| 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For Reference:
| Address | 881 Seventh Avenue at 57th Street, Manhattan |
|---|---|
| Website | carnegiehall.org |
| Cost | Free |
| Other Relevant Links |
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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 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 
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.
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.
Almost better than the content was the array of antique tube monitors they scrounged up to show the video on. It’s been long enough that these bulky, cubical relics are starting to look alien to me. TV was so much better on one of these fuzzy old behemoths, said no one ever.
The African Burial Ground is a small monument overshadowed by the government buildings around Foley Square. As they were digging for a new federal building in 1991 they discovered bodies, and from there re-discovered a forgotten cemetery used by the city’s African American population in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
Today a corner of what used to be the cemetery is a small green open space with a black granite monument, standing in for a headstone. There aren’t any markers, of course, and if it weren’t for the signs and a series of low humps of earth, you’d probably just think it was a pocket park. It’s not the whole extent of the cemetery, as this city is sufficiently about commerce and building that it won’t let the past fully forestall progress, even when that past includes the earthly remains of slaves.
The African Burial Ground is definitely not entertaining. But it is important. Every New Yorker and everyone with an interest in the city and its history should go and pay their respects.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA for short). I knew the space would be great — it was designed by Maya Lin. But having recently been a bit disappointed by 
MOCA is indeed a beautifully designed museum. The space is consists of a series of rooms that surround a central open atrium, which extends from a skylight down to the classrooms, office, and restrooms on the basement level. Scarred bare brick underscores the age of the building, and its more industrial heritage. And windows carved into the rooms around the atrium ensure there’s always some natural light filtering in. The windows aren’t just openings, though: videos projected onto them make them serve a very clever dual purpose — the videos are also visible, of course, from the atrium side of the glass as well.
The educational program succeeds as well as the building does. MOCA does exactly what you’d expect: tells the story of the Chinese immigrant experience in the United States. The show is largely chronological, starting with Chinese immigration to build the railroads and the subsequent racist reactions to Chinese immigration in the 19th century, which led to laws that essentially prevented most Chinese immigration, as well as constraining the kinds of work Chinese immigrants could do.
In addition to the main space, there are two areas for temporary exhibitions. They currently feature an awesome look at Chinese food in the US, featuring about 33 chefs. Wall projections show video interviews where they speak about their lives and work and their take on “authenticity.” The museum set up one room like a banquet, with place settings for each chef that includes a short bio. This is a missed opportunity in our photogenic food-obsessed instagram age: there should be pictures of each chef’s signature dish at their setting. Still it’s a fun show, including a collection of personally meaningful objects: cleavers, cutting boards, menus, and such. Martin Yan’s wok is there, and Danny Bowien’s favorite spoon.
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.”
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.
Halls of fame today are two-a-penny. Everyone and everything from minor league lacrosse to rock n roll has a hall of fame. But it wasn’t always that way. There had to be, at some point, a first one.
The Czech Center’s museum space is small but effective, and it comes associated with three things that no cultural institution I’ve seen thus far can match: