| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 55 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned |
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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 |
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