art Archives - Page 4 of 11

January 12, 2018

Pratt Manhattan Gallery

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	21 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Kathryn Fleming’s Ursa Hibernation Station, an idea for a new home appliance: a portable, pram-sized bear hibernator. So that you can watch (and possibly envy!) your genetically modified mini bear as it sleeps the winter away.

Pratt Institute, Manhattan Campus

The Pratt Institute dates to 1887, when it was founded to give an opportunity for an advanced education to anyone. Today it is mainly known for programs in architecture, art, and design, so it’s fitting that Pratt’s Manhattan building, a handsome edifice on 14th Street, includes an art gallery on its second floor.

The Pratt Manhattan Gallery is a nice space, long and somewhat narrow, with high ceilings and large windows overlooking 14th Street. Kind of the usual for a New York art space: an older space repurposed with white walls, wood floors, periodic columns, exposed duct work and ceiling pipes lending a splash of color.

Pratt Manhattan Gallery

What’s on View

The exhibition when I visited was titled “See Yourself E(x)ist.” I have seen a lot of contemporary, academic art shows during this project. I’ve developed a theory that all such exhibits must be about one of four things:

Migration and refugees
Multiculturalism versus assimilation
Gender and identity
Our declining environment

Or I guess, further simplifying, there is only one topic for a contemporary, academic art show:

Riling up conservatives.

This was a Type 4 exhibition, viewed through the lens of technology. While its theme was different, “The Roaming Eye” at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center featured a number of works that would’ve fit right in here.

I liked it, though I remain somewhat mystified by the typography of the exhibition title. Anything (x)ist makes me think of the men’s underwear brand, which I’m sure was the curator did not intend. At least, I think.

Pratt Manhattan Gallery — Jaime Pitarch, “Chernobyl,” 2009

The exhibit offered a good diversity of pieces, including some video and digital art and a rather amusing interactive work that greatly amplified the sound that sand grains make falling in an egg timer. I like shows that can unite artists in a broad array of media round a common topic.

I also like shows that have at least a little wit or humor in the mix; art that takes itself too seriously tends to lose me. I enjoyed See Yourself E(x)ist on that front, too. Jaime Pitarch’s Chernobyl, a mutant matrioshka doll, made me smile.

I felt similarly about a set of pieces by Fantich & Young called Apex Predator | Darwinian Voodoo, that re-envisioned common objects (men’s shoes, a basketball) studded with human teeth. Eek, creepy and effective. (Lest you worry, the teeth came from dentures.)

Pratt Institute, Manhattan Campus — Fantich & Young, “Alpha Oxfords,” 2010

Should You Go to the Pratt Manhattan Gallery?

It’s always hard to judge a museum like the Pratt Manhattan Gallery based on a single show. But it’s conveniently located, and a nice space. I’m pretty comfortable asserting that if you happen to be around West 14th Street and you feel like seeing some contemporary, academic art, whatever’s on view will hew to one of the four themes above, but it’ll likely be interesting and worth the time as well.

For Reference:

Address	144 West 14th Street, 2nd floor, Manhattan
Website	pratt.edu
Cost	General Admission: Free

December 22, 2017December 30, 2017

Judd Foundation

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	104 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Donald Judd’s dining table looks exactly like Donald Judd designed a dining table. Utterly simple wood with chairs that seamlessly, create a box when its 14 chairs were pushed in. It reminded me of one of those wooden cube puzzles where you remove one piece and the whole thing falls apart— symmetric perfection broken. And it is the exact size of the windows in the huge, open, “eating” level of the building.

In 1968 the artist Donald Judd bought a building in then-dilapidated SoHo. Five stories high, the building was used for light industry — small factories that my guide did not call “sweatshops” but that probably were. Indeed, to this day some of the floors retain holes that show where an apparel manufacturer bolted down sewing machines.

Donald Judd Foundation

Judd, his wife Julie Finch, and their newborn son Flavin moved into the place, and Judd proceeded to remake the four upstairs floors to his own design. Judd changed floors and ceilings, installed fittings and fixtures, and designed both art and furniture specifically for the place. He also installed art from his friends and fellow SoHo Bohemians. He made the place their home, but he also made their home a work of art. Continue reading “Judd Foundation”

December 9, 2017December 10, 2017

Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	58 minutes (most recently)
Best thing I saw or learned	A vertical tour brings you up close to the engineering of an old-school cathedral. The building is buttressed to support the weight of an enormous tower that was never built. Above the ceiling… To balance that buttressing, there’s literally tons of lead above the ceiling vaults, pushing down and out as the buttresses push in.

Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine

Although I have rarely attended a service there, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine has figured large in my life in New York City.

Shortly after I arrived as a freshman at Columbia, I attended an event at the Cathedral. The Dalai Lama spoke, as did the daughter of Desmond Tutu. I vividly remember it was right around Rosh Hashanah, and a group of monks offered a chant in honor of the High Holy Days. Tibetan Buddhist monks singing in honor of the Jewish new year in the largest Christian cathedral in the world. To this day, that stands as one of my quintessential New York experiences. Continue reading “Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine”

November 30, 2017December 1, 2017

Dia: Chelsea

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	46 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Art made out of ginormous freaking laser beams! Rita McBride, “Particulates,” 2017, lasers, site-specific particulates, extraterrestrial dust, and water

The Dia Foundation is a powerhouse in the world of contemporary art. It got its start in 1974 to help artists “achieve visionary projects that might not otherwise be realized because of scale or scope.” (Source: Dia’s website.)

New Yorkers probably best know Dia in the guise of Dia: Beacon, an important contemporary art museum located in Beacon, NY, a bit over an hour by train north of the city. The Dia Foundation also manages the Walter De Maria’s New York Earth Room in SOHO. And several other important art places and spaces around the world (most notably two key environmental art pieces out west: Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and De Maria’s Lightning Field).

Dia’s offices are in Chelsea, and it has two art spaces there, too. Continue reading “Dia: Chelsea”

November 30, 2017

New Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	96 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Kosovan artist Petrit Halilaj’s “Ru,” a room-sized installation of reproductions of Neolithic artifacts from Kosovo mounted on metal bird legs and perched in habitats of sticks and water, installed in a large white room. Petrit Halilaj, “Ru” (detail) It’s odd and obsessive and a little creepy and cute at the same time — like a Miyazaki movie come to life. Petrit Halilaj, “Ru” (detail)

The New Museum, devoted to cutting-edge contemporary art, turned forty years old this year. I know because one of the exhibits on currently celebrates its history, with a timeline and select ephemera from past shows.

New Museum

Having turned 40 myself some years ago, I think it starts to feel a little ironic calling oneself “New” at that age.

Marcia Tucker, a curator at the Whitney in the 1970s, felt that new and emerging artists didn’t get a fair shake at “established” museums (this despite the Whitney Biennial). She therefore set out to create an institution specifically for, well, the new. And thus was yet another art museum born.

The New Museum moved into its current building on the Bowery in 2007, making that aspect of it still actually pretty new. More on the building in a moment. Continue reading “New Museum”

November 21, 2017

Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	28 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Chris Jones’s surreal and fascinating, 3D-ish (2.5D?) depiction of an empty house of many rooms, collaged from book and magazine pictures. Chris Jones, “After They Had Left,” 2016, Mixed media collage

Hebrew Union College Museum According to the guard at the front desk, in order to visit the museum at Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion, you must do four things.

Visitor Pass

Present a photo ID, which they will hold onto for the duration of your visit.
Submit any bags for an inspection.
Agree to be wanded down with a handheld metal detector.
Wear an orange “Visitor” badge around your neck or other suitably prominently visible place for the duration of your visit.

Continue reading “Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum”

November 21, 2017April 11, 2021

International Center of Photography

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	71 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	The lobby boasts a large interactive screen that enables visitors to browse through the ICP’s digital image collection, sorted by timeline or via a large number of tags/keywords. It’s fun to see what comes up, and how images connect across times and places.

UPDATE APRIL 2021: This review is obsolete, as the ICP moved into a new home on Essex Street just before the pandemic. I haven’t visited it yet, though it is high on my museum to-do list.

The International Center of Photography is one of two photo-specialist institutions in New York (the other being the Aperture Foundation). It has a venerable history, founded in 1974 by the photographer Cornell Capa, the brother of even greater photographer Robert Capa. It’s currently located on the Bowery, very close to the New Museum.

In addition to its museum space, the Center offers classes, a full-time school of photography, and events.

Ironically, the ICP does not allow photography inside its galleries. I’m not certain whether that policy is general or just for the current show. Regardless, I have a few shots of the lobby area and cafe, but that’s it.

The ICP Galleries

International Center of Photography features two moderately sized gallery spaces, as well as a small video screening area. Visitors begin in a bland rectangular space on the ground floor, then go downstairs to a similar space directly below. I don’t have a lot to say about them — they are windowless and fairly generic, painted white when I visited. Continue reading “International Center of Photography”

November 18, 2017

MoMA PS1

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	114 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	“Meeting,” an installation by light artist James Turrell. One of Turrell’s Skyspaces, it is a moderately sized, square room, featuring dark wood paneled seating, white walls and ceiling, and a square cutout open to the sky. All you do is sit there and look at the sky thus framed, and the light patterns it casts on the walls. It shouldn’t work. I should find it boring. And yet…it’s beautiful.

MoMA PS1, Queens The Museum of Modern Art’s satellite branch, MoMA PS1, presents contemporary art in a unique setting in booming Long Island City.

PS1 started out as the “Instute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc.” in 1971. Originally nomadic, it settled permanently in its current building in 1976. And MoMA absorbed it into its empire in 2000.

School’s In Session

MoMA PS1, Queens Housed in a school building that dates to 1892 (“PS” in NewYork City parlance stands for “public school”) PS1 is another of New York’s examples of a masterful adaptation of an old structure to new, museum-y purposes. It’s the second schoolhouse-turned-museum I’ve visited, along with the City Island Nautical Museum.

I’m very fond of PS1’s building. A new, concrete structure houses the admissions desk and a small shop, and the concrete stretches around a courtyard with a couple of outdoor spaces, leading to the stairs into the old brick schoolhouse itself.

PS1’s interiors retain a great deal of scholastic charm, including floorplans on blackboards, institutional stairs, sections of ancient linoleum and wood floors, and desk seating in the cafe (run by trendy Brooklyn restaurant M. Wells). And light fixtures that almost certainly come from a company called, appropriately enough, Schoolhouse Electric.

Thanks to the cafe, a tantalizing bacony smell permeated much of the ground floor. Delicious if slightly distracting. I always like a building that retains enough of its original purpose that you can still feel it, at least assuming its spaces for art work well as well.

MoMA PS1, Queens

Some Permanent Art

PS1 has several permanent pieces, things that are part of the infrastructure. There’s the aforementioned Turrell Skyspace. Also multiple works in stairways, making traveling within the building a more artistic experience. I’m particularly taken with spooky tree silhouettes by Ernesto Caivano.

There’s a mysterious hole in one wall which may or may not align with astronomical phenomena. And Saul Melman gilded most of the school building’s massive original boilers, like blinged up steampunk.

Mostly, however, PS1 hosts temporary shows that MoMA doesn’t want or can’t fit in the mothership in midtown Manhattan.

Art, Angry and Baffling

The big show at PS1 currently is “Kinetic Painting,” a Carolee Schneemann retrospective. Schneeman hit it big in the 1960s as a multi-threat, with an oeuvre combining painting, sculpture (and hybrids thereof) and aggressively challenging performance pieces. Her work reminded me of lots of different things. I have in my notes:

An extremely angry Joseph Cornell
A deranged Cindy Sherman
An insane Marina Abramovic

Among other things. Not to accuse her of being derivative — Schneemann was definitely not copying anyone.

Possibly Schneemann’s most infamous piece is something called “Meat Joy.” A performance from 1964 involving several men and women in their skivvies, along with gallons of paint and assorted raw meat — fish, plucked chickens, and such. PS1 has a video. I’m not sure how much of the piece is choreographed versus improvised, but either way, it is funny, gross, and uncomfortable.

Which three words sum up my reaction to much of Schneemann’s work. I liked some of it, don’t get me wrong. But if you go, do not bring the kiddies.

The other large exhibit at PS1 currently is the work of Cathy Wilkes, which I found incomprehensible. I realize the line between “art” and “trash” hasn’t been the same since Duchamp’s famous fountain. But still.

PS1, I Love You?

Contemporary art is almost by definition challenging. I like PS1 mainly because I find the space very friendly. I guess if I’m going to be challenged by art, I’d rather be challenged in a nice, comfy place rather than someplace cool and sterile and purpose-built. (More on that when I review the New Museum.)

PS1 provides awesome spaces to display art, with a nice variety of sizes and scales to the rooms, many of which retain windows that let in tons of natural light. Visiting PS1 takes a reasonable amount of time — despite three floors plus some work in the basement, it won’t exhaust you. The cafe and bookstore there are both terrific too.

For some people, even art lovers, contemporary art can be a bridge too far. That’s perhaps why MoMA keeps this place safely across the river in Queens. Still, if you’re willing to take the plunge and have your buttons pushed, MoMA PS1 is a fantastic place to do it.

Worst case scenario, you might find something you like. And if nothing else, there’s always James Turrell’s eternal sky.

For Reference:

Address	22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
Website	momaps1.org
Cost	General Admission: $10, but free in 2017 for all New York City residents
Other Relevant Links	Schoolhouse Electric M. Wells Restaurant

November 17, 2017

Woodlawn Cemetery

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	120 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	My favorite monument at Woodlawn is the Straus family mausoleum. Three mini-tombs form a complex for the sons of Isidor and Ida Straus, plus a memorial to their parents, famously lost on the Titanic. It’s a unique hybrid of art deco and Egyptian Revival, complete with an awesome, streamlined, funeral barge.

I need to preface this review with a disclosure. I have been visiting Woodlawn Cemetery for almost 20 years. Also, I’m a member of, and volunteer with, the Woodlawn Conservancy, and help out with guided tours there.

So I have a strong bias. I love this place.

Cemeteries as Museums

In my review of Green-Wood Cemetery (New York’s other masterpiece cemetery, in Brooklyn) I explain why I think great historic cemeteries merit consideration as museums. In short, their unique combination of history, art, architecture and nature makes them both edifying and, for some definition of the word, entertaining. And definitely inspiring.

Continue reading “Woodlawn Cemetery”

November 15, 2017

Derfner Judaica Museum & Hebrew Home Art Collection

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	67 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	It’s probably a sin that Torah pointers remind me of nothing so much as highly ornate magic wands from the Potter-verse. But they do.

The Derfner Judaica Museum is one of two museums on my list located at institutions that I’d generally tend to avoid. It resides within the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, a senior assisted living facility. (The other is the Living Museum, located in a mental health facility in Queens.) But it’s on my list, so off to the Bronx I went.

Let’s start with Riverdale. There are many places in New York that don’t feel like “New York.” Fresh Kills. City Island. Broad Channel. Even among the non-New York places, though, Riverdale is special. Surely it is as far from anyone’s mental image of “The Bronx” as it’s possible to get. Verdant and spacious, much of it feels like the suburbs, a clump of wealthy Westchester transplanted within city limits.

Riverdale, the Bronx — The mean streets of Riverdale

The Derfner Judaica Museum: An Overview

The Derfner Museum resides in a bright, 5,000-square-foot ground floor space in the Reingold Pavilion, a 2004 building on the Hebrew Home campus. Windows connect it with the outside, with views encompassing a sculpture garden, the Hudson, and New Jersey’s palisades. Windows also connect it with the lobby and other public spaces of the larger institution.

Derfner Judaica Museum, Riverdale, Bronx An assortment of display cases feature Jewish ritual and cultural objects, organized largely by type, with helpful explanations for those not conversant with them. I expect most Hebrew Home residents would have more than passing familiarity with Jewish rites and tradition. I appreciated that the curators include rare random visitors like me as part of the intended audience.

Many of the pieces on display come from the collection of Ralph and Leuba Baum. Ralph moved to the U.S. in 1936, married Leuba in 1939, and built a successful business as well as a hefty collection of Jewish art and ritual objects. In 1982, the Baums donated 800 pieces to the Hebrew Home to start this museum. If you’re curious why it’s not the Baum Museum, in 2008, Helen and Howard Derfner underwrote the creation of the current space.

The clear focal point of the exhibit is a single, badly damaged, Torah scroll. It comes from a synagogue in a suburb of Hamburg, Ralph’s hometown. The synagogue burned in 1938, during Kristallnacht, and this scroll is the only one of its 13 Torahs to survive. In its silent witnessing way it’s as moving as anything in the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and it was the object that inspired the Baums to donate their collection.

Derfner Judaica Museum, Riverdale, the Bronx

Other Things to See

When I visited the museum had two additional exhibits on display. One was a set of 100 charmingly sketchy watercolors of residents and staff by Brenda Zlamany. The other shows Chuck Fishman’s striking black and white photographs depicting Polish Jewish life, taken from 1975 until the present.

Derfner Judaica Museum, Riverdale, Bronx

I also perused the art in the Hebrew Home’s public spaces a bit. The Hebrew Home displays prints, paintings, and sculpture to help make the place seem less, well, institutional.

Derfner Judaica Museum and Hebrew Home — Andy Warhol, “10 Portraits of Jews”

The plethora of options in New York — the Jewish Museum, the Bernard Museum, the Center for Jewish History — made me wonder about the Baums’ decision to gift their things to a retirement community.

However, the Hebrew Home started collecting art long before it opened the Judaica museum. The institution follows a philosophy of “if you can’t go to the art, the art should go to you.” In that context, the Baums’ decision makes sense — the place was already partly a museum, and had a resident audience likely to enjoy and appreciate their collection.

I mentioned the sculpture garden previously. That too enriches the environment for residents and visitors alike.

Hebrew Home Sculpture Garden, Riverdale, Bronx — Bull Sculpture on the Hudson

A Trip to the Retirement Castle

Derfner Judaica Museum, Riverdale, Bronx

Sad to say, most of my knowledge of senior assisted living comes from TV: the Springfield Retirement Castle, where Abe Simpson lives. So my view is jaundiced, biased, and not very positive. Having the museum and the art help residents immensely, I think.

I’ve written about “gateway museums” — places like the Bronx Museum of the Arts that serve people who may not have much museum experience. I reckon the Derfner is the opposite: for many Hebrew Home residents, it’s the last museum of their lives.

I spent some time talking with Emily, the assistant curator at the Derfner Judaica Museum. She spoke thoughtfully about the role that art plays in the lives of residents. She observed that sometimes the most impactful items in the collection aren’t its one-of-a-kind treasures. Rather it’s something like a pair of mass-produced Shabbat candlesticks that prompt a visitor to remember that their parents or grandparents owned the same pair.

If you have to get old, and you have to live in assisted living, it’s a blessing if you can live in a place full of art.

Should You Visit the Derfner Judaica Museum?

Derfner Judaica Museum and Hebrew Home, Riverdale, Bronx If you’re looking for Judaica, there are better and more convenient institutions to visit. However, the collection gains unique significance by virtue of its location. Jewish or not, if you’re planning to grow old someday you might find it worthwhile visiting the place, the art, and the residents.

For Reference:

Address	Reingold Pavilion, Hebrew Home at Riverdale, 5901 Palisade Avenue, Riverdale, the Bronx
Website	riverspringhealth.org
Cost	General Admission: Free
Other Relevant Links	A bit about art at the Hebrew Home