Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art / Alice Austin House

Alice Austen, Auntie Minn and Oswald Müller. 1884, by Alice Austen

8/15/2010, Sunday

MUSEUMS:

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art …...… 0.5 hr

Alice Austen House ……………………………...… 0.5 hr

COST:

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art …....… $5 each

Alice Austen House ……………………………….... $2 each

In our museum travels, we’ve seen quite a number of historic buildings made into museums, and we’ve begun to realize that these types of museum fall into two distinct categories: 1) buildings preserved for their historical significance, like being the setting of an important event, or 2) buildings associated with a notable/notorious person.  These two types have different styles of exhibits and tours and end up being very different experiences.  In most of NYC, the second category is far more rare than the first, but not in Staten Island. 

Throughout its history Staten Island has been legendary (perhaps infamous) for its resident odd balls, characters and misfits.  A surprising number of artists, actors, poets, inventors and revolutionaries have lived on the island, often seeking refuge from Manhattan and the world.  As an example, two notorious revolutionaries lived here during their periods of exile: Mexican President Santa Anna, and the Italian freedom fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi.  There is a bizarre rumor that Santa Ana was critical in the invention of chewing gum on Staten Island, as he imported chicle, the base of chewing gum, to replace rubber in carriage tires. 

Gum isn’t the only innovation connected to Staten Island.  Charles Goodyear (rubber vulcanization) and Antonio Mecci (possibly the first inventor of the telephone) both worked on their inventions here, and Mary Ewing Outerbridge built the first tennis court in the US on Staten Island (it caught on quick).  The island has been home to a number of extremely odd musicians, from Gene Simons (of Kiss) to Lady Gaga, and the writers who have lived here are legion, ranging from the poet Langston Hughes to the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon.

With so many creative characters on the island, it’s not surprising that four of Staten Island’s historic buildings memorialize a few of it’s odder residents: spiritualist Jacques Marchais, turn of the century photographer Alice Austen, maritime artist John A. Noble, controversial inventor Antonio Mecci and his unlikely roommate the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Girabaldi.  

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art

While all of these people certainly had their quirks, to us the strangest of these museums was the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art.  Jacques Marchais (born Edna Coblenz, 1887-1948) was an actress from Ohio who, for reasons known only to her, became fascinated with Tibetan art, architecture and Buddhism.  She never visited Tibet and didn't consider herself a Buddhist, but she was a charismatic member of a group of New York spiritualists in the early 1900’s and is credited for being one of the people who popularized Buddhism in American. 

Jacques Marchais

Jacques Marchais owned a Tibetan art gallery in Manhattan and eventually amassed a personal collection of over 3000 pieces, once the largest collection of Tibetan art in the United States.  Toward the end of her life, she built a meditation center and retreat in the hills of Staten Island, designing it and the surrounding gardens to resemble pictures she’d seen of Tibetan monasteries.  This historic building was the first Himalayan-style architecture in the United States and is now a museum, with meditation cells and a series of small gardens arranged in steps down a leafy, terraced slope.  

Sadly, the collection has shrunk since Marchais’s death.  The museum passed through a number of hands and many pieces were lost, sold off and possibly stolen.  However, today the museum is in better care and runs an active events program.  During our visit they were setting up for a Tibetan cooking demonstration.  Two rooms of the house are open for viewing: the library and the "Temple Room,” with a three-tiered mica altar.  While the collection is smaller than in Marchais’s day, exhibits still include a number of valuable and interesting pieces of Tibetan art, including ritual knives, alter sets, furniture, textiles and lots of bronze deities.  The museum also hosts the occasional modern displays.  Paul particularly enjoyed a colorful photography exhibit showcasing the current people of Tibet.

To Paul and me, the Tibetan art at the Jacques Marchais Museum was similar to what we had seen at the Rubin Museum (the large Tibetan art museum in Manhattan), and, unfortunately, we encountered the same problems that we had had at the Rubin.  Namely, that the objects were presented with very little explanation.  As we have no background in Buddhism or Tibetan art, we were left with a lot of questions.  We also wanted more information about Jacques Marchais herself, an intriguing woman who lived life on her own terms, inspiring others with an ancient religion and culture that she had no connection with, other than her own curiosity and imagination.

Alice Austen House

Another fascinating Staten Island woman was the subject of the next museum, the Alice Austen House.  Alice Austen (1866 -1952) was an early photographer at a time when images were captured with huge box cameras, glass plates and hand-mixed chemicals.  Austen started taking pictures at the age of 10, her first camera an exotic gift from a world-traveling uncle.  Photography soon became a big part of her life and she took a camera nearly everywhere she went, taking thousands of photographs and capturing a large slice of the life of a Victorian age New York socialite at home and at play.  

Alice and Girlfriends, by Alice Austen

New York street scene, Alice Austen

Alice Austen was active and athletic, and her pictures show Austen, her family and her close group of friends at island events, the beach, playing tennis, biking around the island and traveling around the U.S.  Austen also developed an early photojournalistic style, documenting New York City street life, and taking extensive pictures of the labs at the immigrant Quarantine Station on Staten Island. 

Trude and I, masked, short skirts by Alice Austen

There’s no doubt that Alice Austen was a highly skilled photographer.  However, she is known for reasons beyond her artistic talent.  There is a lot of evidence indicating that she was a lesbian who lived life fairly far out of the closet, during a time when that was rare, to say the least.  Austen was part of a close-nit group of woman who did not associate with men, called "The Darns" (short for "darn those women who won't date men”) and some of her photographs of this group are highly suggestive, showing women partially undressed or cross-dressed as men.  Austen lived with a woman, Gertrude Tate, for fifty-five years. 

Julia Martin, Julia Bredt and Self Dressed Up as Men, Alice Austen

Thus the evidence of Alice Austen’s sexuality seems pretty clear, and the several groups of women in buzz cuts walking around the museum probably had strong opinions on the matter.  Alice Austen is held up in the lesbian community as an example of a well-documented lesbian life and artist at the turn of the century.  You’ll find her more gender-bending photography on a lot of gay and lesbian art sites on the web.  However, what you won’t find is any mention of her sexuality at the museum.  The museum does not show any of her suggestive photography and refuses access to any investigation of her sexuality.  This alleged cover up has been the subject of more than one documentary.

Alice Austen House

The Alice Austen House museum is in the house that Austen lived in most of her life, perched in a small park on the shore of Staten Island, with a glorious view of the entrance to NY harbor and all of its shipping traffic.  The house is well restored, with Victorian furnishings and an antique camera; however, on the whole, we were disappointed in the museum.  Thousands of Austen’s photographs survive, but only a handful were exhibited, and there was no tour and very little information on her life at all, with or without the lesbian question.  We found more information on a modern photography exhibit in the house than we did on Alice Austen.  (For the record, the modern photography was about distorted body images, and both Paul and I thought it was pretty cool.)  However, it seemed as if the museum, in an effort to remove any question of Austen's sexuality, had also removed most of her art and all of her personality, reducing it to just a small historic house.  

Miss E. Alice Austen, 1888 by Captain Oswald Müller

In summary, both Paul and I think that historical houses that focus on people, not events, are the best kinds of historical houses.  Instead of being caught in amber, these houses feel more active and seem to connect with the present.  It's no surprise to us that both of these museums had modern exhibits mixed in with historical ones.  However, at both the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art and the Alice Austen House we would have liked more information about the art exhibited and the fascinating people featured, and a good tour would really help both of these museums.  Despite this, we enjoyed the insight into Staten Island’s creative, odd-ball heritage at both of these museums, and loved the fact that the island works hard to preserve the memories of its more unusual residents, even if conservative museum boards don’t always approve of their lifestyles. 

Images in this post, from the top: Alice Austen, Auntie Minn and Oswald Müller. 1884, by Alice Austen; exterior of Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art; portrait of Jacques Marchais; two statues at the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art; exterior of the Alice Austen House; Alice and Girlfriends, by Alice Austen; New York scene by Alice Austen; Trude and I, masked, short skirts, by Alice Austen; Julia Martin, Julia Bredt and Self Dressed Up as Men, 1891 by Alice Austen; interior of the Alice Austen House; Miss E. Alice Austen at 22, 1888 by Captain Oswald Müller.

International Center of Photography

2/20/2010, Saturday (continued)

MUSEUM:  
International Center for Photography ......................... 1.5 hrs
ICP Education Gallery ............................................ 20 min


COST:
International Center for Photography ......................... $12 each
ICP Education Gallery ............................................ Free


Deep in midtown Manhattan lies a plaza so ugly its been nominated as one of the worst public spaces in the world. The implausibly named Grace Plaza consists of an enormous barren white concrete slab boxed in by the windowless north façade of the WR Grace building, which looms like huge, blank prison walls 50 stories high on two sides of the plaza. During NYC’s seedy days, Grace Plaza was an infamous drug spot; today it's a haven for smokers, and no one else. Yet below this hideous ashtray of a square lurks the International Center for Photography (ICP), a prestigious school and unique museum.

ICP was founded in 1974 by Cornell Capa, a well-known Hungarian photographer, to preserve the legacy of his brother, the legendary Robert Capa (see picture above; 1913 –1954). Robert Capa was a 20th century combat photographer considered one the greatest photojournalists of all time. He covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across much of Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. He took insane risks getting shots of actual combat, becoming famous for photographing soldiers as they fell beside him in the Spanish Civil War and swimming ashore on D-Day to photograph the second assault wave on Omaha Beach. His lover, Gerda Taro, also a photojournalist, died in a battle while they were covering the Spanish Civil War, and Robert Capa was killed by a landmine while photographing a troop advance under fire, literally dying with his camera in his hand.

In keeping with its roots, the museum often mounts thought-provoking shows on divisive, sometimes violent topics such as gangs in L.A. and the war in Iraq. This day’s exhibits were no exception to the ICP museum’s almost pugnacious love of controversy. Can a photography museum have an “in your face” attitude?  We think so. 

The largest exhibit was devoted to the first American showing of the eccentric, possibly insane Czech photographer Miroslav Tichy. Tichy’s photographs appear to be badly damaged snapshots of girls and young woman in streets and public parks, going about their business and mostly unaware of the camera. The photos seem clumsy, often showing only pieces of a scene, like a woman’s foot or backside, and are blurry, badly printed and in terrible condition: battered, dog eared, scratched and water damaged. The juxtaposition of clearly sexual images, the surreptitious nature of the photography, and the trashed condition of the photos give the pictures an oddly dreamy but eerie quality. One reviewer called it an “uncanny fusion of eroticism, paranoia and deliberation” and it’s both captivating and highly unsettling. Obviously this was Paul’s favorite exhibit, EVER. He liked it so much he bought the Tichy exhibition catalogue from the gift shop, a first for us.

The exhibit takes on more depth as you learn more about Tichy from a film playing in the exhibit, made by one of his neighbors. Tichy studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and was for a time a celebrated painter. He was a nonconformist and a former member of the Brono Five, a group of painters who broke with the state-sanctioned Socialist Realism. Yet he also has a history of mental illness, and has been in and out of metal institutions for most of his life. He clearly considers his photographs to be a form of political protest, yet his monologues are not those of a completely sane person. Some things are clear however. The amateur look of his art is deliberate, and the product of a carefully orchestrated series of missteps that begin with crude, homemade cameras. These cameras are on display at the exhibit and are made out of rubbish, fashioned from materials like shoeboxes, toilet-paper rolls and Plexiglas, the lenses polished with toothpaste and cigarette ash.  The cameras look like trash, explaining why a lot of his subjects don’t seem to know that they are being photographed. As he says in the film, “If you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world”.

Tichy had a set routine for his photography.  Allowing himself three rolls of film a day, he wandered the streets of his town performing his own personal version of the Czech government’s surveillance program.  He wore a uniform of sorts, an unbelievably ratty coat that Tichy elaborately unraveled.  Taking his trash cameras with him, he cruised the same bus stops, parks and swimming pools everyday, looking for young women to photograph.  Looking at the photographs, the first thing that came to my mind was that if he tried that in America, he would be arrested as a potential molester, and that’s exactly what happened in Czechoslovakia.  He was repeatedly thrown into jails and mental hospitals, beaten and starved, but always released as a harmless old coot.  Upon his release, he would repeat his behavior until his next arrest.  According to his neighbors, his arrests were routine, always happening before holidays or official visits to remove a potential embarrassment.  As we left the exhibit Paul and I were still unsure how much of his art was political protest and how much was insanity, and where the line was between the two.

The other photography exhibits at the ICP are less radical today, but when they were first taken they were shocking.  “Surrealism, Photography, and Paris” was a collection of surrealist photographers of Paris in the 20’s and 30’s.  At the time, these artists were the height of the avante guarde, using fragmented and manipulated images to project a frenetic disjointed view of urban life in a rapidly modernizing city.  Many of the pictures were of prostitutes and dance halls, exposing the seedy dark side of Paris.  Others contrast new and old parts of the city.  In a 1934 picture of the Eiffel Tower, it soars against the night sky with electric lights illuminating its corners.  The tower is a beacon of the future, and in the foreground the silhouette of an old brick chimney is visible as a sign of a rapidly disappearing past.  Once again, this was more Paul’s type of art than mine, and it highlighted more of Paul’s favorite artist, Man Ray (although Tichy and Tino Sehgal are rapidly challenging that coveted spot).  We saw an entire exhibition on Man Ray at the Jewish Museum, and, for me at least, he does not improve with repetition.

Another exhibit highlighted the work of Alan B. Stone.  In many ways this exhibit echoed Tichy’s.  Stone was a gay photographer in Montreal in the 50’s and 60’s, a time when it was very dangerous to be gay.  The walls of this exhibit are lined with Montreal newspapers of the time, featuring stories of beatings of homosexuals and raids of gay bars, underlining the risks that Stone was taking in his work (although its all in French so we had to take the curator's word for it).  Stone was a purveyor of beefcake, specializing in pictures of male pin-ups, theoretically for women.  More risky were his photographs of his native city, where he wandered, Tichy-like, looking for good-looking young men to photograph.  The walls of this exhibit are lined with well-muscled construction workers, shirtless and glistening, swinging heavy hammers, and young nubile dockworkers flinging heavy ropes to each other.  Strangely, Paul did not find this photography as compelling as I.

The last exhibit was one Paul and I stumbled upon by accident.  The address we had for ICP puts it under Grace Plaza, but what is actually under the plaza is the ICP School.  (The museum is across the street.)  This school is one of the world's most extensive and best-equipped schools of photography, offering 400 courses every year, and it exhibits a constant rotation of student works.  We recommend taking a look at the (free) student gallery if you are visiting the ICP museum.  While we were visiting there were photos from several photojournalist projects from around the world, and it was worth a look to see the next generation of budding Robert Capas.

Images in this post, from the top: Leonore Fini, 1933 by Dora Maar; photograph of Robert Capa by Gerda Taro; 3 untitled images by Miroslav Tichy; one of Tichy's cameras; ; Eiffel Tower, 1934 by Ilse Bing; Molin Rouge, 1933 by Ilse Bing; Untitled, by Alan B. Stone 1964.

The Jewish Museum

2/6/2010, Saturday continued 

MUSEUM: The Jewish Museum 

TIME: 2 hr

COST: Free on saturdays 

Pauline’s note: Paul’s favorite piece of art that we own is a photography print by Man Ray.  I hate it and have exiled it to his office.  (It was going to be in the bathroom, but Paul argued that it might get water damaged.)  The Jewish Museum has a large exhibit devoted to Man Ray this year, so Paul was the logical choice to blog about this museum and his favorite artist.  (Our controversial artwork in question is “Larmes” (Tears) 1930 by Man Ray, see picture.  Feel free to weigh in on the argument in the comments.) 

Paul here: Our second museum of the day was a trip back to Museum Mile and the wonderful mansion/museums.  There are actually quite a few Jewish museums in NYC, which befits the huge impact the Jewish community has had on this city. This is the biggest and most celebrated. The Jewish Museum is located in a renovated Gothic Mansion that used to be the home of Frieda Schiff Warburg, a trustee of the Jewish seminary where the original museum was housed.  It moved to the current site in 1944, and has four floors of exhibition space and a café in the basement.  While some of the building has been preserved inside (particularly the 2nd floor), the bulk has been changed to a clean, modern museum aesthetic.

The museum was high on my list because the subject of one of the current exhibits is one of my absolute favorite artists, Man Ray. We went on a Saturday, which is always free. Saturday is the Sabbath, so the store and café were closed. Also, there are no audio tours available on the Sabbath.  Most people took the stairs, but there is a “Sabbath elevator” that runs automatically from floor to floor, with no button pushing necessary.  For those who don’t know, the Sabbath is a day of rest and reflection; all work is forbidden.  It’s an important observation to many Jews, and it inspired Pauline and I to think about our workaholic ways.

The first floor housed the retrospective of Man Ray, a Jewish-American artist who was a major force in the Modernist, Dada and Surrealist movements.  Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in New Jersey, Man Ray experimented with all different art media, including poetry, painting, printed arts, sculpture, photography, performance art, and just about any other art form you could imagine.  He prided himself in not being pigeonholed into any single artistic trend or technique.  He often felt penned in by his critics, who defined him and thus confined him.  One of the first works you see is a testimonial to that: a life mask of Man Ray stuffed in a box and confined by newspapers on all sides, creating a disturbing, claustrophobic piece.  Man Ray’s work is ever changing and challenging, but the exhibition was a pretty complete representation of it. 

Pauline does not like Man Ray.  At best, she “doesn’t see the genius of it all”; at worst she finds it offensive.  However, I think he is one the more overlooked American artists of the 20th century.  His maverick and mercurial nature made him hard to categorize, and I don’t like all of his works, but really, it’s his spirit that I love.  He never seemed to settle in to a normal life and artistically he alternated between popularity and obscurity, but he always refused to be anything but true to his own quirky, absurdist views. 

The top floors of the Jewish Museum are one huge exhibit on the long history of the Jewish people: how they started, where they went, and how they exist today.  It is truly expansive, covering thousands of years.  The over 800 artifacts were impressive, and included primitive ancient artifacts, a replica of an early temple, and one of the most amazing collections of menorahs I've ever seen, ranging from intricate silver antique menorahs from eastern Europe to ultra -modern ones made out of copper drain pipe with a plastic pro-wrestler figurine as a figurehead.  One very impressive collection was the “Danzig” collection consisting of almost every important piece from the city of Danzig (now Gadansk) in Poland/Germany.  Its one of the few intact collections remaining from Eastern Europe, shipped to the US just before the start of WWII, before the Nazis destroyed most evidence of Jewish existence in that region.

Those who know me know I am a bit of a history buff, and I went into this hoping to get a good introduction to Jewish history, something I really don’t know much about.  There were a lot of history exhibits and discussion of the Judaic Faith and some of the branches- primarily the European Ashkenazi and Sephardic Judaism, but I wish they spent more time on Jewish Mysticism and the Cabbala and the text on the displays is very limited.  Both Pauline and I found ourselves wishing we came on a day we could have gotten the audio tour.  There were guides giving tours, and we found ourselves attempting to trail them so we could overhear.  Otherwise, we would have been lost.

The second floor felt like it was right out of the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum. The exhibit, called Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life surveys the explosion of new Jewish rituals, art, and objects that’s occurred since the mid-1990s.  Contemporary artists and designers transformed the acts of Jewish ritual into new forms and reinterpreted ritual items, such as spice holders, Yamakas, wedding dresses and menorahs.  The projects included industrial design, metalwork, ceramics, video, drawing, comics, sculpture, and textiles from all over the world. The alterations of the spaces, designs and situations in which ritual is performed made this a fascinating and compelling exhibit and made me think about the how and why of the rituals we perform by rote. 

All in all, the Jewish Museum was a good mix of history and art, but we enjoyed the temporary art exhibits the most.  We felt that the history exhibits were largely for people who already knew a lot about Jewish history. 


Pictures in this post, from the top:  
A collage of Hanukkah lamps from the Jewish Museum: Hanukkah Lamp, Josef Kohn, Vienna (Austria), 1872-1921, silver: repoussé, traced, punched, and cast.  (A three-dimensional figure of a peacock set within a frame, as if on stage.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Eastern Europe (?), 18th-early 19th century, Copper alloy: cast and gilded.  Hanukkah Lamp, ZK, Brody, Galicia (Ukraine), 1787, silver: repoussé, pierced, appliqué, parcel-gilt, and cast; copper alloy.  (The form and decoration of this lamp is derived from Torah arks of Polish synagogues of the 18th century. A "balcony" under the ark doors supports the oil containers in the form of leaping lions. Below, the double-headed eagle of Austria proudly spreads its wings.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Possibly Fez (Morocco), 19th century.  Hanukkah Lamp, Eastern Europe, early 19th century (?), copper alloy: cast.  (Depicts the Garden of Eden surrounded by a fence and palm trees. In the center is the Tree of Knowledge, filled with fruit, a snake wound around its trunk.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Italy, late 19th-early 20th century, copper alloy.  Hanukkah Lamp, Paris, France after 1917, copper alloy (The body of this lamp is made of two shell casings, while the candleholders consist of bullet cartridges.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Marek Szwarc (French, b. Poland), Paris, France, 1920s.  Hanukkah Lamp, Central Anti-Atlas Mountains (Morocco), 19th century, copper alloy: cast and enameled.  Hanukkah Lamp, India, end of 19th century, copper alloy.  (Lamps in the form of the Star of David are characteristic of the Bene Israel community near Bombay.)  

“Larmes” (Tears) 1930, by Man Ray; “Cadeau” (Gift) 1921 by Man Ray, “Black and White” 1936 by Man Ray, “Le violin de Ingres” (Ingres's Violin) 1924 by Man Ray; "Hevruta-Mituta" 2007 by Hadas Kruk and Anat Stein (Plastic chess board and thirty-two knitted skullcaps). 

A collage of modern Hanukkah lamps: Hanukkah Lamp, Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert (American, b. Germany), Jerusalem, Israel, 1950-55, Copper alloy: repoussé.   Maquette for a Hanukkah Lamp, David Weinrib (American), Stony Point, New York, United States, 1989, Copper; steel; wood; wax. (This piece was created as a maquette for a Hanukkah lamp for Temple Beth El in Spring Valley, New York. It is made of "found" industrial materials.) Menorahmorph, Karim Rashid (American, b. Egypt), New York, United States, 2004, Silicone and stainless steel.  Hanukkah Lamp, United States, c. 1926-1940, Copper alloy: cast and gilded.  (The letters comprising the candleholders spell out the name of a Jewish woman's organization, Ivriah.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Silver: pierced glass, by Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert (American, b. Germany), Jerusalem, Israel, 1953 (Inscription: "To you, praise is fitting" from "Ma'oz Tzur").  Hanukkah Lamp, Manufacturer: Orivit-Aktiengesellschaft, Germany, 1900-1905, white metal: cast and silver-plated; glass: mold formed.

Museum of the City of New York/ El Museo del Barrio

1/16/2010, Saturday

MUSEUMS:
Museum of the City of New York....................... 2hrs
El Museo del Barrio........................................... 1.5hrs
    Snack at El Café (El Museo del Barrio)......... 0.5hrs

COST:
Museum of the City of New York ..................... $5 each
El Museo del Barrio........................................... Free day
    2 mexican sodas + taco + tamale....................... $11

The first museum of our quest was the Museum of the City of New York. Why did we start with this one? The title says it all, but we considered other options like maybe the largest museum in New York (the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a.k.a the Met) or the most well known (again probably the Met), but we thought a Grande Dame like the Met would make a great finishing museum. We considered the newest museum of the city (Sports Museum of America), but sadly that museum closed less than a year after opening. So the Museum of the City of New York, located on the famous Museum Mile was our starting point.

The building is classically museum shaped, with a large courtyard and stairs leading up to huge ionic columns and a big marble foyer, but the exhibits are less conventional. The museum has a small permanent section containing a somewhat antiquated maritime museum and history of New York harbor, complete with model ships and dioramas, but the majority of the space is taken up by 4 rotating exhibits. At the time of our visit, the largest exhibition was devoted to the work of Scandinavian/New York architect Eero Saarinen, inventor of the office park in the 60’s and clearly a major inspiration of Ikea furniture. His most famous work is probably the St Louis Gateway Arch, a 630 ft arch of reinforced concrete that frames the city skyline. Some of his buildings seem a bit dated now, looking like Star Trek sets from the original series, but it was interesting to see what design was like back when asbestos was a revolutionary material and molded plastic was in vogue, and it was an in depth look at the roots of modern architecture.

Our favorite exhibits of the day were the ones devoted to photography. Sharing the first floor with Eero Saarinen was a photographic exploration of the parks of New York City. For those of you not familiar with the area, New York has a staggering amount of parkland and green spaces within the city. The exhibit was beautiful and educational, with vivid life sized portraits of meadows, brooks and woodland paired with maps and interesting facts about each park (i.e. the first park in New York was rented at a cost of 3 peppercorns annually). The second photography exhibit was crammed in a second floor hallway, but was, in our opinion, an even more interesting look at New York life through the photographs of Look magazine, a photography magazine based in NY from 1940-1960 (for an example see the photograph of the bagpipper above). These beautiful black and white photos documented a time when a teenaged Stanley Kubrick wandered the streets with a camera, taking pictures of a city so crowded that much of people’s private lives were very public. It felt like a very personal glimpse of NYC at that time, at times feeling voyeuristic.

All in all, both Paul and I enjoyed the Museum of the City of New York. Paul was disappointed in the lack of a comprehensive history of the city, but I liked the detailed look at pieces of its history and current culture.

The second museum of the day was El Museo del Barrio, chosen as it was one block over from

the previous museum and free the third Saturday of the month. This museum is devoted to the art of Caribbean and Latin America, and the exhibit on display highlighted Latin American artists who lived in NYC from 1900–1940. Some individual pieces were fun, including a pink bed densely decorated with ribbons, toys, photos and glitter, and there was a nice collection of energetic streetscapes (see picture below), but the exhibits weren’t well explained, the collection didn’t feel very cohesive and I didn’t get much of a sense of the artists or what they felt about NYC.

The museum didn’t seem to be the main focus of the building. Most of the building is classroom space and the area was full of children. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that the exhibits weren’t set up for them; most exhibits were above a child’s eye level, and there were no interactive exhibits. Also, I have to say that the museum was far too heavily policed. Paul was yelled at four times for things

like getting close to exhibits, touching a pillar (that a child had been playing on minutes earlier) and, my personal favorite, taking off his coat. It didn’t make for a pleasant experience.

Paul enjoyed the exhibit on the history of Latin music in NYC, which was crammed into an office hallway on the 4^th floor. It had some colorful costumes and posters and was an interesting look at the rich history of Latin music in NYC, and it might be worth seeking out if you visit the museum, but neither of us loved this museum as a whole.

Ta for now. More on Museum mile to come.