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Jewish Museum

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  4/5
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent  140 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Florine Stettheimer’s marvelous “Heat” from 1919.  Summer languor distilled into color.

Florine Stettheimer, "Heat," 1919

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

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

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Park Avenue Armory

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 43 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned The surveillance show undermines its cautionary purpose by outlining a lot of frankly very silly spying technologies developed over the years.  The CIA apparently spent $15m trying to surgically wire a feline for sound, to approach and unobtrusively listen to conversations.  Sadly, “Acoustic Kitty” failed by being run over by a taxi on its first test deployment.  Truly cat-astrophic.

Park Avenue ArmoryThere were once 49 armories and arsenals in the Naked City (according to Wikipedia).  Today 24 remain. One of the survivors now serves as a leading-edge arts and performance space.  This is that one.

What’s an Armory anyway?

As the city grew, open air parade and training grounds for the militia (what we now call the National Guard) became increasingly scarce.  So the government built a slew of armories and arsenals starting in the early 1800s and extending through to the early 1900s.  These buildings often looked like castles or fortresses, and could take up their entire city block.  Some of them included vast, open, interior spaces for practicing bayoneting and such. 

Each military company used its armory as a sort of clubhouse, too, and so they became encrusted with awards, portraits, and other memorials to great men who served.  Nowadays some armories remain in active use, but many have been decommissioned.  The Park Avenue Armory, completed in 1888, served as the home to the Seventh Regiment.  Adopted by a nonprofit, it underwent a massive restoration that continues to today, room by room, opening to the public in its new role in 2007.

Awards, Park Avenue Armory
Assorted Regimental Awards

A Castle for Art

Today the Park Avenue Armory is a fortress for the arts, both visual and performing.  Many of the ground floor ceremonial rooms are open, and they contain wonders — ancient silver trophies, beautiful decoration and light fixtures.  They are glorious feats of interior design, featuring Tiffany and virtually all the other great designers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Park Avenue Armory, NYC

And then there’s the Drill Hall.  It’s an amazing space — 55,000 square feet with not a column in sight — to have at the disposal of art.  But at the same time, it must be daunting as an artist to get commissioned to do something there.  I read that once about the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern–it’s hard to do justice to the space.  Just so with the Park Avenue Armory.

Just by way of comparison:

  • The Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London measures 500×75 feet, so 37,500 sq. feet, and it rises to a height of 115 feet. 
  • The Drill Hall at the Armory is shorter, with “only” an 85-foot ceiling, but much larger in area, measuring 55,000 square feet. 
  • And just to round out the size-off, Grand Central’s main hall measures 33,000 square feet, with a 125-foot ceiling.  Bottom line, the Drill Hall is BIG.

Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel at Park Avenue Armory
Me, Surveiled

The current Park Avenue Armory show, called “Hansel and Gretel,” typifies the difficulties of filling the space.  Ai Wei Wei along with architects Jacques Hertzog and Pierre de Meuron collaborated on a commentary on the surveillance state.  They did so via a complex technological deployment whereby visitors wander around in a very dark Drill Hall, while drones whir overhead (on tethers so they can’t decapitate anyone if they malfunction), and infrared cameras capture images of visitors which they then project onto the floor of the hall in real time.  You see photos of yourself, in grainy black and white, with red boxes picking out your appendages and such.

It’s…interesting?  But there’s no reason for it to be in the Armory, as opposed to a much smaller place.  I felt lost, wandering in the dark, waiting for something more exciting to happen.  And the darkness defeats the Drill Hall’s grandeur, the whole point of going there.

Park Avenue Armory
Majestic Drill Hall, Park Avenue Armory, in the dark

Caveat:  Perhaps the experience is more compelling when the Drill Hall is full of people.  I went on a weekday afternoon and it was quite sparse.

Following the wander in the dark, visitors then enter the smaller historic rooms where they have a gift shop, a tiny snack bar, and a bunch of tablets that tell more about the history of state surveillance, drone strikes, etc.  Which you can do at home, for free, here.

Bottom Line

I’m happy that I’m reviewing the Armory itself and not the Hansel and Gretel installation (my review: skip it!).  Everyone should visit the Armory.  The restored meeting and administration rooms positively glow.  If you can take a guided tour of the building I heartily recommend that.  And whatever they fill it with, assuming the lights are on the Drill Hall will take your breath away.

Park Avenue Armory, NYC

Wandering through these historic, once-dusty rooms, I imagine the era when our municipal and national security depended on forts along the waterfront and arsenals inland. When the worst we had to worry about were invading naval fleets or anarchist insurrections.  I don’t want to sugar coat other problems of the past, and I would never downplay the threat of anarchists.  But from the perspective of security (and surveillance, too), I envy those simpler, more innocent times.

For Reference:

Address 643 Park Avenue, Manhattan
Website armoryonpark.org
Cost  General Admission:  $15 (exhibit) and $15 (building tour)
Other Relevant Links

 

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El Museo del Barrio

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent 50 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned A haunting and beautiful photograph by Cecilia Paredes, a Peruvian artist.  In her work, she has her body painted to match fancy floral wallpapers or fabrics, and then photographs herself in front of them.  My photo is at the end of the post.

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 building dates to 1921 when it was built as an orphanage, and includes a spectacularly beautiful theater, now run by El Museo and called Teatro Heckscher.

I was a little disappointed in El Museo.  I was expecting a survey of that Latino experience in New York City, as told through art as well as other sorts of artifacts.  The museum has a permanent collection of 8,000 objects, so I’m sure they could tell that story.  In practice, though, El Museo is a small art museum, showing work by Latino-Caribbean artists.  It’s in a large building, and I always assumed it was a rather large museum, so I was surprised to realize the exhibition space is confined to six rooms on the ground floor.

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.”

It’s like my rhetorical question about the Leslie-Lohman‘s acquisition strategy:  will they collect anything just because it happened to be made by someone LGBTQ?  Or do the themes and topics and content of the art have to also reflect that world somehow?

Catalina Chervin (b. 1953, Argentina) “Songs 1-6” from the Canto portfolio, 2010.

Based on the recent acquisitions show, I’d tentatively say that El Museo opts for the broad approach:  they’ll acquire anything by an artist with the right name or country of origin.

That’s a perfectly valid collection strategy.  However, given their minuscule space it directly impacts the likelihood that a visitor to El Museo del Barrio actually learns something about el barrio. I’d therefore argue the museum needs to be clearer about its brand or purpose.

The museum also features Side Park Cafe, a large and decent looking bar/restaurant.  Without at all wanting to seem stereotypical, I bet they make great margaritas.  Apparently it’s fairly new:  there aren’t enough reviews on Yelp to get an objective margarita quality metric.

Should you go to El Museo?  I don’t really recommend it.  If you have to choose between going there and extending your visit to the Museum of the City of New York, the latter is probably the better use of your limited museuming time.  Naturally, as with many places I’ve visited, it comes down to your interest in the current exhibition. If you have a chance to go to the theater there, definitely seize the opportunity. 

Cecilia Paredes (b. 1950, Peru) photograph

For Reference:

Address 1230 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
Website elmuseo.org
Cost Suggested Donation:  $9
Other Relevant Links

 

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Museum of the City of New York

Edification value  
Entertainment value  
Should you go?  
Time spent 203 minutes across 2 days.  I had a lot I wanted to see.
Best thing I saw or learned On display in “New York at its Core” show is the scrap of paper, literally the back of an envelope, on which Milton Glaser scribbled “I ♥︎NY.”  It’s such a quintessential statement it’s hard to imagine someone had to invent it, but Glaser did, in 1977.  That little idea changed the way generations of visitors think about this crazy place, and it elegantly expresses a sentiment I feel (almost) every day.

The Museum of the City of New York is an absolute treasure.  It occupies a really lovely Georgian/Federal-style building at the northern end of Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue.  The Museum started out its life in Gracie Mansion, but as its collection and ambitions grew, and its directors wanted it to be more central, a move seemed prudent. 

I confess I always assumed the building was legitimately old, though on reflection that doesn’t make sense.  Who in the 1800s would build a grand federal style institutional building that far north?  The building was started for the museum in 1929, and it was completed in 1932.

For all that it’s merely fake old, it’s got one of the best staircases of any museum in the city, a super-elegant curve leading up from the ground floor.  Nowadays complemented by a terrific light sculpture. 

It also claims to have the most exciting stairwell in the city, so it’s definitely got a New Yorker’s flair for self-promotion.

Off the top of my head, other great staircases, if you’re a scalaphile or like making a dramatic entrance, can be found at the Neue Gallerie, the Czech Center, the Frick Collection (but you can’t go on it), the Cooper Hewitt, the Rubin, and of course the grand stairs at the Met (both the outside and inside ones).  Come to list them, there are a lot of great staircases in New York City museums.  But City of New York’s is still near the top.

I also have to say a word or two about typography.  Most museums manage signage and wall descriptions okay, but not great. But it matters.  City of New York does its visuals stunningly well.  Legible, fun, brash…  It  makes navigating the museum a pleasure.

The main exhibit on currently is called “New York at its Core,” a look at the full sweep of the city’s history, from the earliest beginnings to the future.  It’s extremely well thought out, covering an immense amount of content economically and judiciously.  It also makes great use of interactive features.  Person-height vertical screens in the middle of the main room feature key historical characters on a rotating basis.  Interact with a character and you get more, potentially much more, about them and their contribution.  And it’s not just human characters, you can find out about players like beavers and oysters, too.  I’m often skeptical of the value of these kinds of things. Too often they are more sizzle than steak.  But this impressed me a lot.

I can’t argue with that…

Other exhibits look at the Gilded Age, protests in New York (no small topic),  photos of Muslim life in the city, and an in-depth look at the city’s zoning laws on the centennial of the original 1916 law.

Let me underscore that.  This museum can make a visually and intellectually interesting show out of the city’s zoning laws.

Graphic showing the number of pages in NYC’s Zoning Laws, 1916-present

Then there’s the Stettheimer dollhouse, with its legit modern art.  And the cafe (great, by the way, and at the top of the grand staircase). 

And the future bit of “New York at its Core” where via touchscreen you can design a building, streetscape or neighborhood and have it rated based on affordability and livability and environmentalism.  Neat, fun, and yet again way better implemented than is typical for that sort of technology.

And finally, as I do wherever I can, I will mention Alexander Hamilton, who is present, larger than life size, on the facade.

Should you go?  Absolutely.  City of New York epitomizes great museuming in my book.  It balances edification and entertainment with great finesse, and tells the story of this place such that both newcomers and lifelong New Yorkers can get something fresh and interesting out of it.

For Reference:

Address 1220 Fifth Avenue (at 103rd Street), Manhattan
Website mcny.org
Cost  General Admission:  $18
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Gracie Mansion

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent 76 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned The name “Margaret” scratched in the glass of the library window.  Back in the 1960s, Margaret Lindsay, daughter of Mayor John Lindsay, decided to test whether her mom’s diamond ring was really a diamond.  Caroline Giuliani scratched her name in one of the windows, too.  Copycat. But I like that in an official house filled with history and art, they’ve allowed those little human touches to remain.

Visiting Gracie Mansion for this project made me realize I knew nothing about Gracie Mansion, beyond the name.

Gracie Mansion is both older and newer than I thought.  Older, in that I didn’t  realize that the original house was built in 1799, in the classic Federal style I’m coming to know well.  Newer in that it only became the official mayor’s residence of the city in 1942.  La Guardia was the first mayor to live there; prior to that it served several roles, including as the home of the Museum of the City of New York.

The Mayor’s front door
Just inside the front door of Gracie Mansion. The ballroom is through the doors at the top of the stairs. No photos from here on, sorry.

The Executive Director of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, who was one of the leaders of our tour, described the situation as “Robert Moses wanted to be the mayor’s landlord.”  (He was head of the Parks Commission at the time.) And it became so. 

I also didn’t know exactly where Gracie Mansion is.  I always assumed it was in the East 50s or so.  More central.  Actually it’s in Carl Schurz Park, high in the East 80s, making it really far from everywhere in the city I tend to go.  And a beneficiary of the  Second Avenue subway.

Doing the math, this year is the 75th anniversary of the house becoming the mayor’s residence, and so they’ve decorated the public spaces with a great variety of art that hearkens back to the city in 1942, a time of war and jazz, fear and excitement.  Weegee photos, a Noguchi scuplture, a 1941 signed Yankees champion baseball, Joe DiMaggio prominently in front…

The house has evolved substantially from its original form, with additions true to the Federal style in the mid 1960s (which apparently was fairly scandalous in a time of architectural modernism, but I can’t imagine a modernist wing stuck on the old house).

As with all buildings over a certain vintage in the city, there is a Hamilton connection, although ironically it’s a recent one.  When they built the 1966 addition, they located and installed the mantelpiece from the Bayard Mansion in the new ballroom.  Thus Hamilton died post-duel in front of the ballroom’s  fireplace.  According to Curbed, there’s a chance that Gracie Mansion and Hamilton Grange were designed by the same architect, too.

Spectacular views from Carl Schurz Park

The tour was excellent, the art on display evocative and well chosen.  We got a little rushed, as there was an event going on with the Onassis Foundation that evening in honor of Greek Independence Day, and so we got chased out of the last few rooms.  Sadly the mayor did not crash our tour.  Still, I appreciated the overview of the history of the building and its evolution, and learned a bit I didn’t already know about LaGuardia and some of the other mayors who lived there.  All of the 14 or so people on my tour were New Yorkers, and I strongly encourage everyone who lives here to visit.

For Reference:

Address E 88th St & East End Ave, Manhattan
Website www.nyc.gov/site/gracie/index.page
Cost Free but tours are limited and advanced reservations required
Other Relevant Links

 

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The Frick Collection

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent 125 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Contemporary critics weren’t always kind to JMW Turner, accusing him of being “unrealistic” and using “blinding” light effects. So he painted the story of Regulus, a Roman general who was captured by Carthage and (among other tortures) had his eyelids cut out and was forced to stare at the sun until he was blinded, before being killed. Turner painted a port where you can barely make out Regulus, and dominating the painting is light, light light.  Touche, Turner.

UPDATE APRIL 2021: The Frick Collection’s 5th Avenue mansion is closed for the next several years for a major renovation. The good news is Mr. Frick’s art has an temporary home in the old Whitney Building, the former Met Breuer, giving it a chance to recontextualize the art and juxtapose and present its art in exciting new ways. I’ll be writing about it soon, I hope. Spoiler alert: I love it!

This is going to be a hard one to write.  I’ve been going to the Frick Collection regularly for over 20 years.  I’m a member there.  It’s my second favorite museum in New York City (the Cloisters is number one).  Everyone needs to go to the Frick Collection. 

Henry Clay Frick may have been a plutocrat industrialist, but he had such an eye for art.  And the Frick, like the Gardner in Boston or the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, is his collection of art, much of it hung as he liked it, in rooms that were his rooms, now open to the public. 

Continue reading “The Frick Collection”

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