uppereast Archives

August 17, 2025August 18, 2025

The Frick Collection

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	210 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I want to break my rule and say that the whole building is my favorite thing about the Frick, but if I had to pick just one thing, I’m so happy to get to visit the Garden Court again. It’s lovely, green, and a respite when you need a minute away from the art.

My second-favorite museum in New York City

The Frick Collection has re-opened in its Fifth Avenue mansion after a multi-year, zillion-dollar expansion and renovation project. My pithy original review from 2017 is here, and my review of The Frick’s temporary home-away-from-home in the brutalist former Whitney, former Met Breuer building on Madison Avenue is here.

I loved the original Frick Collection for its extraordinary good taste, and for succeeding as simultaneously one of the best house museums and art museums in the City. I loved it for bucking museum trends and norms:

Minimal wall text – just look at the art!
No cafe
No photos allowed (take that, Instagram!)

I worried when the big renovation project was announced. Would The Frick sacrifice the things that made it special?

Then, once the museum moved to its temporary space, I found I loved The Frick Madison. I thought the recontextualization of the collection was brilliant and I appreciated (though I did not always love) the opportunities that having the collection there created to let Mr. Frick’s art commune and converse with contemporary art. I was sad when it shut down.

But now The Frick is back, and the question on my mind is, is it still my second favorite museum in New York City? (If you’re curious, The Cloisters is number one..)

Short answer, if you’d rather not read this whole essay, is yes. And luckily enough, during the member previews for the new-old Frick this spring the museum waived its no-photo policy, so I can pepper this review with pictures.

Nothing but the best for Mr. Frick

I try to be careful about superlatives. If I like or dislike a thing subjectively, that’s not the same as something being objectively whatever. So, when I claim that The Frick Collection boasts not one but two of the very best roomfuls of art in New York City, that’s very conscious.

The first room is Mr. Frick’s Living Hall, which is home to an astounding set of pictures. Hans Holbein’s St. Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, forever glaring at one another from opposite sides of the mantel. El Greco’s St. Jerome in between them. The monumental St. Francis by Giovanni Bellini on the opposite wall, flanked by two literal Renaissance Men. I imagine what Mr. Frick’s ego must’ve been like, that he could sit with this group of guys around him, and not be intimidated beyond all ability to work, live, think, converse.

The second room is the West Gallery, which is, I sincerely believe, painting for painting, the best single roomful of art in New York. What a flex this particular collection of masterpieces is. The Rembrandts. The Turners. The Velazquez. The Titians. The Vermeers, plural. There’s not a miss in the room. Any of them merit looking at for hours, for days.

And the thing is, The Frick has always had many other rooms that, depending on artistic tastes and preferences, could easily rank on a “best rooms” list. And the new Frick has a lot more of those rooms to love.

The new Frick takes it to the next level

The ground floor of The Frick Collection includes the public, formal spaces the Frick family dined and entertained in back in the day, with plus dedicated gallery space, a lovely glassed-over garden court, and an entry foyer added in the 1970s.

One reason for the renovation was to address a fairly major need for more space, for many reasons. The collection continues to grow, and The Frick was stuck hosting lovely little temporary exhibits in very inadequate basement space. The gift shop was possibly literally located in Mrs. Frick’s former broom closet. The Frick held concerts in a room that decidedly did not live up to the rest of the building. All these issues are now addressed, and then some.

The biggest change from the old Frick is the second floor. Formerly offices of the museum staff, and before that the family’s private living spaces, the Frick has reclaimed a series of upstairs rooms for art. Everything about them is fantastic, although I do worry that they’re so intimate that crowd control will prove a challenge.

Frick newbies will take it in stride, but for Frick veterans there’s a fun frisson of trespassing when you go up that grand staircase the first time. While the Frick was in previews, they discovered the low risers and carpeting make the mansion’s staircase a little treacherous to descend, so they are up-only. Fortunately, there’s an awesome marble stairway in the new addition that safely returns you to earth again.

Addressing all The Frick’s former problems, the new addition also offers:

Much bigger and better space for temporary exhibits
A fancy cafe
New space to show drawings and works on paper
A beautiful subterranean theater (I can’t wait to hear a concert there)
A gift shop that definitely does not resemble a broom closet.

The Shape of Fricks to Come

We don’t live in a world where things get better. Entropy is the rule, change inspires skepticism rather than hope. But sometimes, against the odds, change improves, reinvents, opens new doors, or new floors. At least in museums. The new-old Frick Collection is better than it used to be.

Perhaps my biggest surprise — shock even — at the new Frick was a bowl of buttons at the member preview. Some bore the classy old-school “HCF” monogram logo, which, thankfully, The Frick has not thrown out in favor of some sort of superflat sans serif font. But the other buttons read, “FRICK YEAH!” If I’d been wearing pearls I would’ve immediately clutched them. Kudos to the marketing team for making a joke I never thought I’d see The Frick willingly make about its august founder’s surname.

I do have one reservation. I was excited about the restoration of the old gallery spaces, putting the collection back “exactly as it was.” Except, it isn’t. Not quite. The Frick has pulled off a super subtle intervention throughout, a temporary installation of dazzlingly realistic porcelain flowers by Vladimir Kanevsky, a Ukrainian-born contemporary artist. These play off The Frick’s art, sometimes too well. They reflect The Frick’s own amazing porcelain collection. AND they offer a nod to beleaguered Ukraine. Well played, curators.

But. But but but. That’s some new art snuck into in the old spaces. And a bit of me raises a skeptical eyebrow, reaches for my metaphorical pearls again. Just because this sneaky, subtle art intervention succeeds (really well!), that doesn’t mean the next one will. And I bet in this edgy, brave new Frick, there will be others. So, we’ll see.

Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland, 1871, plus flowers — James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland, 1871 Plus flowers by Vladimir Kanevsky

That off my chest, I refuse to end pessimistically. Everyone should go to The Frick Collection. It’s both wonderful and essential. And now it’s a whole new Frick, and yet it’s also the old Frick, and I can’t wait to see what it does next. “Frick yeah,” indeed.

The Frick Collection, Henry Clay Frick — Henry Clay Frick, in his collection

For Reference:

Address	1 East 70th Street (between 5th and Madison), Manhattan
Website	frick.org
Cost	General Admission: $30, advance timed tickets essential
Other Relevant Links	Cromwell and More hating each other reminds me of Wolf Hall, where Hans Holbein’s portrait of Cromwell makes a cameo appearance Vladimir Kanevsky’s delicate porcelain work

August 8, 2025August 8, 2025

Vilcek Foundation

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	55 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	It’s lame to pick the obvious crowd-pleaser, but I loved the centerpiece picture in the Il Lee show. IW-2201, 2012 is a big oil and acrylic work. Here’s a detail, a larger picture is in the review, below. Photos do not do it justice, though.

Of all the things I love about New York, the best is how there is always more to it. There are so many bars, restaurants, cultural institutions, jazz clubs, whatever, that it’s virtually impossible for any one person to know them all. No matter how good your radar, on whatever the subject, New York City always has something flying under it. Waiting to be discovered.

For example, say you’re someone who has been going to New York City museums. You’ve been cataloging them and writing about them for nearly a decade. And you (well, me) think, arrogantly, that you’ve got the best database of museums, extant and closed, in the City. And then you discover a nonprofit that’s quietly been hosting art exhibitions since before you started your museum quest. That’s just a thing that happens.

A few weeks ago, I was walking on East 70th Street from the Frick Collection (re-review badly overdue) to Madison to catch the M4 bus when I stumbled on the Vilcek Foundation.

To be fair to me, the Vilcek Foundation has only been on 70th since 2018. Also, based on the foundation’s website the Vilcek Foundation didn’t do any art exhibitions between 2013 and 2019. So maybe I didn’t actually miss them, as much as they restarted a part of the mission that was on hiatus before they moved to the East 70th Street location.

Finally, in my defense, the only way to see Vilcek Foundation exhibits is to make an appointment and get a tour. However, that’s an easy process, and it’s hardly the hardest museum space to gain access to in the City.

All that said, I’m very happy to add a new-old place to my list.

Vilcek it out

The Vilcek Foundation exists to “raise awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation of the arts and sciences.” So, that’s not exactly a fashionable thing to do these days. It makes it akin to, among other places, the Ellis Island Museum. The Foundation gives out grants and prizes, and, across two floors of long, narrow gallery space, holds exhibits showcasing the work of immigrant, something-American artists.

The Foundation website opens with a nice, very unfashionable, tribute to the value of diversity: how it propels innovation and sparks new ideas and strengthens America’s cultural and scientific community. Perhaps, then, it’s better that it’s a bit of an under-the-radar institution, at least until the political winds change.

The Vilcek Foundation’s building, down the block from The Frick, is a landmark, 1910s-era townhouse, understatedly renovated. The gallery spaces aren’t huge, but they are decent in a stark white kind of way, consisting of two levels connected by a staircase of the type that seems required for upscale duplex art galleries and museums.

Who is Il Lee?

The current show at the Vilcek Foundation showcases the work of Il Lee, a Korean-American artist. Born in Korea in 1952, he moved to New York City in 1977 to go to Pratt. Impressively, a large part of his practice is done with ballpoint pen. Which leads to questions of whether it can be called “painting” (which the show catalog does). His work is mesmerizing, a mix of control and randomness, of planning and freedom. And effort. It’s a ton of work. I can only imagine the hours and hours it takes to cover a large-scale sheet of paper or canvas with so many ballpoint lines that they blur together into solid blocks of color. How many attempts end with a piece that doesn’t quite work, where one errant line throws everything into disarray.

The Vilcek Show offers a strong cross-section of Il Lee’s work, showing how his practice has evolved over the years. It highlights several of his loopy, swirly, ballpoint pen pieces and a selection of his prints. It also includes work he’s done in paint. Rather than painting per se, he layers oil over acrylic. He then uses a dry ballpoint pen as a stylus for dragging his signature swirly, swooping curvy lines into the layers of paint. It’s spectacular, tactile stuff, reminding me of the world’s most precise finger-paintings.

Funnily enough, Il Lee also loaned the Vilcek Foundation several bags of pens. Apparently he keeps every one he’s ever worked with. Those are on display in a plexiglas box in the middle of the ground floor gallery space. I’m a big fan of art that elevates humble materials, and there are few more humble than a Bic pen.

It was a beautifully curated show, fun and edifying at the same time, and it had the incredibly beneficial effect of introducing me to an artist who was not formerly on my radar. My bad for that. I can’t imagine how Il Lee does what he does, even though the work is essentially a “how to” for itself. The lines are the lines, there’s no concealing what he’s done. But the amount of time and patience, work and practice required to make them look just so boggles my mind.

Should you visit the Vilcek Foundation?

My guide to the Il Lee exhibit was a curatorial fellow named Olivia. I really appreciated her willingness to spend an nearly an hour with me, talking about Mr. Lee and his practice and his work. Seeing the show, and Olivia’s insights into it, were well worth the (tiny) effort it took to email to get a date and time scheduled.

Confusingly to me, the Vilcek show prior to this one was on Pueblo Pottery, which, would seem antithetical to the mission statement of celebrating immigrants, but I’m always down for some creative cognitive dissonance. I’m sure not every artist the Foundation features would be as in sync with my personal aesthetic as Il Lee turns out to be, but I’m looking forward to keeping an eye on what they show next, and to visiting again.

In the current political climate, I appreciate any organization that tries to remind the world that some of the greatest contributions to American art, science, culture, and society came from people who were not born here. If you’re the sort of person who disagrees with that, no harm, no foul, just skip this place, it’s totally fine.

But if you’re anyone other than that kind of person, I strongly recommend a visit, Il Lee is on until the end of May 2026, definitely go see that if you can. And after that? Check out what’s on, and if you have the luxury of planning in advance, book visit to the Vilcek Foundation as a chaser to a visit to The Frick Collection.

For Reference:

Address	21 E 70th Street (between 5th and Madison), Manhattan
Website	vilcek.org
Cost	General Admission: Free, but must make an appointment in advance by emailing info@vilcek.org
Other Relevant Links	Il Lee on Art Projects International Il Lee on Rembrandt, video from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

May 2, 2018

Roosevelt House

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	88 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Happy Days Are Here Again Set This 1934 pitcher and mug set featuring caricatures of FDR and other Democrats, created by the Stangl Pottery Company following the repeal of prohibition. Cheers!

Roosevelt House on East 65th Street is Hunter College’s public policy institute. Lots of schools name places after people who gave them money or famous alums (or both!) so you might just think, “Oh the Roosevelts bought naming rights back in the day.” Or, I mean, it’s Roosevelt, why not name something policy-related after any or all of them? But all those hypotheses are wrong!

Roosevelt House, Hunter College For nearly a quarter of a century FDR and Eleanor lived there as their place in New York City. Actually it’s two houses designed to look like one from the outside. Franklin and Eleanor lived to the right, while FDR’s mom lived to the left. While few historic furnishings remain, the house’s internal fabric is similar enough that you can get a sense of the space the Roosevelts occupied. And it’s open for public tours on Saturdays.

For some reason, Hunter keeps this quiet. I stumbled on to the place late; it was not on my initial list of museums. I think this is the most under-the-radar historic house museum in Manhattan. And I’ve been to all of them. At least, I think I have.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in New York City

When Franklin and Eleanor married in 1905, Sara Delano Roosevelt, FDR’s mom, gave them a drawing of a townhouse as a wedding gift. It took a while to deliver on the real-world equivalent, and it’s unclear whether she specified she’d be their extremely close neighbor. But still, pretty neat wedding present.

The Roosevelts moved into the Charles Platt-designed house in 1908. They already had Anna and James, and had a further three surviving children while living there. The house feels big by New York standards, though small by modern McMansion ones. And maybe not so big for a family of 7 plus assorted staff.

Each of the paired houses featured a teensy elevator, installed mainly for staff use initially. They turned out to be extremely important once FDR contracted polio in 1921. His wheelchair, designed to be as small and discreet as possible, could fit.

Roosevelt House, Hunter College

The Roosevelts’ library is still a library today, and contains an array of interesting Rooseveltiana, including a complete set of travel guides published by a Works Progress Administration program to provide work for unemployed writers. Today, I guess, the government would just give ’em a blog.

Among other historic events, the Roosevelts were living in the house when FDR won the presidency in 1932. FDR’s first radio address to the nation (also recorded for newsreel distribution by Fox Movietone News, which I can’t help but find ironic) was broadcast from the drawing room.

The House and Hunter

Franklin and Eleanor were living in the White House when Sara Delano Roosevelt died in 1941. By that point, it seemed unlikely that their path would take them back to NYC, and so they decided to put the house/houses on the market. Hunter approached the family with an offer, and, generously, the Roosevelts both cut their asking price and donated some money to the school. In exchange, the house was named the “Sara Delano Roosevelt Memorial House for Religious and Racial Tolerance.”

Hunter used the house primarily as a student center, filling a vital need to build community in what was then an all-girl school that specialized in training teachers.

As a part of a not-very-wealthy academic institution, the house was hard used and ill repaired. Eventually in the 1990s the school had to close it; conditions inside were becoming downright dangerous.

Fortunately, Hunter admins and donors realized the importance of the house to the college, the city, and the country. The school raised nearly $20 million for a lengthy rehab. The restoration was bad in terms of the historicity of the place, permanently merging the two houses into a single space. But it was good in the sense that we might otherwise have lost the house entirely. As happened with Teddy Roosevelt’s torn down then rebuilt birthplace.

Should You Visit Roosevelt House?

Roosevelt House, Hunter College Today if anyone thinks of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s residence at all, they likely think of Hyde Park, the estate north of New York that houses FDR’s presidential library. That’s absolutely worth a visit; Roosevelt House in Manhattan pales by comparison.

But Hunter’s public policy institute was the Roosevelts’ city home as they were growing their family; as Franklin suffered and recovered from polio; and as FDR and Eleanor plotted out the beginnings of a political career that would lead to arguably America’s greatest presidency.

So what if they don’t have the sofas or the lamps or the bric-a-brac. They have the place, and places matter. The guided tour was terrific, too. Rachel, a doctoral student when not guiding people around Roosevelt House, told the story with wit, warmth, and intellect, augmented by photos and videos in the various rooms to help bring the Roosevelts back to life.

If you’re at all interested in 20th century American history, presidential lives and times, or how wealthy New Yorkers lived in the early 1900s, Roosevelt House is well worth a visit.

For Reference:

Address	47-49 East 65th Street, Manhattan
Website	roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu
Cost	General Admission: $10 suggested donation

April 2, 2018

Hunter College Art Galleries

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	205 Hudson: 21 minutes Leubsdorf: 12 minutes East Harlem: 17 minutes Artist’s Institute: 3 minutes Total: 53 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	At 205 Hudson, Dario Robelto’s “I Miss Everyone Who Has Ever Gone Away,” 1997 recreated 2007. Little airplanes folded from the wrappers of candies from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s famous candy-pile artworks memorializing AIDS victims. It’s artistic appropriation in the most unexpected and literal way.

I discovered early in this project that just about every college in New York City has some kind of public art gallery or museum. Some are extremely impressive, like NYU’s Grey Art Gallery. A few have a specific focus, like the Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art. And some of them are surprisingly impressive and hard to get to, like the Lehman College Art Gallery and the Godwin-Ternbach Museum at Queens College.

Hunter College boasts not one but four art venues, collectively the “Hunter College Art Galleries.” If this were earlier in my museum expedition, I probably would write about each of them separately. At this stage, though, I crave variety in my write-ups, to say nothing of efficiency. And Hunter itself thinks of them in the collective. So my review covers all four spaces in one. It gets four dots on the map, though. Continue reading “Hunter College Art Galleries”

January 20, 2018

Neue Galerie

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	101 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Café Sabarsky comes as close as possible to a trip to Vienna while remaining in New York City. If the whole café seems too broad for a “best thing,” I will call out the cake display specifically.

Should I recommend a museum just because I love its café? Sure, why not.

Cafe Sabarsky, Neue Galerie, New York — Sacher Torte and Wiener Mélange

And Café Sabarsky is wonderful, unique, and an important part of the overall experience of a museum whose mission is to transport visitors to a specific time and place, in this case Austria-Hungary at the dawn of the 20th century. Continue reading “Neue Galerie”

October 11, 2017

Americas Society

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	25 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Leonilson, “Leo não consegue mudar o mundo,” [Leo Can’t Change the World”] paint on unstretched canvas, 1989 “Leo Can’t Change the World” stood out to me. The color, the way the canvas hangs like a flag on the wall, and of course the heart in the middle of it, flanked by the words “solitary” and “nonconformist.”

The Americas Society occupies a handsome neocolonial brick mansion on Park Avenue, designed in 1909 by McKim, Mead, & White. It was a private residence through the 1940s, then the home of the Soviet Mission to the UN from 1946 until 1965. Which is an interesting claim to fame; I wonder if they still find CIA bugs in the walls from time to time.

You don’t see much of the house when you visit the museum, which is unfortunate as it sounds pretty spectacular. The America Society’s small gallery space fills three windowless rooms on the ground floor, currently accented in rich shades of blue and green, and preserving some classy travertine framing on the doorways. Continue reading “Americas Society”

September 13, 2017

Guggenheim Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	92 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Joseph Cornell, “Setting for a Fairy Tale,” 1942, and Untitled (Fortune Telling Parrot for Carmen Miranda), ca. 1939. I’ll always pick Joseph Cornell’s achingly lovely, idiosyncratic boxes, wherever I happen to find them.

I despise the Guggenheim Museum. It sucks and you shouldn’t go there.

Guggenheim Museum

The brevity of those two sentences would make for a welcome break from my normal museum review, but my highly contrarian feelings toward the Guggenheim require justification. Let’s start with the building itself, and then move on to what’s inside. Continue reading “Guggenheim Museum”

August 9, 2017

Asia Society Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	68 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I loved a small room entirely filled with Anila Quayyum Agha’s “Crossing Boundaries,” a cubical, laser-cut steel sculpture from 2015 that cast amazing shadows on the walls, floor and ceiling. Immersive, serene, and beautiful, and none of my photos do it justice. (See link to her site at the end of this review.)

Asia Society, New York In terms of attempting to cover an enormous mandate in an undersized area, the Asia Society Museum wins the prize for New York City museum with the most chutzpah.

In two modest floors of gallery space, it aims to present the world’s largest landmass, home to a population of billions and myriads of diverse cultures. Call it “Asia” or “the Orient,” either way the label lumps together people who have nothing in common aside from location in a place that Europeans for centuries defined as “that exotic place that’s not here.”

The Asia Society Museum doesn’t succeed. Moreover, it can’t succeed. Well, it can. The Met will give you a great overview of the arts and cultures of China, Japan, Korea, India, the Himalayan cultures of Tibet and Nepal, the Islamic world, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. But you need an institution the size and scope of The Met to do that under one roof. Continue reading “Asia Society Museum”

July 30, 2017April 11, 2021

Met Breuer

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	62 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Studio Job, “Chartres,” 2009-2012, Bronze, 24K gold leaf This is the best, or at least weirdest, cabinet I have ever seen. Probably the most Gothic. And the least practical. An entire cathedral, tipped on its side! No putting that against the wall, that’s for sure.

UPDATE APRIL 2021: The Met has pulled the plug on its Breuer experiment, reducing its New York City empire to the classic mothership and The Cloisters. I liked what it was doing in the Breuer building, but the silver lining is the Frick is now playing in that space.

The first thing you should know about my take on the Met Breuer, housed in the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, is I really really really dislike the building. The iconic, Brutalist, Marcel Breuer art fortress says to me very loudly and in no uncertain terms, “Don’t come in here. You are not welcome.” It looms over the sidewalk. It has one big wonky window like Polyphemus’s eye. That’s it. It’s a Cyclopean building. A monster. Hide under a sheepskin on your way out or it’ll devour you.

You have to cross a narrow bridge over a crevasse to get in, upping the feeling of peril. Then once you’re in the lobby, the harsh concrete and spotlight-y lights feel like some kind of an art world police state, with you as the object of interrogation. “Admit it! Talk! You like MONET. Confess and maybe we’ll go easy on ya.”

Met Breuer Lobby

One of the reasons I love the Whitney so much today is simply that it’s no longer in this building.

So, I have a bias.

The second thing you should know is, according to the Met, the architect’s name is pronounced BROY-er, not brewer. Just in case you wondered.

With the Whitney’s move to the Meatpacking District, naturally questions arose as to what to do with the Madison Avenue fortress. Fortunately (maybe?) the Met stepped in and leased it, making it the Met’s second satellite location after The Cloisters. Otherwise they probably would’ve turned it into an H&M or a fancy food hall or something.

Thus far, the Met has used the Breuer building to…well, to let its institutional hair down a bit, it seems. None of the permanent collection has moved. Rather, it leverages the space for special exhibitions. They tend to the modern or contemporary, which is good given the space. And yet, the Met’s also done some fairly fascinating surveys, leveraging the strength of its encyclopedic collection but doing things they might not want to do, or even be able to do, in any of the spaces in the mother ship on Fifth Avenue.

When I visited, one show consisted of four video installations, which were okay. Certainly video works well in the cavelike Breuer space.

Ettore Sottsass, Design Maverick

The other show, on the designer Ettore Sottsass, exemplifies what I mean about letting the Met go a little bonkers installation-wise.

Sottsass first found fame designing an iconic Olivetti portable manual typewriter, in super-sexy lipstick red, with a case that could double as a waste-paper basket. It’s adorable and brilliant, and the Met shows it off alongside other modern designs meant to be cheap and cheerful, like a One Laptop Per Child laptop.

But on top of that, they introduce it with a…colorful quote from Sottsass. I have been visiting the Met for over 20 years, and I really don’t think I’ve ever seen that word in a wall text there before, much less in big type as a key quote.

Olivetti Typewriter, Ettore Sottsass Exhibit, Met Breuer, New York — Sottsass, a man of strong opinions

Ettore Sottsass, Met Breuer

Sottsass had a long career designing things of all types, including the outdoor furniture that uses classical capitals and columns in the photo above. This also provides a typical view of Met Breuer gallery space, with its slate floors and the waffle iron ceiling.

Ettore Sottsass also went on to found the short-lived, exuberant, 1980s “Memphis” design movement, exemplified by his wacky, colorful room divider here.

Ettore Sottsass, Met Breuer, New York

Creativity Unleashed

Cleverly, the Met juxtaposed some chunky Memphis jewelry with 4,000 year old Egyptian pieces (that looked really good by comparison). They did things like that throughout. Sottsass designed some glass art pieces he called “Kachinas,” and the Met displayed them next to Hopi dolls from its collection. They displayed some of Sotsass’s nifty, colorful, tall, ceramic towers with a Frank Lloyd Wright architectural model, some Shiva Lingam, and a Chinese jade Neolithic ritual object. Throughout the show, these sorts of unexpected pairings helped illuminate Sottsass’s work, providing a look at objects that might have inspired him, or at least creating a novel context for his pieces. I really enjoyed it.

Creative combinations of works in a dialogue across thousands of years and diverse cultures is something places like the Brooklyn Museum have been trying for some time, not always successfully. The Met seems to be using the Breuer to experiment with that approach to curating a show. And I think they’re doing it really well so far.

My Bottom Line on the Met Breuer

So what’s my bottom line on the Met Breuer? I’m not going to say everyone should drop everything and go. The building might be interesting, but I still don’t think it’s a welcoming or pleasant place to see art. But I can’t deny the creativity that’s going into the Met’s programming at the Met Breuer. The staff has done some tremendous shows there so far, full of…spirit. If having the Breuer lets them think about their collection in novel ways, and tell new stories about art, I value that highly. Hopefully some of the Met Breuer spirit will eventually find outlets in the Fifth Avenue HQ, too.

Met Breuer Exterior

For Reference:

Address	945 Madison Avenue, (at East 75th Street) Manhattan
Website	metmuseum.org/visit/met-breuer
Cost	General Admission: $25 (Suggested)

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”