| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 100 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | The museum includes a small exhibit on homes in Brooklyn. I liked this model townhouse showing how it evolved over the 170 years since it was built. |
Founded in 1899, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum claims to be the oldest children’s museum in the world. However, it hides its age well, and the casual visitor would probably have no idea. Clad in bright yellow tile, the building’s very modern (and somewhat anonymous and uninviting) facade doesn’t give much away in terms of what’s going on inside.
Rafael Viñoly Architects designed the building, an expansion that opened in 2008, making it one of two New York City children’s museums with starchitect cred. (David Adjaye’s Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling is the other.)
Inside Out
It turns out that’s going on inside is a shrunk down, semi-educational version of what’s going on outside. A significant part of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum recreates an eclectic, idealized Brooklyn shopping street, with various hands-on activities to keep young folk engaged, while preparing them for future careers in retail.
There’s an African market, a pizzeria, a Caribbean travel agency, a grocery store… all providing opportunities for roleplaying and, possibly, absorbing points about the diverse cultures that comprise the rich tapestry that is Brooklyn.
Fake Waterfront; Real Loud
Another section has a small display of live, bored-looking reptiles and other small critters. Continuing onward, a third part featured a fake waterfront, with a fake boat, fake pilings, and real sand.
Elsewhere in the museum was an exhibit called Sound Field. This boasted a ginormous and overwhelmingly cacophonous looking contraption. Never have I been happier to see a hands-on display be hands-off and closed for repairs. This museum was plenty loud even without that.
Possibly the best part of the Viñoly building is the roof, which features wide open outdoor space with a soaring canopy. It lacks the playground of the Staten Island Children’s Museum, but as a place for adults to possibly find some respite from being in close quarters with zillions of noisy little monsters, I appreciated it.
Should you visit the Brooklyn Children’s Museum?
Discussing this museum with friends, my joke was, “It could be a great museum, it’s just a shame there are all those kids in it.” But upon consideration, I actually think it could be a great museum, it’s just a shame there’s all that Brooklyn in it.
While its emphatic Brooklyn-ness is charming, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum feels like a missed opportunity. I think that the best kids’ museums transport their young clients to new worlds: places they have dreamed about or seen on television or never even heard of before. The museum’s website talks about a collection that encompasses “30,000 natural history and cultural objects ranging from Paleolithic to ancient to modern day, making the collection an encyclopedia of cultures across the globe.” But I didn’t see much of that. I’m guessing it’s mostly in storage for lack of alignment with contemporary Brooklyn’s cultures and values. What is on display, like the African art below, seems perfunctory and jumbled together and not particularly kid-friendly in its curation.
That’s not to say it’s not fun. The kids I attended with had a great time, running from one storefront activity to the next. I’m not sure any of the intended diversity, tolerance, or other messages had a chance to sink in, but fun was had. However, if you want to engage and inspire the kids in your care, there are better museums in New York.
For Reference:
| Address | 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Crown Heights, Brooklyn |
|---|---|
| Website | https://www.brooklynkids.org/ |
| Cost | General Admission: $13. Kids pay the same price as grown-ups; grandparents get to save a buck. |
| Other Relevant Links |
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The main show at Fotografiska when I visited celebrated the photography of hip hop, which is turning 50 years old this year. (Exact birthdate: August 11, 1973.) The show was organized into five zones: an origins section, three geographic sections (East Coast, West Coast, and Southern, naturally), and a “hip hop today” closer. While breezy, hagiographic wall text introduced each section, there wasn’t a lot beyond that, and I really wanted more exposition.
Many years ago I saw Punt e Mes listed on a menu at a fancy cocktail bar described along the lines of “If you know, you know.” Punt e Mes is an excellent Italian vermouth. Its name is dialect for punto e mezzo, a point and a half— meaning one part bitter, half a part sweet. This poster elegantly depicts the concept. If you didn’t know before, now you do.
, and huge windows. A hallway widens into a smaller rear gallery, passing a beautiful modern kitchen with a plethora of Pantone espresso cups. Offices and a coat room are tucked behind discreet doors.
The exhibition when I visited the Center for Italian Modern Art focused on posters made between the 1920s and the 1950s. It examined the interplay between the worlds of high art and commercial advertising, starting with the Italian futurists and cubists. It concluded with two pieces by Mimmo Rotella, who was something of an Italian anti-Warhol, taking actual posters and folding, spindling, and mutilating them into artworks that say things about capitalism and consumerism. Not generally positive things.
The show also included a poster by Lucio Fontana, who is far better known as an artist than a graphic designer. His 1935 poster for Lloyd Triestino ship lines sleekly conveys speed and modernity. And it also hints at the linear slashes in canvas that would later make him famous. (Apologies for the inadvertent selfie in my photo.)
That said, I was extremely impressed with the curation of the poster show — not to mention the beauty of the pieces they selected. Flipping through CIMA’s past catalogs left me vexed that I missed this place on my initial list of New York museums. On the brighter side, I’m happy that I know about it now. I will keep an eye on CIMA and I’m looking forward to seeing what it puts on next.
The Gilder Center is a very, very, very sexy building. It’d be easy to dismiss its biomorphic, asymmetrical forms as Flintstones architecture, or aping termites or some other social insect. And those are valid brickbats. But, seriously, look at these curves. This is the most Instagrammable new museum space New York has seen since someone last showed off a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room.
The Gilder Center also represents AMNH looking at itself via the view of the collections, and also literally, as new windows peer out at the red brick facade of the older building.
If instead I had grown up in Brooklyn and been a fan of baseball, the number 42 would’ve had a similarly huge and cosmic significance. It was Jackie Robinson’s number when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 to 1956.
much of the show was a hit for me. It helped that most pieces in this show were lighthearted, clever, and often quite beautiful. For example, I loved Judy Fox’s slightly creepy, biomorphic, technicolor terra cotta pieces that looked like something out of a Jeff VanderMeer book.
e entrance to one of the two Academy pavilions features a pair of handsome, old-school bronze doors, with naked cherubim and the personifications of Inspiration (girl) and Drama (guy), along with the sentiment, “By the gates of art we enter the temple of happiness.” However, the pediment of the same building bears a different perspective: “All passes, art alone untiring stays to us.”
It’s a predictable choice but Hispanic Society’s Goya, “The Duchess of Alba,” from 1797, is a fantastic portrait. I especially love that Goya inscribed his signature on the sandy shore where she’s standing. The Duchess unsubtly points a bejeweled finger toward his name.
The International Center of Photography is one of two photo-specialist institutions in New York (the other being the 
Then there’s the Super Sprowtz, a short-lived effort from 7 years ago to use puppet vegetables to teach kids about nutrition. Though, evidently, not spelling. It still exists on YouTube, and at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, but just about nowhere else. Gita Garlic is pretty cool, I’ll grant that (that’s Sammy Spinach to the left). But overall, it speaks to a place that has no clear sense of what kids like or how they think.
But then there’s this about sleep and sleep deprivation. I know I’ve asked before, but I’m compelled to ask again, who is likely to find this fun or interesting?
