architecture Archives - Page 4 of 5

July 18, 2017July 20, 2017

SculptureCenter

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	58 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Sam Anderson’s delightfully spooky cluster of sculptures, all titled “E,” part of her basement installation called “The Park.” Hello, Ladies

SculptureCenter, Queens, New York 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.

Evolution

SculptureCenter has a venerable history. An artist named Dorothea Denslow founded a group called The Clay Club back in the 1920s. Photos suggest a jolly bunch of flappers and rogues united by their love of sculpture. Resident in a couple of different spots in Manhattan during most of the 20th century, the organization rebranded as the Sculpture Center, I guess to sound more grown-up. With the move to Long Island City in 2001, it gained space even as it lost its space (and its “the”) to become “SculptureCenter.” Continue reading “SculptureCenter”

June 28, 2017

National Museum of the American Indian Heye Center

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	73 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	A pair of Christian Louboutin boots laboriously decorated with antique glass beads by Jamie Okuma, of the Louiseño and Shoshone-Bannock tribes.

The National Museum of the American Indian’s George Gustav Heye Center is one of the Smithsonian Institution’s two New York outposts (along with the Cooper-Hewitt). It could be the museum with the longest name in the city.

You may think, “But doesn’t the Smithsonian have a National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall in D.C.?” Yes, it does. The Heye Center in New York came first, though. It started as the Museum of the American Indian, opening in Harlem way back in 1922, to display George Gustav Heye’s expansive collection of Native American arts and crafts. In due course, the Smithsonian took over. While it started planning for the D.C. museum (which opened in 2004) in the 1990s, it also opted to keep a New York outpost.

The Building

Today, the National Museum of the American Indian makes its home in a spectacular Beaux Arts building at the southern end of Broadway. The architect Cass Gilbert designed the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House, which opened in 1907. (The name is the sole Hamilton connection, but I’m counting it!) A monument to commerce wrought in stone, it’s a far grander and more prominent building than Federal Hall National Memorial, which also was built as a customs house.

Allegorical Figures, Alexander Hamilton Customs House, New York

Truly it’s a magnificent piece of architecture, festooned with allegorical sculptures and heroic traders and all manner of artsy ornamentation. Daniel Chester French, the sculptor of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, did four figures representing the major regions of the world. Pictured here, fittingly, is “America.”

Inside some bits of historic grandeur remain, too. A matched set of swirly spiral staircases graces the corners. And the building centers on a –I know I already used the word “spectacular” but I’m using it again deliberately–spectacular oval rotunda. I wish they did more with that space! It features some benches, ratty carpeting, and brass light fixtures currently. But really it cries out to be a fancy cafe or something. I suspect the building’s landmark status prevents altering the rotunda to make better use of its potential. Too bad. The rotunda perimeter features Reginald Marsh murals of New York City, ships in the harbor, and historic figures important in trade in the United States– people like Columbus and Henry Hudson, whose presence seems more than a little ironic in the context of the building’s current use.

Oval Rotunda, National Museum of the American Indian, New York Indeed, the idea of turning a building focused on trade, from an era that unabashedly glorified the commercial impulses that ended up dispossessing the Native American tribes of their lands, into a museum for those nations…well. I find it pretty ironic.

Or perhaps fair and fitting: why not have a colonization work in the other direction for once?

The Exhibits

The Heye Center divides into three galleries. One of them hosts a permanent exhibit on the Native American nations. The other two feature changing exhibits. When I visited, one focused on Central American pottery, and the other looked at contemporary Native American fashion designers.

Native Fashion Now at the National Museum of the American Indian, New York

Dustin Martin, designer, “This is not a peacemaker” T-Shirt. I love an ironic Magritte reference…

I’m particularly impressed that the Heye Center would put on something like the fashion show. My stereotypical view of a Native American Museum would be all tradition and dusty artifacts. I like that they care to show how American Indians today carry their traditions forward, creating both beautiful things and successful businesses. It seems a through-line of the place that the objects on display represent more than just, well, museum pieces.

The permanent exhibit, titled “Infinity of Nations,” is somewhat dense and dusty, and tries valiantly to do justice to an entire continent’s worth of tribes and traditions in a fairly small space. That said, as a native of Hawai’i, I felt slightly vexed that the museum sticks just to the continent.

Dark colored texts call out commentaries from tribal members and other experts

However, I did very much like how the permanent collection intersperses descriptive wall texts with occasional signed ones, written by tribal representatives and other experts on Indian cultures. The specific voices create an immediacy that most museum texts lack, reminding visitors that these cultures still value these objects and their creators. For the same reason, I like how the collection includes contemporary arts and crafts. Finally, I also appreciate the way the curators deployed just a few touchscreens to offer deeper dives into key objects. It felt like they chose the right things.

Buffalo Hide Robe, National Museum of the American Indian, New York — Apsáalooke warrior’s exploit robe, Ft. Benton, Montana, ca. 1850.

On balance, the Heye Center seems to maintain a good relationship with Native American communities. Of course, I’ve only got their word on that. But (a) Heye paid for all the items in his collection, didn’t just loot them, (b) many seem to realize that had he not treasured and saved these things, they likely would no longer exist, and (c) the Museum allows the tribes liberal access to the collections, for both study and ceremonial purposes.

The Bottom Line

Everyone should visit the Heye Center. More than I expected, it depicts American Indian cultures as vital, living things. And it does so in creative ways, via (at least sometimes) inventive, unexpected exhibits. Even if you’ve been to the D.C. National Museum of the American Indian, coming here might still offer new things to look at and to think about. And the building is, as I may have mentioned, spectacular.

National Museum of the American Indian, New York — Infinity of Nations

For Reference:

Address	One Bowling Green, Manhattan
Website	si.edu
Cost	Free
Other Relevant Links	General Services Administration page on the architecture of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House

June 25, 2017

Park Avenue Armory

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	43 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	The surveillance show undermines its cautionary purpose by outlining a lot of frankly very silly spying technologies developed over the years. The CIA apparently spent $15m trying to surgically wire a feline for sound, to approach and unobtrusively listen to conversations. Sadly, “Acoustic Kitty” failed by being run over by a taxi on its first test deployment. Truly cat-astrophic.

Park Avenue Armory There were once 49 armories and arsenals in the Naked City (according to Wikipedia). Today 24 remain. One of the survivors now serves as a leading-edge arts and performance space. This is that one.

What’s an Armory anyway?

As the city grew, open air parade and training grounds for the militia (what we now call the National Guard) became increasingly scarce. So the government built a slew of armories and arsenals starting in the early 1800s and extending through to the early 1900s. These buildings often looked like castles or fortresses, and could take up their entire city block. Some of them included vast, open, interior spaces for practicing bayoneting and such.

Each military company used its armory as a sort of clubhouse, too, and so they became encrusted with awards, portraits, and other memorials to great men who served. Nowadays some armories remain in active use, but many have been decommissioned. The Park Avenue Armory, completed in 1888, served as the home to the Seventh Regiment. Adopted by a nonprofit, it underwent a massive restoration that continues to today, room by room, opening to the public in its new role in 2007.

Awards, Park Avenue Armory — Assorted Regimental Awards

A Castle for Art

Today the Park Avenue Armory is a fortress for the arts, both visual and performing. Many of the ground floor ceremonial rooms are open, and they contain wonders — ancient silver trophies, beautiful decoration and light fixtures. They are glorious feats of interior design, featuring Tiffany and virtually all the other great designers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Park Avenue Armory, NYC

And then there’s the Drill Hall. It’s an amazing space — 55,000 square feet with not a column in sight — to have at the disposal of art. But at the same time, it must be daunting as an artist to get commissioned to do something there. I read that once about the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern–it’s hard to do justice to the space. Just so with the Park Avenue Armory.

Just by way of comparison:

The Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London measures 500×75 feet, so 37,500 sq. feet, and it rises to a height of 115 feet.
The Drill Hall at the Armory is shorter, with “only” an 85-foot ceiling, but much larger in area, measuring 55,000 square feet.
And just to round out the size-off, Grand Central’s main hall measures 33,000 square feet, with a 125-foot ceiling. Bottom line, the Drill Hall is BIG.

Hansel and Gretel

The current Park Avenue Armory show, called “Hansel and Gretel,” typifies the difficulties of filling the space. Ai Wei Wei along with architects Jacques Hertzog and Pierre de Meuron collaborated on a commentary on the surveillance state. They did so via a complex technological deployment whereby visitors wander around in a very dark Drill Hall, while drones whir overhead (on tethers so they can’t decapitate anyone if they malfunction), and infrared cameras capture images of visitors which they then project onto the floor of the hall in real time. You see photos of yourself, in grainy black and white, with red boxes picking out your appendages and such.

It’s…interesting? But there’s no reason for it to be in the Armory, as opposed to a much smaller place. I felt lost, wandering in the dark, waiting for something more exciting to happen. And the darkness defeats the Drill Hall’s grandeur, the whole point of going there.

Caveat: Perhaps the experience is more compelling when the Drill Hall is full of people. I went on a weekday afternoon and it was quite sparse.

Following the wander in the dark, visitors then enter the smaller historic rooms where they have a gift shop, a tiny snack bar, and a bunch of tablets that tell more about the history of state surveillance, drone strikes, etc. Which you can do at home, for free, here.

Bottom Line

I’m happy that I’m reviewing the Armory itself and not the Hansel and Gretel installation (my review: skip it!). Everyone should visit the Armory. The restored meeting and administration rooms positively glow. If you can take a guided tour of the building I heartily recommend that. And whatever they fill it with, assuming the lights are on the Drill Hall will take your breath away.

Park Avenue Armory, NYC

Wandering through these historic, once-dusty rooms, I imagine the era when our municipal and national security depended on forts along the waterfront and arsenals inland. When the worst we had to worry about were invading naval fleets or anarchist insurrections. I don’t want to sugar coat other problems of the past, and I would never downplay the threat of anarchists. But from the perspective of security (and surveillance, too), I envy those simpler, more innocent times.

For Reference:

Address	643 Park Avenue, Manhattan
Website	armoryonpark.org
Cost	General Admission: $15 (exhibit) and $15 (building tour)
Other Relevant Links	Untapped Cities on 22 of the remaining NYC armories Hansel and Gretel (Exhibition) website

June 25, 2017

Ukrainian Institute of America

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	69 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Max Vityk’s “Outcrops” series of tactile, colorful, geologic abstract paintings installed in the third floor library and dining room. Sometimes abstract art clashes with classical decor, but these go better than they have any right to. Compliments to the curator for a beautiful installation.

Ukrainian Institute, New York

Three First Impressions

The first thing you notice walking into the Ukrainian Institute on a balmy day in June is the warmth. No air conditioning. Which is okay — fancy Fifth Avenue mansions (and the Ukrainian Institute occupies one of the fanciest) have thick walls and high ceilings to keep them reasonably comfortable on all but the hottest days.

The second thing you notice is the quiet. They keep the front door of the house locked, you have to buzz for admission. Someone eventually emerges from the non-public (and I bet air conditioned) offices to let you in and find out what you’re about. She’s happy to admit you, though a little…surprised maybe?… I’m not sure the Institute gets many visitors. (There were three others while I looked around, at least one of whom spoke Ukrainian.) She tells you that the admission fees quoted on the desk are suggested, and whatever you want to pay is fine.

And the third thing you notice is the amazingness of the interior, and how much of it you, now admitted as a guest, have available to roam around in. I expected a single gallery space with a small, obscure show, like the Czech Center or Japan Society. Instead, I got four floors of beautifully cared-for Gilded Age rooms, with Ukrainian or Ukrainian-related art very thoughtfully integrated into the fabric of the place.

Ukrainian Institute, New York

The House (Condensed Version)

The Institute makes its home in the 1899 Fletcher-Sinclair House, designed by C. P. H. Gilbert for wealthy (duh) manufacturer Isaac D. Fletcher. It occupies a corner lot on Fifth Avenue, diagonally across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’d call the exterior “extreme French Gothic”: extravagant stonework with flowers and garlands and dragons and such, while the interior feels more mellow, tasteful, and comfortable according to early twentieth century standards.

“…Comfortable, by early twentieth century standards.”

Fletcher died in 1917 and left his fabulous art collection and the house to his neighbor across the way. And unlike Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s collection, the Met Board accepted. But then a few years later, not really needing an opulent mansion (I suspect the Met today would find something to do with it), the Met sold the house. (It kept the art). An oil man named Harry Sinclair lived there with his family for a decade. Then the very last direct descendants of Peter Stuyvesant moved in starting in the 1930s. After they died off, the house went on the market in the 1950s, just as William Dzus’s fledgling Ukrainian Institute needed a home. Which it got for the unbelievable auction price of $225,000 (the 1955 Times headline reads “Ukrainians Take Fifth Avenue Mansion.”) I’m sure the place needed work, but what a bargain!

A Top-to-Bottom View

Ukrainian Institute, New York — Vertigo!

Here’s what I saw, from top to bottom:

Fourth Floor: Ukrainian Socialist Realism from the Jurii Maniichuk and Rose Brady Collection — impressive pieces from a more Soviet time, including a fantastic, huge, triumphalist painting of Khrushchev greeting Yuri Gagarin, unfortunately jammed into a hallway.

Mykhailo Khmelko, “Motherland Greets a Hero,” 1961

Also Fourth Floor: The Sumyk Collection of sculptures by Ukrainian-American Alexander Archipenko, which gets a room of its own.

Third Floor: Max Vityk’s “Outcrops.” As mentioned previously, I just loved the art and the installation. Each piece’s title comes from one of the geologic ages of the Earth. The description talks about appreciating them just as highly textural abstractions, but also as a spiritual or environmental account, “an antidote to the tyranny of time, or chronarchy…” Down with the chronarchy!

Library, Ukrainian Institute, NYC — Contemplating the Chronarchy, More of Max Vityk’s “Outcrops” series

Second Floor: Portrait photographs of WWII Veterans by Sasha Maslov. Rather wonderful pictures of these ordinary men (and a few women) in their unassuming homes, accompanied by quotes from interviews with them that reveal each as extraordinary. Maslov traveled the world to take these pictures, of both Axis and Allied veterans. He defined the word broadly, including some people who didn’t fight, but who nonetheless were involved in the war (and really, who wasn’t?)

First Floor: A brief introduction to Ukraine, the place, its people, history and culture. It includes a nice touchscreen display for those who want a deeper dive, and an overview of notable Ukrainian Americans.

This is my second Ukrainian place for this project (see: Ukrainian Museum). I get why they both exist. Different wealthy patrons wanted to celebrate their heritage and raise the profile of their culture. But if anyone asked me, I would recommend the Institute over the Museum by a wide margin.

A House Museum AND a Ukrainian Museum

I suggest thinking of the Ukrainian Institute as a house museum as much as a museum of Ukrainian art and culture. As an opulent Fifth Avenue mansion-turned-museum, it stands in good company with the Jewish Museum (also by Gilbert), the Cooper-Hewitt, the Neue Gallerie, and the Frick Collection. But with relatively fewer modifications, it feels much more homey.

It lacks the original furniture, but retains amazing amounts of period detail. The rooms aren’t labeled, but they don’t need labels. The ballroom (of course it has one) still looks like a ballroom, the library unmistakably remains a library. Even better, there are no barriers or blockades, and very few “please do not touch” signs. The woodwork smells pleasantly of oil or polish, and has a luster of well-preserved age. The wood floors aren’t pristine, but are much more beautiful and interesting for that.

The rooms have been re-tasked with sharing Ukrainian art and culture (broadly defined), but without losing their former selves. I deeply appreciate that.

I also appreciate that the Institute takes care to relate the story of the house. It provides a quick summary in the ground floor “Intro to Ukraine” section. It also offers a much more thorough version of the tale (complete with newspaper quotes and other primary sources) in a series of panels in a fourth floor room.

Last Thoughts

The Ukrainian Institute may be one of the best-kept secrets of New York that is still actually being kept. Except by me, I guess. Sorry? Anyone who enjoys a taste of Gilded Age splendor (and who doesn’t?) must visit. Even the warm summer temperatures just add to the authenticity. Though I realize that the wealthy Fifth Avenue Gilded Agers did have air conditioning. They just called it “spending August at my Newport cottage.”

Based on my visit, the art on view will be worth seeing, too. And as a bonus you get to learn something about Ukraine and its people.

I’m surprised and delighted with this place, and I feel confident that art and architecture lovers will feel the same.

For Reference:

Address	2 East 79th Street, Manhattan
Website	ukrainianinstitute.org
Cost	General Admission: $8 (suggested)
Other Relevant Links	A neat history of the house with a behind-the-scenes tour on the Big Old Houses blog

June 20, 2017April 11, 2021

Brooklyn Historical Society

UPDATE APRIL 2021: In 2020, the Brooklyn Historical Society merged with the Brooklyn Public Library to create the Center for Brooklyn History. Not sure what that’s going to mean for the institution going forward; currently the building is only open to pick up library books.

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	65 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	A quote from Truman Capote, Brooklyn Heights resident in 1958: “Often a week passes without my ‘going into town,’ or ‘crossing the bridge,’ as neighbors call a trip to Manhattan. Mystified friends, suspecting provincial stagnation, inquire, ‘But what do you DO over there?'”

Brooklyn Historical Society Entrance

The Brooklyn Historical Society started its life as the Long Island Historical Society back in 1863, as Brooklyn was booming. Today it still resides in the LIHS’s absolutely beautiful, landmarked, red brick building in Brooklyn Heights, opened in 1881. For a large building, the two floors of exhibit spaces are surprisingly intimate, making it easy to visit the whole thing in an hour or so.

Potential visitors should know that the society does not tell the whole Brooklyn story. You’d get a better sense of Brooklyn’s timeline at BLDG 92. When I went the Historical Society offered three exhibits: Brooklyn abolitionists, Jackie Robinson’s career, and recently rediscovered photos of late 1950s Brooklyn.

Exhibition Roundup

The abolition show was beautifully designed and laid out, with projections and suspended floating pictures dividing up the space. These and some interactive elements helped make it engaging even though it was comprised mainly of wall texts and reproduced historic images rather than artifacts. The exhibit started by reinforcing the surprising fact of how widespread slave ownership was in revolutionary-era Brooklyn, which I learned at the Old Stone House. It then pivots to celebrate the 19th century religious and intellectual Brooklynites who argued for abolition.

The Jackie Robinson exhibit, too, consisted largely of wall texts and a timeline, although it did feature a case of Robinsoniana in the middle of the room. I found it educational, but dry. City Reliquary‘s shrine to Jackie Robinson conveyed the heartfelt relationship between the man and the borough much better.

Jackie Robinson at the Brooklyn Historical Society

Finally, “Truman Capote’s Brooklyn: The Lost Photographs of David Attie,” was a terrific small exhibit. David Attie, a young photographer, received a commission to take pictures of Brooklyn to accompany a magazine piece Truman Capote was writing about his life there. He spent a day or two wandering around the borough with Capote as his guide and interpreter. Assignment done, years passed, and everyone assumed the unused pictures long gone until Attie’s son stumbled upon the negatives and even some prints. They constitute a splendid snapshot of a Brooklyn long, long gone, from a pair of very distinctive perspectives. And they’re all the better for being so fresh — many not seen since Attie took them.

David Attie, by the way, was the husband of Dotty Attie, one of the co-founders of A.I.R. Gallery— eventually all museums connect!

That Building!

The Brooklyn Historical Society’s gorgeousness struck me throughout — a very loving restoration must have happened here in the not-too-distant past. The light fixtures! The woodwork! The stained glass skylight! And each floor had different humorously old-timey logos indicating where the gents and ladies rooms were. A small thing, but I appreciated it.

Brooklyn Historical Society

In addition to the exhibit spaces, the Society houses the yet-again stunningly beautiful Othmer Library. When I visited, it contained significant amounts of dark, polished woodwork, a studious hush, and lots and lots of historical documents. One of the librarians told me that many people use it for genealogical research. And for the first time in my life, I was sad I have no Brooklyn ancestry.

In addition to exhibits, the Brooklyn Historical Society programs talks ranging from real estate to fishing to hip hop. And has a suitably beautiful space for that, too. It also just opened a small branch in DUMBO, so there’s more to see beyond the Pierrepont Street mother ship.

Worth the Trip?

The Brooklyn Historical Society has one of the loveliest spaces of any museum I’ve visited. And I trust its curators to organize excellent exhibitions. That said, two of the three shows were mainly wall-text-and-pictures exhibits–albeit well done examples of the style. If you’re a Brooklynite of any stripe (birth, residence, aspiration, or just in your heart), go for sure. Otherwise check what they’re showing beforehand, and decide based on your interest level.

For Reference:

Address	128 Pierrepont Street (corner of Clinton Street), Brooklyn
Website	brooklynhistory.org
Cost	General Admission: $10
Other Relevant Links	Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir by Truman Capote (Amazon)

June 5, 2017June 8, 2017

Whitney Museum of American Art

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	176 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	A juxtaposition of two pieces: My Egypt, by Charles Demuth, and Pittsburgh, by Elsie Driggs. Both from 1927, they present similar and yet extremely divergent visions of industrialized landscapes. One is clearly prettier than the other, and yet, as Driggs said of her grey smokestacks and pipes, “This shouldn’t be beautiful. But it is.”

The Met’s Worst Mistake?

The Whitney Museum of American Art. Yet another art museum in our saturated city. Why does it exist? Mainly because the Met in the late 1920s didn’t care to own a vast collection of work by living American artists. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney had offered the Met her collection, with an endowment, even. Yes, the Met’s Board wouldn’t take the art even though they stood to get paid to do so.

It reminds me of the scene in the movie “Pretty Woman” where Julia Roberts gets treated miserably by the snooty store lady on Rodeo Drive, only to return later looking fabulous to point out what a humongous mistake said snooty lady had made. Which raises the question, which museum is Richard Gere?

Anyway, I will say that if any member of the Whitney family now or in the future offers to pay me to take, say, a Hopper or a Rothko, I will gladly accept that offer.

Continue reading “Whitney Museum of American Art”

May 24, 2017

Museum of Arts and Design

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	132 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Kaisik Wong’s spacey, glam 1970s fashions look like costumes from a very trippy sci-fi film. The opposite of most of the counterculture fashion on display, and yet they fit in somehow, too.

Museum of Arts and Design, New York New York City is lucky to boast not one but two extremely fine design museums — the Museum of Arts and Design and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Augmented by the estimable design collections at MoMA and The Met.

Does it really need two design museums, though? I think it does. The Cooper Hewitt and the Museum of Arts and Design (“MAD”) feel extremely different. MAD’s collection starts at midcentury, shaping its outlook and sensibilities. Cooper goes deeper and can do more with historical context. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that the one is like MoMA and the other is like The Met. But it’s not necessarily unfair to make that comparison, either.

Continue reading “Museum of Arts and Design”

May 11, 2017

Rose Museum at Carnegie Hall

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	12 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	When they laid the cornerstone for the Music Hall, Andrew Carnegie himself said that “here all good causes may find a platform.” Remarkably, that statement evolved into a policy of openness to anyone who wanted to take the stage (and could afford to rent it). So even in times when many venues were closed to, say, African American performers, Carnegie was open.

Two Carnegie-related places in a row. First the Cooper Hewitt in Andrew Carnegie’s former home, now the museum of the history of the eponymous Hall. I feel I should open with a joke:

Q. How do you get to the museum at Carnegie Hall?

A. Just head toward the First Tier restrooms at intermission.

Rose Museum, Carnegie Hall The Rose Museum is a small space telling the story of Carnegie Hall, twice actually: once from a building/Carnegie perspective, the other more from an artistic perspective. But they run together and get a little redundant. It is indeed between the auditorium and the First Tier restrooms, as well as the patrons’ lounge.

Ella Fitzgerald, LP cover and glasses, Rose Museum @ Carnegie Hall — Ella Fitzgerald’s Glasses, Live at Carnegie Hall

It’s got some artifacts: various conductors’ batons, Henny Youngman’s clarinet, Ella Fitzgerald’s glasses. And a great display of LP sleeves from some of the myriad records produced “live at Carnegie Hall.” And a number of original or facsimile documents relevant to the place. I found it pretty engaging. But for all that music can help bring museum exhibits to life (e.g., at the Museum at F.I.T.), it’s a tough task making music the subject for a museum.

Album Covers, Carnegie Hall — Decades of “Live at Carnegie Hall” LPs

Carnegie Hall is an absolute treasure. The city would be immeasurably poorer without it. But for a long time its survival was extremely doubtful. The thing I liked least at the Rose Museum was a reproduction of a 1959 article from Life Magazine about what would replace Carnegie Hall. The Life story makes it sound like demolishing it (in favor of a hideous fire-engine-red skyscraper) was a done deal. Happily for the city, the developer couldn’t raise the money, and Carnegie Hall survived. But it got me thinking.

Life Magazine Article on Carnegie Hall Replacement — In an Alternate Universe…

The loss of Carnegie Hall would have been a disaster, but nothing happens in a vacuum. The original, glorious Penn Station was torn down in 1964. What if they had succeeded in demolishing Carnegie Hall 5 years earlier? It’s fair to speculate that that event would have galvanized the historic preservation movement. Which might then have raised sufficient hue and cry that maybe, arguably, plausibly, the effort to save Penn Station would have succeeded.

So that raises a fascinating thought experiment. Which New York would you prefer?

One with Carnegie Hall and the terrible ordeal that is Penn Station today.
Or one with no Carnegie Hall, but the McKim Mead and White Penn Station.

For all that I love the music hall, I might make that trade.

If haven’t yet, you really should attend a concert at Carnegie Hall! They program a diverse set of performers, something there is bound to attract you. Architecturally and acoustically it’s a treasure.

But treat the museum as someplace to kill time during an intermission, not a destination for a special trip.

If you love performing arts and can’t attend a concert there, go take the tour–actually stand on the famous stage! And if you can’t do THAT, then, as a third-best option, do take a spin through the museum.

Carnegie Hall

For Reference:

Address	881 Seventh Avenue at 57th Street, Manhattan
Website	carnegiehall.org
Cost	Free
Other Relevant Links	New York Preservation Archive Project on the demise of Penn Station

April 30, 2017

The Morgan Library & Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	99 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	The West Room Vault, which Charles McKim designed so that Mr. Morgan could keep his most super-special books super safe.

Many of the city’s great institutions, maybe even most of them, were gifts to the public by plutocrats looking to give something back, improve their image, or maybe atone for awful things they did to get ahead. Fro some people, it may diminish the joy of visiting somewhat to reflect on the ruthless profiteering that paid for all of it. That’s especially true of the most personality-driven institutions, like the Morgan and the Frick.

And yet. Your mileage may vary, but when I go to either of those two places, I’m sorely tempted to believe that they did it: the institutions balance the scales, and their sins are erased by the magnificence of what they’ve left for posterity — me– to enjoy.

Mr. Morgan’s Library, now open for your edification and gawking

The Morgan Library & Museum contains treasures. It was literally Pierpont Morgan’s private library, so it combines gilded age period room splendor with a fascinating collection and space to put on dazzling temporary exhibitions.

Additionally, the Morgan is one of my favorite examples of marrying new architecture with old. In 2006, Renzo Piano completed an incredible glass box that fits like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece with the older Morgan buildings. The original library was built in 1906 by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead, and White, so it’s no slouch in the architecture department. One of the things I like best about the new addition is it doesn’t try to erase the differences between the buildings that make up the campus, while still managing to unite them harmoniously. It also adds more gallery space, fancy piston-based glass elevators, and a beautiful cafe with a tree and a view of the Empire State Building.

I love how the Morgan smells. The parts that are more library than museum contain enough ancient tomes that the very air is permeated with old leather, paper, and erudition.

In a city with many a fancy ceiling, one of the fanciest of them all.

The Morgan owns three (three) Gutenberg Bibles. Manuscripts of, it sometimes seems, everything ever written or composed by everyone. A collection of exquisite Babylonian cylinder seals. Huge amounts of religious art. It just goes on and on. I saw scores by Mozart and Chopin and Mendelssohn. And the first page of the original draft of General Grant’s first inaugural address on display. And the Zir Ganela Gospels, from Ge’ez Ethiopia ca 1400. And the only complete manuscript of a Jane Austen novel (of Lady Susan).

Its book and manuscript collection enable it to put on amazing shows just drawing from its own resources — “Delirium,” on the art of symbolist books, was on when I visited, along with a great show on Emily Dickinson (called “I’m Nobody! Who are You?”), where I learned her handwriting was awful. And a small show of old masters borrowed from the Swedish Nationalmuseum.

The Morgan also has at least a bit of a sense of humor. A fair number of things on display are not what Mr. Morgan thought they were — ingenious fakes, misattributed or misidentified works. I get the sense that he was a bit of a sucker. Or he just didn’t care — he’d Hoover up all the art there was, authenticity be damned. Clearly art sleuthing has progressed a lot in the intervening century, and seeing fakes can be both instructive and entertaining. Anyway, I like that they don’t hide them away or quietly dispose of them.

The Morgan contains wonders enough to balance a robber-baron’s debt to society. I can almost guarantee you will see at least one thing, a document, a score, a letter, that takes your breath away. It is an incredibly fine museum, and everyone should go.

For Reference:

Address	225 Madison Avenue (at 36th Street), Manhattan
Website	themorgan.org
Cost	General Admission: $20 (free Friday evenings)

April 9, 2017July 17, 2017

Brooklyn Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	185 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I felt I should pick something from the permanent collection. Having seen several 1800s-era houses so far, I have been wishing there was a historic house museum from the 1920s. I don’t think one exists, but this period room, the 1928-1930 Weil-Worgelt Study, done in glorious art deco, makes that feeling all the stronger.

Brooklyn Museum With Cherry Trees If you aren’t a local, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Brooklyn Museum is all about Brooklyn. There is a museum about Brooklyn, but this isn’t it. The Brooklyn Museum is Brooklyn’s answer to the Metropolitan: huge beaux arts building covering the full sweep of art across times and places. It traces its history back to 1824, making it one of the oldest cultural institutions in the city, and the current building was started a couple of years before the 1898 consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York City, when New York and Brooklyn were cultural and to some extent economic rivals separated by a small river.

Of course the rivalry is still true of Manhattan and Brooklyn today, but when they were separate cities, having a comprehensive art museum in Brooklyn was a point of civic pride.

Here’s the thing. The Brooklyn Museum can’t compete with the Met. It doesn’t have the resources, it doesn’t have the brand, it doesn’t have the collection. It’s strong in some things– fantastic Egyptian, great Asian, superb American art. But the Met outclasses it mightily. It used to try to compete, though. And did pretty well of it, at least sometimes. But starting a little over a decade ago, Brooklyn decided to change the game, move the goalposts. It would be populist, accessible, earnest, and reach out to its community in a way that the Met, as a global museum that happens to be in New York, maybe can’t do as well.

This has been at best a mixed success. There’s a Columbia Marching Band fight song that mocks Brown students for lax academic standards–the lyrics say that they “take seminars in spider-man/and raisin bran/if it’s pass-fail they’ll take it.” I think of that song when I think of the Brooklyn Museum — it’ll put on exhibits on anything. If it thinks it’ll get a body through the door, it’ll do it. The exhibit on “Star Wars” as art in 2002 –as “Attack of the Clones” was in theaters–permanently reduced its stature in my eyes.

But rather than an exhaustive historical essay on the success or failure of specific populist shows, let’s look at what’s on now. That won’t be directly relevant to your future decision of whether to visit or not, but it will help you understand what to expect. From worst to best:

Iggy Pop: Life Drawings. Some dude named Jeremy Deller had Iggy Pop pose nude for 4 hours in front of a bunch of amateurs. Drawings from that…experiment…are on display along with some pieces Deller selected from Brooklyn’s collection that feature the nude male form. The result is as horrible and sensationalist as I can imagine. You get to see some bad (and, admittedly, a few quite good) drawings of naked Iggy Pop, and a seemingly random assortment of other naked guys. It’s neither edifying nor entertaining, unless you like looking at sketchy renderings of a famous old guy’s junk.

Infinite Blue. The exhibition space on the main floor is devoted to the color blue. Things drawn from the Brooklyn’s collection that happen to be that color. There’s nothing wrong with this idea, but the execution fails. This is an opportunity to juxtapose objects to highlight how different cultures see the color and what it means to them. Instead, pieces are segregated by origin, so that there’s a Hindu corner, an Egyptian vitrine, a Chinese porcelain cabinet, a European sector. Put a 16th C. painting of Mary, with her ubiquitous blue mantle, right next to a blue-skinned Krishna: blue representing purity versus blue symbolizing Krishna’s infinite power via the color of the sky and sea. That’d be thought-provoking. Both those pieces are here, but a visitor has to walk a ways to see them. Quite a few cultures and languages have blurred blue and green together. Why is that? This show won’t tell you.

Unknown artist, “Death Cart,” 1890-1910, Taos, New Mexico

But then there’s Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas, a small show drawn from the museum’s collection of Native American art, that’s instructive, interesting, and a little macabre. An exhibit after my own heart.

Marilyn Minter's "Food Porn" at Brooklyn Museum — Marilyn Minter, “100 Food Porn,” 1989-1990, enamel on metal

And a great Marilyn Minter retrospective. I sort of knew her but not well. Some of her work is over the top for my tastes, but I hadn’t ever seen her “food porn” series from 1990 (as opposed to her just-plain-porn series) and I found it delicious.

Georgia O'Keeffe Show at Brooklyn Museum The biggest show on currently is Georgia O’Keeffe: A Living Modern, portraying her more as icon than as artist. It blends some of her paintings with clothes from throughout her life, and photographs of her taken by everyone from Alfred Steiglitz to Cecil Beaton to Karsh to Richard Avedon. It’s fascinating to see how so many different photographers viewed one individual, and how easy it is to tell those with whom O’Keeffe clicked, and those with whom she didn’t. It’s also fascinating to see how carefully she controlled her own image from the start of her career. By her later years, you don’t even need to see her head. Gnarled hands holding an animal’s skull against a black, belted dress lit by harsh desert light communicate exactly whom you are looking at. This is the Brooklyn Museum doing something different, fresh, unexpected, and doing it well.

And then there’s the permanent collection. If you’re an Egypt fan, you have to go just for those galleries alone. Asia was being reinstalled when I visited.

Brooklyn’s Egyptian Collection, all to myself on a Friday afternoon

The Brooklyn has its share of masterpieces, but opted to use the collection differently, as a lens on history and sociology. Who created art and who wanted art and what it expressed about society at the time. The Brooklyn is quite good in that respect, and it gives them a chance to leverage objects that don’t necessarily qualify as top hits. But sometimes you just want to see a great piece of art, and those aren’t always readily on display.

In most other American cities, the Brooklyn Museum would be the must-visit art museum. The Brooklyn has tried earnestly to attract new audiences, which I respect. And it has tried to differentiate in a city that, as my statistics show, is overcrowded with art museums. I respect that too. But in my opinion, it errs in its willingness to entertain at the expense of edifying.

And its efforts have alienated at least some of its core audience –i.e., me. Prior to this visit, I hadn’t gone since a Takashi Murakami show in 2008. It hasn’t done anything to make me want to go. Should you go? Yes. But go knowing that some of the Brooklyn Museum’s efforts at being edgy, innovative, or populist are terrible, and therefore it isn’t as good as it could or should be.

Brooklyn Museum, Interior Court

For Reference:

Address	200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
Website	brooklynmuseum.org
Cost	General Admission: $16 suggested donation. Special exhibitions $20 mandatory (includes museum admission)
Other Relevant Links	2010 New York Times article on Brooklyn Museum attendance 2010 essay on the failure of museum populism (reacting to the NYT piece) 2004 NYT architecture review of Brooklyn Museum’s then-new “democratic” facade.