| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value | |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 114 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | Rather than the grounds or the view I decided to limit myself to the “Call and Response” exhibit. Steven Millar’s “Many-Eyed Object,” 2017, is wood and glass, constructed and organic, and all about changing vistas and views.
 In that, it neatly summarizes Wave Hill as a whole. |
For the first time since I started this project, I feel the need for absolution.
“Forgive me, City, for I have sinned.”
“My son, how long has it been since your last confession?”
“Well, Bloomberg was in office, so it’s been a while…”
“What did you do?”
“It’s not a sin of commission, but a sin of omission. I confess that it has been twenty-three years since I last paid a visit to Wave Hill.”
What the Heck is Wave Hill?
Wave Hill is difficult to describe.
I mean, partly it’s easy:
Two fancy old mansions and associated outbuildings and landscaping across 28 acres of surrounding land, on a bluff in Riverdale in the Bronx, overlooking the Hudson and the majestic cliffs of the Palisades in New Jersey, now used as a venue for contemporary art.
So it’s a hybrid art museum, botanic garden, and historic home. Cut and dried.
Before I started this project, I never realized how many of New York’s city-run and community colleges have a space for art somewhere on their campuses. Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) adds another to that list. BMCC has had its campus in Lower Manhattan since 1983. Fiterman Hall, the college’s flagship building, was severely damaged on September 11, and needed to be entirely rebuilt.
Queens College started collecting art in the 1950s, and today holds a collection that, according to their website, encompasses over 5,000 objects from across history. That makes the Queens College art collection more comprehensive than that of the 
The Americas Society occupies a handsome neocolonial brick mansion on Park Avenue, designed in 1909 by McKim, Mead, & White. It was a private residence through the 1940s, then the home of the Soviet Mission to the UN from 1946 until 1965. Which is an interesting claim to fame; I wonder if they still find CIA bugs in the walls from time to time.
Each of New York’s outer boroughs has a showpiece, namesake museum. They range from the huge and ambitious 
I feel like I’m on thin ice with this one. There’s a fairly strong argument to be made that cemeteries are not museums. Start with the fact that they are called “cemeteries” and not “museums.” But bear with me here.
In 1921, Christopher Robin Milne received a stuffed bear (of very little brain) for his first birthday. Other stuffed animals joined his menagerie, inspiring his father to write stories about them. Amid the sum of human knowledge, the Library keeps Christopher Robin’s friends safe for generations of kids to come.
Whenever I visit the New York Public Library’s spectacular main branch, I always stop and imagine the imposing ramparts of the old distributing reservoir, which stood on its location from 1842 until 1900. There’s still a reservoir on the site, it’s just that now it stores and safeguards the sum total of knowledge of humankind. 
The Swiss Institute is a tiny open gallery space in the ground floor of an old Tribeca building. It’s small and very straightforward, with a little exposed brick and some antique floor tile, but without much floor area to play around with.
