Metropolitan Museum of Art: Alexander McQueen

Dress, Autumn/ Winter 2010-11, Alexander McQueen

7/3/2011

MUSEUM:  Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Special exhibit Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty ......... 1.5 hrs 

COST: Free with membership (otherwise suggested admission is $25)

Without a doubt, New York City's greatest museum is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  As with many celebrities this famous museum needs only its first name to be recognized and is usually referred to as merely "the Met,” a cute moniker for an amazing museum housing over 2 million works in one of the worlds largest art galleries.  Paul and I had originally planned to save the best for last and make the Met the final museum in our trek, but a recent visit to the American Museum of Natural History changed our minds. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art

That museum took us two days and nine hours of concentrated museum viewing to get through, and we still didn't see everything.  After recovering from “natural history overload,” we decided that instead of cramming the Met into one long bleary-eyed viewing extravaganza, we would pace ourselves and see it in stages.  This was made even easier by a thoughtful relative who got us Met memberships for Christmas this year, ensuring free admission to both the Met and its sister museum the Cloisters.  Now the Met is a “suggested admission” museum, so membership may not seem like a good deal, that is until you enter its grand entrance hall and see the lines. 

This year over 5 million people visited the Met, and it can feel like you have to fight through a good portion of that number to enter the museum.  With our membership cards firmly in hand, Paul and I can now sidle up to the completely empty members desk and grab our admission tabs before most tourists figure out which line to stand in.  Then there is the fantastic benefit that members are allowed to “skip the line” at special exhibits, and the exhibit we were here to see today had a two hour wait.  It took us some time to trace the line to its head through both the Babylonian and European Painting sections, but it was a great feeling not to have to stand in it.  (Great Christmas present Mom!)

Ensemble from VOSS 2011 Alexander McQueen

We hadn’t intended on going to the Met this weekend, but a friend of ours from Seattle (lets call him Petruchio) had, like us, recently moved to the East Coast (in his case Baltimore) and was visiting New York with a friend this weekend.  Petruchio is a fan of contemporary art and of course we had some suggestions, but unfortunately he only had time for museums on Sunday, and all but the largest or most Jewish of museums are closed on Sundays.  We recommended the three biggest contemporary art museums: the New Museum, the Whitney and P.S.1 (all have Sunday hours).  However Paul and I have seen all of these, so we thought outside the box and offered to show him the hottest contemporary art exhibit in town, which, oddly for a museum best known for its ancient and classical art, has been packing them in at the Met all summer.

from The Horn of Plenty 2009-10, Alexander McQueen

This exhibit is “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” and exhibits the designs of recently deceased fashion designer Alexander McQueen.  A fashion exhibit might not be the standard fare of the average museum visitor, but the combination of McQueen’s celebrity, his bizarre sense of beauty and his showmanship have been drawing record crowds.  Current estimates indicate that over ½ million people have seen the show, bringing the most visitors to the Met since 1962 when the Mona Lisa made its first and only trip to the U.S.  The closing of this exhibit has been delayed twice due to its insane popularity and the museum has extended its hours to accommodate the crowds, but the exhibit is finally closing for good on August 7th.  Paul and I suggest that you see it if you can.

Jellyfish Ensemble, Plato's Atlantis 2010

"Spine" corset, from Untitled 1998

“Savage Beauty” is the third fashion-related exhibit we’ve seen, and it left the others in the dust.  It's not that the other two were bad (we enjoyed both the history of American fashion at the Brooklyn Museum and the special exhibit on modern Japanese fashion at FIT) but those exhibits were merely clothes.  The McQueen show isn’t really about clothes.  No one you know could or would wear most of the items on display.  Most pieces would be incredibly uncomfortable, like the bondage bracelets made of long lengths of barbed wire and the steel corset shaped like a spine with a rib cage and tail.  Many were too fragile or rigid to move or sit down in, like the dresses made of dangling microscope slides, layered seashells or coiled steel.  Then there is the problem that you can’t even imagine an occasion where covering yourself head to toe in iridescent scales would be appropriate (besides a really ritzy Halloween party).  And his shoes!  I have no idea how models made it down the runway in these sculpted torture chambers. 

Prosthetic leg from No. 13, 1999; shoes from Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius 2010-11 and Plato's Atlantis 2009

 However, the fact that these items are so unwearable is part of what makes this exhibit interesting.  As there is no way you would wear them, they stop being clothes.  Instead you begin to see them as parts of the themes and stories that McQueen was trying to evoke.  The clothes stop representing real people and become bizarre characters in a play that McQueen is putting on.

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Ensemble from Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious 2002-03, Alexander McQueen

Its a Jungle Out There 1997-98 McQueen

The exhibit is divided into the separate themes that McQueen explored in his work and incorporates settings and films of McQueen’s elaborate theater-like fashion shows to set the mood.  For example, one room explores themes of Romantic Naturalism and Primitivism in McQueen’s work.  There are dresses made of animal parts like buzzard skulls and antlers, and pieces from a fashion show meant to depict a shipwreck and the subsequent encounter between the ship inhabitants and a primitive tribe on shore.  The centerpiece is a dress that looks like stacked oyster shells, and the entire ceiling of that room is covered with an eerie film of a woman slowly drowning.  
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Still of a film from Irere Spring/Summer 2003, Alexander McQueen

Its Only A Game 2005 McQueen

Its Only A Game 2005 McQueen

Another room presents the outfits related to the show “Only A Game,” a fashion show staged as a chess game played between the East (Japan) and the West (America), using extremely odd adaptations of traditional dress to explore themes of racism and nationalism.  An quote from Alexander McQueen on the wall reads, "Fashion can be really racist, looking at the clothes of other cultures as costumes. . . . That’s mundane and it’s old hat. Let’s break down some barriers.”  McQueen’s most political show was “Highland Rape,” referencing the Jacobite Risings in eighteenth century Scotland.  In a film of that show, semi-naked, blood-spattered models look lost and wounded in their disintegrating clothes, evoking the bloody slaughter of war.  Paul particularly liked the show that ended with a box falling open to reveal a naked overweight woman covered in live moths and connected via a breathing tube to a monkey.  He found it a fascinating exploration of untraditional forms of beauty.

from Highland Rape 1995-96 Alexander McQueen

In short, Alexander McQueen may have been a fashion designer by trade, but the "clothes" in this exhibit transcended fashion, exploring themes and emotions that no mere dress has ever suggested to me before.  These clothes could be political, violent, twisted, tragic, macabre and primitive, in addition to being beautiful.  By the end of the exhibit I felt worn out, like I'd been on an emotional journey with a troubled yet passionate soul.  Its not often that you get to see an artist's life work collected in a single show, and the four of us agreed that it was an amazing experience, well worth fighting the crowds for.  
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From Sarabande 2007 by Alexander McQueen

Brooklyn Museum

Winged Genie, Nimrud, Assyria c. 883-859 BCE

 7/24/2010, Saturday

MUSEUM: Brooklyn Museum

TIME: 3 hrs

COST: $10 each

Mask for Mblo Masquerade, Baule

We hate to admit it, but we have come to dread going to Brooklyn.  We don’t want to disparage the borough: it has great restaurants, cool nightlife and an interesting and diverse culture, but somehow we always have a horrible experience.  Traffic is horrendous, parking non-existent and Brooklyn museums seem to open and close on a whim, seldom updating their WebPages.  Twice now we’ve taken a wrong turn on Brooklyn’s labyrinthine expressways and ended up in an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, with everyone wearing black hats and frock coats and glaring at us, while our GPS keeps insisting that we have reached our destination.  In our three visits to Brooklyn, we’ve managed to see only three museums.  To give you an idea of how horrible that is, in three visits to Queens (Brooklyn’s larger, supposedly rougher neighbor), we’ve seen eight museums, not including one we visited twice.  Simply put, Brooklyn has been a nightmare, and we are positive that our last museums will all be in this most difficult borough.

Pierre de Weissant, Monumental by Auguste Rodin

On this very hot day in July we visited the amazing Brooklyn Museum, and while we did take a few wrong turns in heavy traffic (as usual), we consider it our most successful Brooklyn trip (largely because the museum in question was open).  We were joined by our friends Peter and Petra, visiting from Canada.  The Brooklyn Museum has a massive art collection and an international reputation, but I think our motivation for visiting this museum today had more to do with finding good air-conditioning on a scorching day, and judging from the large number of people loitering and ignoring the lovely Rodin's in the indoor sculpture garden, we were not alone.

We went to breakfast beforehand at a local restaurant we choose based on air conditioning and the advertised “soul food.”  There were a fair number of people eating good looking, interesting southern food, but unfortunately our menus had nothing but very plain breakfast entrees, and we were not allowed to order anything else.  Annoyed, we ate our dry omelets and boring pancakes while everyone around us dug into delicious looking fried chicken and biscuits and gravy.  It set a bad precedent for Brooklyn, making the place seem closed and elitist, and future visits have not dispelled this feeling for us, but at least we were able to order the excellent strawberry lemonade, so Paul maintains that it wasn't all bad.
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Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is a gigantic building (over half a million square feet), and is the lynchpin of a lovely complex of Victorian parks and gardens in this area, including Prospect Park, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and the Prospect Park Zoo.  The museum’s core is a splendid Beaux-Arts building, but it has a contemporary glass and steel entrance that gives it a modern vibe.  Walking in, our first impression was that it is huge.  In nearly any other city, this would be THE dominant museum.  It’s million-piece collection of art and historical pieces should be spoken in the same breath as the Met and the British museum in scope and range.  It’s truly impressive how much this museum crams into one building.  The museum is noted for major collections in Ancient Egyptian and Near East artifacts, the Art of Africa, American Art, Decorative Arts, and Feminist Art, and there are always several large temporary exhibitions as well.  We found this all very daunting but we jumped in and started looking around.  
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The Last Supper by Andy Warhol 1986

One of the publicized exhibitions during our visit was a collection of Andy Warhol’s later works.  Titled “Andy Warhol: The Last Decade” it examined his commercial and artistic ventures during his last years.  Clips of his TV show and his gigantic series of “Last Supper” paintings were notable, but none of us are huge fans of pop art or Warhol in general.  We agreed that it was an interesting exhibit, but despite the fame of the artist, he didn’t really capture our interest.

Tree Evening Dress by Charles James 1955

Evening Ensemble by Norman Norell 1970

A bigger hit with us was the exhibit “American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection.”  This exhibit was a collaboration between the Brooklyn Museum and the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art focusing on the most renowned clothes from the Met’s fashion collection.  The exhibit consisted of approximately eighty-five outfits and a grand selection of hats and shoes, covering early America to modern times and detailing the evolution of high fashion over the last 200 years.  Pauline loved the emphasis on clothing shape and structure.  The extensive exhibit text explained that the shape of clothes was once derived largely from rigid internal garments such as corsets, but modern clothing has transitioned to shapes derived from cloth selection and careful tailoring, resulting in less stiff looking clothes.  Paul and Petra were particularly fascinated by the evolution of footwear, noting that high heels and ribbons on shoes have gone in and out of fashion over the years, for both men and women.

George Washington by Gilbert Stuart

The American Art section is famous for the iconic portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, but there was wide selection portraits of different people, famous and otherwise.  Peter and Petra spent some time playing what they claimed was a traditional Canadian game called “Dude or Not Dude.”  In it players decide whether portraits of women were in fact woman, or men in drag.  There were a number of portraits where arguments could be made either way, and Peter and Petra debated things like whether that was a 5 o’clock shadow or just a shadow.  It was a little surreal, but now when we see a portrait such as the one of Mrs. Thomas Mumford IV below, we can’t help wondering “Dude or not dude?”

Mrs Thomas Mumford IV by William Johnston

Another area that stuck out for us in the American section was an exhibit on landscapes, with one area concentrating totally on waterfalls.  (Paul grew up near Niagara Falls and has worked as a tour guide there, so this is a subject near to his heart.)  This part of the exhibit showed many different ways that waterfalls have been represented in art: such as realistic oil paintings, romantic Hudson River School paintings, direct modeling in sculpture and abstract representations in contemporary art.  Examining the different styles made us consider what each brought to the common subject and what they were able to evoke, turning a simple landscape piece into a thought-provoking exhibit.  This was one of the first times we’ve really thought beyond the wall text about what the curator was trying to say with an exhibit (bringing us one step closer to being real art critics).
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Niagra, by Louis Remy Mignot 1866

Moorish Smoking Room, Worsham-Rockefeller House

The fourth floor of the Brooklyn Museum is devoted to two installations: the Decorative Arts Center and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.  Demonstrating just how big this museum is, the Decorative Art Center takes the rather grandiose approach of including several entire houses and over twenty rebuilt furnished rooms.  They range from the older, plainer wood paneled Reuben Bliss house (1754) to more opulent rooms like the Moorish Smoking Room from the Worsham-Rockefeller House (1881).  Paul wanted to move into the Art Deco styled Weil-Worgelt study (1928); we only got him to leave after he took detailed photos of the paneling, muttering about “future plans.”  
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Weil-Worgelt Study by Alavoine, 1923

The Dinner Party, by Judy Chicago, 1974-79

Also on this floor was the Center for Feminist Art, which is most well known for the major installation “The Dinner Party” by Judy Chicago.  The Dinner Party comprises a massive triangular table with thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating a woman from history or myth.  The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and painted porcelain plates with raised motifs.  All the items in each place setting are rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored.  The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table.  The amount of intricate work was stunning.  The exhibit came with a booklet explaining why each woman was included: some were well known and obvious (e.g. Mary Wollstonecraft, Georgia O’Keefe and Sacagawea) but others were much more obscure (Elizabeth Blackwell? Ethyl Smyth? Anna van Schurman?), with the implication being that maybe they shouldn’t be.

Mary Wollstonecraft place setting from The Dinner Party, by Judy Chigaco

Senwosret III, Hierakonpolis c 1836 BCE

Nespanetjerenpere c 945 BCE

Our last stop of the day was the impressive Egyptian section on the third floor.  It was packed with carvings and wall reliefs, and had some very impressive mummy cases.  Petra and Pauline were particularly intrigued by the Mummy Chamber, which had a number of human and animal mummies, a 25 foot long scroll of the book of the dead, and detailed instructions on the different ways that mummies were made. (They were all pretty disgusting.)  The museum has done CT scans of several mummies and has movies showing how everything is preserved.  Petra and Pauline felt that this was both educational and gruesomely fascinating.  The rest of the exhibit was broken down into the major epochs of the classical period and made for an interesting historical narrative of the area around the Nile River. 

Madonna of Humility, Sano di Pietro, 1405

By the time we finished the Egyptian exhibit, the museum was getting ready to close, so we got a cup of coffee, sat down to reflect and play “spot the Canadian.”  (Hint: If they are wearing “Roots” brand clothing head to toe, they are probably Canadian.)  We’d covered a lot of ground in three hours, but still had only seen about 70% of the museum and, despite the fact that the African Art section was closed for an exhibit change, we could have easily spent another few hours.  All of us had found the Brooklyn Museum to be both engaging and educational, and we were impressed by the huge variety of high quality exhibits.  It wasn’t quite the Met in size or scope, but it seemed more manageable and certainly less crowded, and it was a great place to spend a hot summer day.

RATINGS FOR THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM:

Pauline: 9 out of 10.  Gigantic museum with amazing variety and range.

Paul: 8 out of 10.  It would be the best museum in any other city but New York City.

Images in this post, from the top: Winged Genie. Nimrud, Assyria (modern-day Iraq) 883–859 B.C.E. Alabaster.  One of many panels that once adorned the palace of King Ashur-nasir-pal II.  Mask for Mblo Masquerades, Baule, Ivory Coast, late 19th century.  This mask's delicate, symmetrical features, ornate hairstyle, and smooth surface exemplify personal beauty and composure.  Pierre de Wiessant, Monumental by Auguste Rodin (French) 1887, bronze 1979.  Exterior of the Brooklyn Museum.  The Last Supper by Andy Warhol, 1986, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen.  "Tree" Evening Dress Charles James, 1955.  Rose pink silk taffeta; white silk satin; red, pink and white tulle.  Evening Ensemble, Norman Norell, 1970–71. Gold organdy, beaded gold silk jersey.  George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, 1796.  Standing in the classical pose of an orator, Washington appears in civilian clothing, but holds a sword that recalls his military achievements and suggests the might of his presidency.  Mrs. Thomas Mumford VI by William Johnston, 1763, the first portraitist to work in Connecticut, where he enjoyed the patronage of prominent colonists.  Niagara by Louis Rémy Mignot 1866.  Throughout the nineteenth century, few landscape forms were more recognizable than Niagara Falls, often employed to embody the natural might that underlay America's promise.  Moorish Smoking Room, from the Worsham-Rockefeller House, 1864–65, remodeled 1881.  Weil-Worgelt Study, originally part of the Park Avenue apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Milton Weil, decorated by Alavoine of Paris circa 1928–30.  The room is in the style now known as Art Deco, paneled in veneers of palisander and olive and a painted lacquered panel designed by Henri Redard and executed by Jean Dunand.  The Dinner Party, by Judy Chicago (1974-79) with a detail of the Mary Wollstoncraft place setting.  Cartonnage of Nespanetjerenpere. Egypt, probably Thebes, circa 945–718 B.C.E. Linen or papyrus mixed with plaster, pigment, glass, lapis lazuli.  The decoration here associates its occupant, the priest Nespanetjerenpere, with divine resurrection. Senwosret III. Egypt, from Hierakonpolis, circa 1836–1818 B.C.E. Granite. A powerful king of the Egyptian Twelfth Dynasty.  Madonna of Humility, by Sano di Pietro, Italian 1405-1481.

Museum of Arts and Design

Landscape I, by Levi van Veluw

5/15/2010 Saturday, continued
MUSEUM: Museum of Arts and Design

TIME: 1.25 hrs

COST: $15 each

Museum of Arts and Design

The Museum of Arts and Design exhibits contemporary art, but with a twist.  It focuses on the art and design of hand-made "crafts," exhibiting objects made primarily in 1 of the 5 traditional craft materials (clay, glass, wood, metal, and fiber).  I thought the twist really worked for the museum, making it stand out from the other contemporary galleries we’ve seen.  The art was applied and approachable, and exhibits had a 3-dimensional and sculptural feel.  Paul disagreed.  He thought the limitation to 5 materials was a gimmick that the museum didn't really stick to.  Also, he felt that the museum was either arts OR design; many of the design exhibits didn't work as art, and the art exhibits didn’t work as design.  He liked it when pieces hit that “sweet spot” and combined both, but felt that was rare.  We’ll leave it too the reader (and museum-goer) to decide for themselves.

Untitled, by Shokosai Hayakawa

Sagittarius, by Shen Shaomin

If the focus on crafts and craft materials is a gimmick, at least the museum comes by it honestly.  For 46 years it has exhibited the work of American craftspeople, first as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, then the American Craft Museum.  Its founder and patroness, Aileen Osborn Webb, sought to bring awareness to the artistry and beauty of handmade objects in an age of machine-made products.  Today, the museum has broadened its scope and includes both traditional crafts (e.g. baskets and pottery, see example at left), as well as objects made more for their expressive and conceptual content (i.e. art, see example at right).  

In 2002, the museum moved into a modern 9 story building on the famous Columbus Circle, facing the southwest corner of Central Park.  We were lucky enough to walk in just as the (free) guided tour began and got extensive explanations of the exhibits, which was much appreciated.  The guide followed what we've come to realize is the preferred mode of museum viewing: starting at the top and working down.  We’d recommend taking the stairs at this museum, as there were installations in the stairwells, such as blown glass goblets and painted murals.

Cauda Equina, by Keith Bentley

The top floor is dedicated to open studios, with young artists actively working on projects.  While we were visiting, there was a woman cobbling bizarre shoes and a group of people putting together a bicycle made entirely out of bamboo.  (The next thing in renewable resources?)  According to the guide, the next two floors down were dedicated to the “fiber” part of the museum, with fiber interpreted as anything organic.  The exhibit was called “Dead or Alive,” and presented the works of 30 different artists who work in organic materials that were once part of living organisms.

Skull, by Jan Fabre

It was an interesting collection, high on the ick factor but fascinating, like a particularly bizarre insect.  There were fanciful skeletons of extinct or mythical creatures made entirely from chicken bones from fast food dinners (I shudder to picture the artist’s cholesterol levels), a delicate chandelier of lit dandelion puffs, a shaggy horse-like taxidermy animal made from the manes of slaughtered horses (picture above), abstract sculptures made of pigeon feathers, a motorcycle with a cow skeleton frame (picture below), a suit of sticks, and lots of things made from dead bugs, including dried butterfly wallpaper, a beetle casing skull (picture at right), and a silk worm cocoon chandelier.

Mad Cow Motorcycle, by Billie Grace Lynn

Tides, by Ferne Jacob

Kuskokwim, by Fran Reed

The next floor down contained the clay and wood exhibits, showing an odd collection of 1960’s semi-abstract ceramic sculptures and a number of baskets.  Most of the baskets were non-functional and clearly meant to be modern artistic statements, such as the baskets made of coiled thread (picture at left) or dried fish (picture at right).  I enjoyed the exhibit, feeling it stretched and challenged the idea of what a basket was, but Paul felt these impractical containers had lost the essence of what a basket was.  According to Paul, “If you can’t put something in a basket, it’s not a basket.”

Wedding Neckpiece, Berber, Siwa Oasis, Egypt;  Miao Neckrings, China; Pair of Anklets, Upper Egypt

The lowest exhibition floor was entirely devoted to metal.  There was a section on the jewelry of tribal peoples in North Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.  Most of the pieces looked heavy and uncomfortable, prized less for beauty and more as a show of wealth, used for trading or as a transfer of wealth in dowries.  It made for an interesting commentary on the history and practicality of jewelry.  The rest of this floor harbored a massive collection of bicycles in the exhibit “Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle.”  For once, I agreed with Paul.  Neither or us saw much art of what looked like perfectly normal bicycles, but then we aren’t avid cyclists so we’re probably missing something.

Our take on things:  The Museum of Arts and Design was our second design museum.  The first, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, focused purely on design and design innovations, and was fairly technical.  The Museum of Arts and Design took a completely different approach and concentrated more on art, often seeming to leave design out of the equation.  We both liked its novel uses of traditional craft materials and felt that the museum’s exploration of art in common objects (and things made from common objects) made for largely interesting and approachable exhibits.  However, Paul would have liked to see more exhibits with both art AND design.

The bar at Robert

One last note:  The top floor of the building is devoted to a posh restaurant by the name of “Robert.”  Robert has a cool retro 60’s vibe with neon pink carpeting and sculpted plastic furniture, but the real reason to go is the view.  The restaurant’s floor to ceiling windows frame a gorgeous panorama of Central Park and the ultra swank condominiums of Park Avenue.  As this was our 4th museum of the day, Paul and I split a 12-dollar pot of tea and relaxed in the bar, ogling the view and watching glamorous young woman in super high New York heels negotiate the treacherously slick tile floors.  (No one fell, but there were some close calls.)  We thought the experience well worth 12 dollars.

Fragile Future 3, by Lonneke Gorkijn and Ralph Nauta

Images in the post, from the top: Landscape I, by Levi van Veluw, 2008; Image of the Museum of Art and Design; Untitled, by Shokosai Hayakawa, 2000, interlaced bamboo; Sagittarius, by Shen Shaomin, 2005, chicken bones, bone meal, glue; Cauda Equina, by Keith Bentley, 1995-2007, 1.4 million hand knotted horse hairs, fabric, taxidermy mannequin, resin; Skull, by Jan Fabre, 2001, mixture of wing cases of scarabs on plastic, stuffed animal; Mad Cow Motorcycle, by Billie Grace Lynn, 2008, cow bones, bicycle frame, electric motor; Tides, by Ferne Jacobs, 2002-2003, coiled waxed linen thread; Kuskokwim, by Fran Reed, 1994, silver salmon skin, felt tip pen, dyed and undyed gut, driftwood, cane; Wedding Neckpiece, Berber, Siwa Oasis, Egypt, 19th - 20th century, silver; Miao Neckrings from China, 20th century; Pair of Anklets from Upper Egypt, 19th century; interior of the restaurant Robert; Fragile Future 3, by Lonneke Gorkijn and Ralph Nauta, 2010, phosphorous, bronze, dandelion puffs.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

1/18/2010; Monday (MLK Jr. Day)

MUSEUMS: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

TIME: 2 hrs

COST: $10 each, plus free audio tour

Today we continued our exploration of the famous “Museum Mile” in the posh Upper East Side, a stretch of 5^th Avenue across the street from Central Park with a grand total of 11 museums, including one of the largest museums in the world (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and one of the most distinctive (The Guggenheim). However today our selection was based on the sole criteria that the museum be open on the holiday (MLK Jr. day). Surprisingly for institutions so integral to the tourist trade, not many museums were open today.

Our first stop was the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, a NY branch of the Smithsonian. The Coopper-Hewitt claims to be the only museum in the world “devoted to historic and contemporary design”, and I’ll admit that both Paul and I were a bit puzzled as to what the museum would contain. We both pictured exhibits of household goods and furniture, like maybe “the history of the chair” with rows of historic and modern chairs. Fortunately for us it was much more interesting than what we imagined.

The Cooper-Hewitt is housed in the former mansion of Andrew Carnige, a lovely Georgian-style “country-house” built at the turn of the century, and notable as one of the first residences to have central heating AND air-conditioning. The lobby is breathtaking, with the floors, walls and ceilings covered in elaborately carved and gilded wood, making you feel like you were standing in a massive and ornate hollow tree. Sort of like visiting very wealthy Keebler elves. Unfortunately, at some time in the past the interior decorations were stripped out of the rest of the mansion, leaving only blank white walls and little personality, and leading us to wonder what the rest of it looked like when the Carnegies lived here.

The exhibitions at the Cooper-Hewitt change frequently, but during our visit the entire museum was devoted to the winners of the National Design Awards from the last 10 years.

These awards honor “outstanding contemporary achievements in American architecture, landscape design, interior design, product design, communication design, corporate design, interaction design, and fashion.” Apparently there have been a lot of them handed out over the last 10 years, and it made for a very dense exhibit. The rooms were full of rows of shelves divided into small spaces, with consecutive spaces dedicated to various things such as the design of the first laptop computer (see picture), a lifetime achievement award for architecture (see picture of I. M. Pei's dome below), a novel design for pants, the invention of a human propelled plane, and Tupperware. If you go we HIGHLY recommend standing in line for the free interactive iPod tour. There’s little text on the exhibits themselves to explain what each is and without the tour we would have been lost, pointing and whispering questions like “What’s with the pants?”.

We both enjoyed the exhibit, and felt it gave us a lot to think about. We didn’t always agree with the choice of winners, but even the disagreements we had gave us interesting things to talk about; for example, was the invention of Tupperware a revolution in food storage and conservation, leading to changes in kitchen design and the way meals were prepared after WWII, as well as being a radical change in home marketing techniques and an influence on women’s liberation with its all woman sales force? Or is it just a colorful plastic novelty item? Discuss...

Paul’s one complaint was that much of the museum seemed awfully commercial, and while the argument should certainly be made that good design can and possibly should be commercialized, it was disconcerting that some of the prominently featured companies (i.e. Target and Apple) were also the exhibit’s sponsors. It lead us to ponder what Paul called the “chicken and egg scenario.” What came first, the Design Award to these companies, or their sponsorship of the award? Food for thought.

Ta for now; we will fill you in on the Neue Gallery next posting.