NY Public Library for the Performing Arts / Rose Museum

5/15/2010, Saturday

MUSEUMS:

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts …. 1 hr

Rose Museum ……………………………………...…. 20 min

COST:

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts … Free

Rose Museum ………………………..……...………. Free

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is not like other libraries. The first difference you notice is its size. As we’ve come to expect from all things in New York, the library is really big. With 50 million items (20 million of which are books), it’s among the world’s largest libraries, ranking with the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the British Library. The second difference is its collection, consisting of more than standard library fare, with outstanding historical and research materials such as Jefferson's copy of the Declaration of Independence, ancient maps from 15th century Florence, and Columbus’s first letters back to Spain describing the new world.

It’s not just the collection that’s large; the NYPL system consists of 87 individual libraries spread out over Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island. We’d highly recommend a visit to the “main branch” as a great stop on any NYC tour. It’s an impossible-to-miss landmark Beaux-Arts building on Fifth Avenue (see picture above), with huge lions on either side of the marble columned facade and an upstairs reading room as grand as any European palace. It’s iconic enough to be featured in movies from “Ghostbusters” to “Sex In the City.” However, it’s not a museum, so that’s not where we went today.

In addition to the 81 lending libraries and the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library for the blind, NYPL has 4 non-lending research libraries: the Humanities and Social Sciences Library; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Science, Industry and Business Library; and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. This last library is situated in a prime location within Lincoln Center (see picture at right), between the famous Juilliard School and the home of the Metropolitan Opera. It houses one of the worlds most extensive collections of materials on the performing arts, and is particularly known for its non-book materials, such as historic recordings, videotapes, autographed manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters and photographs.

A few times a year, the librarians at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts pull a few things out of the collection and exhibit them in a small space set aside from the library stacks. We’re still not sure if it’s technically a museum, but due to the fact that most of the collection is in media format (not books), it certainly makes for some entertaining exhibits. Just finishing up now is an expose on W. C. Fields (“The Peregrinations & Pettifoggery of W. C. Fields”), featuring his comic radio broadcasts, diagrams of his famous juggling and billiards acts, numerous photos and lots of film clips. While we were visiting, the exhibit was “The Jazz Loft Project,” about a more mysterious and haunting subject.

In 1957, celebrated photographer W. Eugene Smith quit his job at Life magazine, moved out of the home he shared with his wife and four children in a charming village in Westchester County, and into a dilapidated five-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York City’s wholesale flower district. He wired the space for sound and furnished it with pianos and drum sets. For the next 8 years, this loft served as the late night haunt of NYC’s jazz scene, playing hosts to the biggest names of the age (Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk) and countless underground characters. 

Smith obsessively documented events in the loft, taking 740 reel-to-reel tape recordings (approx. 4000 hours) and nearly 40,000 photographs, but always setting himself apart. Paul felt he was the muse of the beat generation, bearing witness to the rise of New York jazz, and perhaps forming the catalyst for what elevated the scene to greatness. Major figures to minor players, all did their time in the loft and are captured forever on his tapes.

Yet the “Jazz Loft Project” isn’t about the obsession of one man, but two. Sam Stephenson of the Duke Center for Documentary Studies spent 13 years transcribing these tapes (to the tune of half a million dollars) and researching the events of the loft. His curation of the tapes and photographs made the exhibit possible. 

Walking into the gallery set the mood. The room was dimly light and all around played the haunting strains of jazz, recorded from the loft. The room’s black glass walls held stark black and white photos of late night jam sessions and conversations at dimly lit parties, everyone with a drink in their hand, a cigarette in their mouth and an instrument at the ready. It seemed as if there’s never been an era that captured cool quite like the 50’s. At the end of the room, hidden in a dim nook, was a wall of TV’s and headphones set up to listen to the interviews of the surviving musicians, the NPR broadcast about the project, or the tapes themselves. Both Paul and I found the exhibit to be a fascinating documentation of the merging of madness, obsession and music.

In the same performing arts theme, Paul and I also saw the Rose Museum today, the museum chronicling the history of Carnegie Hall (see picture at left). The Rose Museum is a tiny place, tucked up a narrow stairway in a hard to find corner of the great hall. It exhibits a small collection of brochures and memorabilia from the famous musicians and tenants of the hall. On one wall, a flat screen TV shows a live broadcast of whatever is happening on the main stage. While we were there it played a rehearsal of what appeared to be a Chinese opera/dramatic musical, all done in plain clothes with scripts in hand and the actors stopping frequently to try a scene in different ways. I hadn’t seen a rehearsal since grade school and it was fun to watch, despite the fact that I don’t speak Chinese.

Our favorite parts of the Rose Museum were about the history of this iconic place, including the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891 with the American debut of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. “Tchaikovsky’s opening-night appearance set an auspicious precedent for the array of classical musicians and conductors for whom the Hall would become the essential venue in the United States. Henceforth, a success at Carnegie Hall would be the litmus test of greatness.” We also learned about how the hall was nearly destroyed in 1960 by developers, but saved at the eleventh hour by a cadre of musicians and politicians headed by Isaac Stern. From this story and others, it was clear that many of the musicians who play here develop a deep love of this American icon, and this love has saved Carnegie Hall more than once.

Our take on things: Both the New York Library of the Performing Arts and the Rose Museum delve into the history and culture of performing arts in NYC and both are free, but otherwise they have little resemblance. The New York Library of the Performing Arts features well-researched and atmospheric multi-media exhibits that are well worth the time.  However, definitely check into what’s showing before you go, as subjects vary widely, and you might not find all of them equally fascinating (i.e. past exhibit “The New York Choral Society: The First 50 Years”). The Rose Museum was a much less meaty museum, but this hidden corner of Carnegie Hall might be worth exploring, particularly for lovers of classical music.

Images in this post, from the top: Arthur Taylor, by W. Eugene Smith from the Jazz Loft Project; the facade of the New York Public Library main branch on 5th Avenue; section of Lincoln Center; four photographs by W. Eugene Smith from the Jazz Loft Project (Vic Dickenson and Pee Wee Russell, Thelonious Monk and Town Hall band, Zoot Sims on saxophone, and David X. Younng's canvases and Jimmey Raney on guitar) exterior of Carnegie Hall; self portrait caricature of the tenor Enrico Caruso from the Rose Museum collection; Isadora Duncan's scarf from the Rose Museum collection; Untitled, by W. Eugene Smith from the Jazz Loft Project.

Whtney Museum of American Art

5/21/2010, Friday (continued)

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MUSEUMS: Whitney Museum of American Art 

TIME: 2.5 hrs
COST: Normally $18, but we went Friday after 6 for "pay what you wish" admission.

The Whitney Museum of American Art (a.k.a. the Whitney) is the “other” modern art museum in New York.  Mind you, there are a number of modern art museums in this city, but the Whitney is the only one that even tries to compete with the big guns, the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art (a.k.a the MOMA).


It doesn’t succeed, mind you.  How can you compete with a 150,000 work collection from the likes of van Gogh, Picasso and Salvador Dali?  Instead, the Whitney seems like a plucky younger sister museum: younger and smaller, but bolder and more brazen.  It doesn’t have the classics like van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, but instead manages to carve out a niche for itself in the newest art movements and most current artists.  100 years from now, the people exhibited in the Whitney might be the Picasso’s of their age, or forgotten has-beens.  The greatness of any given work is still to be decided and that makes the Whitney’s collection excitingly edgy, perhaps the one area where it trumps MOMA, just a little. 

The Whitney was founded by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (see painting at right by Robert Henri), heiress of both the great Vanderbilt and Whitney (Standard Oil) fortunes. But even with so great a patroness, the Whitney has struggled for respect throughout its history.  In Gertrude’s time, the focus of the art world was on Europe, yet she valued art from her own country and collected only under recognized modern American artists.  When her 700 work collection outgrew her Greenwich Village house, Gertrude tried to donate it to first the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then MOMA, but neither museum wanted the collection.  Consequently, in 1931, she founded her own museum, and the Whitney has celebrated the American avant garde ever since, persevering through thousands of controversial reviews and attempting to win over a very skeptical public. 

We were lucky to visit during the Whitney Biennial, a prominent and much-debated event in the art world that takes over the museum every two years and attracts long lines of visitors.  The Biennial exhibits current works from living, generally young American artists.  All works are sold to collectors after the show, with the Whitney selecting favorites to enter its collection.  It’s considered very prestigious for an artist to get a work into the show and it’s a great launcher of careers.  However, the biennial is probably better known for the smackdown it takes from critics, artists and the public alike.

This year, in an attempt to respond to that criticism, the Whitney devoted an entire floor to a special exhibit called “Collecting Biennials,” consisting of works the Whitney kept from past biennials.  This turned out to be our favorite part of the museum, as it featured a great range of art, from dated one-hit wonders to familiar modern classics.  There were many artists that Paul and I recognized, even with our limited knowledge, such as Jackson Pollock, Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Georgia O'Keeffe, clearly making the point that the Whitney exhibited these great American artists when they were still young and struggling for acceptance.  Attached to the exhibit, there was a room of newspapers and magazines collecting every review of the 75 Whitney Biennials, so you could look back and see who really turned out to be right: the Whitney or the critics.

My favorite part of the museum was the section spotlighting Edward Hooper (see picture above), an artist in the 30’s and 40’s who participated in the first-ever Whitney annual (later to become the biennial) in 1932 as an unknown.  Soon after, his career began a meteoric rise that has continued after his death, with the Whitney holding the largest collection of his works in the world.  I enjoyed his quiet but tense paintings of the streets of New York and Brooklyn, somehow capturing the loneliness of modern city life in streetscapes and faceless figures.  Other works that caught my eye (and made me laugh) were the life-sized squishy toilet  (“Soft Toilet” by Claes Oldenburg) and the huge sculpture made of hair that looked like a cross between dreadlocks and an exploding spider (“Untitled” by David Hammons).

The rest of the biennial was a dizzying mix of sculpture, photography, painting, mixed media, and a large amount of filmed performance art.  The latter made for a lot of movie watching.  We went during a pay-what-you-wish time (Friday evening), so the museum was full, but unlike MOMA’s free night, many Whitney visitors at this time seemed to be students, with tightly held clipboards, busy pencils and very serious expressions.  We guessed that it must be part of an end-of-term project at some of NYC’s many art schools.  The students were much more uptight and pushier than your average museum patron, giving us hard looks and impatient gestures if we did anything that could be interpreted as disruptive, like standing in front of a sign (me) or whispering during a movie (Paul).  It felt like the place was full of very young, very pretentious, very bossy librarians. 

The meaning of some of the art was clear, like the series of photographs depicting the wedding of a young Marine who lost an arm, his face, and much of his skull in a suicide bombing (“Marine Wedding” by Nina Berman).  Yet most of the Whitney’s collection was much more puzzling, like the 50 foot picture of smoke ("Smoke Knows" by Pae White), the gigantic macramé wallhanging ("Untitled; The Year We Make Contact" by Piotr Uklanski), or the ceramic couch covered in newspaper clippings (“Couch For a Long Time” by Jessica Jackson Hutchins).

Paul particularly liked the performance pieces with a psychological bent, such as the movie of men performing bizarrely rigid calisthenics, reenactments of a set of gymnastic exercises prescribed by German physician Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber in the 1850’s (“Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik”, by Jesse Aron Green).  One of Schreber’s sons committed suicide, and another had several infamous bouts with mental illness, giving the performance a decidedly sinister air.  Another of Paul’s favorites was the documentary-style movie of H. M., a man who, after experimental surgery to cure epilepsy in the 1950s, lost the ability to remember any new information beyond a 20-second span (“H. M.” by Kerry Tribe).  Psychology plays a big part in Paul's life, and after years of hearing about H. M.'s condition, Paul found it awe inspiring to actually see it portrayed. The same film was shown on two screens, with one being 20 seconds behind the other to highlight that interval, and the fragile nature of human perception.  Paul also thought the tiny gnome village in the Whitney stairwell was a nice touch.  It made him smile after a long day of museum hopping.

In conclusion, Paul and I where somewhat overwhelmed by the Whitney’s collection.  It felt disjointed and, as is common with modern art, we often felt like we missed the point, or that the point needed far too much explanation.  However, we found many pieces that we liked, that made us think, or squirm, or even smile, and we loved the Whitney’s devotion to the young artists of this country (it felt very patriotic), and its fierce independent spirit.  Thus we would recommend this museum to the open minded museum goer.  We promise that you’ll at least be entertained, even if you hate everything.

Images in this post: Vertical Red White Light, by Josh Brand, 2009; exterior of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Gertrude Vanderbuilt Whitney, by Robert Henri, 1916; Summer Days, by Georgia O'Keeffe, 1936; Early Sunday Morning, by Edward Hopper, 1930; Soft Toilet, by Claes Oldenburg, 1966; Untitled by David Hammons, 1992; Smoke Knows, by Pae White, 2009; Untitled (The Year We Make Contact), by Piotr Uklanski, 2010; Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik, by Jesse Aron Green, 2008; Baby, by Thomas Houseago, 2010.

7th Regiment Armory Conservancy / Asia Society

5/21/2010, Friday (continued): 

MUSEUMS:

Seventh Regiment Armory Conservancy .... 1.5 hr

Asia Society and Museum ………………..... 30 min

COST:
Seventh Regiment Armory Conservancy …. $12 each
Asia Society and Museum ……................… $10, but free after 6 on Friday

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When we were making the list of museums in New York City for this project, we found most museums easily enough.  Most had reasonable P.R. and made the lists on New York Parks and Recreation or tourist information sites.  But during our travels we’ve found a few museums not mentioned in any guide.  We’ve come to call these the “hidden museums of New York,” known only to locals and a select few in the arts crowd. 

The Seventh Regiment Armory Conservancy (called “the Armory” by those in the know) is one of these hidden museums.  We discovered it through an article about the artist who exhibited there this month, but if I hadn’t read the arts section of the newspaper that day, we would have walked right by it today.  Which is actually a bit ironic, as the Armory is gigantic.  It takes up an entire city block on the Upper East Side, and its 55,000 square foot drill hall is among the largest interior spaces in NYC, just shy of Grand Central Station.

As you might expect from an unpublicized museum, the Armory is an odd duck: part military museum, part historic Gilded Age men’s club, and part exhibit hall for ultra modern performance art.  I am confident that no where else in the world can you walk through 6 inch thick armored oak doors and iron portcullis, past a stuffed eagle and a mounted moose head sitting next to a restored gatling gun lit by a nearby Tiffany stained glass window to see a 25 foot pile of laundry being picked up and dropped repeatedly by an 80 foot orange crane.  Yet that is exactly what we did today.  It’s going to be hard to top this one for bizarre museum experiences.

As with any place (or person) with this much quirkiness and character, the Armory has quite a past and has served a hodgepodge of rolls, as everything from a drill hall to indoor tennis courts to a synagogue.  It was originally built between 1877 and 1881 for the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, State of New York.  This regiment was formed in 1806 to protect the city, after British frigates blockading New York Harbor fired at passing vessels.  It saw some action quelling riots in 1849 and helped with city fire fighting, but after NYC formed its own police and fire departments the regiment became largely ceremonial, serving as an honor guard and participating in civic events such as the inauguration of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 and the Statue of Liberty in 1886.

As a ceremonial guard, the regiment morphed into an elite men’s club for the sons of the city's wealthiest Gilded Age families, acquiring the nickname “Silk Stocking Regiment.”  Vanderbilts, Van Rensselaers, Roosevelts, Tiffanys, Stewarts and Livingstons all served here, and it was the immense wealth of these families that built the Armory we see today; the only armory in the United States built and furnished entirely with private funds.  And it took a lot of funds indeed.  The building itself was designed by Charles W. Clinton, the premier Gothic revivalist and designer of the famed Astor Hotel, and a veteran of the regiment himself.  He designed the exterior as a mock medieval fortress with brick crenellations, musket ports, arrow slits and a central tower. 

Inside, the club areas are lavish, designed by the era’s most prominent artists such as Louis Comfort Tiffany and Stanford White, and have been called “the single most important collection of 19th century interiors to survive intact in one building” by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.  These rooms are undergoing a long restoration process, but wandering around in them is free and we highly recommend it.  Apparently two of the rooms are the only known Tiffany interiors to survive intact, and all of them are gorgeous even in their semi-neglected state.  If you squint your eyes as you wander you feel as if you can spy the shimmer of glamorous gowns and hear the clink of champagne glasses in some long ago cocktail party of New York’s storied past.

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To raise money for the restoration, the Armory’s massive drill hall is rented out as an event and art space.  It's been used for Shakespeare festivals, operas, and most commonly, extremely large art installations.  While we were visiting we saw “No Man’s Land,” by Christian Boltanski, a performance art piece consisting of a 25-foot-high mound of used clothing, surrounded by a field of coats arranged in squares.  Every few minutes a five-story crane plucked a random piece of clothing from the top of the clothes pile, then released them to flop down haphazardly.  As we wandered among the clothes, we heard a ceaseless drum of heart beats emanating from poles at the corners of the squares.

Both Paul and I liked the exhibit.  I thought it was at least bizarre enough to be interesting, though I did come out of there wondering if I had let the laundry go too long again.  Paul loved it (as is usual for performance art) and saw it as a comment on the randomness of life: who gets chosen and who gets left behind.  Parts of the installation seemed designed to be reminiscent of a concentration camp, with a wall of numbers blocking off the entrance to the exhibit and rusty poles with low wires like fencing, although the meaning was vague enough to be open to interpretation and the people wandering the exhibit didn’t seem sure of how to take it.  Despite its size, the space felt claustrophobic, with narrow paths and low hanging lights, and dozens of heartbeats surrounding you from all sides.  Paul stood in line at an ersatz doctor’s office to get his heartbeat recorded for the exhibit, and even talked me into doing it.  Now our heartbeats will be preserved together in a permanent archive (Les Archives du Coeur) on an island off the coast of Japan.  I guess its kind of romantic, in a weird artsy sort of way.  (Paul knows its romantic in a weird artsy sort of way.)

The next museum was the Asia Society, a global organization “working to strengthen relationships and promote understanding among the people, leaders, and institutions of the United States and Asia.”  Our impression was that this organization was really more society than museum, as the gallery space was modest and much of the building closed off into what appeared to be conference space.  Looking online, the Asia Society has a full lecture schedule and seems focused on business development, with talk titles like “Why One Loves to Hate Globalization,” “Hong Kong’s Political Reforms: What Lies Ahead?,” and “Doing Business with Japan: Perspective of Australian Companies.”  Oddly, during our visit we couldn’t get a good grasp on what the goals and purpose of the society actually were, and it seemed somewhat mysterious.  Paul wonders what shadowy organizations really run the place, and what are they up to?

The art of the society is based around John D. Rockefeller’s exquisite collection of 280 Asian artifacts, which are displayed and interpreted in a variety of exhibits year round.  Today’s exhibit was “Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art,” focusing on objects from or about the major sites of Buddhist pilgrimages.  Unfortunately, the exhibits weren’t well explained, and we had to attempt to eavesdrop on a tour guide in a noisy gallery to make much sense of it.  Essentially, it looked like a lot of very similar looking Buddha statues to us. 

Our take on things: We found the Armory to be one of the hidden gems of NYC, well worth a look, both for the lovely designs of a by-gone era, and bizarre large-scale modern art installations.  The Asia Society seemed more focused on business than art, but might be worth a look, particularly if you go on a Friday evening when its free (as we did).  Otherwise, for the same 10 dollars, we might recommend seeing the Rubin Museum instead, with its much more extensive, varied and better explained collection of Buddhist art.

Images in this post: “No Man’s Land,” by Christian Boltanski, in the Armory drill hall; pictures of the interiors of the Seventh Regiment Armory Conservancy, including stuffed eagle, stained glass window, ceiling detail, paneling detail, and a room in the armory; two close ups of “No Man’s Land,” by Christian Boltansk; Asia Society logo on exterior of the building; Buddha Shakyamuni, Tibet 11th century; Buddha Shakyamuni with Kneeling Worshippers, Myanmar/Burma 14-15th century; Buddha Shakyamuni, India, Bihar, 9-10th century.

Grolier Club

5/21/2010; Friday (continued)

 

MUSEUMS: Grolier Club

TIME:  1.5 hr

COST:  Free

Imagine an enigmatic 126-year old society in New York with an arcane name, peculiar interests, and membership by invitation only.  According to rumors, many of New York’s wealthiest and most influential are counted among its members, including the Mayor and Chief of Police.  Sound like a conspiracy in the Da Vinci Code?  It’s called the Grolier Club, and entrance to the society’s stately Upper East Side townhouse is restricted (of course), but the general public is allowed into its lower floors for four exhibits per year.

The Grolier Club was founded January of 1884, as a society of bibliophiles devoted to the “book arts.”  The founders were an odd mix of printers, bookbinders, printing press manufacturers, editors and collectors of fine books, concerned that the age old arts of printing and typography were in a rapid decline, brought about by “mechanized presses, machine-made papers, and a general slackening of standards” (from Hard Times at the Grolier Club, by Eric Holzenburg).  To quote from the Grolier Club’s constitution, the object of the club is "to foster the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper, their art, history, production, and commerce.”  To this end, the society publishes and maintains a large private library of books about books (e.g. book making and book collecting), and generally promotes education and appreciation of the book arts. 

The club is named after Jean Grolier de Servières, Treasurer General of France in the 1500’s, and one of the great book collectors of all time.  Grolier’s library contained the great literary works of the time, but it was more than just a good read; Grolier prized books for their physical beauty.  He designed printings just for him and his friends using the finest paper, painted compartments, gilded covers and initials in lavish colors, and he is apparently legendary (in bookish circles) for using the highest quality of bindings and requiring the widest of margins (a status symbol in bookbinding).  He was such a well known book connoisseur that many of the best printers and binders of the era (Garuffi, Étienne Niger and Budé) dedicated printings to him, and books from his library are considered some of the finest examples of the book arts to this day. 

As you can imagine, the exhibitions the Grolier Club puts on are somewhat specialized.  Themes have included modern fine presses ("K. K. Merker: Serving the Muse / Stone Wall Press and Windhover Press"), printing techniques ("One Text, Two Results: Printing on Paper and Vellum”), outstanding private libraries ("The Book Room: Georgia O'Keeffe's Library in Abiquiu"), and book binding ("The Art of Victorian Bookbindings").  Today’s exhibition "Bound For Success" presented the top 117 bookbindings from the 2009 International Bookbinding Competition, organized by Designer Bookbinders (one of the foremost societies in the world devoted to the craft of bookbinding) and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. 

The contest was simple (if you’re a bookbinder).  Each contestant was given the same book to bind in his or her own fashion.  For 2009, that book was “Water,” an anthology of poems in several languages on the title subject.  The top 25 best bindings were awarded a sterling silver bone folder (a bookbinders tool for folding paper- yes, I had to look up what a "bone folder" was), with modest cash awards going to the top two bindings.  As should be obvious by now, Paul and I are great fans of books, but until now we had given no thought to the “book arts.”  I must confess that after seeing these masterpieces, our shelves of paperbacks look quite shabby indeed.  

The craftsmanship and creativity was amazing.  Books were made from all kinds of materials, from the traditional leathers and fabrics, to plastic, metal, wood and glass.  First prize went to Alain Taral of France, who created a book from wood veneers overlapping in delicate waves to look like water.  Second prize went to Jenni Grey (UK) who constructed covers out of embroidered fabric, etched acrylic and silver wire draped to create water-like shadowing (see images of both prizewinners below).  One of my favorites was white ceramic with a rubber stopper (like a sink), another overlapped layers of leather to create the look of parched earth on the front, and fertile watered earth on the back (see image above).  Paul’s favorite was shaped from a crystalline material to look like a splash.  He declared that he would have made his book waterproof, encased in neoprene with a diver’s mask on the front.  We were all set to enter this year's contest, if we just knew something about bookbinding. 
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In addition to the larger shows, the Grolier Club mounts a number of smaller scale exhibits featuring the collections of Grolier Club members.  At the discretion of the collector these shows are occasionally opened to the public.  We were lucky enough to be allowed up the 2nd floor to see one of these, laid out in a library room with perfect conspiracy theory décor: wood paneling, dark antiques, red oriental carpet (to disguise the bloodstains) and a fireplace (to throw incriminating evidence into).

The exhibit was called “Beyond the Text: Artists’ Books from the Collection of Robert J. Ruben,” and contained over 60 pop-up books, if the definition of pop-up books is expanded to all types of 3-dimensional book.  How many types of 3-D books are there, you ask?  Well, in addition to the “traditional” pop-up, there are accordion books, foldout books, box books, scrolls, tunnel books, and some things that are just kind of sculptures with words on them.  We saw them all.  There was an addition of the book “Flatland” describing life in a 2-D world, that unfolded as you read it into a 2-D surface, with the characters (lines, circles and polygons) depicted as cutouts between the lines of text.  Interestingly, while we often link pop-up books with children's books, most were on serious subjects, such as Tatana Kellner’s “71125: Fifty Years of Silence” devoted to her mother's experiences in a concentration camp.  Inside a plain pine box was a life-like cast of a forearm with the inked tattoo of her concentration camp number.  The arm was embedded in the text and turning the pages revealed more and more of the story, and more and more of forearm and hand.

In Summary:

Paul and I both enjoyed this museum.  The exhibits are perhaps a little simple and not terribly well explained but I’ll never look at a book quite the same way again, now that I know that they are capable of being such lovely works of art.  And just try to leave here without fantasizing about being a member of one of New York’s ancient secret societies, imagining what rich and fabulous book collectors talk about with the Mayor at their invitation-only tea parties in the private rooms of the 5th floor.

Rating:

Pauline: 8 out of 10 for a unique take on an old subject (books), interesting art and mysterious old-school NY location. 
Paul: 8 out of 10.  The best ultra-exclusive club run by the elite of New York that I've ever been too.
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Images in this post, from the top: the Grolier Club's lower gallery; prize winners from the International Bookbinders Competition, listed from the top with their ranking, #6 Edgard Claes, #11 Eduardo Gimenez, #15 Jana Kaden, #13 Per-Anders Hubner, #22 Mary Norwood, #16 George Kirkpatrick, #1 Alain Taral, #2 Jenni Grey, #12 Killi Grunback, #27 Christine Sieber; two pop-up books from the "Beyond the Texts" exhibit, including Tatana Kellner’s “71125: Fifty Years of Silence"; and lastly, prize winner from the International Bookbinders Competition #23, Andrea Odametey.

American Folk Art Museum

5/21/2010; Friday 

MUSEUMS:

American Folk Art Museum ……………....….... 45 min

COST:

American Folk Art Museum ……….....……....… $12 for both (with 2 for 1 coupon)

This is the day we finally did it.  After months of trying, we’ve broken the 4 museum barrier and seen 5 complete museums in a single day!  You may not be impressed, but let me give some background.  When we first started this project, we assumed two things about the 180 museums of New York, critical to the success of this project: 1) that while New York City has several very large, very famous museums (i.e. the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum, and the Guggenheim), the bulk of the 180 would be much smaller affairs; and 2) that we could get through these smaller museums quickly.  “We’ll breeze through large swaths of them in 30 minutes or less,” I naively assumed.

We were right about the first assumption.  Outside of a few famous behemoths, most NYC museums aren’t very large (NYC real estate prices being extremely good motivation for small floor plans).  However, we were completely wrong on the second.  Small museums have to fight for both patrons and financial survival, and as a result many are focused and captivating places with jewel-like collections: small but breathtaking.  Also, they’re often staffed by zealots.  People who have given up their Saturday, spending the entire day on their feet, without pay, just to talk to you about one particular subject.  These are not the sort of people you ignore.  So, while we spent 2 hrs in the Guggenheim, fighting the crowds and viewing the Picassos in this large and justifiably famous museum, we spent almost as long in the tiny one room Onassis Cultural Center, viewing ancient paintings that are surely some of Greece’s national treasures, and we spent even longer (3 hrs) in the miniscule Van Courtland House Museum listening to a detailed lecture on life in the 1800’s given by a very passionate and well informed docent/historian. 

Most of today’s 5 museums were small (with the exception of the Whitney), and the majority held true to the rule of small museums being well worth the time.  In fact one of these (the Grolier Club) ranked among our favorite museums to date.  We made it through all 5 in one day by being willing to spend nearly 7 hours just seeing museums (a 10 hour day when you including transit time, lunch and one coffee break), an experience that we wouldn’t recommend to the novice museum viewer, and one we probably won’t repeat too often.

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Paul was looking forward to the first museum of the day, the American Folk Art Museum.  Neither of us had been exposed to much folk art, but Paul (as an amateur historian) was interested in its historical context.  We were also looking forward to the museum’s impressive facade of tombasil; a white bronze alloy used in boat propellers and tombstones, and never before used architecturally.  The tombasil was indeed impressive, appearing both stone-like and metallic (see picture of facade above), and it stood out from the rest of midtown like someone had dropped a 4-story tombstone between office buildings.  Paul, who has a fascination with tombstones, was captivated and declared his intention to one day encase his house with it.  (Pauline is hoping he forgets about this if we every buy a house.)  Regrettably, the facade ended up being the best thing about the museum. 

I think our dissatisfaction was less about the art itself, and more about the museum’s vision which came off as highly fragmented and kind of ditsy.  We liked quite a bit of the historical pieces; there was a lovely section on women’s art in 1800’s America (with detailed quilts and sweet family portraits), a nice collection of painted duck decoys, and a few striking weathervanes (see the weathervane of an angel at the top of this post).  However, the museum mixed in a lot of the very trendy “outsider art,” defined as art done by self taught artists working outside of cultural norms.  I think it saw this as a kind of contemporary folk art.  The outsider art displayed included works by the mentally disabled, the clinically insane, and things that appeared to be the inexpert doodling of perfectly average people.  There was an entire floor devoted to a series of battered rough magazine picture collages done by a janitor in Chicago (see image at right).

In summary, to us, it felt like the American Folk Art Museum had a ragtag and confusing collection, with no real direction or focus.  We felt the best pieces were those that connected to the people and events of an era, but most of the outsider art seemed abstract and disconnected.  Even the concept of outsider art itself was not well defined, as several featured “outsiders” are successful artists and teach art themselves, making them decidedly “insiders.”  I left the museum feeling a bit confused, like I had missed the point somehow.  Paul left feeling a bit ripped off.  Twelve bucks is a lot to pay for doodles and duck decoys. 

Images in this post, from the top: Archangel Gabriel Weathervane, United States c. 1840; tombasil facade of the American Folk Art Museum; Girl with Cat and Dog, Ammi Phillips (1788-1865) Amenia, NY; Untitled (Man and Boy, twice), Henry Darger; Untitled (Vehicle 82/82), Dwight Mackintosh (1906-1999), Oakland CA; Loon, Artist unidentified, New England, 20th century.