Wave Hill

4/23/2010; Friday, continued

MUSEUM: Wave Hill ………………….…….. 1.5 hrs

COST: …………………...……………..…….. $8 each

After visiting the museums in the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, we stopped by the other museum in this leafy Bronx neighborhood, Wave Hill.  Wave Hill consists of two historic estates on the cliffs above the Hudson River that have been combined and converted into a public botanical garden.  The houses of those estates, Wave Hill House and Glyndor House, are still present but access is limited to their gallery and event spaces.  The real attraction at Wave Hill isn’t the historic buildings or even the immaculate gardens.  It’s the stunning vistas of the New Jersey Palisades, huge shear cliffs rising out of the Hudson River on the western shore, visible from numerous locations in the gardens.  The most classic views are found at Pergola Overlook (pictured above) and the Elliptical Garden, but most of the vegetation of Wave Hill seems specifically grown to frame this view.

Wave Hill was once the private estate of George W. Perkins, financier and former partner of J.P. Morgan, who spent years accumulating properties along the Hudson River which were deeded to the City of New York in 1960.  Perkin's involvement in the Palisades Interstate Park Commission was pivotal in preserving the Palisades, once heavily quarried for railroad ballast. 

The Perkins family resided in Glyndor House and leased Wave Hill House to a series of illustrious tenants.  Theodore Roosevelt's family rented Wave Hill during the summers of 1870 and ‘71, when the future president was 12 and 13.  By some accounts, Teddy's time here deepened his love of the outdoors that would later prompt him to preserve millions of acres of American parkland.  Mark Twain leased the estate from 1901-1903, setting up a treehouse parlor in the branches of a chestnut tree on the lawn.  Of winter at Wave Hill he wrote, “I believe we have the noblest roaring blasts here I have ever known on land; they sing their hoarse song through the big tree-tops with a splendid energy that thrills me and stirs me and uplifts me and makes me want to live always.”  Another famous nature lover to stay at these estates was pioneering naturalist and proponent of evolution Thomas Henry Huxley.  Huxley was astounded by the Palisades across the river, declaring them one of the world's greatest natural wonders.

Paul and I thought that the views of the Palisades were indeed great, but the gardens themselves were also worthy of a look.  Paul was impressed by the massive 100-year-old copper beach and the enormous American elm, which Wave Hill claims to be the largest tree in New York City.  Other good garden sites were the monocot gardens (though Paul and I had to struggle to remember our botany to identify it), and the wild garden with its hidden gazebo.  Paul claims that the whole time we were wandering he kept thinking of “Fern Hill,” a pastoral poem from his favorite poet, Dylan Thomas; see the first stanza below.

Wave Hill House is now used as a gallery space, with rotating exhibits that pay homage to it’s nature-loving heritage.  While we were there the main exhibit was “Propagating Eden: Techniques of Nature Printing in Botany and Art.”  Nature printing is a technique of creating impressions from the surfaces of organic forms, such as a leaf, flower, feather or bone, and it was an interesting collection of a type of art that I haven’t seen since summer camp, when we made cards with fern leaf impressions.  Paul and I both thought the most interesting piece was “earth/pool #3,” prints from zinc plate that had been buried for a year in a vernal pond, allowing the nitrogen to etch its surface, resulting in an abstract but peaceful image (see image below). 


In summary, the art and gallery spaces of this museum were modest, and don’t take much time to view.  The reason people come to Wave Hill is the gardens and the magnificent views, so if you go, be sure to come in good weather, bring your strolling shoes and pack a picnic.

First stanza of “Fern Hill”, by Dylan Thomas:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

    The night above the dingle starry,

         Time let me hail and climb

    Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

         Trail with daisies and barley

     Down the rivers of the windfall light. 

Images in this post, from the top: view from the Pergola Overlook at Wave Hill; Glyndor House; the Elliptical Garden, "Spring Tree" by Dan Beyton; "Imprints from Nature" by J. E. Parritt; and “earth/pool #3” by Kate Temple, 2006.

Derfner Judaica Museum/Art at the Hebrew Home

4/23/2010, Friday

MUSEUMS:

Hebrew Home at Riverdale:

  Art at the Home ……………...….. 30 min

  Derfner Judaica Museum …….… 30 min

COST:

Hebrew Home at Riverdale:

  Art Collection ………………....…. Free

  Derfner Judaica Museum …….… Free

Part of the fun of seeing ALL the museums of NYC is that, in addition to visiting popular attractions (like MOMA), we also get to tour some very unusual, hidden and even mysterious parts of the city we would never otherwise see, like unused subway tunnels (New York Transit Museum), an abandoned speakeasy (Museum of the American Gangster), and the inner sanctum of a 100 year old secret society of bookbinders (Grolier Club).  The location of today’s museum doesn’t sound as exotic as these, but it certainly isn’t a place we would normally visit, and, according to Paul, it was “the creepiest place so far.”

Today’s museums were located in a very large, very wealthy and very private retirement home, the Hebrew Home at Riverdale.  Riverdale is a neghborhood in the Bronx, but this quiet, leafy historic neighborhood on the bluffs overlooking the Hudson feels so far from the bustling urban-ness of the Bronx that it might as well be on the moon.  To reach the museum, we started on typical Bronx streets, full of people, elevated train noise and traffic, but after we turned and began our descent toward the river, the densely packed brick apartment complexes of central Bronx abruptly gave way to spacious graceful private homes, partially hidden behind immaculately prunned shrubbery and ancient trees casting heavy shadows on the road.  The roads narrowed, the people vanished, all street noise faded out, and by the time we reached the retirement home, the only noises were the wind in the trees, birdsong, and the faint sound of distant water.

A large black fence surrounds this complex in the forest, monitored by a security system that would do a prison proud.  All visitors must check in at the heavily guarded gate and submit to a thorough security check, including ID check, justification of visit and car search if deemed necessary.  There wasn’t a cavity search, but it felt like maybe the guard who did that was off for the day.  If you’re allowed past the checkpoint, you’re given a visitor’s pass and a narrow window of time to complete your business.  Neither Paul nor I asked what would happen if we stayed past our allotted time, and we knew we didn’t want to find out.


After the interrogation, we proceeded into the complex.  Despite the map provided at the gate, we got lost instantly.  In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is not your average retirement home, and the place is huge.  Located on 19 manicured acres overlooking the Hudson River, the Hebrew Home has over 3,000 elderly residents, a fully staffed hospital, counseling center and rehab facility, and of course what we were there for: a 5,000 piece art collection, a Jewish history museum, and one of the larger sculpture gardens in NYC. 


There are virtually no signs (maybe they’re considered tacky?), so we found the first museum by entering one of the larger buildings and wandering around.  It turned out to be part of the hospital, so we had the bizarre and fairly disturbing experience of dodging gurneys and gowned patients while trying to find someone who didn’t look busy saving someone’s life to ask where any of the museums were.  Eventually we stumbled upon a lofty atrium-like structure overlooking the river called the Jacob Reingold Pavilion, the location of the Derfner Judaica Museum.

The objects in the Derfner Judaica Museum were originally the private collection of wealthy residents Ralph and Leuba Baum, and donated to the home upon their death.  This is how the home acquired most, if not all, of its extensive art collection, and after you realize that sad fact you begin to see every piece of art as representing a death at the home, just one of the many things that made this an intensely eerie experience.

A refugee from Nazi persecution, Ralph Baum (d. 1984) and his wife, Leuba (d. 1997) collected objects used by European Jews before the Holocaust, trying to persevere some of the history and memory of what was lost.  It’s an impressive collection of artifacts, ranging from ceremonial objects like elaborately decorated Torah cases and Hanukah lamps, to more personal items like kitchen spice containers and playing cards.  Paul thought it seemed the most personal of the Jewish museums we’ve seen, consisting largely of small but meaningful things people carried with them as they fled their homes, like a bridal belt worn by all of the women of a family on their wedding day, or a girl’s embroidered Matzah bag.  The object that made the greatest impression on me was an old Torah scroll, yellowed with age and partially charred, but still intact.  It had been pulled from the rubble of a synagogue near Hamburg burned to the ground by the Nazis on Kristall-nacht, the only one of 13 scrolls to survive.  It had been stored in a local police station, and when Ralph Baum returned to his hometown after the war, it was presented to him, the only survivor left to claim it.

In addition to the Judaica museum, the Hebrew Home also has an extensive art collection, comprised of 5,000 works by renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and Joan Mitchell, as well as a large sculpture garden with breathtaking views of the Hudson River and Palisades. The art collection is recognized as a museum, but displayed in common areas throughout the complex.  To see it Paul and I essentially had to tour the retirement home.  I particularly liked the Warhol sketches of famous Jews, and the exhibition of Rachel Leibman’s collages made from images of ancient manuscripts.  Interspersed throughout the halls are also displays supposedly for children, including a huge model train garden designed by landscape architect Paul Busse, an antique doll collection, and a wall of creepy porcelain birds (they just stare at you with beady black eyes).  The art was nice, but it was difficult to just wander through other people’s parlors, feeling like outsiders as friendly residents asked whom we were there to see.  Paul had to constantly fight the urge to go talk to all those lonely people.

Our take on things: on the plus side, there were no crowds and the collections were interesting, particularly the Judaica museum and, oddly, the model train set.  However, their location in a swank retirement home, while certainly novel, made them difficult to get to and awkward to view.  We just could not shake the feeling that we were trespassers here.

Images in this post, from the top: three sculptures in the "River walk" sculpture garden of the Hebrew Home at Riverdale; "Illuminations" by Rachel Leibman; Torah scroll from Elmshorn Germany; “Artistic Palestine Play-Cards” from 1920 Jerusalem replaces the four usual suits with four symbols of religion and the land (fig, pomegranate, star of David and menorah). The kings are Ahasuerus, David, Saul and Solomon. The queens include Esther and the Queen of Sheba; "Olde West Garden Railroad" by Paul Busse, a model railroad depicting life in the 19th century American frontier; and Hanukkah Lamp, Bezalel School, Jerusalem, ca. 1920-29.

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

3/12/2010, Friday

MUSEUM: Museum of Modern Art

TIME: 1.5 hr

COST: $20 each

The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) is one of the world’s greatest museums.  Oh sure, there are bigger museums and a few with greater collections (but not many), but there is little doubt that MOMA has a huge influence in the art world and on the public at large.  Quite simply, it’s a legend.  Unfortunately, our visit this day was fraught with peril and mishap and we didn’t see as much of it as we would have liked, but we can’t blame that on the museum.  Our troubles really started when a tree fell in Dobbs Ferry, but more on that later.

Much of MOMA’s fame is derived from its massive collection (over 150,000 works), which includes iconic works such as Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory, and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, and is considered by some to be the best collection of modern Western masterpieces in the world.  But this museum doesn’t collect just paintings.  MOMA has 6 different departments: Painting and Sculpture, Architecture and Design, Photography, Prints and Illustrated Books, Drawings, and Film and Media.  Film and Media alone has 22,000 films and 4 million film stills. 

A substantial portion of MOMA’s fame comes not from its collection, but from it’s daring.  Past and present curators have held true to the philosophies behind modern art, and love to shake things up.  The Architecture and Design, Film, and Photography departments were the first of their kind in any museum.  Groundbreaking MOMA exhibitions have included Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936), The Family of Man (1955), and Primitivism (1984).  Right now the exhibit just finishing up is a series of performance pieces featuring, among other things, 38 completely naked men and women in various poses, including lying under a skeleton and facing each other in a doorway that visitors have to push past.  Needless to say, the exhibit attracted a great deal of media attention, and not just because there were naked people in a museum.  Apparently not all visitors have kept their hands to themselves. 

Even MOMA’s origins are controversial, with its beginnings forged in a long lasting marital disagreement in New York’s most famous family, the Rockefellers.  John D. Rockefeller Jr. was brought up a strict Baptist, with a deep respect for traditional values and a love of traditional art.  His extensive collection of medieval art forms the core of the Cloisters (a huge medieval museum in Manhattan).  However, his wife, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, had completely different tastes.  She loved modern art.  J.D. became increasingly disturbed by the art his wife brought into their home, and as a result the allowance he gave her was quite modest in relation to the fortune he controlled.  Despite her limited funds, Abbey managed to amass a large collection of prints and small paintings during the 1920’s and 30’s.  One might say she eventually won their argument, as their sons Nelson and David became avid lovers of modern art, and if you ever visit Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Hudson Valley, you’ll find Nelson’s large collection of modern art and sculpture looking very jarring and out of place next to his father’s Neoclassical architecture and nymph fountains.  The guide of the Kykuit tour I took called it a textbook case of a son’s rebellion, just done with a bit more money than most.

Due to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s more limited funds, MOMA began as collaboration between her and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan (pictured above from left to right), over an idea Abby proposed literally over lunch.  Nelson Rockefeller later remarked, "It was the perfect combination. The three women ... had the resources, the tact and the knowledge of contemporary art that the situation required. More to the point, they had the courage to advocate the cause of the modern movement in the face of widespread division, ignorance and a dark suspicion that the whole business was some sort of Bolshevik plot." 

In keeping with MOMA’s revolutionary attitudes, the headline exhibit when we visited featured the works of Hollywood superstar Tim Burton, not someone you’d normally think of being exhibited in a museum (see entrance to the exhibit in picture at left).  In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last three decades, Burton is famous for his dark and quirky films, featuring sensitive misfits triumphing over a world of repressive mediocrity.  His biggest hits include “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and “Batman.”  The exhibit featured models, costumes and set pieces from his well-known films, but also many non-film works, such as sketches, photography and even sculpture.  Burton was an illustrator for Disney early in his career, and is a talented sketch artist.  I particularly liked the pieces he drew during his childhood in Burbank California, like his drawing for the parks department litter campaign.  Paul was fascinated by the big pink angora sweater worn by Johnny Depp in “Ed Wood.”  The exhibit also featured earlier and less well known short films, like the excellent “Vincent”, depicting a young boy who fantasizes that he is his (and Burton's and Paul’s) hero Vincent Price, with Price himself providing narration. 

The works all feature Burton’s particular brand of gothic macabre horror, which is funny and a little scary at the same time, and has made him famous.  Both Paul and I like many of his films, but the exhibit highlighted a problem that we both have with Burton’s work.  It all feels homogenous, with very little variety, and after wandering around looking at caricature after caricature with exaggerated proportions and bizarre disfigurements, we actually felt a bit bored.  Burton isn’t trying to say anything new with his art, he just seems stuck in the same “weirdo makes good” rut that he’s always been in.  All in all, the exhibit was fun for a while, but ultimately a bit of a let down.  Paul found a humorous short video to help explain our perceptions of Burton's lack of originality. 

The Burton exhibit generated a lot of fuss in the press, and was heavily advertised.  It’s been held up as an example of a shift in museum attitudes.  Many museums have been attempting to throw off their stodgy image and attract a younger audience.  To do this, they’re hiring younger curators and embracing popular trends, like Burton.  (This show was currated by the shockingly young 37-year-old Rajendra Roy, chief curator of film at MOMA.)  The strategy seems to have worked in this case, as Burton visitors were relatively young, averaging in their 30’s, and the show was a blockbuster.  Every weekend was completely sold out, which is where our problems began.

As we don’t live or work in Manhattan, it can be difficult for us to get into the city during the week.  I managed to get a ticket for a Friday afternoon visit (one of the few left) and Paul and I arranged to be free that afternoon so we could drive into the city BEFORE rush hour.  However, that afternoon a tree fell in Dobbs Ferry, knocking out power to all traffic lights in the vicinity, and Paul was stuck in a 2-hour traffic jam on his way home.  From there on it was a disaster, for now we were driving into the city during rush hour (another 2 hour traffic jam).  When we finally arrived at the museum, we were cranky, exhausted and extremely late for our ticketed time.  Fortunately the museum is open late on Fridays and they were still willing to let us in to the exhibit.  Unfortunately, the museum is open late on Fridays because that when it is free and it was completely packed.  We had to fight our way through crowds to see every piece in the Burton exhibit, and when we were done with that we just couldn’t face the rest of the museum in these insane crowds.  We had both seen MOMA in its entirety when we visited New York as tourists 2 years ago, so we called it a day and went home.

In conclusion, of course we would recommend MOMA for a visit; it’s in all NYC tourist guides for good reason, but try to avoid the crowds if you can. 

Images in this post, from the top: "Baboon Boy," by Tim Burton, in the lobby of MOMA; A visitor at MOMA walks between Jacqueline Lounsbury and Layard Thompson in "Imponderabilia," from the exhibit "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present"; John Bonafede in "Nude with Skeleton," from the exhibit "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present"; photograph of sculpture in the gardens of Kykuit, the historic Rockefeller estate; photographs of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan (from left to right); entrance to the Tim Burton exhibit; sculpture at the Tim Burton exhibit;"The boy with nails in his eyes" figure; sketch from the short film "Vincent," by Tim Burton.

New York Botanical Gardens

4/11/2010, Sunday 

MUSEUM: New York Botanical Gardens (http://www.nybg.org)

TIME:        3 hr

COST:       $15 parking, free admission with guest passes from a friend)

We were warned.  Looking back over the events of the day, I can say that for certain.  Like characters in a fairy tale, we were taken aside and given quite clear instructions, which we ignored.  “It’s the biggest flower show of the year, and it can get crowded,” we were told.  “You’ll be fine if you just go early in the day.  It’s indoors, so if possible, go on a day with bad weather.  And whatever you do, don’t wait until the end of the show.”  Yet there we were, in the afternoon of a beautiful sunny spring day, on the last day of the New York Botanical Gardens Orchid Show. 

The crowds were massive.  It was a 30-minute wait just to get into the parking lot.  It seemed like everyone in the city of New York and their mother just had to see flowers today, and I definitely mean “their mother”, as two thirds of the crowd were middle-aged to older women.  I have nothing to say in defense of our foolishness, except that we were given free tickets to the very expensive flower show (normally $20 each, plus $15 for parking), and we just hadn’t been able to fit it into our schedule before this weekend.  Somehow, we had convinced our friend Peter that this was a good idea, so at least we had company waiting in lines (see picture at right) on this badly planned outing. 

On the plus side, the flowers were lovely.  The orchid show is a yearly event, and takes place in the magnificent Haupt Conservatory, a Victorian era wrought iron framed, "crystal-palace style" structure designed by the famed Lord & Burnham firm, and without a doubt the largest and most beautiful greenhouse I’ve ever laid eyes on.  This year the show’s theme was “Cuba in Flower” and there was an emphasis on Cuban orchids and “Caribbean atmosphere” which consisted of a few adobe and grass hut-like structures spread through the different rooms conservatory.  A little hokey, but honestly I didn’t even notice the huts until they were pointed out.  The real stars here were the orchids, and they were everywhere.  Brilliantly colored orchids sprouted along side every path, dripped in vivid cascades from nearly every tree and rafter, and seemed to poke at you from every bush and branch in the place.  There were areas where you literally had to brush hanging strands of these delicate flowers aside to get by.  Of course Paul, being a bit of a plant rebel, was much more impressed by the large display of carnivorous plants than any mere orchid, and mused for several minutes over his lost pitcher plant collection, abandoned in our move from Seattle.

In most areas of the conservatory, there were so many flowers to take in that I didn’t mind waiting for the line to move.  However, there was a lot of waiting, and while you’d think the crowd at a flower show would be sedate and polite, this is New York after all, so that was not always the case.  In the most orchid-dense room, toward the end of the tour, there was a long delay as nearly everyone pulled out their cameras to snap pictures of their favorite flowers.  Not having brought my camera today (more bad planning) the time dragged a bit, but there was group of women behind us that was just fuming.

They complained loudly for several minutes about everyone taking pictures and discussed an organization system where people taking pictures would move to the left so those who wanted to get through could move by on the right.  They eventually started yelling this and pushed past people, including us.  Their organization system wasn’t a bad idea, and they initially got a bit of movement in the mob, but then they stopped and blocked off the entire path so they could take group pictures.  Peter, who had been the closest to them when they were complaining, just about lost it right there in a justifiable orchid-fueled rage.  When we finally got out of the conservatory, he had a good 30-minute rant.

Fortunately, there is more to the New York Botanical Garden than just the orchid show, so we had a lot of places to walk while Peter cooled down.  It's one of the premier botanical gardens in the US, spanning 250 acres, and containing 50 separate “curated” gardens as well as 50 acres of un-logged virgin woodlands, the last piece of the original forest which once covered all of New York City.  It also has the Mertz Library and Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory, containing the most important botanical and horticultural library in the world, the largest herbarium in the Western Hemisphere and a large research center and graduate studies program dedicated to the study of plant genetics worldwide.  As impressive as the library was, it was too beautiful a day to be indoors, and we spent our remaining time wandering the gardens.  The curated gardens are wonderfully diverse and designed to be seen at all different times of the year.  While we were there Daffodil Hill and the Cherry, Magnolia and Lilac Collections were in full bloom. The Conifer Arboretum and Rock Gardens were also lovely, and we all enjoyed the forest paths next to the babbling Bronx River.  I was a little disappointed that the roses weren’t blooming (I’m a sucker for a good rose garden), but that just gave me a good reason to come back. 

In all fairness, I should note that Peter was not the only one to have a good garden rant this day.  There’s a tram that circulates in the gardens, blasting a loud audio tour at all times.  For me, it was more than little distracting from quiet garden contemplations.  While we were walking along one lengthy section of trail/tram path, we heard a whole section of the tour backwards, as we were walking in the opposite direction of tram travel.  It was so distracting that Paul started yelling spoilers to passing trams, telling them the next part of the tour.  “Kew Gardens!  It was inspired by Kew Gardens!”  It offended my garden decorum, not only to be interrupted every 10 minutes, but also just the fact that people would take a tram around a garden at all.  How can anyone experience a garden from a bus?  Yet all trams were full.  Paul, ever the nice one, made the suggestion that the trams were important for the handicapped or those with limited mobility, but most people on them appeared fully capable of walking.

To sum up, the New York Botanical Gardens is definitely worth a visit for any garden fancier, or just anyone who likes a good walk.  We would recommend not going to the Orchid Show on the last day, but clearly we don’t listen to that sort of advice.  Paul initially questioned whether or not a botanical garden could actually be counted as a museum, but I argued for the inclusion of this particular one based on its extensive library, watercolors collection and herbarium (which we didn’t see).  However, by the end of the day, Paul was won over by the concept of a garden as a museum, pointing out that the gardens are carefully curated (planted), exhibits (plants) change throughout the year just as in a brick and mortar museum, and can you really argue that flowers are not art?

 

Images from the New York Botanical Gardens in this post, from the top: Orchid from "Cuba in Flower"; the Lilac Collection; crowds at the orchid show; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory; two more orchids and a collection of orchids around palm trees in "Cuba in Flower"; the Herb Garden; the Magnolia Collection; Daffodil Hill; and waterlilies blooming in the conservatory courtyard.

Van Cortlandt House Museum

4/24/2010, Saturday

MUSEUM: Van Cortlandt House Museum

TIME: 3 hrs 
COST: $5 each 

It was one of the first sunny weekends of spring: a warm 74 degrees, bright blue sky with little fluffy clouds, the leaves had just covered the trees again and were a spectacular shade of new-green, birds were singing, and there were flowers everywhere.  Paul turned to me and said, “It’s too nice to spend the day inside.  Lets play hooky from the museums and go for a hike somewhere.”

This flabbergasted me, as Paul hates both warm weather and the un-airconditioned outdoors, but I humored him. “Do I have the museum for you,” I said.  “There’s a historic house in the Bronx in the middle of a huge park.  The house is a tiny seven-room affair.  We’ll see some historic chairs and hear a story about how George Washington slept there, because every historic house from Boston to Richmond has a story about how old GW slept there.  The whole thing shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes, then we’ll have over 1100 acres of forest and trails to hike.”  Paul agreed and we packed a picnic lunch and headed to the Bronx.  It’s amazing how something that starts off sounding so reasonable can go so horribly awry. As Paul (and Carl von Clausewitz) said, “ No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” 

The “enemy” here is the Van Cortlandt House and it is indeed a small but charming historic house, and George Washington did actually sleep there.  It was built in 1748, making it the oldest building in the Bronx, but not the oldest in NYC.  That honor goes to the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn.  Built in 1652, the Wyckoff House is almost 100 years older, and yes, it’s on our Museum list, so expect to hear about it here.  We had a bit of trouble finding the Museum, as the house is small and the park is huge.  I had assumed there would be a sign, but no such luck, and we ended up driving around the periphery of the gigantic park for a while looking for something that looked “Museum-y”.  It’s hard to describe how big this park is to people with no experience of huge urban parks (like us).  There are 18 baseball fields, 7 football fields, 7 basketball courts, 8 tennis courts, 13 cricket pitches and a 3000-seat stadium.  Additionally, there’s a golf course and driving range, horse stables and jumping course, a lake, a nursery, a parade ground, a swimming pool, 4 playgrounds, 2 historic cemeteries and picnic grounds beyond count.  There is also extensive acreage of forest, a wetland marsh and a nature center.  All this, and it’s only the fourth largest park in NYC, behind Pelham Bay Park, Flushing Meadows Park and the cleverly named Staten Island Greenbelt.

After some wandering, we realized that we weren’t just going to stumble upon the house, so we stopped at the horse stables and Paul went inside to ask for directions.  Let me stop right here and give you a vital piece of information: Paul is afraid of horses.  Not “run screaming” afraid, more the “nervous, deep breaths, getting the shakes” kind.  So I was surprised when he volunteered to go in, and worried when he didn’t come back.  I watched the little girls on ponies bounce around the paddock for a few minutes, debating when would be a good time to rescue him.  Too soon and it might hurt his pride, too late and he might need something a lot stronger than what was in our picnic basket.  Fortunately he reappeared after about 5 minutes, and after some walking around to “shake it off” he was able to form complete sentences.

There was no one in the stables, and he’d been wandering around futilely looking for anyone who wasn’t four-legged.  After some cool off time, we did what we should have done in the first place and consulted Paul’s Blackberry, once we found a place with signal.  Turns out we weren’t far off, so we found a place to park and hiked in with our picnic basket.  Already tired of being lost, we ate our lunch on the property’s back stairs, perched on the side of a small bluff with a view of some co-eds sunning themselves on a raised platform in the marsh.  You’d think they’d never heard of mosquitoes. 

We bought our $5 tickets at the modest gift shop and received what I realized only later was a warning.  (Cue ominous music.)  As she handed us our tickets, the receptionist asked if we wanted our tour to be self-guided or led by the docent.  We asked for the docent, as we’ve found that we get much more information from talking to actual people in museums than squinting at dry descriptions in small print.   She nodded and handed us the self-guide tour sheets, encased in plastic folders like a Chinese menu.  Confused, I asked “Is the docent not available?”

“He’s in there, but you may want to break from the tour at some point and explore on your own.”  Puzzled, we thought that maybe he was overly busy or had a large group, but when we got inside there was only a tour group of three: two school-aged girls and a woman, plus the docent, David Kappes.  The tour had just begun when we arrived, and Mr. Kappes was regaling the group with stories of the house’s past, setting the stage at 250 years ago, when this whole park was a massive grain plantation, home to one of the country’s wealthiest families: the Van Courtlands. 

Mr. Kappes was amazingly well informed and detailed, telling us everything from how many slaves lived in the house, to the story of the near arrest and flight of the Van Cortlands in the Revolutionary War.  During that war, the house changed hands multiple times as British and colony forces skirmished in the area.  George Washington used the house as a command center (and slept here) during the period when colony forces held the area.  Now Paul considers himself a bit of an amateur historian, so when the docent made a comment about Washington not being a great General, Paul began to debate him, and that’s when things really got going.

After 20 minutes of watching Paul and Mr. Kappes debating the minutia of Revolutionary war troupe movements, I was ready to move on, but the school girls had a paper to write and were furiously scribbling down every word and asking for more details.  Mr. Kappes, clearly enjoying such an enthusiastic audience, obliged them.  For the next 2 hours we got the most comprehensive history lesson of our lives.

We heard exhaustive details on every part of the house, from the placement of the original wainscoting to the lack of nails in the attic ceiling.  We discussed the shockingly high rate of infant mortality at the time and its influence on child rearing (the lesson: don’t get too attached).  We saw a crumbling piece of wood recovered from the mill pond, barely recognizable as a toy boat, and learned about the importance of a keel.  We questioned the design of baby bottles (originally made of pewter) and wondered about the leakage of lead and water acidity levels at the time.  We saw 200 year-old soap, had a horrifying discussion on past hygiene and the origins of germ theory, and went into great detail on how to use a bedpan.  We heard about bed tightners and the details of a remote door un-locking mechanism (now gone).  Mr. Kappes continued this amazing lecture until the museum closed for the day and we stumbled, exhausted and blinking, back into the bright sunlight.  Feet aching from standing for 2.5 hours, we no longer felt up for a hike, so we wandered around the grounds for 20 minutes and went home.

In summary, while the day did not go as planned, spending 2.5 hours with an extremely knowledgeable historian was a marvelous way to spend the afternoon.  Time and time again, we’ve found that leaving ourselves open to a change of plans leads to our most rewarding experiences and the moments that we’ll treasure for years to come.  As in museums, so in life.

Images in this post, from the top: exterior of the Van Courtland House; west parlor; and east bedchamber.

Rubin Museum of Art/Tibet House

5/1/2010, Saturday

MUSEUMS:

Rubin Museum of Art ……… http://www.rmanyc.org

Tibet House ……………....… http://www.tibethouse.us 

TME:

Rubin Museum of Art ………. 2.5 hrs (with free tour)

Tibet House …………………. 15 min 

COST:

Rubin Museum of Art ………. $10 (with 2 for 1 coupon)

Tibet House …………………. Free

How many museums devoted to Tibetan art do you think there are in New York City?  Just make a guess.  Maybe one, at most two?  Surely no more than three.  After all, it’s not a place that has a lot of contact with the U.S.  Other than the odd documentary about Everest, and the occasional mention in the news about Chinese oppression, we Americans don’t get much exposure to Tibet, which is literally on the other side of the planet.  Well, apparently Tibetans want to change that, and there are actually FOUR museums just in NYC devoted exclusively to Tibetan art and culture.  We went to two of them today. 

We started with the Rubin Museum of Art, the largest and most well regarded of the NYC Tibetan museums.   I’d like to say it was because we were organized and wanted to start with the best, but in actuality it was because we had a coupon, good for two for one admission valid through this month only.  The Rubin is a huge, five floor museum that took over a defunct department store (Barneys).  The museum kept much of the old layout, so it has the open but compartmentalized feel of a department store, organized around a wide gleaming spiral staircase.  Its lovely, but you may find yourself thinking, as you get off the elevator “Fifth floor.  Ladies lingerie, Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti, next to the shoes.”  There is also a bit of irony in it, as the former home of $35,000 dresses is now a primarily Buddhist institution celebrating release from worldly desires.

Most of the collection originated from a single person, Donald Rubin, the founder of the managed-health-care network MultiPlan, Inc.  What led a rich white Jewish American businessman to connect so strongly with Tibetan Buddhist art that he filled his home and offices with it?  According to a Washington Post article, his father, Jay Rubin, was a Jewish immigrant who came here alone from his family home in Grodno, Poland.  During World War II, his entire family disappeared.  Every brother, sister and nephew and niece was exterminated.  Donald Rubin explains, "I was a 10-year-old at the end of the war, and I watched my father's anguish as he tried and tried to find them.  Many American Jews went through this. It left a deep imprint. What is it in the human mind and the human heart that allows us to behave so barbarously?"

Tibetan art and religion embraces humanity’s "barbarous" side; its full of angry demons, murderous gods and macabre scenes.  We saw necklaces made from skulls, sculptures of zombies with decaying flesh, bloody human skins with bulging eyes hung over doors, and demons with knives in all four hands drinking blood and crushing people under foot.  Some of my favorite drawings were of the symbolic deities that Tibetan’s believe must be faced after we die.  These are derived from our own minds, and we face 58 wrathful reflections of ourselves, but only 42 peaceful ones, demonstrating where they think the balance lies in human nature, yet all must be recognized as illusions to pass out of the circle of rebirth. Clearly this art acknowledges the darkness in human nature.

In that spirit, the first exhibit we saw had the cheery title “Remember That You Will Die.”  It compared the Tibetan approach to death with the Christian one from the middle ages to the present, pointing out the similarities in the art that each religion uses to remind us that our time is fleeting and our deeds have an impact on the afterlife.  There were a lot of skulls and dancing skeletons, including a drawing of a “dance of death” mural from a German church (a line of people from all walks of Medieval life dancing with skeletons) and a haunting performance art video of dreamy woman walking through a veil of water. [Paul here- I saw it as a meditation of the cycle of life and death.  The oldest woman led the way into life and back across the veil, followed by a young adult and a teenage girl.  On one side of the veil they are in color, and drained of it on the other.  I was captivated and mystified and I kept going back to watch].  The exhibit was made even more creepy by the fact that the only other people in this exhibit were a pair of very old woman, one hunched and barely walking, the other mostly blind, with the one who could see yelling the descriptions of each item to the other.  “IT’S A SKULL WITH FANGS.  IT SAYS TO REMEMBER THAT YOU WILL DIE.  THAT WE WILL DIE."  For me, that was the most effective reminder in the whole exhibit.

The other exhibits were less clear in their meaning.  We got on a tour from an obnoxious tour guide (I have been to India and am so much more spiritual than thou), who seemed to think that everyone who visits the museum knows everything about Buddhism, and just wants to discuss it with her.  We were left with a lot of questions about the art, like “Who is that 4 armed blue guy with the sea shell and the flower coming out of his naval, and why is he getting a foot rub?” and “Why is the guy with the 10 legs having sex on that cow?”  There wasn’t a lot of explanation, and after 5 floors of this it got tiring.  Paul said it was probably what someone with no background in Christianity would think if they visited the Vatican.  “Who’s the guy with the beard, and why did they want to torture him?”  Lots of pretty art, but without a background in the stories behind it, we were mostly puzzled.

The Tibet House is a much smaller museum, founded by the Dalai Lama as an outreach house to NYC.  It has some small exhibits, but focuses on talks about Tibet and Buddhist meditation groups.  It’s not usually open on Saturday, but they let us in anyway, and we tiptoed around trying not to disturb the meditation group in the next room.  There was some nice art, similar to what we saw in the Rubin Museum, but Paul and I both thought that the most interesting thing was a framed government document from the 1940s granting permission to an American journalist for a tour of Tibet.  The calligraphy was breathtaking and all done with a brush.  Clearly this simple document took hours to paint, harkening back to an earlier time and philosophy, when even paperwork could be beautiful.

Images in this exhibit, from the top: detail of Guhyasamaja with Sparshavajra, Secret Gathering, Tibet 17th century; Manjushri, The Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Tibet 15th century; Vajra Terror, Tibet; detail of The Red Yogini Vajrayogini, Eastern Tibet 19th century; dancing skeletons and skull from the "Remember that you will die" exhibit; image from Bardo Thodrol, known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead; Vasudhara, Godess of Abundance, Nepal 12-13th century; Garuda, Napal 13th century .