It's another NYVF! Episode #5

It's been rainy recently in NYC, so let's step inside the Met(Metropolitian Museum of Art) and view the the exhibition of John Baldessari's work, "Pure Beauty." This video by James Kalm* also includes the artist responding to questions from the interested crowd.

In 1970, he burned all his paintings created between 1953 and 1966. He baked the ashes into cookies.

"If I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn’t do art." - John Baldessari

 

*James Kalm is a working artist living in Brooklyn New York. He has been an active critic for over twelve years writing for the controversial Brooklyn Rail http://brooklynrail.org/. For higher resolution videos, writings by James Kalm and views of the paintings of Loren Munk visit http://www.lorenmunk.com/.

Little Bytes Recommends: The Silk Road at the American Museum of Natural History

Until August 15th, you can travel the historic Silk Road in an interactive exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.  Here are just a few little bytes of trivia I found interesting on my last trip on the museum's Silk Road:

--The Silk Road stretched between Xi'an and Baghdad, ran 4600 miles and took a traveller about six months.  The temperatures along the journey could dip down to -50 degrees Farenheit and rise to 122.

--1000 years ago, Xian was the capital of China and the largest city in the world.  1 million lived inside the walls and 1 million lived outside.  It was a grid system with 108 walled neighborhoods.  The largest street was Heng Street and was as wide as a 120-lane highway.

--The secrets of silk were guarded for centuries.  5000 years ago, a small cocoon dropped into an empress's tea cup.  When it was removed, it unwound into a glistening strand. The empress dropped multiple cocoons into hot water and the silk industry was born.  A single cocoon can unwind into a silk filament about 3000' long (or, in modern-day measurements, 10 football fields).  2500 silk worms are needed for one robe.  Other animals that spin silk are spiders, some bees, ants and wasps.

--Paper was another guarded secret.  The Chinese were using paper as early as 50 BCE.  At some point in 794, the secret was smuggled west and Baghdad built a paper mill in 795AD.  The oldest existing paper book dates to 868 A.D.

Dyin' Before the Good Stuff, Part Three

THE ARCHITECTS

5--Ray Hood did get to see his skyscrapers finished (including the American Radiator Building, the McGraw-Hill Building, and the Daily News Building) but he died before the completion (and before being recognized as the lead planner) of New York's most important business and entertainment complex.  According to Daniel Okrent's history, Great Fortune, Hood's "obituaries made surprisingly little mention of his role in Rockefeller Center, presumably because, at the time, the specific contributions of the various architects were not clear.  Hood never once attempted to claim credit due him for the design triumph that was Rockefeller Center."  

6--A major critic of Hood's (and almost every other architect) was Frank Lloyd Wright who still eulogized Hood respectfully:  "Architecture needs about ten first class funerals of the higher-up more than it needs his."  Unlike Hood whose reputation was quiet, Wright loudly proclaimed his own genius, perhaps rightfully so as he gave us some of the greatest structures in the U.S.  Wright designed few buildings in New York City, but one of his masterpieces and one of his final achievements stands boldly on Upper Fifth Avenue:  the Guggenheim.  Wright died in April, 1959, and his inverted ziggurat opened that October.  (Solomon Guggenheim for that matter also never saw the museum that bears his name, the temple for nonobjective art he dreamt about and financed--he died a decade before it opened.)

Whatever Happened to Annie Moore?

If you've been to Ellis Island, you have probably seen the statue of Annie Moore, the first immigrant to step onto Ellis Island when it opened in 1892.  She was given a gold coin and disappeared into history.  For years, it was believed she ended up in Texas.

In actuality, she never left New York.  She married, became Annie Schayer, had eleven children and died on the Lower East Side in 1924...coincidentally, the year that most immigration ceased at Ellis Island.   

For more, read the article in The NY Times.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Turns 50

In April of 1959, one of America's greatest architects passed away.  Six months later, on October twenty-first, one of his most significant structures opened on Fifth Avenue.

Visit THE DAILY NEWS for fifty beautiful photographs of the landmark building, which include wonderful shots of the site during construction as well as pictures of the Gehry Guggenheim which Wright's imaginative freedom inspired.

Tonight the Empire State Building will be lit red in homage to its fellow icon--original plans for the Guggenheim featured a red exterior.

The interior of the Guggenheim in 1998 when the spiral was sheathed in chrome for its Art of the Motorcycle exhibit.
 

The New York City 400

The Museum of the City of New York just opened its newest exhibit in commemoration of Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage.

Inspired by the 400 years that have passed since the Half Moon entered the harbor as well as the old term for the city's creme de la creme--the number of people that could fit comfortably in Caroline Astor's ball room, the curators have compiled "the first-ever list of New York City's ultimate movers and shakers since the City's founding—from politics, the arts, business, sports, science, and entertainment."

See who made the cut.

Clutter in front of the Met

In January of 2007, when we first started shooting the Little Bytes, the Guggenheim was still under scaffolding and there were only two hot dog carts in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The rent paid to the Parks Department for those two carts exceeded $600,000 per year.  A reminder:

Today there's a small fleet of those carts.  Last year I wrote about the veteran who started selling from a third cart at the steps.  He paid no rent, charged less and ignored a stack of police summonses.  Others have followed his example.  Taking advantage of the same nineteenth-century state law that permitted veterans to sell in areas without paying rent, more carts have rolled up to the steps.  There are even claims that certain vendors are actually hiring veterans (rent-a-vets) to sit and sell their products so they can avoid paying the city rent.

Read the Adam Lisberg piece in The Daily News (about the eviction of the vendor who is $310,000 behind in his rent) or the Simon Akam article in the Times (about those who have moved in).

Monday is a great day for a Saint(-Gaudens)!

In honor of the magnificent exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, we bring you a little history and some inspiration. Here's a lovely video from PBS to give a taste of Augustus Saint Gaudens:

For more info:

A New Yorker review of the Met Show

Thanks Justin Ferate (http://www.justinsnewyork.com) for these links!

Hold on,there's more:  to see the FIRST Saint-Gaudens in New York (and it's NOT in a museum) watch this:

A Sculptural tidbyte from statuesque Cayce, Bon Appetit!!

Roxy Paine on the Roof

I took groups to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on six different days in May and June.  On five of these days, the Roof Garden was closed because of rain.  (The torrential spring of 2009 will go down in infamy.)  On the sixth trip, however, the weather was gorgeous and since I was one of the first people inside the museum, the roof was all mine for about thirty minutes.

The sculpture built for this particular rooftop is entitled Maelstrom by Roxy Paine whose work you might remember in Madison Square two years ago. 

 

 

 

Maelstrom will be on the roof until October 25th.

Hudson Heights, Part Nine: The Cloisters

Every other Monday, we'll be posting the newest byte in our walk through Hudson Heights, my neighborhood in Upstate Manhattan, the stretch on the western ridge between the GW Bridge and the Cloisters.  The last Little Byte of the series will be posted on Monday, August 3rd. 

This byte was directed by Nona Lloyd.  Nona directed several of the Little Bytes up Broadway--between Madison Square and Columbus Circle.

Nona Lloyd is now the General Manager of the new hot lounge, WATERMARK, located on the Jersey Shore in Asbury Park.  While it may seem that she's left the theater world, she's still using all of her producing and directing skills, every ounce of her creativity, and is sure to jump into "show biz" again.

 

Little Bytes Recommends: The New American Wing at the Met

For me, the new American wing at the Met was even more of a surprise than the opening of the spectacular Roman galleries two years ago.  Much of the Charles Engelhard Court is now floored with yellow marble.  A sunken area was retained on the northern end that allows visitors to examine some of the collection's marble statues before stepping up through the facade of the Branch Bank of the United States (which was first erected on Wall Street in the 1820's) to explore the newly renovated and refurbished period rooms, which look better than ever.  There's a glass elevator on the eastern side of the rooms and a brand new mezzanine-level balcony that literally adds another level of display space on the western end of the court.  One of the museum's better cafes still remains, tucked away obscurely below the new balcony, and the Visual Storage seems more welcoming and user friendly. 

If you can, visit this weekend.  I can also vouch for the amazing (beautifully disturbing) Francis Bacon retrospective.

Sadly, I can't vouch for the Roxy Paine installation on the roof, since the roof has been closed due to rain each of the last FOUR times I've been there.

Pictured:  Judy Krauss imitating Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. 

Little Bytes Recommends...MURDER AT THE MET

For my birthday last week I wanted to check out one of the scavenger hunts run by Watson Adventures.  They host hunts in New York, LA, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia and I had heard raves about their most challenging:  Murder at the Met. 

I invited eleven I felt would love the game to join me.  (Apologies for the blurry pictures, but, remember, you're not supposed to use flash inside the museum--not even for a special occasion.)  I thought that twelve players divided into three teams of four would be ideal.  A team of two would have a difficult time since there's so much ground to cover, items to find, and codes to break, while a team of five or more might get in each other's way or leave a few people out of the fun. 

For the sake of your own potential hunt, I'm not going to divulge any of the details other than to say that in Murder at the Met, you have two hours to loop through the museum locating objects, filling in clues and then using the clues to solve the mystery. 

There were nine other teams playing that night and I'm proud to say that two of our teams tied for third and for second, and one of our teams won with a perfect score.  (I have very smart friends.)  Mine was one of the teams in second place, short of a perfect score by only one measly point.  We couldn't find the thingamajig in the whatchamacallit room.  This was one of the hardest items to find and since it was early in our loop (every team follows the same route but starts in different locations), we expected all the searches to be that difficult and forced ourselves to move on.  By the end of the game we convinced ourselves that the temporary answer we had put down was probably the right one.  It wasn't.  And apparently, according to the other teams, the correct item is "really, really beautiful."  (I look forward to admiring the "really, really beautiful" thingamajig on my next visit.)

The scavenger hunts are designed as team-building projects and I was fascinated to see and hear how each individual took a specific role in the hunt.  Consider my group.  Since I knew the floor plan very well, I became the navigator, moving my group from gallery to gallery and to a few of the objects without a single false turn, but I could not for the life of me get my mind around the mystery we were supposed to solve.  "I know who was murdered!" I proclaimed at one point even though the murder victim was stated in the opening line of the handout and was never, at any moment, in question.  Becca turned out to be the story sleuth, keeping track of every suspect, relationship and motivation; Doug was the code breaker; and Sarah was the voice of reason, bringing us back to earth whenever our rationalizing got too complicated.  (What's most interesting is that these aren't necessarily the roles we would have played if the teams were different.)

Pictured on the right--Laura, Tessa, Marc and Chris:  the winners of last Friday's Murder at the Met:

To solve the Murder at the Met or to find another scavenger hunt near you, visit Watson Adventures.

If You Missed the de Montebello Show, Take a Virtual Tour

 The fantastic show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Phillippe de Montebello Years:  Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions, closed this Sunday.  I visited several times, most recently on Friday, and was always entranced by something new.  The tribute, which was arranged in one of the larger exhibit spaces, was unique in the variety of objects on display.  There was no theme, no cultural or materialistic criteria to hold the items together.  These were simply objects acquired in the last thirty years from all eighteen departments of the museum, which meant that each room was almost cluttered with a mind blowing array of loot not likely to occupy the same room again.  One room, for example, held a Hauser guitar donated by Andres Segovia; a large Rothko painting; a bronze cast of Diana; the beautiful writing desk commissioned for Louis XIV; a marble bust of Robert Fulton; a flintlock gun from 1735; and a seven hundred-year-old silk tapestry from China depicting a Cosmological Mandala...just to name seven. 

Below are a few of the featured items.  For further information and to see many more of what came to the Met these last thirty years, visit their online catalog.

The only existing set (I believe) of medieval playing cards.

The teensy-weensy, o-how-did-those-Byzantines-make-their-art-without-going-blind pointer tip.

 

The AMAZING Autograph Quilt created by Adeline Harris Sears, a young woman from Rhode Island, who sent pieces of white silk to important world figures and asked for them to inscribe their names.  The autographs then went into her quilt.  Among those who obliged were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and seven presidents, including Abraham Lincoln.

The Striding Horned Demon, which the Met only acquired in 2007, and which dates back to the beginning of cities...in ancient Sumer around 3000 BC!!

The Duccio--arguably de Montebello's most publicized acquisition--dubbed the Mona Lisa of the Met.

This ridiculously elaborate French armoire I never liked. 

And this I either loved or hated depending on the day.

 

But I could never get enough of the van Gogh that hung to its left...it helped keep me warm this frigid winter.

 

 

Two Planes Floating in the Hudson

This is one of my favorite amateur shots taken yesterday--if you look beneath the plane, at the edge of the water, you can see the tail fin of a Concord jet in the river as well.  The Concord and part of the aircraft carrier, which you can see to the right of the water tower, belong to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.  The US Airways flight crashed four blocks north of the Intrepid's flight deck, an irony that went unreported.  Both the Concord and the Airbus are facing east and until 3:30 yesterday afternoon the Concord was the only plane floating in the Hudson.  An interesting byte of trivia--when the Intrepid first brought the Concord to the museum, headlines described the move as "Concord Lands in Hudson River."

The Intrepid, by the way, is where we began our video tour of 46th Street which features the video, "Things That Fall from the Sky."  Another irony is that this view is very close to the view from the window of Leo--the World Record Breaking Cat who a few years ago jumped from the 46th floor of Manhattan Plaza and survived. I think yesterday's miraculous (and still unbelievable) survival of all 155 passengers and crew (and the George Washington Bridge which the plane only cleared by 900 feet) win out over Leo. 

Two things I wanted to note about the city yesterday.  I was with a friend in a coffeeshop exactly three blocks east of the crash but thirty minutes passed before we heard anything about a plane and we learned about it the same way that most in the world do--by television.  As we were getting up to go, we noticed the footage and titles but didn't believe they were real.  Everyone around us in the coffeeshop and on the streets were going about their lives as though there weren't 155 people standing on the wings of a downed jetliner three blocks away.  I'm often in awe of how many major events this city can absorb without breaking its stride.  I'm also in awe of all the people who stop what they're doing to help whenever they see someone in trouble--that goes for all the ferryworkers and first responders who turned their attention to rescuing the US Air crash victims as well as to the ten people on Ninth Avenue who helped the older person passed out in the cold, calling 911 and finding blankets.  It is an amazing city.

And about that cold:  for those out west or down south, it is FREEZING here!  If you walk outside for two minutes, you talk about it for three.  I cannot imagine standing, without a jacket, my feet submerged in frigid water, on the wing of a jet in the middle of the Hudson.  Shock and relief were probably useful tools.

Well, I'm off now to meet a group landing at LaGuardia.  Hoping there are no geese...

Things We Lost in 2008

Recently, every year seems to be a banner year of lost NYC institutions, but 2008 is one for the record books.  Here are ten off the top of my head:

Wall Street 

(If you think that one way arrow should be pointing down, realize that it is pointing south.) 

However Wall Street survives, it's going to be drastically transformed with the loss of 40% of the Dow's value since its high last October, and the fall of some of the largest investment banks around including:

A Byte from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Overheard by one of my tourists in a gallery of European Paintings:

BOY:  Why is that man stabbing that woman?

LAZY MOTHER:  Um, they used to do that.

Aerobics on the USS Intrepid

First posted on the 46th Street Tour page after the Intrepid was tugged away for its $115 million makeover:

For over thirty years, the Intrepid fought in wars and recovered spacecraft for NASA, but for the last few decades the Intrepid has been a museum and peculiar party venue.  My first visit was in 1994 as part of Columbia's Senior Week when hundreds (maybe thousands, I don't remember) danced on the flight deck between A-12 Blackbird spy plane and a Polish MiG-21, both powerless to stop the relentless beat that was Ace of Base.

My favorite visit took place in 1997 when I worked as a guide on an award-winning program designed by Tony Napoli at what was then Briggs Red Carpet.  (Now just Briggs.)  The owner of a successful temp agency in the Netherlands wanted to celebrate his company's silver anniversary in style.  He brought over six hundred of his employees (most in their twenties) as well as six hundred guests of those employees.  There were Broadway shows, tours, and a gala party held in the ballroom of the Marriott Marquis hosted by one of their own local television personalities.  Then came the surprise.

Months earlier, when the client was asked for the first thing to pop to mind when he thought of New York City, his answer was emphatic:  "Aerobics."  Aerobics?  Not one to argue, Napoli set to work, and so on the Sunday morning after the gala, twelve hundred drunk or hungover Dutch and Belgian twenty-somethings wearing identical blue shorts and white t-shirts were bussed over from the Marriott to the Intrepid where five of the city's best aerobics instructors were waiting.  I climbed to one of the balconies (to use the nautical term) and watched below me as twelve hundred temps in unison stretched, waved their arms, squatted, and bounced up and down.  And just as there are now over a thousand more Europeans who associate Manhattan with aerobics, I will forever link aerobics with aircraft carriers.

THE USS INTREPID REOPENS!

Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of the failed attempt to move the USS Intrepid away from its berth of twenty-four years.  On November 5, 2006, with politicians and journalists on board, with bands playing, several tugboats pulled and groaned at the massive ship without any success.  The aircraft carrier was stuck at Pier 86 in two and half decades of muck.  The politicians and journalists disembarked and work commenced underwater to remove the 39,000 cubic yards of sediment.  A month later, the ship was quietly, without fanfare, removed to dry dock in Bayonne, New Jersey.

Our first video on the walk across 46th Street, shot in the spring of 2007, tells this story.

In early October, after two years and a $115 million makeover, New York's floating museum was tugged back from Staten Island to Manhattan and it reopens tomorrow.  A formal rededication ceremonty will take place on Veteran's Day next Tuesday.

Read about the new features of the refurbished museum. 

Visit the website of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

COFFEE BREAK AT THE MUSEUM and THE WORST SEED

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MARCH 13, 2008.  FOR MORE OF THE ORIGINAL BLOG (MAY, 2006-SEPTEMBER, 2008), CLICK HERE.

Last weekend, as my tour group strolled through the fossil record, I bought a cup of coffee and tried to get some writing done in the basement food court, stupidly forgetting that the basement food court at the American Museum of Natural History is where children come to throw their grandest tantrums.  Billed as NYC's top family attraction--and I have no doubt that it is--there's not a place in the tri-state area with a higher quota of screaming, crying, and whining children or of parents fuming, mutually loathing each other, resenting whomever had the bright idea of a trip to the museum, regretting every decision in their lives that brought them to this moment.  Night at the Museum is about a security guard at the Museum of Natural History who discovers "an ancient curse (that) causes the animals and exhibits on display to come to life and wreak havoc."  This is a comedy.  A horror movie would be entitled Coffee Break at the Museum and would also involve an ancient curse that transforms all the children who come through the doors of the basement food court.  I gave up writing and decided instead to transcribe the pandemonium around me.  Here are selections from one ten-minute period.

EQUUS AT THE MUSEUM

Until January 4th, the American Museum of Natural History is hosting a special exhibition entitled, "The Horse:  How Nature's Most Majestic Creature Has Shaped Our World."  The following seven tidbits are just a sampling of the kind of equine edification awaiting you in the galleries on the 4th floor:

1--You might recall from sixth-grade social studies that there were no horses in the Americas when the Europeans arrived—horses had to be imported—and yet the oldest fossils of the horse (Equidae) family can be found in North America.  3 million years ago, horses migrated to other continents, a move which saved the family, because 10,000 years ago, horses became extinct in the western hemisphere.

 2--The remaining branch of the horse family is the genus Equus and includes 4 species of zebra, one horse, and three asses.

3--The closest living relatives outside of the Equus genus are the rhinoceros and the tapir.  Interesting, no?  (It all comes down to the “feet.”)