Pterosaurs Leave New York

Posted on January 3, 2015 by MsSusanB

AMNH illustration of Mary Anning’s Dimorphodon. Courtesy: AMNH.

They came from all over the world to hang out for the ball drop, but will be gone by the time of the Super Bowl. Yes, the crazy cast of characters in the American Museum of Natural History’s show, Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of the Dinosaurs, will decamp for their hometowns tomorrow, January 4 just like everyone else who came to New York and had a blast.

Quetzalcoatlus, Tropeognathus, and “Dark Wing” have been putting on quite a show for AMNH visitors since April, and only time will tell if New Yorkers have learned to stop calling them “dinosaurs.” They are flying reptiles.

AMNH illustration of super-tiny Nemicolopterus from China (10 inches) proves that not all pterosaurs were giants. He lived in the forest.

The show features life-sized replicas of these flying machines and the big celebrity “Dark Wing” from Germany – the only pterosaur fossil yet found with impressions of the amazing wing membrane that contains layers and layers of thin muscle, all suspended from a single finger.

Get to know more about these amazing animals in the intro to the show, complete with a peppy soundtrack created by the Museum’s digital divas:

When Mary (“She Sells Sea Shells…”) Anning went scouting along Dorset’s Jurassic Coast in 1828, she found little Dimorphodon and sold it to Mr. Buckland, starting a scientific quest to determine the exact nature of these enigmatic creatures.

Happy Ptreranodon in the Vertebrate Origins hall before the crew made him a star of the show inside the Lefrak Gallery.

Most of the press at the time went gaga for the pterodactyl found in Bavaria during the 1830s and 1840s, named Pterodactylus by Mr. Cuvier. Pterosaur fossils have been around so long that it’s hard to believe that this New York show is the first time that these non-dinos have gotten the full star treatment.

Co-curators Mark Norell and Alexander Kellner and the AMNH exhibitions squad took on the jumbo challenge of mounting this first-ever museum show devoted solely to the vertebrates who “invented” flight. Yes, before birds (or bats) took to the skies, fuzzy-bodied pterosaurs were dive-bombing Mesozoic fish, launching from beaches, and leaving their unmistakable footprints on mudflats all over the ancient world.

Click here to see paleontologists searching for pterosaur footprints on an ancient Upper Jurassic beach in central Wyoming.

Pterosaur tracks in the Wyoming sandstone. Crooked forelimb print (L), hindfoot print (R). Taken on a 2006 trackway field trip with the Tate Museum.

We couldn’t take photos inside the AMNH show of the beautiful pterosaur trackway from the Utah Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Utah, so this Flickr slide show gives you the idea. The shots were taken ten years ago, when paleontologists were still debating whether pterosaurs were bipedal or quadrupedal. As you can see, these Jurassic pterosaurs left quadrupedal tracks.

It’s doubtful that these flying marvels stayed on the beach for long. Watch here to see how gigantic Quetzalcoatlus and friends took off via the animations by the AMNH digital team, based on Michael Habib’s analytics and simulations. You’ll be surprised by what airplanes and pterosaurs have in common:

Groundbreakers App Ties History and Beauty Together

Posted on September 7, 2014 by MsSusanB

The New York Botanical Garden carved out an ambitious agenda in its Groundbreakers show – to tie the stories of six women of landscaping history, present a two-gallery recreation of an historic garden, pay tribute to the contributions of several landscapes within NYBG itself, create a poetry walk, and wrap it up with the history of early 20th-century photography and high-gloss publishing. They did it with GPS and an iPhone app, courtesy of Bloomberg.

Closing this weekend, Groundbreakers: Great American Gardens and the Women Who Designed Them is still worth downloading from iTunes, just to get a glimpse into the lives of six landscape-gardening pioneers, see their work, and understand the popularization of American gardening long before the dawn of HGTV or Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Here’s the link.

Photos of Ms. Johnston (left), lantern slides and projector, and Beals (right) on NYC street in 1902. Courtesy: NYBG

Here’s the story: back in the day (early 1900s), garden design and photography were two of the few career avenues available to women.

Way before Instagram, Photoshop, and two-way phone cameras, documenting the lush gardens involved lugging a gigantic, large-format camera up and down garden paths and around water features, processing black-and-white negatives into prints, turning some into newly-invented lantern slides, and having each slide painstakingly colored by hand. It helped if you had a car and an able-bodied assistant to help navigate the flagstone-lined paths with all the heavy gear.

Six American landscape pioneers who changed the course of American gardening. Courtesy: NYBG

Also, after the Industrial Revolution, aesthetically minded women (predating Lady Bird Johnson) felt it was time for American homescapes to get a little more spruced up.

The rich and famous were beginning to hire landscape designers to fix up the areas behind their East Side townhomes and acreages around their country estates. Why not document this and inspire upper middle class homeowners to follow suit?

The exhibition gives us a look at how artist visionaries, authors, and the publishing industry worked in tandem to record how landscape architects were creating romantic backyard landscapes and popularize beautification. Although seeing actual lantern slides, projectors, and gigantic tripods is amazing, one of the highlights is a recreation of the slide show by Frances Benjamin Johnston that basically blazed the trail of a new vision of what was possible – one image after another of gorgeous, visionary landscapes on the grounds of homes on the East Coast, California, England, and France.

NYBG recreated the evocative Moon Gate from the Rockefeller garden, inspired by their experience of the Forbidden City and designed by Beatrix Farrand

In the Conservatory, the team at NYBG recreated Mrs. Rockefeller’s garden, originally designed by Beatrix Farrand, to highlight how the garden was conceived, used, and enhanced by the Asian art Mr. and Mrs. John D. collected. Since Farrand took on this project in 1926, NYBG has the sounds of America’s Jazz Age wafting through the galleries. Take a look on our Flickr page.

Another great feature of this show and the app – NYBG’s GPS feature shows you where you are in the expansive garden and encourages you to visit features where these groundbreakers had a hand – such as Marian Coffin’s ornamental conifer collection and Ferrand’s Rose Garden.

Get a closer view of the spectacular Groundbreakers in NYBG’s news-style video:

If you have a bit more time, listen to this curator lecture on the Beautiful Garden movement in America in 1900 and see the photos used by Johnston home to show suburbanites exactly how it should be done. You’ll witness garden images that hadn’t been seen since 1930. Take a look and get inspired:

Click here for other videos: a lecture about Beatrix Farrand created Mrs. Rockefeller’s garden and how the NYBG team recreated it in the stunning Victorian conservatory.

Sailing Life Rafts into Brooklyn’s Submerged Motherlands

Posted on August 23, 2014 by MsSusanB

The tree touches the top of the Cantor Gallery. Photo: Brooklyn Museum

The tree touches the top of the Cantor Gallery. Photos: Brooklyn Museum

The view is dramatic, but the story is it evokes is even bigger than what’s in the room. There’s still time to travel out to the Brooklyn Museum to have the immersive experience of Swoon’s Submerged Motherlands, closing August 24.

The pictures here just don’t do justice to the super-high wrap-around effect of this walk-through take on the emotional side of rising tides throughout the world. A photo can’t take it all in — a sheltering, 60-foot tree with cut-out paper leaves with some day-after-the-Flood rafts parked down below, all decorated with sketches of the peoples and mothers of the world.

And did we mention that Brooklyn visionary Callie Curry (a.k.a. Swoon) actually built and lived on those rafts for a while? Several years ago, she sailed them up and down the Hudson, on the Mississippi, and across the Adriatic.

Close-up of one of Callie’s rafts.

You’ll get to see these jerry-rigged but seaworthy concoctions up close, and examine the drawings, cut paper, and torn, coffee-stained textiles draping walls, floor, and shelters in this dramatic space.

The feeling it evokes makes you wonder if we’re ready for rising seas and climate change. It’s beautiful, monumental, and reminiscent of our recent lights-out experience of Hurricane Sandy, which tore at the edges of Brooklyn, Long Island, and Staten Island just two years ago – exactly what inspired Callie to take this work in this direction.

Hear what it took for Callie to create this fantastic walk-through installation on Brooklyn’s top floor:

You may also want to hear what Callie has to say about being a working artist in the real world – outside the four walls of a gallery – in her talk from TEDxBrooklyn in 2010. She will show you her rafts in action at Minute 5 and tell you what it felt like to arrive on a hand-built raft in Venice, her projects in post-earthquake Haiti, and interacting with people from the neighborhood as she creates art on the sides of Brooklyn buildings. Truly inspirational.

Poison Packs Punch at AMNH Night at the Museum Adult Sleepover

Posted on August 2, 2014 by MsSusanB

The sleepover site under the Blue Whale

The first-ever adult Night at the Museum sleepover at the American Museum of Natural History last night was a hit, thanks to the enthusiasm and star power of Dr. Mark Siddall, the curator of the fantastic exhibition, The Power of Poison, closing August 10.

Early in the evening, Siddall mingled with sleepover guests at dinner in the Powerhouse and later in a series late-night talks from the Victorian theater inside the Poison show where costumed performers normally show visitors how to gather clues to solve a period murder mystery involving poison. (Think “I’ve got poison in my pocket” from A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.)

After dinner, the adventurers, some in costumes themselves, made quick trips with their stuffed animals to the cots under the Blue Whale and bounded up the stairs through the low-light galleries to reach the shark IMAX, live animal demos, fossil tours, and Siddall’s Poison briefings.

The Victorian theater inside Poison. Photo: AMNH/D. Finnan

You had to pass through the always eerie Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians (hello, Komodo dragons!) to enter the magical kingdom of the Poison galleries.

Once inside, you were transported to a tropical rainforest, with golden poison-dart frogs under a dome, huge models of dangerous insects, and a toxin-eating Howler Monkey lurking on a branch.

Beyond the tropics, the show morphed into a land of make-believe…or was it? Tableaux with a sleeping Snow White, the witches of Macbeth, and the Mad Hatter were captivating, with the label copy bringing you back down to earth by explaining the role played by poisons and toxins in these scenes and what exactly witches’ brew contained.

Supplies for the toxic witches’ brew. Source: AMNH

A Chinese emperor (the one with the terra cotta army, no less!) ingests mercury in one diorama, thinking it’s going to give him immortality. Wrong move. Glancing down, you find out that as recently as 1948, mercury-laced teething powder was still being used on babies in the United States.

A spectacular illusion along the way is a magical set of Greek vases whose painted figures came to life to tell stories of how poison helped Hercules and doomed Ms. Medea.

The lively vases are a prelude to the exhibition team’s greatest wonder – the Enchanted Book – a gigantic tome where ancient illustrations leap to life as you turn big, think parchment pages. Visitors could not get enough of that magic book. Somehow the AMNH digital team replicated it on the website, so click here to take a look at The Power of Poison: An Enchanted Book and turn the pages on line.

Here’s a glimpse of one story from the belladonna page, providing the backstory on how witches fly:

A lot of Siddall’s spectacular, magical, immersive, theatrical exhibition explains the science behind venoms, the “arms races” in the natural world, poison’s role in children’s stories, and how to analyze clues in solving murder mysteries.

Check out the Victorian-style introduction to Poison with Dr. Mark Siddall, its creator, and get a little taste of what the sleepover guests saw and heard.

To ward off any bad dreams about toxins or creepy crawlers, a lot of the late-nighters nestled in to watch vintage Abbott and Costello and Superman films and post Instagrams from the cozy, pillow-lined pit in center of the Hall of Planet Earth.

See the Today show’s recap (video after the commercial).

PS: If you can’t get to this show before August 10, download the iPad app, Power of Poison: Be a Detective that allows you to experience the last portion of the show. It’s been nominated for a 2014 Webby Award in the Education and Reference category.

William Morris: Meeting the Needs of Artistic Shoppers

Posted on July 19, 2014 by MsSusanB

Detail of the large woolen Bird textile that Morris designed in 1878 for his home that was still being sold decades later.

William Morris not only did his historic homework, but was able to channel his convictions about the magic of the Medieval to tap into what artistic Victorian shoppers wanted – stylized visions of nature and old-school craftsmanship, the way it was done in the “old days.” See the evidence in two Metropolitan Museum of Art shows on right now — The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design (running through October 26) and William Morris Textiles and Wallpaper (closing July 20).

You’ll see how Morris used the historic textile collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum as inspiration for his modern wall coverings and textiles. In the little low-light gallery outside the museum’s textile center –many designed by his designer, John Henry Dearle — right next to the older textiles that inspired them both. You’ll be able to compare Morris’s own winding, intricate patterns with those woven by the 15th-18th c. Venetians, Germans, and Spaniards.

Voided velvet and silk from Venice, 1420

As our Flickr site shows, the Met has its own examples for you to enjoy.

Morris began designing in 1861, went through a couple of iterations of his company and collaborators, and finally landed at Hanover Square in 1917, where his workshop was located just a few steps from Liberty of London on Regent, another retail hotbed of the Arts and Crafts movement where many of the Pre-Raphaelites shopped. As Oscar Wilde once remarked, ““Liberty is the chosen resort of the artistic shopper.”

In 1923, the Met decided to scoop up all of the still-being-sold Morris textiles from London. What you’ll see in the show aren’t the originals, but likely subsequent runs of the super-popular block-printed decorating papers and yardage.

The Backgammon Players, the faux-Medieval, mixed-arts furniture collaboration that started it all 1861, with the 1878 Bird wall hanging far right.

The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy has paintings, photos, sculptures, and other works by a wide range of artists. Check out the early painted furniture that Morris did with Edmund Burne-Jones (1861) and the book, written by Morris in archaic English and illustrated by Mr. Burne-Jones at the height of Morris mania (1898).

Next to the furniture collaboration, the curators have hung Morris’s own Bird textile, an intricate woven wonder of woodland creatures and forest marvels. The detail will blow you away, but so will the fact that the original was created in 1878, but what you are looking at was likely manufactured decades later for artistic shoppers and décor enthusiasts who just had to have it.

Gauguin’s Primitive Universe at MoMA

Posted on June 5, 2014 by MsSusanB

Be Mysterious (1890) Carved and painted lime wood from Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais /Art Resource NY.

You can almost hear the rustling pandan leaves, waterfalls rushing into exotic coves, and the drums and chants of fiery Tahitian rituals around powerful idols long since banned by the Christian missionaries…but only if you take the time to get close to the smaller works in MoMA’s revealing sixth-floor show, Gauguin: Metamorphoses through June 8.

Yes, Gauguin’s bright, colorful paintings of island life are displayed, but the show is really about the darker, more primitive experience expressed in Mr. Gauguin’s ceramics, woodcuts, carvings, and monoprints – the works that we rarely get to see en masse.

Hina and Fatu (c. 1892) Carved tamanu wood. Courtesy: Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto © 2013 AGO

After nearly two decades plugging away at his day job, weathering a stock-market crash, struggling to stay in the middle class, cranking out artworks in his spare time, and showing with the Impressionists, he just chucked it all, packed a bag, and went to Tahiti in 1891. From his young-adult years working in the merchant marine, he figured Tahiti was as far away as he could get from his family, responsibilities, and the frustrating Paris art scene where others were making it besides him.

Nothing’s perfect, and the Tahiti he arrived in was already changing from contact with the global trade networks of industrialized countries. No matter. Gauguin was captivated by the thought of connecting with the “true” primitive and savage that lived in the myths, lore, and natural beauty of Polynesia and shoving it all into the face of the avant-garde and art-buying public back home.

The curators have assembled all the images Gauguin created for three dramatic series of woodcuts. The rough edges really come out in Noa Noa (1893) and The Vollard Suite, with a few of the gouged-out woodblocks exhibited right next to several states of the same image.

Mahna no varua ino (The Devil Speaks), state IV / IV, from the suite Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent).
(1893–94). Woodcut from private collection. Courtesy: Galleri K, Oslo. © Reto Rodolfo Pedrini, Zurich

Black, dark, primitive, edgy – too edgy, in fact, for his dealer, Mr. Vollard, who felt that the prettier oil paintings were a lot more palatable to his clients. (Vollard kept the more expressive primitive prints in the drawer.)

Take a look on MoMA’s special website for the show, which has a detailed timeline for Gauguin’s travels. Clicking on images on the site allows you to zoom in closely on each work. A particularly nice touch is the full digitized version of Gauguin’s unpublished Noa Noa manuscript, which he assembled (but never published) to interpret all the exotic images and symbols of the series for the public and his hoped-for fans. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see the manuscript, page by page.

Oviri (Savage). (1894) Partly enameled stoneware, from Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © RMN-Grasnd Palais /Art Resource NY

So here’s your chance to examine what was boxed up for so long along alongside magnificently disturbing sculptures, panels, and reliefs of goddesses, devils, spirits, waves, women, and mountains created out of tamanu and pua wood with the occasional daubs of colored paint. It’s clear that the design and detail of Gauguin’s beautiful symbolist color paintings got a further workout through all of these other works portraying the dark, mysterious side of life forces emanating from the mind of a struggling artist obsessed with the uber-primitive.

Some say that Picasso was inspired to transform his Demoiselles after seeing some of this raw work (exhibited after Gauguin’s death). Say hello to them seven days a week on MoMA’s 5^th Floor.

Get Out of Town with JJ Audubon

Posted on May 25, 2014 by MsSusanB

Audubon’s Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), Study for Havell pl. 281 (1832). Watercolor, graphite, and pastel on paper, laid on thin board. Courtesy NYHS and Mrs. Audubon

If you need to get out of town Memorial Day weekend, there’s no better traveling companion than J.J. Audubon, whose original watercolors will transport you to another time and place better than any plane, car, or train. Experience his spectacular show at the New-York Historical Society, Audubon’s Aviary: Parts Unknown: Part II of the Complete Flock today and tomorrow.

Can’t make it in person to New York? Not a problem, because you can tour Mr. Audubon’s show (and more) on a fantastic website that shows you his birds, provides the maps of your journey, and more. True, you won’t enjoy the life-size paintings – shocking when you see them in person – but you’ll learn the entire backstory of JJ’s trips through the Southeast US and Northeast Canada as he did the best-job-ever for his epic Birds of America four-volume series.

In the NYHS gallery in the last several weeks, visitors have been running up to the second floor and grabbing the magnifying glasses to study each brushstroke of these magnificent works. Although they’re mostly watercolor, each painting is enhanced with graphite, pastel, gouache, and ink. Because no one’s perfect, a few have birds pasted in from other pieces of paper, but you really can’t tell unless you study them closely.

A second Great Blue Heron (1834), thought to be another species at the time, with the skyline of Key West, Florida. Courtesy NYHS and Mrs. Audubon

It’s the first time that NYHS has exhibited JJ’s complete watercolor series, but it’s so big – 474 original watercolors – that they had to break it into three separate shows.

Mrs. Audubon presented JJ’s entire set of original work to NYHS in1862. Her husband had worked so hard on these works of art (he didn’t consider them “scientific”) that she commented that sometimes the birds felt like “her rivals.” Better that NYHS preserve them for posterity.

The museum decided to mount the watercolors in the order in which JJ painted them. On the website, you can revisit Part I, but let’s turn our attention to Part II.

As you’d expect from his trips to the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Labrador, and Newfoundland in 1831-33, the majority of the birds you’ll see live in and around the water. Two spectacular works are of the Great Blue Heron in two color ways. In JJ’s lifetime, the white- and bluish-colored herons were thought to be two separate species (which they’re not), so we’re treated two very large paintings of one fishing from shore and the other enjoying a meal in sight of the Key West skyline across the bay.

Carte–de–visite of John James Audubon. The legacy lives. Courtesy: NYHS

It’s amazing to consider that JJ started many of these while he was on his journeys, totally outdoing Banksy as a premiere peripetatic creating-art-wherever road warrior. Of course, he did it all without electricity and frequent-flyer miles hauling around gigantic pieces of perfect paper.

Through it’s collaboration with the Cornell Ornithology Lab, the NYHS provides (on the web and on the gallery audio guides) clips of each bird’s distinctive voice. Another nice in-gallery touch is an iPad app that allows visitors to compare each watercolor with the engraved print made in London by Robert Havell, Jr. for the printed books.

Enjoy JJ’s images here.

Subversive Chinese Brush-Up at the Met

Posted on March 26, 2014 by MsSusanB

Yang Jiechang’s Crying Landscape (2003) shares the Gallery for Art of Ancient China with a sandstone stele from the Northern Wei dynasty (489-495) and the 1319 Buddha of Medicine.

Normally, the galleries for Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are pretty tranquil. But through April 6, you’ll find them buzzing with contemporary art lovers reveling in the hunt to find the most famous, subversive, subtle works by Chinese painters, sculptors, and digital artists residing amidst centuries-old treasures in the widely popular exhibition, Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China.

The Met gave the Chinese art curators free reign to pluck sly works from the in-house contemporary collections created by Chinese artists over the last 20 years, grab monumental works from private collectors, and mount a tribute to how post-Cultural Revolution innovators parse the traditions associated with centuries-old art making in their ancestral country.

How do the hottest artists on the planet turn calligraphy and inked woodblocks into biting social commentary? Take a stroll through the second floor Asian art wing.

Inspired by Cultural Revolution posters, the letters in Wu Shanzhuan’s Character Image of Black Character Font (1989) have no meaning. Courtesy: Private collector, the artist.

Just past the balcony-bar area, the monumental 1319 Buddha of Medicine mural from Shanxi Province, China, casts a benign presence over the Gallery for Art of Ancient China. But just stage right, two larger-than-life works on paper preview how Chinese artists twist the “then” into the “now”.

Yang Jiechang’s Crying Landscape panels are painted in the beautiful, colorful “old school” flat Asian style but depict decidedly unbeautiful industrial and political subjects. Similarly, Qiu Zhirie’s Nanjing Yangzi River Bridge ink triptych features masterful, large-scale ink-brush technique but uses art-world icons to relay a disturbing story. It’s an installation triumph that will haunt you every time you pass through that room again.

Large-scale calligraphy by many of the artists makes ink-pot-and-brush tradition echo with gestures as large as Rothko’s. In the galleries with meticulously crafted “landscape” drawings and images, you’ll ask how this modern crew managed to produce scrolls with such heft and detail. Take a walk-through of the show through our Flickr site.

In 1995, Ai Weiwei corporatized a Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 9 A.D.) earthenware jar. Courtesy: M + Sigg, the artist

Along the way to back of the wing, the curators play hide-and-seek, putting Ai Weiwei’s “enhanced” Han Dynasty jar right in the aisle with the “unmodernized” earthenware vessels, and mounting Hong Hoo’s subtly colored, hilarious historical “atlas” silkscreens in a case that practically dares unfocused visitors to pass them by as they drift toward the Astor Court.

Hopefully by the time they get to the rock garden they will notice Zhang Jianjun’s crazy pink silicone rubber “scholar rock” right next to the real ones. Zhan Wang’s stainless steel scholar rock and Shou Fan’s side chairs are beautifully arranged in the Ming Dynasty room just off the Court, along with more of Ai Weiwei’s furniture hijinx.

After you’re done getting a feel for how the galleries have been transformed, go back into the Met’s exhibition web site to study the brushwork and details and get to know some of the artists.

Zhang Jianjun’s 2008 silicone rubber Scholar Rock (The Mirage Garden) sits in a 17th-century pagoda in the Met’s Astor Court

Zhang Jianjun’s 2008 silicone rubber Scholar Rock (The Mirage Garden) sits under a 17th-century pagoda in the Met’s Astor Court. Courtesy: Sigg Collection, the atist

Although the web site appears to be more plain-vanilla than jazzy, you’ll be surprised to see that the digital back-end of the Met archives lets you zoom into each of the paintings to see the handsome handwork of each of these wunderkinds from each thematic section of the show. You can even peruse the gigantic scrolls up close, section by section.

The video room, where art lovers can relax and watch a rotating collection of work, is a nice touch. The modern digital sign to the side tells you exactly where you are in the rotation.

Here’s a link to one of the featured videos: Get to know the constantly transforming cityscape of Beijing through Chen Shaoxiong’s 2005 Ink City, and see what happens when a contemporary artist paints daily life in Beijing with traditional tools and ports his day-to-night experience to video.

The Most Lavish Natural History Show in the World

Posted on March 6, 2014 by MsSusanB

Remember 17th c. Dutch tulipmania? JAR Tulip Brooch 2008 made of rubies, diamonds, pink sapphires, garnets, silver, gold, and enamel. Private collection. Photo: Jozsef Tari. Courtesy: JAR, Paris.

Remember 17th c. Dutch tulipmania? JAR  Tulip Brooch 2008. Rubies, diamonds, pink sapphires, garnets, silver, gold, and enamel. Private collection. Photo: Jozsef Tari. Courtesy: JAR, Paris.

If you took the detailed observational field skills and plant-and-animal artistry of JJ Audubon and crossed them with the gold-and-jewels precision of a Fabergé master, you can understand the enjoyment, beauty, and wonder that await the luxury-lovers crowding into Jewels by JAR, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s tribute to the world’s most exclusive and reclusive jewelry artist. Meditate on his exquisite take on the natural world before it all goes back to the vaults on March 9.

Plenty of worshippers were wielding tiny flashlights last Saturday night, working their way meticulously through the darkened gallery perusing every detail of 400 tiny, sparkling, jewel-encrusted pieces by JAR (or, Joel A. Rosenthal as he was known growing up in the Bronx). He’s one of the world’s experts in the pavé technique and achieves subtle effects by painstakingly arranging miniscule diamonds, rubies, opals, and amethysts across gold, platinum, and silver surfaces.

JAR’s 2010 bracelet evokes snow on branches. Diamonds, silver, and platinum. Private collection.  Photo: Jozsef Tari. Courtesy: JAR, Paris.

Despite being one of the most sought-after jewelers in the world, JAR will not do commissions. Each piece is one of a kind, so the subjects that he chooses tell you a lot about him. Look closely.

The first case features bracelets, earrings, brooches, and necklaces fashioned into exact, delicate replicas of just about anything you can find at the New York Botanical Garden on a spring day — gardenias, roses, camellias, tulips, lilacs, carnations, wisteria, pansies, and even wild oats. Across the room, you’ll see perfect oak leaves and acorns (made from diamonds, platinum, silver, and gold) formed into dramatic rings, cufflinks, necklaces, and earrings.

Growing up, JAR loved roaming the halls of the American Museum of Natural History and the Met, which shows. He’s made one pair of pendant earrings (No. 83) from iridescent beetle wings, married with tiny emeralds, garnets, and diamonds set into silver and platinum.

JAR  Butterfly Brooch 1994.  Sapphires, fire opals, rubies, amethyst, garnets, diamonds, silver, and gold. Private collection. Photo: Katharina Faerber. Courtesy: JAR, Paris

Right next to that (No. 84) you’ll see his 1981 Egyptian-style faience earrings with emeralds, coral, and gold — a 20^th century take on the Middle Kingdom. He’s crafted stalactite earrings (No. 93) from diamonds and silver and found a heart-shaped pebble into which he’s set a perfect ruby surrounded by silver and gold (No. 283).

In the center of the room there are moon and stars pendant earrings (a tribute to Cole Porter) made of sapphires and diamonds (No. 274), and a box (No. 260) inspired by lightning (rock crystal and diamonds). JAR’s 1991 Phases of the Moon Bracelet, made of basalt, diamonds, silver, and platinum, makes you think he probably also hung out at the Hayden in his youth.

The finale to the gallery is the Met’s jeweled twin to the AMNH Butterfly Conservatory – a wall in which 22 of JAR’s beautiful butterflies take flight. OK, there are 2 dragonflies in there, too, but the overall message is butterflies.

A few animals are in the show, too. JAR Zebra Brooch 1987 made of agate, diamonds, a sapphire, silver, and gold. Private collection.  Photo: Katharina Faerber. Courtesy: JAR, Paris

Every person in the crowd seemed to pause here in the dark to choose which creature was the most beautiful before entering the bright, unforgiving lights of the gift shop. A personal favorite was the 1987 Dragonfly Brooch (No. 378) with double-layered rock crystal wings.

If you love nature, wit, color, and fool-the-eye magic, you’ll like getting lost in the dark among the billions of points of light that JAR has created in his glittering universe.

Must-See Skytop Panorama of NYC Past & Present at The Whitney

Posted on February 3, 2014 by MsSusanB

The installation view of T. J. Wilcox: In the Air, 2013. Photo: Bill Orcutt

If you want to enjoy a beautiful view of Manhattan from the roof, don’t worry about the snow, rain, or cold weather. Go over to the Whitney Museum before February 9 and take in the film installation T.J. Wilcox, In the Air, that features a beautiful panorama (from the roof of Wilcox’s Union Square studio) that dreamily introduces six stories about the past and present of life, art, energy, fame, events, and cosmic forces that ebb and flow continuously below.

The big, in-the-round screen circles around you (duck and just walk into it), so you can really take in the view, all the way from the Battery to beyond the Empire State Building.

Still from T.J. Wilcox’s panoramic 2013 silent film installation, In the Air. Image courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures.

The film cycles from dawn to dusk, but along the way, Mr. Wilcox takes you on little journeys as you enjoy his movie panorama. The experience is one where you begin to see New York through his eyes, past and present together.

After a few minutes, one of his panorama screens fades you see a short, reflective, poetic, subtitled NYC story-movie. It’s a quiet experience — bringing you back to the Thirties when the Empire State Building was contemplated to be used as a zeppelin-docking station, to the present when 14th Street is one of the best vantage points to contemplate the out-of-this-world spectacle of Manhattanhenge, and the days of glitter, glamour, and grit of Warhol, Gloria Vanderbilt, and fashion-industry icon, Antonio Lopez.

Watching Wilcox’s Gloria Vanderbilt vignette from outside the installation. Photo: Bill Orcutt.

He reminds you that Gertrude Whitney, the museum’s founder, long ago succeeded in a custody battle to care for little Gloria. The film takes you to her apartment and reflects on the fact that Gloria was “in the public eye from birth” and celebrates her vibrant artistic, business, and family accomplishments (re: plenty of shots of Anderson Cooper). Another mini-film focuses upon a nano-second in Warhol’s life, when his Factory crew unfurled Mylar balloons to welcome the arrival of the pope-mobile to New York City in 1965.

Weegee’s Variant of Untitled (Striking Beauty) is hung in an adjacent gallery. Courtesy: Whitney Museum

In his musing on the film about fashion-illustrator extraordinaire, Antonio, Wilcox reveals his surprise that Antonio’s studio was located right next to his own building, takes pleasure in asking us to gaze out over the community where so much magnificent art was made, careers enlivened, and life lived.

In a tiny back-room gallery, the Whitney has installed a few other reflections on skies over the City – Weegee’s lightening strike behind the Empire State Building and Yoko’s Sky TV, are two – but the big “wow” here is Mr. Wilcox’s ability to take us on a 35-minute journey in and among the streets and skyline that from his quiet, contemplative perch.

It’s quite a collage of memory, reflection, mythologies, politics, history, and beauty. Click here to see the Whitney’s slide show of the storyboards in Wilcox’s studio, and listen to him talk about it this beautiful work in this YouTube video:

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