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Socrates Sculpture Park

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Time spent 28 minutes (it was chilly)
Best thing I saw or learned Bryan Zanisnik’s “Monument to Walken” (2016) A bunch of cement heads of Christopher Walken, sprouting from the ground like malevolent mushrooms.  If I had a garden, I would absolutely want one or two for it.

Socrates Sculpture Park is a fantastic place to see, well, sculpture.  Located on the East River waterfront in Queens, it hosts changing exhibitions of works designed for an outdoor environment. Continue reading “Socrates Sculpture Park”

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Isamu Noguchi Museum

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Time spent 100 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned It’s surprisingly difficult to pick a favorite! But I will call out Walking Void #2 (1970), which is a highly finished piece of granite, utterly harmonious and balanced.Isamu Noguchi Museum, Walking Void #2

Noguchi. I’d always meant to visit the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Queens.  I love Japan, and it always sounded like a good little museum to visit.  But then again, I only really knew Noguchi from blocks of stone that looked unfinished to me, like the sculptor gave up halfway through, and that famous curvy wood and glass coffee table from the 1950s.

So it never made it to the top of my to-do list.

To sum up, it’s amazing. I won’t look at or think about his work the same way again.  Seeing it in its own company, and understanding how it evolved, or how he evolved, was joyous and eye-opening. Continue reading “Isamu Noguchi Museum”

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The Frick Collection

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Time spent 125 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Contemporary critics weren’t always kind to JMW Turner, accusing him of being “unrealistic” and using “blinding” light effects. So he painted the story of Regulus, a Roman general who was captured by Carthage and (among other tortures) had his eyelids cut out and was forced to stare at the sun until he was blinded, before being killed. Turner painted a port where you can barely make out Regulus, and dominating the painting is light, light light.  Touche, Turner.

UPDATE APRIL 2021: The Frick Collection’s 5th Avenue mansion is closed for the next several years for a major renovation. The good news is Mr. Frick’s art has an temporary home in the old Whitney Building, the former Met Breuer, giving it a chance to recontextualize the art and juxtapose and present its art in exciting new ways. I’ll be writing about it soon, I hope. Spoiler alert: I love it!

This is going to be a hard one to write.  I’ve been going to the Frick Collection regularly for over 20 years.  I’m a member there.  It’s my second favorite museum in New York City (the Cloisters is number one).  Everyone needs to go to the Frick Collection. 

Henry Clay Frick may have been a plutocrat industrialist, but he had such an eye for art.  And the Frick, like the Gardner in Boston or the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, is his collection of art, much of it hung as he liked it, in rooms that were his rooms, now open to the public. 

Continue reading “The Frick Collection”

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Merchant’s House Museum

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Time spent 104 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned In mid-19th C. New York rowhouse-style mansions, bedrooms were semi-public space.  When you came calling, you’d first go upstairs to a bedroom where you’d leave your coat and hat and change from street shoes to indoor shoes.  Only then would you go down to the parlor.  Seems strange to me– like they should’ve had a changing room as part of the floorplan.  But even in these grand houses, space was at a premium.

The Merchant’s House Museum is a venerable 19th century home and maybe the only historic house in the city where so many of the furnishings on display are actually original to the house, owned by the home’s owners and maintained by the museum to this day.

The merchant in question is a guy named Seabury Treadwell, who bought the house for $18,000 in 1835.  His family lived there for 90 odd years, and by a series of fortuitous events, the house and all the stuff in it became a museum in 1936.  In 1965, when the Landmarks law was passed, the Merchant’s House Museum was among the very first places to be landmarked by the city. Continue reading “Merchant’s House Museum”

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Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS)

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Time spent 19 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Micro-mini exhibit on activist technology over time

The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space occupies a classic old-school East Village squat, and consists of some artifacts, photos, and other memorabilia documenting the East Village of the 80s and 90s.  It and its denizens focus mainly on squats (abandoned buildings that individuals made habitable and moved into), community gardens, bike lanes, and other aspects of a time and culture that feels increasingly at odds with the hyper-gentrified city of today. Continue reading “Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS)”

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Ukrainian Museum

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Time spent 41 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Marko Shuhan’s 2016 work “Space Needed, Apply Within,” a crazy hodgepodge of paintings and paints and liquor bottles on shelves.  Like an artist’s studio compressed into a single wall installation. 

The Ukrainian Museum is one that I definitely wouldn’t go to barring this project.  It occupies a sort of blah, to be honest, modern building on a side street off Cooper Square, and has moderate gallery space with temporary exhibits.

Currently on show were contemporary works by Ukrainian American artists, a textile exhibit comparing traditional textiles of the Romanian and Ukrainian parts of the Carpathian Mountains, a small display of traditional woodcarving, and some of the artwork coming out of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution. Continue reading “Ukrainian Museum”

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General Grant National Memorial

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Time spent 53 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned New York City fielded a volunteer army force called the Mozart Regiment.  I hoped that all city army units had classical composer nicknames, but alas, it’s because the regiment was financed by the Democratic National Committee of Mozart Hall.

“Let us have peace.”  So reads the inscription on the last resting place of America’s greatest military hero of the 19th century.

At one point, Grant’s Tomb was the most visited tourist destination in New York City.  And to this day it is the largest tomb in North America. Built when the city didn’t extend that far north, it was a prominent marble landmark on a hill, attracting visitors in droves, by boat and train, coach and bus, to pay their respects. Continue reading “General Grant National Memorial”

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Hamilton Grange National Memorial

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Time spent 61 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Hamilton placed a marble bust of himself styled as a slightly smirking, handsome, Roman senator, in the entryway of the Grange. Looking at it now it’s like he’s thinking, “Hey, Jefferson, you may get to be president, but see if anyone composes the biggest musical in Broadway history about YOU someday.”

How do you kick off a project like this?  I decided to stick fairly close to home, and what better way to start in this Hamiltonian era than with the Harlem summer, country home of Alexander, Eliza, and family?  Hamilton went into serious debt to buy the land (32 acres) and have the Grange designed and built.  It’s a beautiful, Federal style home dating to 1802. Lots of symmetry, including two faux chimneys just to create balance.

Hamilton Grange National Memorial Continue reading “Hamilton Grange National Memorial”

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