Statue of Liberty Museum

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  4/5
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 37 minutes (in the museum; far longer getting to and wandering around Liberty Island)
Best thing I saw or learned I keep coming back to a pair of quotations. One was from an editorial from the Black-owned Cleveland Gazette from Nov. 27, 1886, that read, “Shove the Bartholdi Statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the ‘liberty’ of this country [exists for the] colored man.” Alongside that was a quote from Lillie Devereux Blake, president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, who said, “In erecting a Statue of Liberty embodied as a woman in a land where no woman has political liberty, men have shown a delightful inconsistency.” Cheers to this museum for celebrating the statue and what she means, while acknowledging that not everyone agreed, even back in 1886, that liberty was a done deal.

Note: This review updates my review of the old Statue of Liberty Museum, dating from 2018, when the museum was located inside the Liberty’s pedestal.

Why Liberty?

We do not live in terribly allegorical times. Alas, this era rewards bluntness over allusion, and literalism rather than metaphor. How, then, can can one explain the enduring popularity of “Liberty Enlightening the World,” a very allegorical and symbolic symbol indeed, standing on an island in New York Harbor? 

Liberty Enlightening the World
Lady Liberty

Because, judging from the insane queues of people who had journeyed from every corner of the world to go visit her inconvenient island, Lady Liberty remains exceedingly popular.

It’s stranger still because, when you think about it, “Liberty Enlightening the World” is a particularly 19th century sort of idea, obsolete in times where many both in the United States and outside it would question the mission statement.

With those thoughts on my mind, I semi-patiently queued, scrummed, went through airport-style security and boarded a ferry to cross the harbor to visit her, and the museum that tells her story.

The Statue’s Story

Surely everyone knows the story of the Statue of Liberty. Gift from France, colossal, New York Harbor. Immigrants. Lifting her lamp beside the golden door. Yadda yadda yadda.

The museum highlights five instrumental people, also immortalized in statues on Liberty Island:

  • Edouard de Laboulaye:  who dreamed her
  • Auguste Bartholdi:  who designed her
  • Gustav Eiffel:  who engineered her
  • Joseph Pulitzer: who raised the money to give her a place to stand
  • Emma Lazarus: who gave her her soul
 

Statues of the key figures in the creation of the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island

Old Statue, New-ish Museum

The Statue of Liberty Museum occupies a purpose-built, very modern building on the northern edge of Liberty Island, as far from the statue as one can get without plunging into the harbor. Opened in 2019, it boasts a green roof, ample space for accommodating the huddled masses from the ferry, and fantastic views toward Manhattan, as well as of Lady Liberty’s rear.

Statue of Liberty Museum, Liberty Island, New York

The museum tells the story of the genesis, engineering, construction, and gifting of the statue, as well as her absolutely iconic role as a symbol of freedom, democracy, New York City, and the United States. Among other treasures, it includes the statue’s original lit-from-within torch, replaced during the 1986 rehabilitation of the Statue.

Continue reading “Statue of Liberty Museum”

Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History

Edification value N/A
Entertainment value N/A
Should you go? N/A
Time spent 51 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned In the display of the museum’s collections, I characteristically especially liked the plethora of bats.Bats!

Much has changed among New York museums since I started systematically visiting them. I’ve revised the list multiple times, and I have visited several that were not part of my initial plan. I’ve also revisited ones that have expanded or changed. The American Museum of Natural History recently opened the Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, a vast new wing of the venerable institution, and its biggest change since it replaced the old planetarium with the spiffy sphere-in-a-clear-glass-box of the Rose Center over twenty years ago.

Gilder Center interior

I visited the Gilder Center during its member-only opening weekend. Rather than re-review the whole museum, I have some impressions of the new space, and its likely impact on the rest of the institution.

Sexy, Sexy Curves

Gilder Center interiorThe 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.

(Perhaps times have changed enough that I should revert to “photogenic” rather than Instagrammable — but I stand by that statement either way…)

And these snapshots are me only half trying – imagine the photos someone with a good camera who really studies the light and angles will be able to take. The building’s forms come from deliberately rough concrete, sprayed layer by layer following what must’ve been insanely complex plans to look like it just sort of accidentally formed the way it did.

Gilder Center interior view

There’s an argument to be made that museums aren’t supposed to be sexy. Except for the Museum of Sex, of course. Certainly if this were an art museum there’d be a valid gripe of the building upstaging the art (I’m looking at you, Frank Gehry). But that doesn’t apply to science museums. Moreover, unlike many other flamboyant recent museum buildings, Gilder keeps its sexiness largely under wraps. The calm façade resembles cut stone — like upthrust sedimentary rock layers — fitting with the scale and massing of the rest of the Columbus Avenue side of the building. Indeed, it may be too calm, like a tech startup corporate headquarters. At least it runs no risk of upstaging the Neoclassical if recently de-Roosevelt-ed Central Park West entrance.

Gilder Center exterior view

Raisons d’etre

The two things that the Natural History Museum most desperately needed were more space and more connections between far-flung parts of the place. Important halls like Gems and Minerals have long been culs-de-sac, fun to discover but hard to get back out of. The Gilder Center was precision crafted to address both of those issues, as well as creating new exhibit spaces.

Gilder’s wayfinding and signage are great, although they doesn’t follow the pattern of the rest of the museum. Then again, I love AMNH for its glorious inconsistencies.  Stairways are easy to find and, like the Rose Center, the windows in this wing will also help visitors orient themselves.

AMNH also needed more research space, and, apparently, a library, which is by far my favorite space in the new building. On the top floor, it appears to have a concrete tree in the middle. Tree of Knowledge? Tree of Life? Anyway, it evokes Saarinen’s landmark TWA terminal at JFK, with sleek midcentury-esque furniture to match. Like most visitors I probably won’t use it, and only glimpsed it through the glass door. But, wow, I’d like to research some science in there.

The Library at the Gilder Center
Sexy library

Bugs, Mycelia, Whales and More

Leafcutter ants at the Gilder Center
What could go wrong with introducing a colony of ravenous, leaf-chewing, fungus-growing ants in the middle of Manhattan?

The Gilder Center also houses several new exhibits. Most notably, the Museum now has a permanent insect exhibit, praising the myriad of ecosystem services provided by our arthropod friends. Displays feature the Insects of New York and a living colony of leafcutter ants. I fear them getting out and eating Central Park or something and I hope AMNH’s entomologists thought that through. The museum now also has a permanent space for frolicking with live butterflies, though even on the member preview day the line for that was long enough that I skipped it.

There’s also a series of displays about AMNH’s unparalleled collection of objects catalogued and tagged and stored (often after being killed and stuffed or formaldehyded) for future researchers. This takes up one wall across multiple floors and is really fun. It offers a sort of Cliffs Notes version of the museum itself. Reinforcing that this place drives ongoing important research are a couple of spaces where visitors can peek in on scientists at work. I would not want to put up with that were I on the staff, but hopefully exhibitionist researchers will enjoy it.

Lightshow!
The light fantastic

And finally, there’s an interactive, immersive space called Invisible Worlds. This is, essentially, an excuse for kids to run around and burn off energy. It tells several stories: about the mycelial networks that underpin forests, the neurons that make our brains run, and the web of life that comprises plankton. Each of these includes moments that invite visitors to stomp on lights on the floor, or create patterns as lights follow their movements.  Lacking a conventional playground, this is a clever way to bleed off some hyperactivity and perhaps make other parts of AMNH calmer as a result. You could also hold a pretty awesome rave in there, assuming raves are still a thing.

Final thoughts on the Gilder Center

I went to the Gilder Center a skeptic. It’s such showy architecture. Biomorphic curves look good (sometimes) but do they do anything to help people get from Point A to Point B? And yet, it won me over.

Gilder’s thoughtful connections make the rest of AMNH far easier to navigate. As with the Rose Center, when you’re in the space you always know where you are. Hopefully traffic patterns in the rest of the museum will improve in the coming weeks. That said, who knows whether the Gilder Center’s 230,000 new square feet will mitigate the crowds or end up just as overcrowded as the rest of the museum. For now, I’m cautiously optimistic.

AMNH Gilder CenterThe 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.

On the downside, the Gilder adds some things I’m not sure the museum needed. For example, there’s a show-off grand staircase/ bleacher affair in the lobby that was cool the first time I saw one but now seems an overused architectural trick. Also a fancy new restaurant. And I’m unconvinced about the whole “live scientists on display” element.

While I’m being critical, I’m also not sure how this architecture is going to age. I have a feeling that in twenty years Gilder will look “so 2020s” to people. And who knows how easy or hard it’s going to be to maintain the rough concrete – I expect those beautiful biomorphic surfaces are going to collect dust like nobody’s business.

However, frivolous features and maintenance challenges feel like small quibbles. For the moment, I love what they’ve done with the place.

Gilder Center bleacher staircase

For Reference:

Address 415 Columbus Avenue, Manhattan
Website https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/gilder-center
Cost  General Admission:  $28 for adults (pay what you will for residents of NY, NJ, and CT)
Other Relevant Links

 

The Frick Madison

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent 210 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Bellini’s wonderful St. Francis in the Desert now has a room to itself, angled to one of the Breuer’s weird, skewed windows such that the light hits it exactly the way the light in the painting works. It’s like Bellini knew back in the 1470s that someday this room would exist, or like Breuer knew someday this painting would be in this spot. It gave me chills. Also, St. Francis in the Desert has one of the best oblivious donkeys in all of art.

Have you ever had a dear old friend, tell you that they planned to change up their entire look? Style, hair, clothes, the way they present themselves…the whole shebang. Have you ever worried that, even though you know they’ll be the same person underneath the superficial changes, you might like them… less? Maybe tried to talk them out of it? “You’re awesome just as you are! Don’t go changing!”

This has never happened to me with a person, but it’s very much how I reacted when the Frick Collection announced that while Stately Frick Manor is closed for a major renovation and expansion, Mr. Frick’s art would be on view in Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist building, originally home to the Whitney and lately venue for the Met’s experimental, defunct Met Breuer effort.

There’s no overstating the magnitude of the change, the cognitive shock of Henry Clay Frick’s lovely, genteel, incredibly tasteful collection of masterpieces recontextualized out of the home that’s been its home for over a century, and re-installed in one of the least friendly buildings in New York City. 

I feel like I should hate it. To be brutal(ist)ly honest, I wanted to hate it.

I loved it.

Possibly this is because it was my first art museum visit in 4 months. Maybe I was just starved for art…maybe you could’ve showed me anything and I would’ve gone into raptures. But I don’t think so.

Space: The Final Frontier

The clearest benefit of the move to the Breuer building is a ton of square footage to play with. I wonder if the Frick curators toyed with the idea of keeping everything more or less “where it was” — recreating the mansion’s rooms in the Breuer space. Like what they did with the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. That would have been a terrible idea. Probably.

Instead, for the first time ever, the Frick collection is arranged chronologically and thematically. That sort of pedagogy is out of fashion in museums and seems very retro, but it makes tons of sense, and it feels new, because we’ve never been able to see this art this way before.

For example, the Vermeers are in one place, creating arguably the best single roomful of art in New York City (prove me wrong!). Holbein’s Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More now glare eye to eye, no fireplace or stern St. Jerome separating them. I never realized how many Van Dycks the Frick Collection had til I saw them all in one place.

The extra space also creates more breathing room between pieces. As a result, there’s less sensory overload, and so more ability to focus. Works that were second-tier Frick treasures get attention, and the Frick’s best pieces get showcased in ways the mansion doesn’t allow.

What’s more, things that were perviously part of the scenery — the porcelains, the bronzes, the carpets — now get spotlights, literally, thrown on them. The porcelain room is a particular delight, and its very contemporary design made me stop and pay attention to those pieces in a way I never have before.

The other remarkable change is you can get closer to some pieces now, and the heights and sight lines are different. It’s a literal shift of perspective. To wit, I’ve never been a fan of the froufrou Fragonard room with its insipid cherubs. It’s still definitely not my fave, but seeing its panels anew on Madison, rearranged, I realized that at least some of those cherubs are violent. And therefore a little edgy.

What’s Stayed The Same

In terms of things that haven’t changed, the Frick has retained its no-photos policy. While I deeply respect that, this is an utterly photogenic, super-Instagrammable experience. Visitors will be tempted!

Also, The Frick’s retained its no-wall-text philosophy. You can pick up a free guide, or download a reasonably good Bloomberg-sponsored app, but if you want, it can be just you and the art. I admire that.

A Whole New World

The best art makes you see the world in a new way, and the best museums make you see art in a new way. However, for a place like the Frick, there are few opportunities (outside of their jewel-box special exhibitions) to let people see the collection anew. That’s okay when you’re as perfect as the Frick. But perfection breeds inertia, and a resistance to innovate. It takes some doing to overcome that.

I’m surprised at how pithy my original, 2017 Frick review is. But it says what it needed to say: Everyone needs to go to the Frick. And I wish it would never change.

The Frick Madison forces me to rethink part of that conclusion. Everyone definitely needs to go to the Frick Madison, most especially people who know and love the original. And I stand happily corrected about the “never change” part. I can’t wait to go back.

For Reference:

Address 945 Madison Avenue, Manhattan
Website https://www.frick.org/
Cost  General Admission:  $22. Advance tickets required
Other Relevant Links
  • Details on the Frick building project are here.

 

Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation

Edification value 3/5
Entertainment value 2/5
Should you go? 2/5
Time spent 40 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned I appreciated the arrows penciled on the sides of Andrew Spence’s paintings (themselves rather nice, too), orienting curators, gallery staff, and curious viewers as to which way is up.Resnick Foundation

Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof were a husband-and-wife team of New York-based abstract expressionists, working alongside de Kooning and Ad Reinhardt. I have to confess I’d never heard of either of them before visiting their museum. Which, in my Joe-centric way leads me to conclude they were less successful than say Pollock or Krasner, but maybe they’re just under my radar.

In any case, following Resnick’s death in 2004 and Passlof’s in 2011, a foundation was created to further their legacy. Eight years later, that foundation recently finished transforming Resnick’s old home and studio into a moderately sized art museum.

Resnick Foundation Exterior

Temple Resnick

The Resnick-Passlof Foundation’s building was a modest-yet-classic Lower East Side synagogue until 1963, when the couple moved in. Resnick, who favored really large canvases, painted in what used to be the congregation’s meeting space. I wonder what it looked like in its art-creating prime, as it’s entirely different now. 

Indeed, not much of the building as it was remains following a thorough transformation to stabilize the place and conform with building codes and modern museum design principles.  It’s definitely not an experience like the fantastic Judd or Renee and Chaim Gross Foundations, where you get a sense of the artists as people as well as their work.

Instead the Resnick~Passlof Foundation offers three floors of galleries: two small in  scale, and the old congregation meeting area now a big, exciting space complete with tall windows, wood floors, fancy new staircase, and grand piano.

Resnick Foundation Interior

On an in-between floor, mostly Foundation offices, visitors can peek into a tiny, meticulously preserved studio that Resnick used late in his life, when infirmity forced him to work in different media and at a far smaller scale. That one spot gives a sense of Resnick the person.

What I Saw

The intent with the Resnick+Passlof Foundation is not to solely show off the work of those two artists. Instead the smaller galleries will at least sometimes host exhibits of  other artists’ work, in  conversation with Resnicks (and eventually Passlofs). 

The current show is called “Doing What Comes Naturally: Seven Painters in Their Prime” — a group show of contemporary abstract artists of various flavors.

The soaring congregation gallery hosts nine Resnicks, including “Elephant,” his biggest work.  All are very textural, with thick impasto paint that reminded me of lava flows or brownie batter. I like that kind of painting, but I always feel tempted to touch it!

Which I did not do.

There’s very little information about Resnick or about the works, just some minimal wall texts. As an outsider to this couple and their art, I would have benefited greatly from an audio guide or some other aid.

The fourth floor gallery charmed me by having a skylight, and a ceiling that is far from level — it reminded me of those illusion rooms where if you stand at one end you’re a giant and at the other end teensy.

Resnick Foundation

Piano Recital and Guide

As I was making my way downstairs from the 4th floor gallery, I heard piano music. At first I thought the staff had plugged an iPhone into the audio system, but then I discovered gentleman sitting at the shiny grand piano in the congregation gallery and just casually playing. I love a free concert. I stopped and listened to him for a while, and later struck up a conversation.

The pianist was Geoffrey Dorfman, a Foundation Trustee and Resnick biographer. Basically the best possible person a sub rosa museum reviewer could speak with. He was super nice, and shared some insights into the conversion of the space, the time and cost to stabilize it and make it accessible (adding a better elevator, the new staircase, restrooms, etc.) as well as the crazy amount of cost ($4,000) and trouble it was to get “Elephant” (pictured below) into place. It involved slicing a long, skinny hole in the floor.

Elephant, By Milton Resnick
Jumbo-Sized Painting

Should You Visit the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation?

Resnick Foundation Facade

I liked the Resnick*Passlof Foundation less than I expected, because there’s less of Resnick and Passlof there than I was expecting. I was glad I got to talk with Mr. Dorfman — even a short conversation with someone who knew the man and the place was far more enlightening than what the Foundation offers a casual and non-expert visitor.

Although it is a lovely jewel box of a museum, it has very little to evoke the place Resnick and Passlof lived and worked. Even some “before” photos of what the spaces looked like in Resnick and Passlof’s time would’ve been a great help in that regard.

Having seen Resnick’s work, I’m still not sure of his position in the pantheon of Abstract Expressionists. If you’re an AbEx fan, of if you were on a first-name basis with Pat and Milton, by all means go. Otherwise you’ll see more and learn more about that period by visiting MoMA.

That said, the architecture is neat, and it’s free!  And this stretch of the Lower East Side is home to two other institutions that combine for a fun, thematic afternoon. The outstanding Eldridge Street Synagogue is just a few blocks away. And the obscure, community-focused museum of the Kehila Kedosha Synagogue is also nearby.  A trifecta of synagogues in various states of use and adaptation.

Resnick Foundation

Also, if you visit the Resnick/Passlof Foundation and you want a bite after, I strongly recommend Vanessa’s Dumpling House, just up the street. Cheap and delicious!

For Reference:

Address 87 Eldridge Street, Manhattan
Website resnickpasslof.org
Cost  General Admission:  Free
Other Relevant Links

Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling
Edification value 3/5
Entertainment value 4/5
Should you go? 3/5
Time spent 79 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Yuken Teruya’s complex, captivating, thought-provoking constructions made from and contained within shopping bags. My very favorite were “Constellation,” a series of intricate night skies — a universe in a discarded Barney’s bag.

Even before you get to it, the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling makes a strong and unexpected impression. It occupies an airy, light-filled, below-ground space in a distinctive building — an utterly modern, 2014 low-income apartment house that looks like anything but low-income housing. The building was designed by Sir David Adjaye, who also designed Washington, DC’s National Museum of African American History.

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling

The Sugar Hill Museum, which refreshingly does not have a “SHCMo…” acronym, was a key programmatic element of the building, along with a preschool and a community art gallery.

The place knows its audience. I appreciated its kid’s-eye-level sign that explains not a list of “don’ts,” but “rules for being cool” while visiting.  I don’t know if that works, but I appreciate the gesture.

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling

 

Art To Make

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and StorytellingThe Sugar Hill Museum, knowing its audience, splits its programming very evenly between art to look at (in several gallery spaces and a studio) and art to make in a main multipurpose space and what I’ll call a sort of art lab.  There’s blocks to stack, a wall you can paint (with water — it’s kind of fun to watch your graffiti disappear slowly as it dries), leaves to color and other things to make.

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling

The museum also has an artist-in-residence program.  Currently the artist is Damian Davis, who makes layered collages bolted together out of shapes cut from plastic. Playing off his work, a group activity during my visit involved letting young visitors assemble their own layered creations with a variety of precut shapes, in soft foam. It was clever, and when we visited Mr. Davis in the studio the kids I was with were excited to talk with him about their creations.

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling

Art to See

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling
Fernando Tamburini, “The Flying Town,” 2016

The first piece of art a visitor sees at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling is a charming array of floating houses that animates the light well that makes the subterranean space feel, well, above ground.

In addition to the artist-in-residence’s studio, two rooms hold temporary exhibitions. The museum curates those to reflect themes of the neighborhood, as well as subject matter suited to the target audience. When I visited one gallery hosted the works of Faith Ringgold, an activist, but also a children’s book author and illustrator. Her work does a great job of raising issues of cultural and political history in a kid-friendly way. 

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling
Faith Ringgold at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum

The other gallery, a narrow space well suited to small shows and short attention spans, is where the museum showed Yuken Teruya’s work. Obsessively, beautifully cut and folded trees made from paper bags comment eloquently on consumerism and the environment, while being beautiful at the same time. The kids I was with were as fascinated by these pieces as I was.

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling
Yuken Teruya at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum

Should You Visit the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling?

The Sugar Hill Museum designs its programming primarily for children ages 3-8. But I think even a slightly older kid, if they like art, would enjoy it, at least for a while. It’s not overwhelming, which is great. You can go, spend an hour or two, make something neat, see some art, talk to an artist, hear a fortuitous jazz concert, and be done.

It’s an unexpected space, in a noteworthy building. And the curators do a good job keeping grown-ups engaged along with the young ones.

Most importantly, I think the museum is — rarity in today’s New York — something of a hidden gem as well. My borrowed kids and their mom and I went for the museum’s free third-Sunday day and yet while there were a healthy number of kids and caregivers there, it was not at all overrun.

Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling
Unexpected Jazz Concert

I came away completely impressed at how well the museum executes its mandate. It could just be a smaller clone of the Children’s Museum of the Arts, but instead it’s distinctive, vibrant, and really, just a lovely, welcoming space in which to see and create art.  I recommend it for anyone with kids.

For Reference:

Address 898 St. Nicholas Avenue (at 155th Street), Manhattan
Website sugarhillmuseum.org
Cost  General Admission:  $7
Other Relevant Links

 

Queens Botanical Garden

Edification value 2/5
Entertainment value 3/5
Should you go? 2/5
Time spent 84 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned The plants are terrific, but I will pick this tucked-away sundial.

Queens Botanical Garden, Flushing

It was a gift from Queens-based Bulova Watch Company, and a garden resident since April of 1951!

I still wonder whether I was right to include botanical gardens in my definition of museums. However, I did it, and I haven’t undone it. So another garden it is. I didn’t even know the Queens Botanical Garden existed when I started this project.  However, it does bill itself as “a living museum,” so its staff seem to agree with me.  It also calls itself “a place of peace and beauty for the quiet enjoyment of our visitors.” Please reserve your noisy enjoyment for places like the American Museum of Natural History.

Queens Botanical Garden, Flushing

Continue reading “Queens Botanical Garden”

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Museum

 

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 108 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned The tantalizing glimpse into the gold vault.  I’m not awed by wealth, generally, but there’s wealth and there’s WEALTH.

Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkThe Federal Reserve Bank of New York occupies a huge (full city block) beautiful Italian palazzo of a building constructed for it in 1924.  Its classical grandeur meant to evoke the stability of many centuries of tradition. Solid and rich, like a Medici. Which was important, because the Fed was then still a fairly young institution created to stabilize the financial system and steer the economy in the right direction.

Security at the New York Fed exceeds even that of the United Nations. And frankly, in terms of relative institutional importance, that might be appropriate.

However, mere mortals can in fact visit. Limited free tours introduce visitors to the history and role of the Federal Reserve System, explain what the New York Fed does in particular, and, best of all, permit them to ogle one of the largest accumulations of gold in the world. Continue reading “Federal Reserve Bank of New York Museum”

Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration

Edification value  
Entertainment value 4/5
Should you go?  
Time spent 213 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Ellis Island National Immigration Museum, New York

Ellis Island’s mental health tests were simple puzzles designed to be as culturally and linguistically neutral as possible. In theory, they quickly weeded out anyone who needed a closer cognitive look.

The classic twofer of New York Harbor is typically viewed as nerdy little brother Ellis overshadowed by big sister Liberty, who enlightens the world.  But from a museum perspective it is the reverse.  Ellis Island’s outstanding National Museum of Immigration tells the story of a unique era in American history, in the space where that era unfolded.  Twelve million people got their starts in the United States right here.

Ellis Island National Immigration Museum, New York Continue reading “Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration”

Statue of Liberty Museum

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  4/5
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 123 minutes (not counting time going through security, waiting for the ferry, or on the ferry)
Best thing I saw or learned I’d never given much thought to the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. So the story of its design — and the near failure of the effort to raise the money to build it — fascinated me. Yes, it’s like choosing frame over the painting, but still.
Statue of Liberty, New York HarborThink how different she’d look if they’d gone with a stepped, Aztec-looking pyramid as her base.  Or something Egyptian revival.

Note: This is my entry about the original Statue of Liberty Museum, dating from May of 2018. Please see my updated review of the new museum on Liberty Island, here.

There aren’t all that many museums built to honor a single work of art. Right? I assert that and now suddenly I’m unsure of myself. In New York, there’s Walter de Maria’s Earth Room. And I think of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans as a single, unified whole, even though many busts of great men (and a few women) comprise it. And the Statue of Liberty Museum makes three.

Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor
Lady Liberty

The Statue of Liberty Museum occupies a substantial space in Liberty’s pedestal. It tells the story of the genesis, engineering, construction, and gifting of the statue, as well as her absolutely iconic role as a symbol of freedom, democracy, New York, and the United States. Among other treasures, it includes the statue’s original torch, glass and lit from inside. Continue reading “Statue of Liberty Museum”

Staten Island Museum

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 94 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned I had completely forgotten about New York’s state fossil, until the Staten Island Museum reminded me.  It’s a sea scorpion or eurypterid, which I would absolutely not want to meet on a Jurassic beach.

Staten Island Museum
The State Fossil!

The Staten Island Museum started as a private pooling of personal natural history collections in 1881, opening to the public in 1908.  Currently it claims to be New York’s only truly encyclopedic museum, embracing science, history, and art.  And so it does, albeit in small doses of each.

The museum formerly resided in a classical building in St. George, near the Staten Island Ferry, until last year, when it moved to Snug Harbor.  It’s a bus or car ride from the ferry terminal, but at least the architecture is still appropriately museum-y.

Staten Island Museum

The Snug Harbor Cultural Center is Staten Island’s Mall of Enlightenment.  A Chinese Scholar’s Garden, a Children’s Museum, the fantastic Noble Maritime Collection, the hit-or-miss Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, and the Staten Island Museum all reside within its more-or-less renovated, beautiful, Greek revival grounds and buildings. Continue reading “Staten Island Museum”