culture Archives - Page 4 of 6

July 26, 2017July 28, 2017

Bernard Museum of Judaica at Temple Emanu-El

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	38 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	From a 2007 exhibit on Jewish cemeteries, I learned that they are sometimes called Beit Hayyim in Hebrew, House of Life. More than just a euphemism, it affirms ties between the living and the dead, and an eternal existence to come. Hans D. Beyer, “Interior of the Schmidl Family Vault,” Budapest, Hungary, 2006 I loved this photograph of the Schmidl family vault in Budapest. An art nouveau extravaganza from 1904, covered in mosaics, I’d like to see it in person someday.

Temple Emanu-El, New York City Temple Emanu-El is a beautiful, imposing synagogue, one of several great houses of worship on the green stretch of Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. The temple itself is shut tight like a fortress between services, However, if you go around to a side entrance on East 65th Street and ask the guard, you can visit the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum, which hosts temporary exhibits on various aspects of Jewish life, faith, and culture.

The museum occupies three smallish rooms on the second floor. A life-sized, somewhat cartoony Golda Meir sculpture currently greets you at the door. She seems nice, though somewhat off-putting, like the Jewish museological equivalent of the fiberglass Ronald McDonalds that help to dissuade me from ever eating chicken mcnuggets. Continue reading “Bernard Museum of Judaica at Temple Emanu-El”

July 11, 2017April 2, 2018

Jewish Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	140 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Florine Stettheimer’s marvelous “Heat” from 1919. Summer languor distilled into color.

Entrance, Jewish Museum, New York The first time I visited the Jewish Museum, in July of 2017, it was in the midst of re-installing its permanent collection, taking a floor and a substantial part of the reason to visit offline. I had doubts concerning the temporary shows on at the time— odd curatorial decisions, highly esoteric subject matter and general kitschiness all nudged me away from strongly recommending the museum.

I’ve now been back to see the new permanent galleries, and I’m happy to say that in a rare re-review of a place, the permanent collection hugely and positively changes my impression of the place. As a result, I’m updating my review and my summary rating (it was formerly all 3s). Continue reading “Jewish Museum”

July 4, 2017April 11, 2021

Studio Museum in Harlem

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	72 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Barkley L. Hendricks, Lawdy Mama, 1969, from the portraits show. Arresting today, must’ve been even more so when new. To quote the wall text, “Hendricks uses the master’s tools to dismantle his house.”

UPDATE APRIL 2021: The Studio Museum in Harlem is closed as it builds a new home for itself. I’m looking forward to visiting it in its new building. It opened a small temporary gallery space, but that is closed due to the pandemic.

Studio Museum in Harlem, New York The Studio Museum in Harlem harbors no small ambitions, despite its smallish space. It prints its mission statement outside its front door:

The Studio Museum in Harlem is the nexus for artists of African descent, locally, nationally and internationally and for work that has been inspired and influenced by black culture. It is a site for the dynamic exchange of ideas about art and society.

As Chief Brody says in Jaws, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

And yet, I left the Studio Museum reflecting that they do a masterful job with the boat they’ve got. Continue reading “Studio Museum in Harlem”

July 3, 2017February 17, 2024

Rubin Museum of Art

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	203 minutes (including a leisurely supper)
Best thing I saw or learned	Tibetan Buddhism has a macabre streak a mile wide, and I find it deeply endearing. They make bowls out of skulls and trumpets out of human leg bones. Perhaps not for everyone, but I consider that a healthy attitude toward mortality. What goth (or goth sympathizer) wouldn’t love the idea of dancing in the charnel fields with the Lords of the Cremation Grounds?

Rubin Museum of Art, Manhattan

Update: Feb 17, 2024: I’m very sad to learn that the Rubin Museum of Art is closing down as of October, 2024. As you can tell from this review, I love the Rubin, and will be sorry to see it go, or as they euphemistically put it become “a museum without walls.” Uh huh. Well, Buddhism is nothing if not about cycles, perhaps a future wall-bound incarnation will return someday. In the meantime, New York will be poorer for the loss — go while you can!

—

New York’s museums house themselves in a wide variety of repurposed spaces. Disused armories, synagogues, navy yards, customs houses, aircraft carriers, robber-baron mansions (galore), activist storefronts… nearly anything can be transformed into a museum with sufficient effort of will (and money).

But I believe only one museum in the city exists in a former department store. The old Barney’s, on 17th Street near Seventh Avenue, is now the home of the Rubin Museum of Art. It’s audacious that a former home of high-end fashion retail now teaches people about Tibetan Buddhism and related Himalayan cultures. Both rarefied atmospheres in their own ways, but that’s the only thing they have in common.

The Rubin, though, stands as a supremely successful museum conversion. It offers seven floors of exhibit space, a far better restaurant than you’d expect, and (hearkening back to the DNA of the building) a lovely little gift shop full of Buddhist and New Agey treasures (but sadly no leg bone trumpets).

Continue reading “Rubin Museum of Art”

July 2, 2017January 12, 2018

National Jazz Museum in Harlem

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	13 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	A poster of the famous Esquire Magazine jazz family portrait, taken on the stoop of a Harlem brownstone. The museum doesn’t say much about the creation of the picture, but the 1995 documentary “A Great Day in Harlem” covers it well.

Hey there, daddy-o, if you’re a swingin’ hep cat and you dig the syncopated sounds of America’s native musical form, have I got a museum for you!

Actually, I don’t. I went to the Jazz Museum skeptical but hopeful, and ultimately I can’t recommend it.

Skeptical because how do you put jazz in a museum? Music of any sort is a tricky thing to museum-ify. But jazz in particular, with its energy and improvisation… you could have a Hall of Fame for jazz. But a museum?

Hopeful because, hey, you never know. The right combination of stories, artifacts, and interactive listening kiosks might be able to do justice to the vast sweep of traditions that comprise jazz and its influence across the whole of music.

In the event, the Jazz Museum is at best a proto-museum. An aspirational museum. A sketch or an outline for an institution in the future. It occupies a small ground floor space on a side street in Harlem, and seems largely to exist as a shrine to one of Duke Ellington’s pianos. They have a couple of other instruments from less famous instrumentalists, and a chunk of a living room emphasizing the importance of music in homes in Harlem. But really there wasn’t much to see.

Duke Ellington's Piano, Jazz Museum Harlem — Duke Ellington’s Piano

They had Ella playing in the background, but even that proved a mixed blessing. There were a couple of touchscreens where visitors can listen to jazz, but the background music, while good, interfered with listening to the headphones.

Interactive Screen The Jazz Museum, Harlem — Also, their interactive jazz bios are in some cases tragically out of date.

On the other hand, their space includes a tiny, informal performance area in the back, and while I was there an older gent stopped in and just started playing the piano. Really well. As a musically untalented person, I hate people who can do that. But deeply appreciated it in that space.

National Jazz Museum in Harlem Visiting the National Jazz Museum made me think about the regular reports of the death of jazz, which may even be deader than opera at this point. I wondered if having a museum to it serves as yet another piece of evidence for the demise of the form? They have a display with photos of young jazz musicians, and sorta reach toward hip-hop, kinda. But really nothing I saw there suggests anything innovative or interesting has happened in jazz since the 1970s.

I firmly believe that museums for specific groups or cultures can emphasize the aliveness of the cultures they represent. Both the Museum of Chinese in America and the National Museum of the American Indian do that in different ways and at different scales. But I don’t think the National Jazz Museum succeeds. If jazz isn’t dead yet, maybe the museum will kill it.

If you are in New York City and are curious about or interested in jazz, here are an assortment of things I’d suggest you do rather than visit the Jazz Museum:

Hear a show at Smoke, Jazz Standard, Village Vanguard, Minton’s or any of a dozen or so other clubs.
Go to Jazz at Lincoln Center. A bit more stuffy and formalized — more like a museum for jazz if you will, but Wynton Marsalis is the reigning king of the art form. And the Allen Room has the best view of any music venue in New York City.
Check out art from the Jazz Age–either the exemplary show currently at the Cooper-Hewitt, or any time at the Whitney.
Make a pilgrimage to the final resting places of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis in Woodlawn Cemetery.
Rent or stream Ken Burns’s PBS jazz series
Visit Louis Armstrong’s house in Corona, Queens

As for the Jazz Museum, maybe, possibly go to a performance there. But skip it otherwise.

For Reference:

Address	58 West 129th Street, Manhattan
Website	jazzmuseuminharlem.org
Cost	Free
Other Relevant Links	Time Out NY’s coverage of jazz venues Jazz at Lincoln Center (jazz.org) Ken Burns’s Jazz “A Great Day in Harlem”

June 29, 2017

China Institute

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	38 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Inexplicably, the jade burial suit included round bits just where the nipples should go. Mysterious, as there were no jade abs or jade belly button. Still, it created a link across times and cultures from Han Dynasty China to Ancient Greece and Rome to the awful Val Kilmer Batman movies.

China Institute, New York The China Institute occupies second floor space in a fairly anonymous office building in the Financial District. It appears they will soon move to much more prominent ground-floor space, which should help drive awareness and attract visitors.

The Institute broadly recently turned 90 years old. Like the Japan Society and the Korean Cultural Center, it serves multiple purposes: hosting talks and language classes and, since 1966, a gallery as well. Unfortunately, the China Institute frowns on photography, so this will be a relatively un-visual review.

The gallery is reasonably sized, windowless, and neutral. The current exhibition divides into four themes or sub-topics, and to match that the curators divided the space into four rooms, using modular internal walls. It worked well.

Have a Good Afterlife

The space, then, is fine, and right now they’ve filled it with treasures. “Dreams of the Kings: A Jade Suit for Eternity, Treasures of the Han Dynasty from Xuzhou” displays examples of the funerary goods buried with a prominent Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220) ruler. It includes terra cotta figures selected from the army-in-miniature they buried kings with. While not as impressive as the life sized ones from Xi’an, these were much more portable. It also featured various other terra cotta servants, including a beautiful dancer, all long sleeves and sinuous curves. And finally, various beautiful and luxurious objects made of jade, bronze, and gold, all complementing the showstopper at the exhibition’s heart.

That would be the jade suit. Literally, a head-to-toe burial costume comprised of 4,248 little jade tiles with tiny holes pierced in the corners allowing each piece to be tied to the next with gold thread. According to contemporary beliefs, burying the nobility with appropriate jade accoutrements–handgrips, plugs for the nine orifices, and the full suit–helped ensure the preservation of the body (and therefore the soul) forever.

Marketing for China Institute Exhibition — Marketing a jade suit

I felt just a little bit suspicious about the state of preservation of the jade that makes up the suit. Other jade pieces in the show look…older. They definitely restored it significantly, but the exhibition doesn’t specify just how much. I’m no archaeologist and I’m not reviewing the suit, so I’ll not say more on that subject.

On the other hand, the well-written labels and wall texts explained things well and thoroughly. They even sneaked a pun into one of the section titles, “Rapt in Jade.” I doubt that works in Mandarin, but in English it made me smile.

Where else in New York can you take a tour through the tomb treasures of a 2,000 year old Han Dynasty ruler? Actually, by coincidence, one place: you can see very similar, but even more extravagant, artifacts at The Met’s “Age of Empires” show. But outside The Met, you’d have to go to China.

Under the Radar no More

The China Institute has flown under my radar in the past. I won’t let that happen going forward. Their ability to borrow the Han tomb artifacts from the Xuzhou Museum bespeaks strong connections with cultural institutions and government leaders. I’d compare it to the Onassis Center in terms of ambitions and capabilities.

Who should visit? The Met’s China galleries will always offer a better overview for those seeking the full sweep of Chinese art history. But sometimes you want something smaller and more focused, or you don’t have a whole day to spend on art overload. For sure anyone with an interest in Asian art should definitely go, and keep an eye on their calendar, too.

When it comes to prepping for the afterlife, I’m not convinced about having jade plugs stuffed in my nine orifices and being dressed in a jade suit. Judging from history, it seems like an invitation to grave robbers to mess you up. Three orifices plus some terra cotta dancers to keep me company would be plenty, thanks. I’ll share more on my preferred funerary practices when I get around to visiting Green-Wood and Woodlawn.

For Reference:

Address	100 Washington Street, Manhattan (entrance at 40 Rector)
Website	chinainstitute.org
Cost	General Admission: $10 (free for IDNYC members)
Other Relevant Links	Vice talks to Joel Schumacher about Batman Forever

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

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

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 25, 2017

Japan Society Gallery

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	45 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	It can be hard for an untrained modern viewer to distinguish between youths and women in Japanese prints. There are subtle but important hairstyle and fabric differences but in terms of face and body shape, they were depicted very similarly. I wonder how many pretty women I’ve seen in woodblock prints over the years have actually been pretty dudes.

The Japan Society’s home, Japan House, was designed in 1971, by architects Junzo Yoshimura and George Shimamoto of Gruzen & Partners, and built on a site near the United Nations donated by the Society’s then-president, John D. Rockefeller the Third. The Society’s history, however, goes back much further than that; it was founded in 1907 in the wake of an official U.S. visit by two Japanese dignitaries. Its fortunes have waxed and waned along with Japan-U.S. relations, and today the society is a great place to take a language class, hear a talk, see a movie, or see some art.

The building feels simultaneously modern (for a midcentury architectural definition of same) and Japanese, and the first thing you notice on entering is the sound of water from a gentle fountain, replete with a stand of bamboo, a modernist, completely enclosed and skylit, take on a traditional courtyard garden.

The Society’s gallery space is on the second floor, in rooms arrayed around the courtyard. They program all kinds of stuff there. It’s one of the first places I saw Haruki Murakami’s work; they’ve done great shows on crafts like contemporary Japanese basketwaving and ceramics; they did a show a couple of years ago on cats in Japanese art (I bet the Brooklyn curators were jealous the Japan Society thought of it first)… It’s a broad and varied list, always tied back to Japan.

The current show is called A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Prints, and looks at societal impressions of essentially tween- and teenage boys in early modern Japan. It makes the case that they were viewed as beautiful and desirable by both men and women, and displays a variety of contemporary woodblock prints, books, and other artifacts to examine how they were depicted and described in that society.

I am emphatically not going to use this blog to discuss concepts of gender or the politics of sexuality. But I was disturbed by this exhibition, because it robs the subject of the show of all agency: there’s nothing in it that says whether tween and teen boys in Japan liked being or wanted to be the objects of lustful attentions from grown up men and women. To me it feels uncomfortably like looking at TV shows and advertising from 1950s and 1960s America and concluding that women then enjoyed being secretaries and housewives and having their butts pinched by the boss.

My misgivings aside, like all Japan Society exhibitions I’ve attended it was well curated and thoughtfully designed. While none of the pieces in it is super-famous or a masterpiece, it leverages depth of collection to examine an otherwise unknown facet of life in Tokugawa Era (ca 1600-1868) Japan.

Unless you’re a fan of the Land of the Rising Sun (full disclosure, I am a fan, and have been a member of the Japan Society for well over a decade) I don’t think the Japan Society generally merits a special trip to the far eastern reaches of midtown Manhattan. But they put on a good show, and if you happen to be by the United Nations it’s an excellent place to imbibe some culture that will almost certainly be beautiful and interesting.

For Reference:

Address	333 E 47th Street, Manhattan
Website	japansociety.org
Cost	General Admission: $12
Other Relevant Links	Riki, my favorite izakaya near the Japan Society, in case you want to imbibe some topically appropriate alcohol post-visit