It was so rewarding to see Sims Patton get her masters degree! We went to lunch afterwards ... and also had dinner together the next day. Otherwise, Steve and I visited the Smithsonian American Museum of Art and Portrait Gallery and browsed through both the Eastern Market and the Tephra ICA Arts Festival, an outdoor show featuring many of the artists we know from past Philadelphia and Smithsonian Craft Shows. Amazingly, we got entry tickets to the Smithsonian African-American Museum and spent five hours there (without even getting to two of the seven levels!) We highly recommend this experience! It was far better than either of us dared to imagine, and we will return!
From DC, we took an early morning Amtrak train into NYC for a five night stay! Although we've been to New York City several times (including last August!), neither of us had ever been to MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art. This was a first. We were among the first wave of people to enter last Tuesday and the last to be ushered out! Sure ... we stopped for lunch in the terrace cafe ... but otherwise, we were never tired. It was fabulous!
I snapped a fair amount of images. I've included several in this blog post, but mostly I was entranced with the wide range of artwork, the arrangement inside the spacious galleries, and the maze of rooms. It would be easy to get happily lost on any of the floors!
Some of the works that fascinated me most were ones done around the time I was born. I like thinking about "modern" being sixty+ years old. It is also challenging to view unique approaches to artwork that are still being explored as if "brand new".
Seeing a work by Ana Mendieta was special too. I've long admired her pioneering spirit and mourned her untimely death.
MoMA has a comprehensive, on-line listing of its artwork. Yet, there's no comparison to standing in front of these pieces. The depth, color, and artist's hand just doesn't come across well enough when just seeing a photo! Still ... I've linked the pieces I've included in this blog post. It is wonderful to have this resource.
Often "modern art" is viewed as a very American driven, mid-20th century era. I was happy to see so many other influences ... like Erol's Turkish inspired calligraphic marks ... and ...
... the lush, early 20th century colors of Klimt!
Steve and I love museums, but we don't spend all our time inside! We also visited Van Cortlandt Park, toured the 18th century VanCortlandt House Museum ...
... and went to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx to see Patricia Cronin's Memorial to a Marriage, the first and only Marriage Equality monument in the world and future, final resting place for the artist and her wife, Deborah Cass. This 400+ acre cemetery also has graves for suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Herman Melville, Dorothy Parker, Irving Berlin, and too many others to list. The landscaping is magnificent.
We also went to Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. This place has an art residency program but it is without housing and lasts for nine months. Ah ... to dream of such an opportunity!
Another highlight of this trip was going to Jeffrey Deitch's New York Gallery in Soho to see Bisa Butler's The World is Yours art quilt exhibit. The space was filled with people and at least one or two of the included works were listed as in a private collection.
We saw our first Bisa Butler art quilt at the Smithsonian African-American Museum in DC. CLICK HERE to see it, I Go To Prepare a Place For You, featuring Harriett Tubman. The size of these pieces is enormous. The fabrics dazzle. The use of transparent tulle is brilliant. There is no wonder why Bisa Butler's work now commands six figures and that museums across the country are lining up to add one to their collection.
Of course I snapped a selfie from the loft area inside the gallery. I took other selfies too ...
... including this one! The Nick Cave Soundsuit mosaics at the Times Square/42nd Street subway station is the largest and most ambition mosaic in the entire subway system. The installation covers 4,200 square feet and is called Each One, Every One, All Equal.
Steve and I are really good at navigating the NYC subway system. Steve even has a senior pass. I bought a week of unlimited rides for $33. Best buy in the city! Knowing that our transportation needs were as easy as swiping our cards, we ventured to Roosevelt Island. While there we walked to the southern tip to see the The Ruins, the former smallpox hospital that has sat abandoned since closing in the 1950s. This unique site is possibly going to be the meaningful site for a COVID-19 memorial.
From here, we took the metro system's suspended tram across the East River and into Manhattan.
We really hope to return to The Ruins after the permanent memorial is created. We like the way significant places from the past are transformed into new spaces ... like The High Line. In the past, we walked from north to south. This time, we walked in the opposite direction and continued to remark how different the views were.
Another important thing happened last August when we last visited NYC. We purchased an annual senior pass to The Met. This pass cost only $110 and allowed "a friend" to accompany the senior member! Last August, we went to The Met every single day ... five days in a row. Since our pass was still valid, we visited The Met three times! The "big day" was last Thursday. Members can enter a full hour before the general public. We went in with several hundred others ... but far fewer than were lined up outside. This allowed us to visit the special Van Gogh's Cypress exhibit without hordes of people in the space. It was awesome.
By the time we left the Van Gogh area, we were first in line to visit the Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty ... though lots and lots of people were coming into the museum at that time.)
Anyone who knows me knows that keeping up with fashion is NOT something important in my life. I own (and wore during the trip) clothes purchased from thrift stores and t-shirts that have been in my possession for at least a decade. That said, I adored this exhibit. What's not to like about fields of seed beads ...
... and loosely crocheted mohair yarns being interspersed with delicate artificial floral units ... all over nearly invisible silk tulle ...
... or clear and opaque futuristic materials made into easily wearable garments? From hand-painted caftans dresses to oversized wedding gowns covered in ostrich feathers, the exhibit was eye-popping.
We also visited Lauren Halsey's new rooftop installation, a full scale architectural piece drawing on an Egyptian framework covered in African-American tagging ... with a fantastic view of the city. The photo above came from another temporary show about the life and artistic achievements of seventeenth-century Afro-Hispanic painter Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608–1670). The words included the manumission documentation. We'd never heard of this word. It means "release from slavery".
Included in this exhibit was a piece of 15th Spanish lusterware.
Steve and I wandered through other areas of The Met, including the Islamic art section, Cecily Brown's enormous and "messy" paintings in Death and a Maiden, and Berenice Abbott's New York Album ... photographs from 1929. There's no way to really see The Met in a single day ... or even three days ... or even a week. Yet, every visit is unique, insightful, and beautifully displaced.
We stayed in a TownePlace Inn ... on hotel points. Our upgraded room (because Steve is "special"! LOL!) had a balcony. It was a great place for pizza dinners!
We intended to see a Broadway show and had tickets to the Fosse revival, Dancin' but it closed early. The refund was instantaneous. Several other shows were investigated but we happily settled for a free choral concert with the brass instruments and organ at St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was a late Easter selection of divine music.
On our last full day in NYC, we spent the late afternoon at the American Folk Art Museum. This totally free museum had two shows running, including thirty-five quilts in What That Quilt Knows About Me.
The works were not arranged thematically or chronologically but in spaces that truly showcased each one. The pieces included works by enslaved sisters in antebellum Kentucky, a British soldier during his convalescence in the Crimean War, living artists, anonymous makers, and even a 1935 charity quilt made by the Ladies' Aid Society of the McKinley Community Church ...
... with hundreds of finely stitched names!
(Above: Detail of the Littlejohn sisters dense quilting and trapunto, 1850).
What's not to like when comparing two entirely different approaches to hand-stitching? Perfect tiny running lines and trapunto ...
... or the freedom of expression in hand-cut applique figures? I could only wish for more!
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