Fotografiska

Edification value 2/5
Entertainment value 4/5
Should you go? 2/5
Time spent 88 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned My favorite picture in Fotografiska’s hip hop show is this iconic 1998 shot of Missy Elliott by Christian Witkin. It hits that perfect balance between posed and spontaneous, and she comes across as confident as hell.

Missy Elliott portrait at Fotografiska's hip hop show

At some point I’ll write a story about the superlative museums of New York. I don’t mean the best, but things like the smallest, the quirkiest, (which may well be one and the same), the oldest and so on. Fotografiska, a museum focused on photography, earns an unexpected superlative: It is the darkest museum I have visited in all of New York. I saw two different exhibitions there and both were lit very similarly: spotlights on photographs (and other work) in otherwise deep gloom.

Fotografiska, typical interior
Fotografiska, typical interior

 

It’s dramatic and unexpected — and a refreshing change to visit a museum where it’s actively challenging to take a selfie — or to take pictures for a museum review. But what else do I think about it?

A Snapshot of Fotografiska

Early in this project, I defined museums as non-profit organizations, thereby deliberately excluding museum-in-name-only experiential entertainment zones like the Museum of Ice Cream. I have been on the fence about Fotografiska since it opened in 2019.

Fotografiska is a mini museum empire, with outposts in Stockholm, Berlin, Shanghai, Miami, and Tallinn in addition to New York. It self-describes as “a destination to discover world-class photography, eclectic programming, elevated dining and surprising new perspectives,” and I’m pretty sure they’re in it to make money. And yet it also does use the m-word, and serious publications write about its shows.  So into the darkness I plunged.

Fotografiska's Renaissance revival NYC building

Fotografiska’s New York outpost occupies a landmark 1800s Renaissance Revival, former church mission house on Park Avenue South. The building’s interior was thoroughly transformed to house several floors of windowless gallery space and one of the fanciest restaurants at a New York museum, in keeping with the “elevated dining” part of the mandate.

Hip Hop Hooray

Fotografiska Hip Hop Exhibition, portrait of Biggie SmallsThe main show at Fotografiska when I visited celebrated the photography of hip hop, which is turning 50 years old this year. (Exact birthdate: August 11, 1973.) The show was organized into five zones:  an origins section, three geographic sections (East Coast, West Coast, and Southern, naturally), and a “hip hop today” closer. While breezy, hagiographic wall text introduced each section, there wasn’t a lot beyond that, and I really wanted more exposition.

Each photo did have a label identifying the photographer, the subject and date. Sometimes — too rarely — those labels also said something about the context of a photo, the when and why it was taken, which was a treat. Despite this, beyond identifying them by name the exhibition said nothing about the photographers of hip hop. It felt like a miss that a show in a museum of photography failed to focus on the artists behind the camera as well as those in front of it.

Fotografiska image of Jay Z
Chris Buck photo of Jay-Z from 1998, from a series that imagined what Jay-Z would be doing if he weren’t one of the most famous entertainers on the planet

There’s a great Vice article that interviewed three of the photographers featured in this exhibition about how they created specific images, including Christian Witkin on the one of Missy Elliott. It’s a big failing to me that those stories weren’t told as part of the show.

Even the title of the exhibition: “Hip Hop: Conscious/Unconscious” promised something that Fotografiska didn’t deliver. I’d love to have learned more about the process of imagemaking; how much of each of these pictures were “unconscious” capturing of moments versus consciously constructed images. I left feeling I’d seen a bunch of fantastic photos. And that was it. 

Second best thing I saw or learned at Fotografiska: Madonna and the Beastie Boys played Radio City Music Hall on June 6, 1985, almost exactly 38 years (and a handful of days) before I wrote this. I have no further comment on that, except: cool photo (by John Cheuse).

Beastie Boys publicity photo outside Radio City Music Hall

Sound and Fury

The second show at Fotografiska also disappointed. Titled “Listen Until You Hear,” I was intrigued by the cognitive dissonance of a photography show attempting to address to an aural phenomenon. However, that’s not what this was. Although all six contemporary artists in the exhibition included photography as part of their practices, much of the show featured videos and sculpture, which feels like cheating. It tried to coin”visual listening” but I’m unconvinced that’s a thing. 

I can imagine a great museum show about hearing and listening. The Rubin Museum pulled one off a few years ago. But this wasn’t it.

Should You Visit Fotografiska?

It’s hard to recommend Fotografiska as a museum. It’s very sceney and very cool. It has a distinct downtown vibe. And a museum of photography that’s so dark you can’t take good pictures there has an irony that I admire.

Fotografiska lobby and gift shop

However, both of the exhibitions I saw there felt like they were just for fun. And, particularly given the price of admission, that’s not enough to justify a visit.

If you like photography, there are several better museums in New York City. The International Center of Photography and the Aperture Foundation (currently closed because it’s moving) are both better, as well as much cheaper. The delightful Alice Austen House in Staten Island is also great if you like early street photography.

For Reference:

Address 281 Park Avenue South, Manhattan
Website https://www.fotografiska.com/
Cost  General Admission:  $30
Other Relevant Links
  • Verōnika, Fotografiska’s fancy restaurant
  • Bootleg recording of that 1985 Madonna concert at Radio City Music Hall (YouTube)
  • The birthplace (and birthdate of hip hop

 

Center for Italian Modern Art

Edification value 4/5
Entertainment value 3/5
Should you go? 3/5
Time spent 83 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Punt e Mes poster at Center for Italian Modern ArtMany years ago I saw Punt e Mes listed on a menu at a fancy cocktail bar described along the lines of “If you know, you know.” Punt e Mes is an excellent Italian vermouth. Its name is dialect for punto e mezzo, a point and a half— meaning one part bitter, half a part sweet. This poster elegantly depicts the concept. If you didn’t know before, now you do.

Knowledge Gap

How did I not know about the Center for Italian Modern Art? I love Italy and I love art. I am reasonably fond of modernity. And centers are generally okay with me, too. This is one of those places that has been quietly doing cool things just a bit under my radar. In fact, I only know about it because I received a Poster House email announcing a tour of the current exhibit.

Center for Italian Modern Art, exterior

The Center for Italian Modern Art (inevitably, “CIMA,” but at least it’s pronounced “chee-ma”) occupies a light-filled fourth floor SoHo loft space. I expect it is a coincidence that it’s just around the corner from the last vestiges of Manhattan’s Little Italy, which has been eroding steadily since well before I moved to New York City. Still, it’s an interesting confluence of things Italian. 

Center for Italian Modern Art, interior with fireplace

CIMA’s exhibition space is compact, consisting mainly of a gallery area that boasts lovely wood floors, an appropriately sleek and modern ornamental fireplaceCenter for Italian Modern Art's very modern kitchen, and huge windows. A hallway widens into a smaller rear gallery, passing a beautiful modern kitchen with a plethora of Pantone espresso cups. Offices and a coat room are tucked behind discreet doors.

Although limited in square footage, it’s comfortable, with chairs and couches and that very nice kitchen lending a homey touch.

Posters Galore

Center for Italian Modern Art, interiorThe exhibition when I visited the Center for Italian Modern Art focused on posters made between the 1920s and the 1950s. It examined the interplay between the worlds of high art and commercial advertising, starting with the Italian futurists and cubists. It concluded with two pieces by Mimmo Rotella, who was something of an Italian anti-Warhol, taking actual posters and folding, spindling, and mutilating them into artworks that say things about capitalism and consumerism. Not generally positive things. 

Arranged chronologically, the exhibition touched on tremendous changes in advertising from the pre-war period, the rise of Italian Fascism, and through to postwar reconstruction.

Although there was little in the way of wall texts, CIMA is part of the growing network of organizations that leverage the Bloomberg Connects app, and so offered descriptions of key pieces via mobile. There was also a catalog for sale.

I want to go on about the variety of techniques Italian midcentury poster designers used (some cool photomontages here). I could also reflect on the changing dynamics between corporate brand identities and creative artistic impulses  But mostly I want to rave about how awesome these posters were. Not to fixate on alcohol, but an early, cubist-inflected Campari advertisement definitely caught my eye. 

Campari poster at the Center for Italian Modern Art

Lucio Fontana for Lloyd Triestino: Express service for the whole worldThe show also included a poster by Lucio Fontana, who is far better known as an artist than a graphic designer. His 1935 poster for Lloyd Triestino ship lines sleekly conveys speed and modernity. And it also hints at the linear slashes in canvas that would later make him famous. (Apologies for the inadvertent selfie in my photo.)

I could go on… I haven’t even mentioned Olivetti yet, and that’s a shame. Only an Italian company could make a typewriter into a fashion accessory.

Andare o non andare?

The Center for Italian Modern Art puts on two shows a year. Its hours are limited and moreover it requires an appointment, so no just dropping in spontaneously in the midst of a SoHo shopping spree. Its smallish space means anything CIMA does will be focused and fairly limited in scope.

Center for Italian Modern Art, interiorThat said, I was extremely impressed with the curation of the poster show — not to mention the beauty of the pieces they selected. Flipping through CIMA’s past catalogs left me vexed that I missed this place on my initial list of New York museums. On the brighter side, I’m happy that I know about it now. I will keep an eye on CIMA and I’m looking forward to seeing what it puts on next.

Anyone who likes cose italiane, or modern art, should look out for this place as well.

 

For Reference:

Address 421 Broome Street, 4th Floor, Manhattan
Website https://www.italianmodernart.org/
Cost General Admission:  $10; $15 for a tour. All visits by appointment only
Other Relevant Links

 

Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History

Edification value N/A
Entertainment value N/A
Should you go? N/A
Time spent 51 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned In the display of the museum’s collections, I characteristically especially liked the plethora of bats.Bats!

Much has changed among New York museums since I started systematically visiting them. I’ve revised the list multiple times, and I have visited several that were not part of my initial plan. I’ve also revisited ones that have expanded or changed. The American Museum of Natural History recently opened the Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, a vast new wing of the venerable institution, and its biggest change since it replaced the old planetarium with the spiffy sphere-in-a-clear-glass-box of the Rose Center over twenty years ago.

Gilder Center interior

I visited the Gilder Center during its member-only opening weekend. Rather than re-review the whole museum, I have some impressions of the new space, and its likely impact on the rest of the institution.

Sexy, Sexy Curves

Gilder Center interiorThe Gilder Center is a very, very, very sexy building. It’d be easy to dismiss its biomorphic, asymmetrical forms as Flintstones architecture, or aping termites or some other social insect. And those are valid brickbats. But, seriously, look at these curves. This is the most Instagrammable new museum space New York has seen since someone last showed off a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room.

(Perhaps times have changed enough that I should revert to “photogenic” rather than Instagrammable — but I stand by that statement either way…)

And these snapshots are me only half trying – imagine the photos someone with a good camera who really studies the light and angles will be able to take. The building’s forms come from deliberately rough concrete, sprayed layer by layer following what must’ve been insanely complex plans to look like it just sort of accidentally formed the way it did.

Gilder Center interior view

There’s an argument to be made that museums aren’t supposed to be sexy. Except for the Museum of Sex, of course. Certainly if this were an art museum there’d be a valid gripe of the building upstaging the art (I’m looking at you, Frank Gehry). But that doesn’t apply to science museums. Moreover, unlike many other flamboyant recent museum buildings, Gilder keeps its sexiness largely under wraps. The calm façade resembles cut stone — like upthrust sedimentary rock layers — fitting with the scale and massing of the rest of the Columbus Avenue side of the building. Indeed, it may be too calm, like a tech startup corporate headquarters. At least it runs no risk of upstaging the Neoclassical if recently de-Roosevelt-ed Central Park West entrance.

Gilder Center exterior view

Raisons d’etre

The two things that the Natural History Museum most desperately needed were more space and more connections between far-flung parts of the place. Important halls like Gems and Minerals have long been culs-de-sac, fun to discover but hard to get back out of. The Gilder Center was precision crafted to address both of those issues, as well as creating new exhibit spaces.

Gilder’s wayfinding and signage are great, although they doesn’t follow the pattern of the rest of the museum. Then again, I love AMNH for its glorious inconsistencies.  Stairways are easy to find and, like the Rose Center, the windows in this wing will also help visitors orient themselves.

AMNH also needed more research space, and, apparently, a library, which is by far my favorite space in the new building. On the top floor, it appears to have a concrete tree in the middle. Tree of Knowledge? Tree of Life? Anyway, it evokes Saarinen’s landmark TWA terminal at JFK, with sleek midcentury-esque furniture to match. Like most visitors I probably won’t use it, and only glimpsed it through the glass door. But, wow, I’d like to research some science in there.

The Library at the Gilder Center
Sexy library

Bugs, Mycelia, Whales and More

Leafcutter ants at the Gilder Center
What could go wrong with introducing a colony of ravenous, leaf-chewing, fungus-growing ants in the middle of Manhattan?

The Gilder Center also houses several new exhibits. Most notably, the Museum now has a permanent insect exhibit, praising the myriad of ecosystem services provided by our arthropod friends. Displays feature the Insects of New York and a living colony of leafcutter ants. I fear them getting out and eating Central Park or something and I hope AMNH’s entomologists thought that through. The museum now also has a permanent space for frolicking with live butterflies, though even on the member preview day the line for that was long enough that I skipped it.

There’s also a series of displays about AMNH’s unparalleled collection of objects catalogued and tagged and stored (often after being killed and stuffed or formaldehyded) for future researchers. This takes up one wall across multiple floors and is really fun. It offers a sort of Cliffs Notes version of the museum itself. Reinforcing that this place drives ongoing important research are a couple of spaces where visitors can peek in on scientists at work. I would not want to put up with that were I on the staff, but hopefully exhibitionist researchers will enjoy it.

Lightshow!
The light fantastic

And finally, there’s an interactive, immersive space called Invisible Worlds. This is, essentially, an excuse for kids to run around and burn off energy. It tells several stories: about the mycelial networks that underpin forests, the neurons that make our brains run, and the web of life that comprises plankton. Each of these includes moments that invite visitors to stomp on lights on the floor, or create patterns as lights follow their movements.  Lacking a conventional playground, this is a clever way to bleed off some hyperactivity and perhaps make other parts of AMNH calmer as a result. You could also hold a pretty awesome rave in there, assuming raves are still a thing.

Final thoughts on the Gilder Center

I went to the Gilder Center a skeptic. It’s such showy architecture. Biomorphic curves look good (sometimes) but do they do anything to help people get from Point A to Point B? And yet, it won me over.

Gilder’s thoughtful connections make the rest of AMNH far easier to navigate. As with the Rose Center, when you’re in the space you always know where you are. Hopefully traffic patterns in the rest of the museum will improve in the coming weeks. That said, who knows whether the Gilder Center’s 230,000 new square feet will mitigate the crowds or end up just as overcrowded as the rest of the museum. For now, I’m cautiously optimistic.

AMNH Gilder CenterThe Gilder Center also represents AMNH looking at itself via the view of the collections, and also literally, as new windows peer out at the red brick facade of the older building.

On the downside, the Gilder adds some things I’m not sure the museum needed. For example, there’s a show-off grand staircase/ bleacher affair in the lobby that was cool the first time I saw one but now seems an overused architectural trick. Also a fancy new restaurant. And I’m unconvinced about the whole “live scientists on display” element.

While I’m being critical, I’m also not sure how this architecture is going to age. I have a feeling that in twenty years Gilder will look “so 2020s” to people. And who knows how easy or hard it’s going to be to maintain the rough concrete – I expect those beautiful biomorphic surfaces are going to collect dust like nobody’s business.

However, frivolous features and maintenance challenges feel like small quibbles. For the moment, I love what they’ve done with the place.

Gilder Center bleacher staircase

For Reference:

Address 415 Columbus Avenue, Manhattan
Website https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/gilder-center
Cost  General Admission:  $28 for adults (pay what you will for residents of NY, NJ, and CT)
Other Relevant Links

 

Jackie Robinson Museum

Edification value 3/5
Entertainment value 2/5
Should you go? 2/5
Time spent 74 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned In 1956 the Brooklyn Dodgers made a goodwill tour of Japan. It’s a footnote to Jackie Robinson’s story but I loved the display containing photos, tickets, and other souvenirs from that trip. Jackie Robinson / Dodgers program in Japanese

I grew up a fan of both science fiction and dry English humor. As a result, whenever I see the number 42 I immediately think of the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. 

42 - 9 - 5 : Jackie Robinson's numbers as a professional athleteIf instead I had grown up in Brooklyn and been a fan of baseball, the number 42 would’ve had a similarly huge and cosmic significance. It was Jackie Robinson’s number when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 to 1956.

That significance of 42 is explored in detail at one of New York City’s newest museums (as of April 2023), the Jackie Robinson Museum, located somewhat unexpectedly in Soho. 

Jackie Robinson Museum

Texts and timelines

The Jackie Robinson Museum occupies a bright ground floor space at the corner of Canal and Varick Streets. It’s something of a shame, actually, as the south-facing windows are almost entirely blocked by displays. A bit of daylight sneaks around them, but the design diminishes some the potential awesomeness of the space.

The museum comprises two main galleries: One devoted to Robinson the man and the other to Robinson the athlete. Smaller spaces invite visitors to “speak out, stand up!” (in a stairwell) and highlight Jackie Robinson in pop culture (by the restrooms). The curators take a role-based approach to Robinson’s life: soldier, activist, entrepreneur, family man, and of course athlete. Each of those pillars of the man is represented by a literal pillar in the museum, summarized by nice little infographics of key stats: “Jackie by the Numbers.”

There's a lot to read at the Jackie Robinson Museum

Infographics notwithstanding, the museum is extremely text-heavy — it felt like reading a Jackie Robinson biography printed on the walls (the photo here is typical). Indeed, it surprised me how little video the museum uses. (More on that in a moment.)

Beyond the copious amounts of text, each gallery contains a giant wall-filling timeline, one for Robinson’s life and one for his sports career.

Timeline of Jackie Robinson's life and times
Timeline blocking a view of Canal Street

Where’s Jackie Robinson?

If there was one thing missing from the Jackie Robinson Museum it’s, surprisingly, Jackie Robinson himself. For sure, there are lots of photos of him, and memorabilia, and quotations in wall texts. But for a very famous person who must’ve given countless radio and television interviews — the museum says that he even starred in his own biopic — there’s very little of that in the Jackie Robinson Museum.

It’s a notable contrast to the presence of Louis Armstrong that fills the wonderful Louis Armstrong House in Queens. Louis’s self-recorded audio journals bring the place to life. Here, Robinson doesn’t tell his own story so much as have it told for him, and the experience is poorer for it.

Wall of multimedia recordings of interviews about Jackie Robinson

It’s not that the place is against media. There’s a whole corner of interactive tablets featuring  public figures delivering encomiums to Jackie Robinson’s general awesomeness, but not Robinson himself.

I’m never one to advocate for tech for its own sake, but in this metaversal age, if there’s any New York museum that could justify a tasteful holographic re-creation of its raison d’etre, it’s this museum.

The museum does include a fun, interactive, multi-sensory recreation of Ebbets Field (the Dodgers’ legendary stadium in Flatbush). So the curators thought along these lines.

A taste of Ebbets Field
Multimedia, interactive, Ebbets Field

Should you visit the Jackie Robinson Museum?

Old-school Brooklynites, Dodgers fans, and fans of historic moments in racial integration will definitely want to visit the Jackie Robinson Museum. Fans of Jackie Robinson’s story should also visit the awesome City Reliquary, which houses a lighthearted shrine to the man.

The museum does its job. I learned a significant amount about a historical figure I didn’t know all that much about –beyond his key historic achievement. However, I wish the narrative struck a better balance between the history and the fun, and with a lot less to read.

And when it comes to fun, the Jackie Robinson Museum swings and misses. For sure, the difficult, painful challenges of fighting racism and integrating Major League Baseball are stories this museum needs to tell. But this is also a story about baseball, and Chock Full O’Nuts coffee (When he retired from the Dodgers, Robinson became a VP there, the first Black vice president of a major American company), and being one of the most famous athletes in the world. It’s not that the Jackie Robinson Museum ignored the triumphs in Jackie Robinson’s life. It’s just that the balance felt off, and the man himself felt strangely absent. And that makes it hard to recommend to anyone with a merely casual interest.

Jackie Robinson Apple Ad

For Reference:

Address 75 Varick Street, Manhattan
Website jackierobinsonmuseum.org
Cost  General Admission:  $18
Other Relevant Links

 

American Academy of Arts and Letters

Edification value 3/5
Entertainment value 3/5
Should you go? 3/5
Time spent 37 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned This 2015 tapestry by Michael Smith, titled “Excuse Me I am looking for the Fountain of Youth!” delighted me. Who makes tapestries? But this one was full of wonderful narrative details including skinny dipping bunnies, errant knights, and a TSA metal detector. Michael Smith Tapestry

A Hall of Fame for Great Artists

Imagine the 250 greatest living creators of art and literature had a club, and you could only join it if one of them nominated you. Once you’re in, you’re in for life, and you and the other 249 greatest creators would get together and, I don’t even know what. Hob-nob, soiree, cotillion, give prizes to one another and possibly to other artists who aren’t quite 250-worthy, but hey, you keep trying there.

That’s the American Academy of Arts and Letters, founded in 1898. Except that in 2020 it graciously upped its ranks (or, from another point of view, lowered its standards) to 300. 

It somewhat reminds me of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, except the Academy’s 250 (or 300) don’t have bronze busts. They do, however, have a neat clubhouse up in Harlem, part of the Audubon Terrace complex that also houses the Hispanic Society.

American Academy of Arts and Letters
Pavilion Number One

 

A Space on Audubon Terrace

Mere mortals mostly don’t get to visit the Academy. However, periodically, the place does open up for special exhibitions. I have always managed to miss them, right up until this year, when I finally made a visit.

The Academy’s gallery spaces are lovely, in a slightly-gone-to-seed way. They comprise two mirror-image Beaux-Arts pavilions facing one another across the brick plaza of the Terrace.

American Academy of Arts and Letters
Pavilion Number Two
Trinity Church Cemetery
A view to die for

Their interiors range from darkened rooms for video installations to spaces bright with skylights or windows (overlooking the atmospheric Trinity Cemetery and Mausoleum, no less).

I tend to think contemporary art works best in older spaces. The contrast of old and new works better for me than, say, an austere, whitewashed concrete box.  So the slightly shabby pavilions held great appeal. Moreover, I appreciated how thoughtfully the curators used the variety of spaces at their disposal.

American Academy of Arts and Letters

Invitational Only

I saw the Academy’s 2022 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, a sort of mini-Whitney-biennial of contemporary artists that the Academy’s members like. Future member recruitment? 

American Academy
Carl D’Alvia, Loveseat, 2021

The description said that although there was no intentional theme, nonetheless, “[i]n many cases, the finished works destabilize, even disregard, old disciplinary questions rooted in hierarchy—is it a painting or a sculpture; art or craft? Instead, they opt for plenitude, for and, and, and. ” Indeed, the show included nearly three dozen artists working in eclectic materials: ceramics and glass, sculpture and video, the aforementioned tapestry, and even upholstery (see Loveseat)

These kinds of exhibits are always hit-or-miss, and so I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the show was a hit for me. It helped that most pieces in this show were lighthearted, clever, and often quite beautiful. For example, I loved Judy Fox’s slightly creepy, biomorphic,  technicolor terra cotta pieces that looked like something out of a Jeff VanderMeer book.

Should You Visit the American Academy of Arts and Letters?

The Academy’s raison d’être is unfashionable these days. Elitism and exclusivity aren’t really a good look. However, I think elitism, after a fashion, is due for a comeback, and so I am very happy that the Academy still exists, and seems to be going strong. 

ThAmerican Academy Bronze Doorse entrance to one of the two Academy pavilions features a pair of handsome, old-school bronze doors, with naked cherubim and the personifications of Inspiration (girl) and Drama (guy), along with the sentiment, “By the gates of art we enter the temple of happiness.” However, the pediment of the same building bears a different perspective: “All passes, art alone untiring stays to us.”

While art isn’t always (and shouldn’t always be) about making people happy, positioning museums as temples of untiring happiness is no bad thing, especially in an era when happiness feels in especially short supply.

The Academy boasts great old spaces for viewing new art, and Audubon Terrace is an unexpected architectural gem. I’d definitely recommend visiting the next time the Academy opens its doors.

For Reference:

Address 633 West 155th Street, Manhattan
Website https://artsandletters.org
Cost  General Admission:  Free
Other Relevant Links

 

Hispanic Society of America

Edification value 2/5
Entertainment value 2/5
Should you go? 2/5
Time spent 33 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned It’s a predictable choice but Hispanic Society’s Goya, “The Duchess of Alba,” from 1797, is a fantastic portrait.  I especially love that Goya inscribed his signature on the sandy shore where she’s standing. The Duchess unsubtly points a bejeweled finger toward his name. 

Goya's Duchess of Alba, Detail
The Duchess gives Goya the finger

 

Iberian Dreams…

Like many other institutions around New York City, the Hispanic Society of America was founded by a rich guy who became obsessed with something. Think Gustav Heye and what is now the New York branch of the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, or Mr. Frick’s collection or Mr. Morgan’s library… Occasionally it was an obsessed rich woman, like Jacques Marchais’s thing for Tibetan Art or the artistic passions of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

In the case of the Hispanic Society, the rich dude was Archer Milton Huntington. And the obsession was the art of the Iberian peninsula. Archer Milton Huntington opened his Spanish Museum in 1908, though he’d dreamed of having a museum of some kind since he was a boy. Born very rich, the story goes that as a young man Huntington fell in love with Hispanic art on a visit to Mexico, which sparked many trips to Spain, learning Spanish as well as Arabic, and becoming both a connoisseur of and an expert in the art and culture.

The Hispanic Society is located in a splendid Beaux-Arts building in Harlem, part of the Audubon Terrace campus. It’s an interesting quirk of fate that Spanish is much more likely to be spoken in the museum’s neighborhood today than when it opened there a century ago. The beautiful old building is a blessing and a curse: the museum closed for a massive renovation shortly before I started my museum project back in 2017, and remained closed right up until 2022.

Today, happily, it is in the first stages of reopening its doors. When I visited back in March, I saw a “best-of” selection of the museum’s collection, curated to demonstrate how its mission has evolved and expanded.

Nuestra casa es su casa

The exhibit on view when I visited was titled Nuestra casa, and split a small basement space into two sections. The first half focused on Archer Huntington’s dream for the museum, travels in Spain, and the foundations of the collection. The second half was titled “A collection without borders” and focused on the museum’s mission since the 1990s, when it started to greatly increase its holdings from Latin America.

The Hispanic Society argues that this is justified because of the huge cultural influences back and forth between Iberia and its colonial (or former colonial) holdings – the Spanish and Portuguese speaking worlds. And of course it wants to stay relevant in a cultural landscape much-changed since Huntington’s time.

I’m not convinced the exhibit really supported the “one big world of influences” argument. It was easy to see Spain and Portugal influencing art in their overseas territories; however, cultural influences in the other direction were much less clear. I think that’s a fault of the bifurcated curation; it didn’t let the Society’s classic collection and its more recent acquisitions really talk to one another.

The space was a let-down as well: a small, windowless room, interrupted by a row of six large columns, with walls painted in shades of ochre that play off the collection’s Goya.

Hispanic Society Interior

That said, the Hispanic Society’s greatest hits are indeed quite great, including a dynamite Velázquez and the aforementioned showstopping Goya portrait, along with El Greco, Zurbarán, and even a dark and murky Sargent. I had a less strong reaction to the art from the New World, though some small devotional sculptures from Equador, depicting what awaits after death, were almost Tibetan in their macabre exuberance.

Four Fates of Man
Manuel Chili, “The Four Fates of Man,” Ecuador, ca 1775

Should You Visit the Hispanic Society Museum?

I’m excited that the Hispanic Society seems to be (slowly) returning to life as a museum. Its important collection and beautiful building are valuable restorations to the cultural fabric of the city. 

However, the tiny current space doesn’t merit a trip. Having seen photos of what the building’s interiors look like I’m confident that will change when more of the place opens back up. I just hope it won’t be another five years before that happens. 

Hispanic Society Interior View

The Hispanic Society is worth a quick stop if you happen to be in that part of Harlem. It might make a good combination with the splendid Morris-Jumel Mansion, both historic buildings. It is also close to the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, and while kids may not enjoy the Hispanic Society, at least the small size means they won’t get too impatient. 

On a nice day it would be pleasant to just hang out in the piazza of Audubon Terrace and contemplate Don Quixote (yay), the conquistadors (boo), and El Cid (yay? boo? I don’t know…), all of whom are immortalized there. The Society once shared the terrace with the aforementioned American Indian Museum, as well as the American Numismatic Society. A mini Lincoln Center of museums and cultural institutions, now scattered across the City. The American Academy of Arts and Letters is still there, and occasionally opens for exhibitions.

Audubon Terrace Plaza
El Cid, by Anna Hyatt Huntington

Finally, those with an interest in modern or contemporary Hispanic art should also consider El Museo del Barrio, which didn’t impress me much but for the moment has far more to see than the Hispanic Society.

For Reference:

Address 613 W 155th Street, Manhattan
Website hispanicsociety.org
Cost  General Admission:  Free

 

International Center of Photography

 

NOTE: This is my original review of ICP in its old space on The Bowery. Here are my thoughts on their new home on Essex Street.

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  3/5
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.  

International Center of Photography

International Center of PhotographyThe 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”

The Frick Madison

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent 210 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Bellini’s wonderful St. Francis in the Desert now has a room to itself, angled to one of the Breuer’s weird, skewed windows such that the light hits it exactly the way the light in the painting works. It’s like Bellini knew back in the 1470s that someday this room would exist, or like Breuer knew someday this painting would be in this spot. It gave me chills. Also, St. Francis in the Desert has one of the best oblivious donkeys in all of art.

Have you ever had a dear old friend, tell you that they planned to change up their entire look? Style, hair, clothes, the way they present themselves…the whole shebang. Have you ever worried that, even though you know they’ll be the same person underneath the superficial changes, you might like them… less? Maybe tried to talk them out of it? “You’re awesome just as you are! Don’t go changing!”

This has never happened to me with a person, but it’s very much how I reacted when the Frick Collection announced that while Stately Frick Manor is closed for a major renovation and expansion, Mr. Frick’s art would be on view in Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist building, originally home to the Whitney and lately venue for the Met’s experimental, defunct Met Breuer effort.

There’s no overstating the magnitude of the change, the cognitive shock of Henry Clay Frick’s lovely, genteel, incredibly tasteful collection of masterpieces recontextualized out of the home that’s been its home for over a century, and re-installed in one of the least friendly buildings in New York City. 

I feel like I should hate it. To be brutal(ist)ly honest, I wanted to hate it.

I loved it.

Possibly this is because it was my first art museum visit in 4 months. Maybe I was just starved for art…maybe you could’ve showed me anything and I would’ve gone into raptures. But I don’t think so.

Space: The Final Frontier

The clearest benefit of the move to the Breuer building is a ton of square footage to play with. I wonder if the Frick curators toyed with the idea of keeping everything more or less “where it was” — recreating the mansion’s rooms in the Breuer space. Like what they did with the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. That would have been a terrible idea. Probably.

Instead, for the first time ever, the Frick collection is arranged chronologically and thematically. That sort of pedagogy is out of fashion in museums and seems very retro, but it makes tons of sense, and it feels new, because we’ve never been able to see this art this way before.

For example, the Vermeers are in one place, creating arguably the best single roomful of art in New York City (prove me wrong!). Holbein’s Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More now glare eye to eye, no fireplace or stern St. Jerome separating them. I never realized how many Van Dycks the Frick Collection had til I saw them all in one place.

The extra space also creates more breathing room between pieces. As a result, there’s less sensory overload, and so more ability to focus. Works that were second-tier Frick treasures get attention, and the Frick’s best pieces get showcased in ways the mansion doesn’t allow.

What’s more, things that were perviously part of the scenery — the porcelains, the bronzes, the carpets — now get spotlights, literally, thrown on them. The porcelain room is a particular delight, and its very contemporary design made me stop and pay attention to those pieces in a way I never have before.

The other remarkable change is you can get closer to some pieces now, and the heights and sight lines are different. It’s a literal shift of perspective. To wit, I’ve never been a fan of the froufrou Fragonard room with its insipid cherubs. It’s still definitely not my fave, but seeing its panels anew on Madison, rearranged, I realized that at least some of those cherubs are violent. And therefore a little edgy.

What’s Stayed The Same

In terms of things that haven’t changed, the Frick has retained its no-photos policy. While I deeply respect that, this is an utterly photogenic, super-Instagrammable experience. Visitors will be tempted!

Also, The Frick’s retained its no-wall-text philosophy. You can pick up a free guide, or download a reasonably good Bloomberg-sponsored app, but if you want, it can be just you and the art. I admire that.

A Whole New World

The best art makes you see the world in a new way, and the best museums make you see art in a new way. However, for a place like the Frick, there are few opportunities (outside of their jewel-box special exhibitions) to let people see the collection anew. That’s okay when you’re as perfect as the Frick. But perfection breeds inertia, and a resistance to innovate. It takes some doing to overcome that.

I’m surprised at how pithy my original, 2017 Frick review is. But it says what it needed to say: Everyone needs to go to the Frick. And I wish it would never change.

The Frick Madison forces me to rethink part of that conclusion. Everyone definitely needs to go to the Frick Madison, most especially people who know and love the original. And I stand happily corrected about the “never change” part. I can’t wait to go back.

For Reference:

Address 945 Madison Avenue, Manhattan
Website https://www.frick.org/
Cost  General Admission:  $22. Advance tickets required
Other Relevant Links
  • Details on the Frick building project are here.

 

Children’s Museum of Manhattan

Edification value 2/5
Entertainment value 2/5
Should you go? 2/5
Time spent 126 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned This multilayered architectural image that, if you look closely, it turns out incorporate TIE fighters into it. I know nothing about it — there was no wall text and I neglected to ask any of the staff who did it. But I liked it! 

Children's Museum of Manhattan

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan was founded in 1973, and makes its home in the former Holy Trinity Parochial School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I mostly make fun of museum acronym-based nicknames, but I kind of like “CMOM.” I just wish I liked the museum as much as its motherly acronym.

Children's Museum of Manhattan Exterior

CMOM is an odd mishmash of different things. If there’s a curatorial or organizational idea behind it, they keep it well hidden. Moreover, it’s not really clear from my visit there who the ideal visitor is. Well, I suppose the ideal visitors are harried New York parents who will pay anything to give their kids something to keep them occupied for a couple of hours. 

What’s on at CMOM

The museum currently hosts 7 exhibits spread across its 5 floors. A couple of floors are meant for specific ages, but most of the exhibits seem simultaneously too simple for older kids and too dense for younger ones. Is this for budding science nerds? Artsy kids? CMOM tries to be something for everyone, which I think is a mistake.

For instance, take “It’s About Time.” Here’s a bit of this small installation.

Children's Museum of Manhattan
Watch This?

Who’s likely to find this interesting? Besides the Bulova Watch Company, which is lauded by name (“Bulova: A Timely New York Story”) and not incidentally provided financial support for the installation. Too much wall text for a little kid; there’s some interactivity in the installation, but, why? I love a good anachronism as much as the next guy, but clockwork clocks and watches are not the most interesting or relevant technologies for a kid-oriented museum to showcase.

Tough to Digest

Super SprowtzThen there’s the Super Sprowtz, a short-lived effort from 7 years ago to use puppet vegetables to teach kids about nutrition. Though, evidently, not spelling. It still exists on YouTube, and at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, but just about nowhere else. Gita Garlic is pretty cool, I’ll grant that (that’s Sammy Spinach to the left). But overall, it speaks to a place that has no clear sense of what kids like or how they think.

To be sure, there’s a lot to do here: a fake intestine kids can climb in (not as gross as it sounds), and the very well named “Royal Flush,” a giant toilet that teaches kids about poop (very much as gross as it sounds). 

Children's Museum of Manhattan - Royal Flush

Sleep and MoodBut then there’s this about sleep and sleep deprivation. I know I’ve asked before, but I’m compelled to ask again, who is likely to find this fun or interesting?

 

Brought to You By…

Another thing that disappointed me about CMOM was the degree to which exhibits are sponsored — like the Bulova Watch installation I mentioned previously. And not just in a subtle “brought to you by the letters J and L and by the number 3” way.

Here we have Nickelodeon bringing you the Dora and Diego explorer zone. It makes the Children’s Museum of Manhattan feel more like edutainment than education. Not that that’s bad, but I’m concerned about priorities, and it adds to the generally hodge-podge feel of the place.

Children's Museum of Manhattan - Diego

Oversized Playmobil characters in various professional guises lurk in the stairwell, giving the weird Lego knockoffs some product placement. CMOM is apparently very fine with that, but it bugged me. It doesn’t add anything — except possibly to make Playmobil less uncool in the eyes of visitors. And even that seems unlikely.

Bring Purell. Oceans of Purell

The other phrase I’d use to describe the feel of this institution is “slightly sticky.” Kids, man. They are gross creatures, and CMOM gets more little grubby munchkins visiting it than the place is equipped to clean up after. I am in no way a germophobe, and I visited well before the covid-19 outbreak (it’s taken me a while to sit down and write this post). However, I found myself wishing I’d brought a bottle of Purell with me when I visited, and I was thankful whenever I found a dispenser of the stuff.

The Art Center

By far my favorite bit of CMOM was the large space on the main floor devoted to art. It just hit me, this must have been the gym when this place was a school. Poetic justice to take the jock space and turn it over to the art kids. Anyway, CMOM has an artist-in-residence program, including some pieces on display and a bunch of hands-on art activities available. The day I visited, kids had a choice of collaging, textile art, and animation using the Play-Doh TOUCH app (but alas, no Play-Doh).

Art Center at CMOM

That said, New York boasts specialist institutions that do this better and more comprehensively than the Children’s Museum of Manhattan does. The Children’s Museum of the Arts in Tribeca and the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling are both more creative, and less crowded, than this. 

Should You Take the Kids to CMOM?

The big thing CMOM has going for it is convenience. It’s smack on the Upper West Side. And its size makes it much easier to navigate than the nearby American Museum of Natural History. But I found it disappointing; it could and should be much better than it is. It’s confusing, it sells out readily to corporate sponsors, its exhibits seemed surprisingly out-of-date and (giant toilet notwithstanding) not terribly compelling to a young audience.

There’s fun to be had here, but there are many better kid-oriented museums in this city — I’d encourage parents to have the intestinal fortitude to seek them out.

Children's Museum of Manhattan
Intestinal Fortitude

For Reference:

Address 212 West 83rd Street, Manhattan
Website cmom.org
Cost  General Admission:  $15 (kids are also $15)
Other Relevant Links

 

Museum of the American Gangster

Edification value 2/5
Entertainment value 4/5
Should you go? 2/5
Time spent 108 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned I liked this dusty model rum runner, combined with Mimi’s commentary drawing a direct line from these boats to World War II PT boats and Kennedy’s wartime heroism.   

Museum of the American Gangster-Rum Runner
Rum Runner!

I arrived at the Museum of the American Gangster predisposed to dislike it. A small, threadbare operation by the sound of it, two modest rooms over a nautically-themed absinthe-specialist dive bar on St. Marks Place (with a fancy take-out-window sandwich shop embedded in it). Combine that premise with a steep $20 admission charge and it seemed sketchy — like the execrable Ground Zero Museum Workshop, a ploy to separate gullible museum-goers from their hard-earned cash.

Museum of the American Gangster-Entrance

And, yup, it’s that.

But it’s not just that. It’s also Mimi, the guide on the Sunday shortly before New Year’s when I took my tour. Mimi who gave a rather astonishing, 105-minute, note-free, free-associative, and fascinating history of the entire American project, from colonization through today, as viewed through the lens of organized crime and from the unapologetic perspective of a smart, funny, middle-aged, super-liberal, Jewish New Yorker.

I realize that description contains a fair amount of redundancy.

What I Saw at the Gangster Museum

The Gangster Museum is indeed basically two rooms, the size of a starter New York apartment (which in a past life it probably was). Very much of the Science Fair variety of exhibition: lots of photos, reproduction documents, and wall text with a few artifacts (old bottles, models, some bullets from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre…Tommy gun) to liven things up.

Museum of the American Gangster-Tommy Gun

You can only visit on a tour — no wandering in off the street. For the first chunk of it, covering the early history of organized crime and booze and America, there are thankfully seats. The second part is about standing and peering at pictures on the walls. There’s not much of any time for self-guided exploration, but then again, there’s not much to explore.

Museum of the American Gangster-OfficeThe space is, to put it kindly, disheveled. A desk in at the front of the first room serves as the office, with various bits that should probably be thrown out or tidied up, just kind of out there. If you need a restroom break, visit the dive bar on the ground floor.

Eventually, the tour takes you down to said dive bar, which was a speakeasy during Prohibition, and which also now houses the old St Mark’s Theater, installed after the Prohibition days. Then you put on somewhat sketchy hard hats (are these things sanitized between visitors?) and go down to the basement, which is even sketchier, and gives you a great view into what the basement of an East Village apartment building that also contains a dive bar and trendy sandwich shop looks like.  Cluttered with utility pipes and ducts and wires and conduits dangerously everywhere.

Museum of the American Gangster-Basement
Typical East Village Basement

 

In the Prohibition days, the organized criminal who ran the enterprise kept his office down there, and you can see what the space is like today. It didn’t add much.

What I Heard at the Gangster Museum

I’m not going to try to reconstruct the Gangster Museum spiel from my notes. You need to hear it firsthand. Some highlights of what we covered, though:

  • The triangle slave trade
  • Women’s rights and the dawn of Prohibition
  • Southern plantations as Auschwitz
  • Rum Runners and Kennedy’s WWII Heroics
  • Prescription Booze
  • The Dawn of the Cocktail
  • The Chemist Wars as Extrajudicial Killing — or “Assisted Suicide”
  • Prohibition was just for the poor

And then we finally got to gangsters. This review is already long enough but two of my particular favorite quotes from the gangster part were: 

  • Arnold Rothstein (real gangster): “I think we can do crime better.”
  • Omar Little (fictional gangster): “You come at the king, you best not miss.”

We rolled right over our allotted tour time and still barely had time for the history of the building. As it was Mimi turned away a guy who arrived for the 2:30 tour — sent him to the bar for a hot apple cider, because she wasn’t finished with us yet.

Museum of the American Gangster-Interior

We learned of lost safes, buried in concrete. The speakeasy turned theater, the lost office, the whole building an “improvised explosive device” should the Feds come knocking. Escape tunnels and expired Italian dinners (locked in said safes).

I can’t even.

There was a whole heck of a lot left out. No real conversation about organized crime post-Prohibition, or certainly not post-WWII.

Nothing about the potentially awesome, deep topic of organized crime in popular culture. Though Mimi did talk about the ways that early gangsters masterfully manipulated their images in popular culture — at least until their extralegal activities got too bloody or grandiose for their generosity or outsized personalities to balance.

I left exhausted and excited in a way I hardly expected from a two-room, threadbare, quasi-museum.

Museum of the American Gangster-Interior

Is The Museum of the American Gangster a Hit?

Rarely in the course of my museum project have I found myself so stymied by the bottom line. Generally, it’s an easy “go” or “don’t go.” Or a “go if you’re into so-and-so topic.” The Museum of the American Gangster isn’t a good museum — it’s not worth it if you approach it as one, even if you’re into organized crime.

But think of this place, instead, as a theatrical experience. Your reaction to it will completely depend on your guide and whether you click with that person. I can only speak for Mimi, who reminded me why I love this city in all its quirky, passionate, fascinating diversity.

Note also that there’s a Groupon deal seemingly always available that gets you in two-for-one. Do that. Even for Mimi, I have trouble recommending spending $20 on the Gangster Museum.

Museum of the American Gangster-Exterior

 

For Reference:

Address 80 Saint Marks Place, Manhattan (near First Avenue)
Website museumoftheamericangangster.org
Cost  General Admission:  $20, check website for guided tour times. Note, check Groupon for a 2 for one deal.
Other Relevant Links