| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value | |
| Should you go? |  |
| Time spent | 62 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned |
 This is the best, or at least weirdest, cabinet I have ever seen. Probably the most Gothic. And the least practical. An entire cathedral, tipped on its side! No putting that against the wall, that’s for sure.
|
UPDATE APRIL 2021: The Met has pulled the plug on its Breuer experiment, reducing its New York City empire to the classic mothership and The Cloisters. I liked what it was doing in the Breuer building, but the silver lining is the Frick is now playing in that space.
The first thing you should know about my take on the Met Breuer, housed in the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, is I really really really dislike the building. The iconic, Brutalist, Marcel Breuer art fortress says to me very loudly and in no uncertain terms, “Don’t come in here. You are not welcome.” It looms over the sidewalk. It has one big wonky window like Polyphemus’s eye. That’s it. It’s a Cyclopean building. A monster. Hide under a sheepskin on your way out or it’ll devour you.
You have to cross a narrow bridge over a crevasse to get in, upping the feeling of peril. Then once you’re in the lobby, the harsh concrete and spotlight-y lights feel like some kind of an art world police state, with you as the object of interrogation. “Admit it! Talk! You like MONET. Confess and maybe we’ll go easy on ya.”
One of the reasons I love the Whitney so much today is simply that it’s no longer in this building.
So, I have a bias.
The second thing you should know is, according to the Met, the architect’s name is pronounced BROY-er, not brewer. Just in case you wondered.
With the Whitney’s move to the Meatpacking District, naturally questions arose as to what to do with the Madison Avenue fortress. Fortunately (maybe?) the Met stepped in and leased it, making it the Met’s second satellite location after The Cloisters. Otherwise they probably would’ve turned it into an H&M or a fancy food hall or something.
Thus far, the Met has used the Breuer building to…well, to let its institutional hair down a bit, it seems. None of the permanent collection has moved. Rather, it leverages the space for special exhibitions. They tend to the modern or contemporary, which is good given the space. And yet, the Met’s also done some fairly fascinating surveys, leveraging the strength of its encyclopedic collection but doing things they might not want to do, or even be able to do, in any of the spaces in the mother ship on Fifth Avenue.
When I visited, one show consisted of four video installations, which were okay. Certainly video works well in the cavelike Breuer space.
Ettore Sottsass, Design Maverick
The other show, on the designer Ettore Sottsass, exemplifies what I mean about letting the Met go a little bonkers installation-wise.
Sottsass first found fame designing an iconic Olivetti portable manual typewriter, in super-sexy lipstick red, with a case that could double as a waste-paper basket. It’s adorable and brilliant, and the Met shows it off alongside other modern designs meant to be cheap and cheerful, like a One Laptop Per Child laptop.
But on top of that, they introduce it with a…colorful quote from Sottsass. I have been visiting the Met for over 20 years, and I really don’t think I’ve ever seen that word in a wall text there before, much less in big type as a key quote.
Sottsass had a long career designing things of all types, including the outdoor furniture that uses classical capitals and columns in the photo above. This also provides a typical view of Met Breuer gallery space, with its slate floors and the waffle iron ceiling.
Ettore Sottsass also went on to found the short-lived, exuberant, 1980s “Memphis” design movement, exemplified by his wacky, colorful room divider here.
Creativity Unleashed
Cleverly, the Met juxtaposed some chunky Memphis jewelry with 4,000 year old Egyptian pieces (that looked really good by comparison). They did things like that throughout. Sottsass designed some glass art pieces he called “Kachinas,” and the Met displayed them next to Hopi dolls from its collection. They displayed some of Sotsass’s nifty, colorful, tall, ceramic towers with a Frank Lloyd Wright architectural model, some Shiva Lingam, and a Chinese jade Neolithic ritual object. Throughout the show, these sorts of unexpected pairings helped illuminate Sottsass’s work, providing a look at objects that might have inspired him, or at least creating a novel context for his pieces. I really enjoyed it.
Creative combinations of works in a dialogue across thousands of years and diverse cultures is something places like the Brooklyn Museum have been trying for some time, not always successfully. The Met seems to be using the Breuer to experiment with that approach to curating a show. And I think they’re doing it really well so far.
My Bottom Line on the Met Breuer
So what’s my bottom line on the Met Breuer? I’m not going to say everyone should drop everything and go. The building might be interesting, but I still don’t think it’s a welcoming or pleasant place to see art. But I can’t deny the creativity that’s going into the Met’s programming at the Met Breuer. The staff has done some tremendous shows there so far, full of…spirit. If having the Breuer lets them think about their collection in novel ways, and tell new stories about art, I value that highly. Hopefully some of the Met Breuer spirit will eventually find outlets in the Fifth Avenue HQ, too.
For Reference:
| Address | 945 Madison Avenue, (at East 75th Street) Manhattan |
|---|---|
| Website | metmuseum.org/visit/met-breuer |
| Cost | General Admission: $25 (Suggested) |
Temple Emanu-El is a beautiful, imposing synagogue, one of several great houses of worship on the green stretch of Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. The temple itself is shut tight like a fortress between services, However, if you go around to a side entrance on East 65th Street and ask the guard, you can visit the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum, which hosts temporary exhibits on various aspects of Jewish life, faith, and culture.
Driving up the west side of Manhattan helps New Yorkers exercise our jadedness. Here’s my routine with out-of-towners. 
SculptureCenter, a museum dedicated to, yes, sculpture, resides in an historic old trolley garage in the eye of the gentrification storm that is Long Island City these days. The stroll there from the Queensboro Plaza subway station boggles the mind — new residential high rises seem to be sprouting on every single lot for blocks around.
Barkley L. Hendricks, Lawdy Mama, 1969, from the portraits show. Arresting today, must’ve been even more so when new. To quote the wall text, “Hendricks uses the master’s tools to dismantle his house.”
The Studio Museum in Harlem harbors no small ambitions, despite its smallish space. It prints its mission statement outside its front door:
The wall text observes that since the 1954 Hague Convention, walking off the battlefield with lost coin collections is no longer Kosher. So it’s lucky Fordham acquired its when it did.
Tucked away in the main library at Fordham University’s Bronx campus is an unexpected little museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art, which opened in 2007. William and Jane Walsh donated their collection of about 270 objects to the school, the thought being that having a small museum of classical antiquity close at hand might inspire students pursuing a liberal arts education.
As a Columbia alum, I’m slightly jealous. I can imagine the resonance of reading Sophocles, Thucydides, or Cicero in the presence of objects from the cultures that shaped those works. Then again, our library is 
The Fordham Museum offers a quiet, competent display of an interesting collection in a beautiful academic setting. It’s great if you like communing with art solo: a kid studying was the only other person when I went. And a guard popped in briefly to make sure I wasn’t pilfering votive objects.
Baby Bootlegger was a 1924, 29-foot 10-inch speedboat with a 240 horsepower engine. She was designed by George F. Crouch, built by Henry B. Nevins of City Island, and owned by Caleb Bragg. She won the Gold Cup in 1924 and 1925 and I’m sure no rum was ever run in her.
In addition to various books, copies of Yachting magazine going back to the 1930s, and neat ship models, the library currently houses a temporary show of local artwork memorializing the City Island Bridge, recently torn down.
Then again, I have to say much of the collection feels random and not very important. For example, the museum has an array of outboard motors that look like they date to the 1940s-1960s. Whose outboard motors were they? Are they historically important for some reason? Who made them and why? There’s a case of arrowheads. A bunch of old bottles. Old cameras. Nothing feels…documented. The artifacts kind of tell a City Island story, in that they all presumably were used there at some point. But they don’t tell it in coherently. And they crowd out things that would give a better understanding of the island’s people and times.
Long ago (1654) and far away (under an oak tree on what is now the frontier of the Bronx), a, Englishman named Thomas Pell signed a treaty with the local Siwanoy/ Lenape Indian tribe. He gained ownership of either 9,166 acres (City of New York, Friends of Pelham Bay Park, other reputable sources) or 50,000 acres (Bartow-Pell Mansion printout, Wikipedia) of land. While his descendants sold off the massive holding over time, in 1836 Robert Bartow, scion of the Bartow-Pell family, bought back part of the original estate and started building a fine country house and working farm on it. In 1842, he and his wife Maria Lorillard Bartow, their seven kids, and assorted Irish servants moved out from the filth and hubbub of New York City. The family resided there for over 40 years.