| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 29 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned |  Utterly unsurprisingly, there were four references to Michelle Obama in the text for the Black Fashion Designers show. Because I really miss having her in the White House, I’ll pick the Laura Smalls sundress Mrs. Obama wore on Carpool Karaoke. |
If I think about the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), it’s generally in terms of the building — the brutalist concrete pile that jumps over 27th Street at 7th Avenue, the anchor tenant of the Garment District. I’ve walked by it many times and surely I’ve seen the sign that said “museum” — it’s pretty evident. But not being especially a part of that world, I probably just glossed over it, edited it out, walked on. The Museum Project ensures that doesn’t happen anymore. My museum-dar is now top-notch.
In any case, I finally had a reason to visit the Museum at FIT, and I was very favorably impressed. The museum space occupies a narrow, cave-like gallery on the ground floor, as well as a much larger space downstairs. It’s all very dark, with spotlights to better to highlight the garments on display. And of course, black is always fashionable. Where museum walls go, black is the new black?
The cumulative space is larger than I expected it to be. Not just some leftover rooms they needed to do something with, it earns the name “museum” (even without a gift shop or cafe).
There were two shows on the day I visited. The first was called “Black Fashion Designers.” Refreshingly straightforward, non punny title. And a good show to boot. This show could not have been more different from the Center for Architecture‘s show on black architects I recently visited. I realize buildings can be harder to show in a museum setting than clothes are, but even from an organizational perspective, the Black Designers show had a thoughtfulness and narrative to it that the Architecture Center’s display sorely lacked.
The second show was on Parisian fashion in the 1950s and 1960s. Apparently the conventional wisdom is Parisian fashion houses were sort of stuck in the past at that point, and UK and American designers really stepped to the fore; this show examines and seeks to correct that misapprehension. It takes up the two basement spaces, one a low-ceilinged rectangular room that my notes again call “cave-like.” But the other space was quite different.
Through a door, the second room opened upward and outward, to about triple height, a real surprise given the subterranean location. Again black, but this was a wide-open, encompassing space filled, tastefully and carefully, with islands of beautifully dressed mannequins stretching into the distance. “Zou bisou bisou” (but not the Mad Men version) playing in the background quietly set the tone. I’ve discovered I like museums that use music subtly and cleverly to set a tone or convey a time. Here it works particularly well.
I didn’t spend a lot of time at the Museum at FIT, but that was mainly because I had a meeting to get to. Even with my fairly limited knowledge of and interest in clothing, I could’ve spent another 15 or 20 minutes. Both shows were expertly and lovingly curated and beautifully presented. I have no doubt that FIT has the resources to deliver an authoritative exhibition on any fashionable topic it cares to. And both exhibits zoomed in on subjects that the Met Fashion Institute, with its more general audience, probably wouldn’t do.
Fashion design being a topic of fairly narrow interest, I wouldn’t say everyone should go. Obviously anyone who is a fashionisto or fashionista (fashionistx?) should make a pilgrimage to the Museum at FIT. Indeed, I suspect that one reason for the museum’s existence is so that the fashionable who don’t actually get into FIT have a place to which to make a pilgrimage. But if you go, I’m confident you’ll see something beautiful and interesting.
For Reference:
| Address | 227 W 27th Street, Manhattan |
|---|---|
| Website | fitnyc.edu |
| Cost | Free |
| Other Relevant Links |
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El Museo del Barrio is currently the northernmost of the “Museum Mile” museums, occupying a stately building on Fifth Avenue, just across 104th Street from the Museum of the City of New York. According to its website, it started in the early 1970s as a cultural center focused on Puerto Rico. It has since expanded its focus to cover all Latin American and Caribbean art and artists. After bouncing around East Harlem a bit it found its current home in the Heckscher Building in 1977.
The main show when I visited was of video art by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, as well as selections she chose from the museum’s permanent collection. I run hot and cold with video art. On the one hand, two of the best, most memorable works of art I’ve seen in the past two years were video pieces. On the other hand, I am bored to tears with the vast majority of it. Muñoz’s work, largely non-narrative, did little for me. I lacked the eye or knowledge to understand how her selections from the permanent collection clicked with what she’s trying to do.
The other show featured recent acquisitions, definitely a common and valid theme for a museum, although given the small space available, I didn’t find it very edifying as far as key current trends in Latin or Caribbean art. I liked some of the pieces, but I also thought much of the work on view wasn’t especially “Latin.”
If you aren’t a local, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Brooklyn Museum is all about Brooklyn. There is 
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 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.
Without a doubt the Onassis Center was good for my vocabulary (which is very good to begin with). I picked up six new-to-me words, at least five of which I am sure I will find opportunities to use in the near future.
The building’s stained glass is a treasure of nautical and celestial themes.
The New York Public Library’s branch at Lincoln Center is easy to overlook, tucked in between the Met and the Vivian Beaumont Theater. It puts on a number of free exhibitions throughout the year, and has a fairly large space for doing so. I saw a great show celebrating the 45th anniversary of Sesame Street there a few years back. 
I’m impressed by the sheer blackness of the Folk Art Museum’s gallery space, as designed for the Gabritschevsky show. It’s super different from anywhere else I’ve seen art yet.
I have a problem with the idea of “folk art.” In my mind, it always translates as “art that’s just not very good.” The naive stuff, the outsider stuff, the untrained stuff, the stuff made by people not right in the head…always it feels to me like there’s some qualifier that attaches to the creator or the work that sets your expectations lower. And for me art is all about high expectations. I know there’s a 
I was just 
Here’s another place that I had no idea existed before starting this project. The Society of Illustrators occupies a very handsome townhouse on East 63rd Street, and includes an ample museum space (and even a gift shop!) for showing off the work of illustrators of all kinds.
The museum is terrific, although given that it is a townhouse, there are some stairs to navigate — fair warning if you’re movement impaired.
