visit, you’ll discover something new. Should you go? Those seeking a solid chronological telling of New York’s tale won’t find it there. But those looking for the quirky bits will love this place. Alternately, if you’ve explored the A-list history museums and still feel like something’s…missing, have I got a place for you!

In the end, New Yorkers will probably get more out of it than visitors. But for anyone afraid that this city has become sterile and homogenized and has lost its mojo, the Reliquary has it. It’s in one of their collection of Greek coffee cups, next to some gneiss and schist samples, on a shelf just below the collection of subway grab-holds.

For Reference:

Address	370 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn
Website	cityreliquary.org
Cost	General Admission: $5
Other Relevant Links	Laura Silver’s book on Knishes (she guest-curated the knish exhibition Article at Bluestocking on Little Egypt

May 4, 2017

Trinity Church

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	32 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Phillip Hamilton, son of Alexander, is buried in Trinity Churchyard. But there’s no longer a marker, and somehow no one quite knows where he is. How can that be? What kind of negligence does it take to lose a Hamilton for goodness’ sake? I mean, even before the musical to end all musicals made him a hero, A.Ham was always New York’s hometown Founding Father. And Phillip’s death was always an important part of the story. So, Trinity Church, how do you lose a Hamilton?

Wall Street NYC — View of Trinity Church from Wall Street

Its steeple stretching toward heaven at the head of Wall Street, Trinity Church stands as a powerful rebuke to those greedy financial types who see money as the beginning and end of living. I’m not sure it’s an effective rebuke, but it’s the thought that counts.

It’s an impressive, location at the heart of 18th century New York, and Trinity boasts not only a storied history, but also serves as a key, perhaps even the key stop on the Hamilton pilgrimage route. He’s buried there. As are Eliza and Angelica Schuyler (Peggy, the third Schuyler sister, is in Albany). And Phillip Hamilton is at Trinity too, though as mentioned above, no one quite knows where.

Eliza Hamilton Monument, Trinity Church, Manhattan 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 Church, Wall Street 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.

With Trinity itself, I’d say the cemetery is more important to visit than the church, which with one an exception doesn’t play much of an historical role. In addition to Hamilton and family, an assortment of other luminaries is there, including Robert Fulton (inventor of the steamboat), who probably wishes Lin-Manuel Miranda would get to work on a musical about him. And there’s a monument to firefighters, and assorted romantically crumbling old gravestones. The oldest legible marker in the cemetery dates to 1681.

Trinity Church, Manhattan 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.

To my mind, Trinity’s most important historic role came in the days after September 11. Trinity and St. Paul’s Chapel served as incredibly important sources of physical and spiritual sustenance for all the people facing the unimaginable work at Ground Zero.

Graveyard, Trinity Church, Manhattan 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.

Finally, I was going to take Trinity to task for not playing up the Hamilton-Hamilton connection–missed marketing opportunity!–but as I was departing I spotted this sign on the fence:

There's a Million Things You Haven't Seen...at Trinity Church — Clever, subtle, Hamilton reference

Well played indeed.

For Reference:

Address	75 Broadway, Manhattan
Website	trinitywallstreet.org
Cost	Free
Other Relevant Links	NY Times piece on Trinity Church’s role after 9/11

May 2, 2017

Federal Hall National Memorial

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	33 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	The steampunky goodness of the “Damon’s Patent Lock Mechanism” guarding the Customs House vaults. Even the bolts are pretty.

Federal Hall National Memorial, Greek Revival Masterpiece, New York 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.

Federal Hall’s spot on Wall Street was the location of New York’s colonial-era City Hall, built around 1700. When the fledgling United States of America decided New York would be the capital, that building got remodeled by Pierre L’Enfant (later architect of the District of Columbia’s master plan) to make it fancier. Rebranded from City Hall to Federal Hall, it did indeed serve (briefly) as the nation’s first capitol building, before the government moved to Philly and eventually to Washington.

Federal Hall, New York — Model of the actual Federal Hall

Ever more practical than sentimental, New York tore Federal Hall down in 1812. According to the visitor guide, the city sold the scrap to a “grocer on South Street” for $425. The guide skips over what they built next, but eventually the government replaced it with a United States Customs House in 1842.

In some ways that’s okay. The current building is fantastic, the best example of Greek Revival architecture in New York City. As Customs House and later a Sub-Treasury, it has its own important history as a key locale in New York’s growth as the commercial and financial capital of the U.S.

Federal Hall National Memorial, Interior, New York 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.

As I’ve racked up historic sites for this project it occurred to me that New York’s relentless development leads to a fairly loose definition of “authentic” history. Sometimes authentically old buildings migrate from their original locations (like Hamilton Grange or Edgar Allan Poe’s Cottage). Sometimes historic locations remain, while the buildings themselves change (like Theodore Roosevelt’s Birthplace, Federal Hall, or Trinity Church). And sometimes “historic” sites feature inauthentic buildings in ersatz locations.

That last one is typically bad, but not always. Think of The Cloisters, which enthralled both me and Jorge Luis Borges.

Forced to choose, I’d prefer old building/new location. I’d rather see Hamilton’s house somewhere else (within reason) than an exact reproduction built on the site of Hamilton’s house. Your mileage may vary.

On view at what I will more accurately call “(Not Actually) Federal Hall National Memorial”:

Federal Hall National Memorial, New York — Washington Stood Here

The cracked but actual marble slab Washington stood on when taking the oath of office.
Vaults where the Customs House kept tons of cash (literally)
A model of Washington’s Inaugural Parade
Memorabilia from the centennial celebrations of Washington’s Inauguration.
Models showing the old City Hall and Federal Hall buildings.
A National Park Service overview of historic sites and parks, in the New York region and beyond.
An exhibit on the Zenger trial of 1735, an early libel case that set a precedent for freedom of the press.
The Bible on which Washington swore the oath of office (borrowed at the last minute from a local Masonic Lodge).

Everyone should visit (Not Actually) Federal Hall National Memorial. The architecture alone justifies a special trip. Contemplating the vicissitudes of history and what we save versus what we tear down just ices the cake.

Federal Hall, New York

For Reference:

Address	26 Wall Street, Manhattan
Website	nps.org
Cost	Free

May 2, 2017May 2, 2017

Grey Art Gallery

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	27 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Mark Motherbraugh, Orchestrions Mothersbaugh builds “orchestrions,” musical machines comprised of old pipe organ pipes, whistles, bellows and circuit boards that I found delightful. These ungainly contraptions seemed like goofy piles of junk to me until they started playing.

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.

The current show features the art of Mark Mothersbaugh, of the band DEVO. Probably the most random show I’ve seen at any of the school museums I have visited so far. Who even knew he made art?

The exhibit consists of some of his art school work, a fair section about DEVO (are we not men???), and then various pieces that show off the kinds of art he makes, which include sketchy postcards, rugs made from the sketchy postcards, neat manipulations of found vintage photos, the musical contraptions I mentioned above, and, randomly, an ice cream swirl made of polished bronze and the world’s largest crystal ruby (at 30,090 carats).

Mark Motherbaugh, Beautiful Mutant series

That last alone would’ve made the visit, worthwhile, even if it struck me as rather Jeff Koons-y.

Mark Mothersbaugh, Ruby Kustard, 2009-2014

The Grey Gallery manages NYU’s art collection, but as with many such spaces, deciding whether to visit Grey depends largely on your interest in the current exhibit. That said, the location factor makes it more accessible, if not more appealing, than some other school-related art spaces. I loved the show I saw at Lehman College, but I’m far more likely to find myself with time on my hands in Greenwich Village than the far reaches of the Bronx. I’d recommend stopping in if you happen to be in the vicinity. It makes for a quick, free art snack.

For Reference:

Address	100 Washington Square East, Manhattan
Website	Greyartgallery.nyu.edu
Cost	Free
Other Relevant Links	On Mark Mothersbaugh’s Beautiful Mutant project

May 1, 2017

South Street Seaport Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	48 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	The Museum is home to the Alan Govenar & Kaleta Doolin Tattoo Collection. The current modest Gus Wagner show is like a teaser for what they might be able to do once material in the collection (Wagner’s notebooks and such) is conserved and stable. I was sad to learn the Staten Island Tattoo Museum is no more, so I’m hopeful this enables the Seaport Museum to fill that gap.

The South Street Seaport Museum just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and its establishment contributed to the survival of a collection of historic buildings in the face of Lower Manhattan’s relentless pressure for development. The museum includes a print shop (worth visiting; great cards), the museum building proper, and the “street of ships,” a collection of historic vessels, several of which are open for tours when the museum is open.

The museum itself is still not fully back on its feet following 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. This is unfortunate because a significant part of the museum’s space is not currently open, and the exhibits on display now are long on words and short on artifacts — the science fair school of museum displays, wherein you might as well just read about it on the internet. Told that way, even something as fun as the story of an early 20th century tattoo artist is only so engaging.

A wall of reproductions and captions, the bulk of the Gus Wagner, Tattooist exhibit

Until it fully reopens, the museum by itself is not worth the time or $12 to visit. However, the museum also offers the chance to tour the lightship Ambrose and the tall ship Wavertree. And the museum also runs the sailing vessel Pioneer (which needs to be booked separately) which is an awesome way to get out on the Harbor.

I only had time to visit Wavertree, but she’s impressive. Immense, steel-hulled, and built in 1885 as a cargo ship, Wavertree just completed a massive restoration effort that has helped put her back in seaworthy condition. The brief public tour gives a taste of what life was like for sailors (i.e., tough) and the officers (i.e., less tough) aboard. She’s still a work in progress, which is interesting too: there’s always staff or volunteers performing some work or other on her.

Ambrose is a lightship, which was a sturdy class of ship used as a floating lighthouse, in places where terrestrial ones weren’t feasible. She went into service in 1908 and helped ships navigate the entrance to Lower New York Bay until 1932.

The collection is completed by two sailing vessels, Lettie G. Howard and Pioneer, and an adorable wooden tugboat named W. O. Decker.

I want to be more enthusiastic about the Seaport Museum than I am. I love ships, the sea, and the city’s history. South Street Seaport is about as central as it gets, while many of the city’s other maritime museums are in far flung locales like Staten and City Islands. Still, in its current state, it’s operating at only a fraction of its potential, and having two historic boats to tour only goes so far. With regret, the best I can muster for it is a lukewarm nod to anyone with an interest in those topics.

For Reference:

Address	12 Fulton Street and Pier 16, Manhattan
Website	southstreetseaportmuseum.org
Cost	General Admission With Ship Tour: $12
Other Relevant Links	Tour New York Harbor on Pioneer, a schooner dating from 1885

May 1, 2017May 1, 2017

Edgar Allan Poe Cottage

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	70 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	During their sojourn at the cottage Poe and his wife had a cat named Katarina. And maybe that was Mrs. Poe’s idea but still there’s an endearing humor to that which changed the way I think about Poe a little.

Edgar Allan Poe, proto-goth, inventor of the detective story, writer of gruesome tales and horror-struck poetry, quother of the raven, had a hard life. Baltimore has largely claimed him as its own (just think of their NFL team). While he did live there for while, and died there in 1849, Poe was a New Yorker for a good chunk of his life. Indeed, he was only visiting Baltimore when he shuffled off his mortal coil in circumstances that remain mysterious to this day. For the last three years of his life Poe resided in a small rented cottage in what was then the village of Fordham in Westchester County, known today as the Bronx.

Built in 1812 by the Valentine family to house farm laborers, it’s a mark of how fast esteem for Poe rose after his death that his cottage has survived to the present. In 1902 Poe Park was established, and in 1913 the cottage was moved to the park, where it has stood as a museum ever since.

Poe’s reason for moving north was as sad as anything else in his life: his wife Virginia had contracted consumption, and they hoped that by escaping from the foul miasma of the city to bucolic Fordham, she might improve. It was not to be, however, and she died less than a year after they moved to the cottage, in January of 1847.

The cottage is definitely the home of a poor man. A realtor would call it cozy. While tiny, I imagine that during the winter it was freezing. A kitchen, parlor, and small bedroom on the ground floor, and a study and bedroom on the second floor, a small porch out front, and that’s it. Poe and his wife rented it for $100 per year.

It’s furnished with a fair number of period pieces, three items of which are known to have been Poe’s: a rocking chair, a fancy gilded mirror, and the narrow bed where Virginia Poe passed away.

In addition to period furniture, the house also contains assorted Poe memorabilia: period prints of the cottage, a bust of Poe that used to be in the park, and several pictures of the man in various states of unhappiness.

There’s a brief video that describes Poe’s life in the Bronx: walking the High Bridge, wandering along the Bronx River, and visiting the Jesuits at then then brand-new St. John’s College (founded in 1841, now called Fordham), with whom he seems to have gotten on well. Poe wrote some of his best-known works while he lived at the cottage, including “The Bells,” and Fordham lays claim to having THE bell that inspired the poem.

My guide during my visit was a local kid who really loved Poe and the place. His enthusiasm helped bring the cottage to life.

And he explained the most random furnishing of the cottage: a picture of penguins on the parlor wall. They feature in Poe’s only novel, a whaling tale called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. I asked him who comes, and he said it was about 25% New Yorkers, 50% tourists from overseas, and 25% tourists from other states.

It takes some determination to get there. It’s on the way (by subway) to the New York Botanical Garden or Woodlawn Cemetery, and kind of near Lehman College Art Gallery. But it’s not especially close to any of those. Thus, even though the city has grown up all around it, Poe’s cottage is still sort of a lonely place.

Anyone with vaguely goth or romantic tendencies should absolutely go. Underappreciated poets and anyone who can still quote the opening lines of the Raven should too. But those outside those categories could probably stick visiting other historic houses in the city, many of which are easier to get to.

For Reference:

Address	2640 Grand Concourse, the Bronx
Website	Bronx Historical Society Website
Cost	General Admission: $5
Other Relevant Links	Full text of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (from Project Gutenberg)

April 30, 2017May 2, 2017

The Cloisters

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	115 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I’m going with the crowd on this one, but I’m picking the Unicorn Tapestries. I just love them — the allegory, the sheer beauty, the amount of work that went into making them (and any tapestry really). I love the mystery to them — we don’t know exactly who the “A” & “E” were for whom they were made. The unicorn has a rough time of it, but they fill me with joy, and I see new things in them every time I visit. Also don’t overlook the narwhal horn tucked in the corner of the room where they reside.

This is a milestone post, my fiftieth museum review. So I decided to treat myself to my very favorite of all New York museums, The Cloisters. But now that I’ve started, I realize, what can I say about The Cloisters? I feel overmatched and inadequate. The Cloisters isn’t just my favorite museum, it’s quite possibly my favorite place. It’s so unlikely, it’s like magic or a miracle happened in this park at the far northern tip of Manhattan. But as with so many of the miracles in New York City, it was money not magic that made The Cloisters happen. Continue reading “The Cloisters”

April 30, 2017

The Morgan Library & Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	99 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	The West Room Vault, which Charles McKim designed so that Mr. Morgan could keep his most super-special books super safe.

Many of the city’s great institutions, maybe even most of them, were gifts to the public by plutocrats looking to give something back, improve their image, or maybe atone for awful things they did to get ahead. Fro some people, it may diminish the joy of visiting somewhat to reflect on the ruthless profiteering that paid for all of it. That’s especially true of the most personality-driven institutions, like the Morgan and the Frick.

And yet. Your mileage may vary, but when I go to either of those two places, I’m sorely tempted to believe that they did it: the institutions balance the scales, and their sins are erased by the magnificence of what they’ve left for posterity — me– to enjoy.

Mr. Morgan’s Library, now open for your edification and gawking

The Morgan Library & Museum contains treasures. It was literally Pierpont Morgan’s private library, so it combines gilded age period room splendor with a fascinating collection and space to put on dazzling temporary exhibitions.

Additionally, the Morgan is one of my favorite examples of marrying new architecture with old. In 2006, Renzo Piano completed an incredible glass box that fits like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece with the older Morgan buildings. The original library was built in 1906 by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead, and White, so it’s no slouch in the architecture department. One of the things I like best about the new addition is it doesn’t try to erase the differences between the buildings that make up the campus, while still managing to unite them harmoniously. It also adds more gallery space, fancy piston-based glass elevators, and a beautiful cafe with a tree and a view of the Empire State Building.

I love how the Morgan smells. The parts that are more library than museum contain enough ancient tomes that the very air is permeated with old leather, paper, and erudition.

In a city with many a fancy ceiling, one of the fanciest of them all.

The Morgan owns three (three) Gutenberg Bibles. Manuscripts of, it sometimes seems, everything ever written or composed by everyone. A collection of exquisite Babylonian cylinder seals. Huge amounts of religious art. It just goes on and on. I saw scores by Mozart and Chopin and Mendelssohn. And the first page of the original draft of General Grant’s first inaugural address on display. And the Zir Ganela Gospels, from Ge’ez Ethiopia ca 1400. And the only complete manuscript of a Jane Austen novel (of Lady Susan).

Its book and manuscript collection enable it to put on amazing shows just drawing from its own resources — “Delirium,” on the art of symbolist books, was on when I visited, along with a great show on Emily Dickinson (called “I’m Nobody! Who are You?”), where I learned her handwriting was awful. And a small show of old masters borrowed from the Swedish Nationalmuseum.

The Morgan also has at least a bit of a sense of humor. A fair number of things on display are not what Mr. Morgan thought they were — ingenious fakes, misattributed or misidentified works. I get the sense that he was a bit of a sucker. Or he just didn’t care — he’d Hoover up all the art there was, authenticity be damned. Clearly art sleuthing has progressed a lot in the intervening century, and seeing fakes can be both instructive and entertaining. Anyway, I like that they don’t hide them away or quietly dispose of them.

The Morgan contains wonders enough to balance a robber-baron’s debt to society. I can almost guarantee you will see at least one thing, a document, a score, a letter, that takes your breath away. It is an incredibly fine museum, and everyone should go.

For Reference:

Address	225 Madison Avenue (at 36th Street), Manhattan
Website	themorgan.org
Cost	General Admission: $20 (free Friday evenings)

April 25, 2017

Japan Society Gallery

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	45 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	It can be hard for an untrained modern viewer to distinguish between youths and women in Japanese prints. There are subtle but important hairstyle and fabric differences but in terms of face and body shape, they were depicted very similarly. I wonder how many pretty women I’ve seen in woodblock prints over the years have actually been pretty dudes.

The Japan Society’s home, Japan House, was designed in 1971, by architects Junzo Yoshimura and George Shimamoto of Gruzen & Partners, and built on a site near the United Nations donated by the Society’s then-president, John D. Rockefeller the Third. The Society’s history, however, goes back much further than that; it was founded in 1907 in the wake of an official U.S. visit by two Japanese dignitaries. Its fortunes have waxed and waned along with Japan-U.S. relations, and today the society is a great place to take a language class, hear a talk, see a movie, or see some art.

The building feels simultaneously modern (for a midcentury architectural definition of same) and Japanese, and the first thing you notice on entering is the sound of water from a gentle fountain, replete with a stand of bamboo, a modernist, completely enclosed and skylit, take on a traditional courtyard garden.

The Society’s gallery space is on the second floor, in rooms arrayed around the courtyard. They program all kinds of stuff there. It’s one of the first places I saw Haruki Murakami’s work; they’ve done great shows on crafts like contemporary Japanese basketwaving and ceramics; they did a show a couple of years ago on cats in Japanese art (I bet the Brooklyn curators were jealous the Japan Society thought of it first)… It’s a broad and varied list, always tied back to Japan.

The current show is called A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Prints, and looks at societal impressions of essentially tween- and teenage boys in early modern Japan. It makes the case that they were viewed as beautiful and desirable by both men and women, and displays a variety of contemporary woodblock prints, books, and other artifacts to examine how they were depicted and described in that society.

I am emphatically not going to use this blog to discuss concepts of gender or the politics of sexuality. But I was disturbed by this exhibition, because it robs the subject of the show of all agency: there’s nothing in it that says whether tween and teen boys in Japan liked being or wanted to be the objects of lustful attentions from grown up men and women. To me it feels uncomfortably like looking at TV shows and advertising from 1950s and 1960s America and concluding that women then enjoyed being secretaries and housewives and having their butts pinched by the boss.

My misgivings aside, like all Japan Society exhibitions I’ve attended it was well curated and thoughtfully designed. While none of the pieces in it is super-famous or a masterpiece, it leverages depth of collection to examine an otherwise unknown facet of life in Tokugawa Era (ca 1600-1868) Japan.

Unless you’re a fan of the Land of the Rising Sun (full disclosure, I am a fan, and have been a member of the Japan Society for well over a decade) I don’t think the Japan Society generally merits a special trip to the far eastern reaches of midtown Manhattan. But they put on a good show, and if you happen to be by the United Nations it’s an excellent place to imbibe some culture that will almost certainly be beautiful and interesting.

For Reference:

Address	333 E 47th Street, Manhattan
Website	japansociety.org
Cost	General Admission: $12
Other Relevant Links	Riki, my favorite izakaya near the Japan Society, in case you want to imbibe some topically appropriate alcohol post-visit