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 .

New York Historical Society

3/6/2010, Saturday 

MUSEUMS: New York Historical Society ..... https://www.nyhistory.org/web

TIME:  3 hrs 
COST:  Normally $12 each, but free this week.

Paul here:  On the day we went to the New York Historical Society, we were not planning on spending a lot of time at museums.  We actually had a few errands to run on the Upper West Side- primarily getting my coffee supplies at Zabars, who in my opinion roasts the best coffee in North America (http://www.zabars.com).  Yes, after 7 years of living in Seattle, I still maintain that an east coast medium roast is a better tasting cup of coffee than the dark bitter roasts of the est coast.  But I digress. 

The intention was to pick a single smallish museum in the Upper West side and then shop.  The NYHS seemed like a logical choice. Not only was it perceived to be on the smaller side, but during the week of Presidents Day in February it was free. So we hopped in the car and drove down to the city, a 20 minute drive.  Normally, we have pretty good luck parking in the upper west side, but today that was not the case.  After driving around for about 45 minutes we finally were forced to use a parking garage, much to Pauline’s (and our wallet’s) dismay. 

As we walked to the NYHS, I think it dawned on us that really, the NYHS was only small in comparison to the Natural History Museum next to it.  The NYHS is 4 stories of neoclassical hugeness that fills half a city block, and there was a lot of activity today.  Lots of people were taking advantage of the free admission.  As we made our way through the crowd we picked up a map and an audioguide for each of us.  Really, one thing we learned about during this project is: always get an audioguide. 

The NYHS is the one of the, if not the, oldest museums in the city of New York.  Founded in 1804, its holdings cover four centuries of American history, and include one of the world’s greatest collections of American historical artifacts, American art and documentation of the history of the United States as seen through the prism of New York City and State. 

The first exhibition we saw covered Abraham Lincoln and his relationship with the city of New York during his rise to power until his assaination (http://www.lincolnandnewyork.org).  At that time, New York City was the biggest and most important city in the Union, and the State of New York was the most important state. Starting with his Cooper Union address in 1860, the exhibition showed the complex relationship he had with the powerful in the city.  The exhibit also demonstrated how attitudes towards Mr. Lincoln changed as the civil war evolved, as well as positions on the draft, Habeas Corpus and slavery.  The rise of the anti-Lincoln copperheads, the draft riots and his death and martyrdom were all addressed.  There were many different displays, ranging from original letters and documents by Lincoln, political cartoons from the era (cleverly deconstructed to better understand the meanings), and multimedia exhibits.  There were even people dressed in period costumes representing the first African American military companies.  As someone who has been somewhat passionate about this era of American History, I thought it was fascinating, but Pauline thought it was overly wordy and a bit long.  (Pauline here: I thought it was insanely detailed and focused on people like Paul who obsess over historical minutiae like how railway stock was affected in each stage of the civil war, and there was no place to sit while Paul attempted to puzzle out 150 year old handwritting in letters debating the best building for Lincoln to give a speech in NYC.  Yawn...)

Next, we went up to the top floor to check out the Luce Center for the Study of American Culture.  Boy, were we surprised at this collection.  One of the first things that came to mind was that they should change the name of the society to “The New York Packrat Society”!!!!   This floor is a treasure trove of nearly 40,000 artifacts crammed into a space that feels like a cross between an enormous attic and the storage warehouse in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.  Every nook and cranny of this floor was filled with stuff, all arranged haphazardly: a chair that Napoleon once sat on was located beneath shelves displaying old election buttons, between a full sized horse carriage and a display of old glass bottles, across from an enormous marble statue of an Indian head with full feathered headdress. Every wall was covered in paintings, every floor space crowded with furniture and shelving, and all the shelving packed to bursting with odd random things, like hundreds of complete sets of silverware, Washington's camp bed at Valley Forge, 911 artifacts, hundreds of ashtrays, children’s toys, police badges, and even plastic knickknacks from the 20th century.  It was amazing and overwhelming.

One of the things that stood out was the Tiffany lamp collection. It came from a single couple: Dr. Egon Neustadt and his wife Hildegard.  They began their collection in 1935 with the purchase of a Tiffany desk lamp and from there Dr. Neustadt's interest in Tiffany shades and bases became all-consuming and he became one of the earliest serious collectors of Tiffany lamps, eventually cramming 135 lamps into a single East Village apartment. They left the entire collection to the NYHS in 1985, and they occupy a very colorful corner of the exhibit space.

In addition to the fascinating display of the Luce center, this floor had even more exhibits, including an exhibit on slavery in NYC, a section of paintings about the city and history of NY, and a small but impressive display of Audubon’s watercolors of birds.  As cramped and oddly arranged as it was, this floor was quirky and fascinating, and one of our favorite displays to date.  It took well over an hour, and we could have been there even longer if we had not run out of time. 

We saw two other exhibits in the museum. One was one of the nation's premiere collections of eighteenth-century American portraits. Essentially a small group of native-born painters and European émigrés painted the elite colonial New York society developing a flat, stiff style that was both derivative of the European schools, but unique to the colonies. Neither Pauline nor I found this to be particularly compelling, but portraits often leave me cold.

The other exhibit was one of the first major American art movements, the Hudson River School (NYHS collection of Hudson River School paintings.).  The Hudson River School embraced a romanticized style of naturalist paintings that was extremely popular in the 19th century, producing some of the most evocative and dramatic images of nature ever seen, and serving as an early pro-America propaganda.  The NYHS has more than 100 paintings in its collection by well known artists of the movement, such as Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, John F. Kensett, Jasper F. Cropsey and Albert Bierstadt, all displayed together in an enormous cavern of a room and they make a pretty astounding impression, and defiantly worth seeing.

All in all, this was a great way to spend 3 hours. We did not intend to spend that kind of time here, and it didn’t leave us much time to run errands, but this was a museum that took us by surprise and it was time well spent. 

Images in this post, from the top: Ki-On-Twog-Ky (also known as Cornplanter) 1796 by F. Bartoli; Proposed coat of arms for New Amsterdam, New Netherland, drawing for presentation to the Dutch West India Company, c 1630; bust of Abraham Lincoln; Oak Renaissance Revival armchair made of timber from George Washington's New York City residence, decorated with the seals of New York and a bust of Washington, presented to the NYHS in 1857 for the use of the president of the society; NYC police badge and manacles; part of the display of Tiffany lamps at the Luce Center; Dragonfly Table Lamp, c. 1900-1906, designed by Clara Driscoll, Tiffany Studios; Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) 1825 by John James Audubon; California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) 1838 by John James Audubon; Autumn Woods, 1886 by Albert Bierstadt; medal of the Free Masons 1920.

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.

Scandanavia House

2/20/10, Saturday (continued)

MUSEUM: Scandanavian House  (http://scandinaviahouse.org/)

TIME: 0.5 hr 

COST: Free + Lunch for 2 at Smörgås Chef ($34) 

Museum food has come a long way.  I’ve vivid memories from my childhood of great museum visits followed by time in the horrible cafeterias that lurked in museum basements like leviathans, ensnaring weary travelers who just wanted a place to rest from a long day on their feet.  I remember the broken plastic chairs and the tangerine/avocado color scheme at the Smithsonian.  McDonald’s was classier, and had better food.  And who could forget the rotten milk smell of the damp cement echo chamber that passed for the café at the art museum in Portland, OR.  Yet as bad as the décor was, the food was worse: stale hamburgers, rubber hotdogs, soggy fries and sandwiches with questionable expiration dates, all sold at shockingly high prices.  The thinking of the museum staff at the time could only be something like that of airports today: if people have no other choices, you can charge high prices for awful food in ugly environments. 


Yet at some point something changed.  Somewhere, somehow, a wise curator or docent with epicurean leanings finally made a suggestion that was listened to, and it caught on.  Paul and I eat at many of the museums we visit, and we’ve had no bad experiences: no dirty dungeons, no dated décor and not one soggy French fry.  Dishes have been imaginative, flavorful and strongly supportive of the Museums’ theme, managing to be both educational and tasty.  For example, El Café at the Museo del Bario had great Latin American food, with dishes like spicy black bean conch stew, hand rolled tamales, and tacos with the tortillas grilled in front of your eyes.  Sure the décor was simple, but the food was cheap, and if you wanted entertainment you could watch the Cuban children’s folk tales being read aloud at one end of the café.  It felt laid back and homey, like you could be in a popular café somewhere south of the border.

And speaking of transporting experiences, the best museum cafe for capturing a “Zeitgeist” was the glamorous Café Sebarsky in the Neue Gallerie.  The elegant black and white art deco décor and German language menus plop you down in turn of the century Austria.  The Austrian pastries are rich and delicious, and the coffee, rumored to be the best in New York, is pulled from antique copper espresso machines in a thick, strong European style, with froth thick enough to hold the intricate flower patterns the baristas create in your cup.  The cafe even has live cabaret performances in the evenings, in German of course.

The latest star in our series of excellent museum meals was at Smorgas Chef, the restaurant on the ground floor of the Scandinavia House.  The museum itself wasn’t much to speak of.  It’s a small gallery space on the 5th floor of the Scandinavia House, the headquarters of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, an American non-profit organization that “works to build cultural and educational ties between the United States and Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.”  While we were there, the gallery had an exhibit on Snohetta, a Norway-based group of architects known for innovative modern designs.  There were models, photographs and films of the group’s major works including Egypt’s Alexandria Library (the modern one), the Norwegian Opera House in Oslo, and the controversial plans for the 911 Memorial in NYC.  All of these were impressive thought provoking pieces of architecture, but honestly the thing that made the biggest impression on both of us was an interactive desk with a massive touch screen for selecting, moving and viewing files.  It felt like we were in a science fiction movie, and we were both wondering when we could get one for the office.....

By this point, we’ve seen a few museums for cultural exchange (like the Onassis Cultural Center and the Austrian Cultural Forum) but what made this one stand out was that it wasn’t just a museum.  It seemed to be more of a community center for Scandinavians in New York, importing Scandinavian TV series for weekly viewings, organizing classes in Scandinavian crafts like weaving and furniture making, and hosting a legitimate Scandinavian restaurant, serving what appears to be comfort food for homesick Scandinavians.  Apparently Smorgas Chef is legendary for its Swedish meatballs, and we certainly saw quite a few meatballs eaten by actual Swedes, but both Paul and I wanted to be adventurous and opted for the house-cured gravlaks, cold water shrimp salad, the pickled herring platter with cucumber salad, and aquavits flavored with cloudberry.  We didn’t know what most of this was when we ordered it, but it was all fantastic.  Gravlaks sounds like a type of space alien, but is actually tasty raw salmon cured in salt, sugar, dill and vodka.  The pickled herring was amazing, much better than pickled herring has any right to taste, and the cloudberry aquavit turned out to be vodka with actual cloudberries, and had a sort of a sweet and tart raspberry taste.  

If you happen to find yourself in this area of midtown, stop by and see what’s showing in the gallery space (it's free), but for a real Scandinavian experience, we recommend you try the food!


Ta for now.  I'll fill you in on the International Center for Photography next time, and Paul has promised a post about our visit to the New York Historical Society, which was much more interesting than it sounds.

Images in this post, from the top: King Abdulaziz Center for Knowledge and Culture, designed by Snohetta; exterior of the Scandinavia House; Tuballoon, a pavillion for the Konigsberg International Jazz Festival, designed by Snohetta; Ras Al-Khaimah Gateway Project, designed by Snohetta.