The Museum Project Posts - Page 7 of 24

March 7, 2018

Center for Book Arts

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	34 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	A book turned into a fantastically eroded landscape by Guy Laramée. Google that dude, his work is amazing. Guy Laramée, “Archaeology,” 2010, altered book

The Center for Book Arts is one of those quixotic organizations whose unlikely existence helps make life in New York worthwhile. In this digital age, the idea that an organization will teach you how to letterpress print, how to bind a book, how to marbleize paper, seems hopelessly, charmingly, vitally anachronistic. In addition to classes, the Center for Book Arts also offers memberships; join and you can go and hand-set lead type to your heart’s content. Just don’t lick your fingers while you do it.

Continue reading “Center for Book Arts”

February 26, 2018February 26, 2018

New York Museums of Excellence

Museum Buttons When I first compiled my list of New York museums, one of my sources was the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). Trade associations, I love ‘em. The Alliance accredits worthy institutions. However, its website describes an AAM Continuum of Excellence rather than a black-and-white, accredited-or-not dialectic.

Indeed, the AAM offers a variety of options for museums short of full accreditation. The simplest simply being signing a Pledge of, well, Excellence. AAM maintains a list of museums that have signed the Pledge and/or proceeded further along its Continuum, up to and including full accreditation. Continue reading “New York Museums of Excellence”

February 25, 2018

National September 11 Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	133 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	A special exhibition of New Yorker covers that featured the Twin Towers both before and after Sept. 11. My favorite of all is probably this one from 2003, showing New York’s iconic buildings twinned. Particularly timely exhibition now that Condé Nast’s headquarters are in One World Trade Center.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum bills itself as a single, unified whole. And indeed, the museum is integrally part of the plaza, a cavernous underground space that extends all around– and under– the footprints of the World Trade Center towers. However, for my purposes I’m thinking about them separately.

National September 11 Memorial and Museum — The WTC Memorial

The September 11 Memorial, with its somber square fountains and all the names, is one thing: well worth a visit even as the Trade Center has gone from being a giant hole in the ground to being a thriving center for commerce and commuting once again.

The September 11 Museum I don’t recommend so heartily.

Continue reading “National September 11 Museum”

February 24, 2018

FDNY Fire Zone

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?	*
Time spent	77 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Keep Back 200 Feet These toddler-sized fire-engine-red longjohns, with “keep back 200 ft.” on the rear. Sound advice!

Tucked into Rockefeller Center, the Fire Department maintains a small kid-oriented presence called the FDNY Fire Zone. The Fire Zone consists of a modest-sized space with all sorts of fire equipment lining one wall, an old fire truck (at least, the cab of it and a slice of the back part), huge numbers of patches, given or traded from fire departments the world over, and a gift shop about the same size as the exhibit space.

The Fire Zone offers occasional fire safety demos (for a fee), and it is staffed by a guy running the shop and a fire fighter who is happy to answer questions about the items on display. I got to talking with him about the communications gear in the truck (very outdated according to him) and the pros and cons of GPS, which the Fire Department does not use.

FDNY Fire Zone

Where’s the Fire?

My grown-up reaction to the Fire Zone was disappointment. I wrote it off, and was ready to move on to other things in five minutes. But the group of three kids I borrowed for the visit loved it. Gear to look at. Heavy fire jackets to try on. A fire truck they can get inside and pretend to drive? Best. Thing. Ever. They would’ve stayed there all day, maybe. We grown-ups talked about museums and joined in the kids’ intense pretending periodically.

FDNY Fire Zone

Therefore I’ve asterisked my “Should You Go?” rating for this place. Any grown-up not in need of any Fire Department-branded gifts can skip this place. At least one of the visitors while I was there worked as a fire fighter and seemed to enjoy talking shop with the FDNY officer on duty. So amend that: fire fighters might derive value out of a visit.

FDNY Fire Zone However, if you have kids roughly 4-8 years old, the story differs dramatically. In that case the Fire Zone merits 4 Met buttons for visitability. For anyone with young kids interested in firefighters or fire trucks (and what young kid isn’t?), this place will seem ultra-cool, with a whole truck to play in and around. It’s a rare free, indoor play space. While it is somewhat commercial (there’s that gift shop after all), it’s not nearly as commercial as say the other kid-friendly indoor spots near Rockefeller Center, the Nintendo or Lego stores.

For any grown ups interested in fire departments and fire fighting, I strongly recommend the Fire Museum in SoHo, but you can safely stay out of the Zone.

FDNY Fire Zone

For Reference:

Address	34 West 51st Street, Manhattan
Website	fdnysmart.org/firezone
Cost	General Admission: Free. Fire Safety Demo $6

February 19, 2018

Living Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	62 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	John Tursi’s prolific, colorful, abstractions, en masse, amazed me. John Tursi, Abstract Paintings A friend accompanied me to the Living Museum, and when Tursi asked her opinion of them, she replied unthinkingly, “This is crazy.”

I don’t believe in psychic powers. If they existed, we would have proved it by now. And yet, I can’t deny that some places have an inexplicable aura about them — a feeling indelibly embedded in the stones and bricks. Ellis Island, full of hopes and dreams from long ago. The library at Columbia, resonant with over a century of stress and study.

I mention this to set up my initial reaction to visiting the campus of Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. Even just driving by Creedmoor’s forbidding deco-institutional buildings along the Grand Central Parkway, it commands attention. You may not know what it is or what goes on there, but it has a hulking presence. For lack of a better word, it’s creepy. It comes as no surprise that it is a mental hospital.

The Living Museum, Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital, Queens Creedmoor dates back to 1912, when an abandoned National Guard barracks was used to house a few dozen patients. At its peak in 1959, the sprawling facility housed an inconceivable 7,000 patients. Since then, the inpatient population has fallen, leading it to sell the farm (literally), and also to abandon some buildings, adding to the creepiness of the campus today. And at Creedmoor’s heart, in the ginormous former inmate cafeteria, lies the Living Museum.

Continue reading “Living Museum”

February 16, 2018March 9, 2019

New York Museums of African-American History and Culture

Lawdy Mama, 1969, Studio Museum in Harlem — Barkley L. Hendricks, “Lawdy Mama,” 1969, Studio Museum in Harlem

For anyone seeking ways to celebrate Black History Month besides seeing “Black Panther,” I’ve compiled a list of New York City’s African-American museums. As an aside, I’m not sure seeing “Black Panther” actually counts, but I went today and it was awesome.

Of course, many of the city’s general arts and cultural institutions feature African-Americans as part of their permanent collections and in temporary exhibitions. For example you could pay homage to the Obamas, Beyoncé, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others at Madame Tussaud’s. Or visit Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for its tour visiting Duke Ellington and other great African-American “residents.”

New York has nine museums devoted to African-American culture, art, and history. I reckon that seven are well worth a visit, whatever month you happen to read this.

I’ve also included an addendum of two non-African-American places and a “maybe.” These are less appropriate but may still merit visits to ponder black history.

Louis Armstrong House Museum, Corona, Queens — Louis and Lucille Armstrong’s Home in Queens

I Recommend

African Burial Ground National Monument, Lower Manhattan. A solemn and dignified memorial to the pre-Revolutionary War black experience in New York City.

Lewis Latimer House, Flushing, Queens — A tribute to a largely forgotten African-American inventor, musician, poet, and general Renaissance guy, who worked with Edison perfecting the light bulb and became an important executive at GE.

Louis Armstrong House Museum, Corona, Queens. One of the city’s best house museums and a tribute to a truly singular, titanic genius of music history, and the modest life he and his wife led in Queens.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem. An essential resource for black history, literature, and the arts. Leverages the New York Public Library’s supreme skill at curating shows that use primary documents to bring history to life.

Studio Museum in Harlem, Harlem. A fantastic collection and great space make this a must-visit institution for African-American art in New York City.

Weeksville Heritage Center, Bed-Stuy/Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Historic houses and a sleek, modern visitor’s center commemorate Weeksville, an African American community started in the 1830s.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — From Black Power!, Exhibition at the Schomburg Center, March, 2017

I Don’t Recommend

National Jazz Museum, Harlem. An institution with grand ambitions hampered by limitations of space and capability. Jazz may just not work well in the confines of a museum.

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), in Downtown Brooklyn, has a great name, but a small space that doesn’t suit its mission statement or its ambitions. So I can’t recommend it.

Sandy Ground Historical Society, Staten Island. Sandy Ground was an early African-American community. I tried, unsuccessfully, to visit this place this week. It’s a huge trek to get somewhere not reliably open during its ostensible open hours. Check out Weeksville in Brooklyn instead. Sandy Ground’s website is here.

Addendum: One “Maybe,” Two “Others”

Fraunces Tavern Museum, Lower Manhattan. This is my “maybe.” Some reckon that Samuel Fraunces, saloonkeeper, spy, and aide to Washington, was black. Mainly because his nickname was “Black Sam.” However, there’s little solid evidence for this claimed racial background, and most historians seriously doubt it. Still, ‘maybe.’

General Grant National Memorial, Morningside Heights, Manhattan. Obviously Ulysses S. Grant wasn’t an African-American, but in an era when some parts of this country still can’t seem to get rid of Confederate monuments, why not visit one of New York’s greatest monuments to the victors in the Civil War?

King Manor Museum, Jamaica, Queens. Rufus King was not an African-American either, but he was an early, persistent voice against the compromises that the framers of the Constitution made allowing slavery in the infant United States. His historic home today serves as a monument to an early abolitionist.

Bonus Museum

Okay, I’ve got one more, but it’s not a physical place. I feel compelled to add the Museum of UnCut Funk, a virtual institution that co-presented the Finance Museum’s great exhibit on blacks on U.S. currency. As surely the funkiest museum in the world, I highly recommend visiting it online, even if it’s not technically in New York.

February 14, 2018

Weeksville Heritage Center

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	89 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I have a fascination with kitchens. I loved the 1930s kitchen in the Williams House. Full of obsolete appliances and a pantry stocked with canned good brands that no longer exist.

In 1838, about a decade after New York State abolished slavery, James Weeks bought some land in central Brooklyn with the aim of creating a community of free, landowning, African Americans.

Weeksville Heritage Center

Weeksville thrived for about a century, before changing times and demographics conspired to end it as a distinct neighborhood. While local people never quite forgot Weeksville, the larger city did, as Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant absorbed and paved over it. Continue reading “Weeksville Heritage Center”

February 12, 2018

Queens County Farm Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	32 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	In the dormant children’s garden, the sign for Egyptian walking onions, which I learned are a type of perennial onion. Walk Like An…Nevermind

This is a necessarily incomplete review. Visiting a “farm museum” in midwinter is not a recipe for seeing the place at its best, busiest, or most inviting. Indeed, I’m not sure why the Queens County Farm Museum doesn’t just shut down from December til March. But it was open and it’s on my list. So I gathered an intrepid friend and we trooped out to the far eastern fringes of Queens, where New York City blurs into Nassau County, to get the lay of the land.

I imagine this place exists mainly so that city kids can learn that chickens come in forms other than McNuggets and wool doesn’t start out life as a sweater. And I bet most visitors arrive on school buses.

The Farm in Winter

Queens County Farm Museum I’m sure that in more clement seasons the 40+ acres of grounds are verdant and bucolic. This time of year, not so much.

On a winter weekday, the only things to see are the livestock and some dormant farm equipment. A couple of alpacas, some goats, a few sheep, a couple of cows, and a whole flock of laying hens. Indeed on that last point, you can buy farm fresh eggs at the gift shop when it’s not winter (hens apparently don’t do much laying in cold months). You can also get farm-fresh honey and alpaca yarn at the gift shop.

As I was flying the coop a touring school group came crowding around to look at the birds. One kid asked if he could pet them, the answer to which was a resounding “no!” Chickens like to peck. And as I got further away I thought I heard a kid say “KFC! KFC!” However, I was almost out of earshot. It might have been “I can’t see! I can’t see!”

Queens County Farm Museum

A Little History

The origins of today’s farm museum extend all the way back to an actual farm founded in 1697, though there aren’t any physical traces from that era. The grounds do still have an historic house belonging to the Adriance family, dating to just before the American Revolution.

Queens County Farm Museum

The Adriances kept the place in their family for about a century, before it passed quickly through a succession of other farming families, and from there to the Creedmoor State Hospital, which owned and operated it from 1926 through the 1970s.

Creedmoor is a nearby psychiatric hospital associated with this and another New York museum, the Living Museum (review coming very soon). Creedmoor used the farm for rehabilitation and to grow food for patients, and flowers and ornamental plants to brighten its campus.

As Creedmoor’s population shrank, it had less need of its own farm, and so the place spun off into a museum in 1975.

Should You Visit the Farm?

The Queens County Farm Museum website claims that its receives 500,000 visitors annually, making it “the highest attended cultural institution in Queens County.” I feel skeptical about the superlative given that the borough is home to New York’s great contemporary bastion of tragedy (and occasional farce), Citifield. But it likely is the highest attendance of a Queens County museum.

Regardless of the myriads of others who go, should you?

Certainly you shouldn’t visit the farm in the dead of February. Most of the buildings are shut down, there’s no public greenhouses like the New York and Brooklyn Botanic Gardens or Wave Hill have, and the various zoos offer more convenient places to encounter a goat if you feel inclined to do that.

I felt disappointed in the place from a learning perspective; I wanted more in the way of explanatory texts. Even with fields fallow, the place could explain what farms do during the winter. But perhaps they have an awesome brochure, or do a great guides/docents/explainers program in warmer seasons. I will have to come back.

The largest downside to the Queens County Farm Museum is its location. For anyone coming from more central parts of the city it’s decidedly inconvenient. You have to really want to go (and ideally have a car).

Additionally, I didn’t see much attraction for grown-ups. Buying farmstand stuff grown right there would be neat, but New York these days is blessed with an abundance of farmers markets offering terrific produce. But I reckon the Queens County Farm Museum offers a fascinating and eye-opening experience for city kids. And New York has nothing else quite like it.

Queens County Farm Museum

For Reference:

Address	73-50 Little Neck Parkway, Floral Park, Queens
Website	queensfarm.org
Cost	General Admission: Free
Other Relevant Links	Egyptian Walking Onions have their own website Greenmarket Farmers Markets in NYC

February 5, 2018

Ground Zero Museum Workshop

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	57 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I appreciated the inappropriate irony of this shot of a movie poster in the destroyed subway station at the World Trade Center. Collateral Damage

During this project, mercifully few museums I’ve visited have felt like a waste of time. Some because they required significant travel time to get there. Some because their collections, space, or abilities just failed to live up to expectations. But up until I visited the Ground Zero Museum Workshop, I never felt ripped off.

Ground Zero Museum Workshop, New York That it’s an institution related to September 11 doing the ripping makes it all the more vexing. If you want to learn about 9/11, the large museum at the World Trade Center, the 9/11 Tribute Museum, or the moving display at the Fire Museum are all reasonable choices. This is not.

Continue reading “Ground Zero Museum Workshop”

February 3, 2018

Williamsburg Art and Historical Center

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	32 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Terrance Lindall’s “Carried Away by Night” typifies his fantastical, surreal, Bosch-ish work.

Close to the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge, though somewhat far from the trendier parts of Williamsburg, stands the impressive, imposing Kings County Savings Bank building, which dates to 1867.Since 1996, the building, in a charmingly shabby state today, has served as the home of the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (or “WAH Center”), a moderately sized gallery space on its second floor. Continue reading “Williamsburg Art and Historical Center”