Ivy Style or Gangnam Style?

Posted on January 3, 2013 by MsSusanB

Red and white cotton flannel blazer, c.1928. Museum at FIT purchase.

It’s hard to remember a time without Gangnam Style, but it’s even harder to remember before there was Ivy (as in Preppie) Style. There’s just a few more days to trek to The Museum at FIT for its revealing show on the roots of American menswear, Ivy Style.

Sure, the show is peppered with references and examples of the current Kings of Prep –Lauren, Hilfiger, and (prep with a twist) Thom Browne. But the real eye-opener here is the manner in which the curators journey back in time to show you how something so familiar today was once so radical – how “Ivy” got its name in 1876, how students set the sportswear trends before WWI, and the debut of the now-forgotten (but influential) “beer suits” at Princeton in 1912.

It’s also startling to learn that Brooks Brothers industrialized wardrobes as far back as 1818, and that J. Press “owned” the market for natural-shoulder jackets for pretty much the entire 20^th Century.

1937 illustration of college men’s fashions from FIT Library and Archives.

Thankfully, FIT has packed enormous amounts of menswear history on its special exhibition web site, so work your way through it and mine it for your own favorite tidbits (e.g. origins of saddle shoes, polo coats, and blazers).

Favorite factoid: In 1931, the average college student spent 51% more on clothes than the average man-on-the-street – a college trend that kept going right through the Great Depression. So, maybe it’s like Gangnam Style, after all? Psy sports it too, you know.

If you can’t get to the show in the next few days, take the virtual walkthrough with the Richard Press, the former President of J. Press, who interprets the who, what, why, and when of menswear history (including the roots of the most memorable scene in Animal House). Don’t ask, just watch:

Clock Ticks All Night at MoMA

Posted on December 31, 2012 by MsSusanB

Christian Marclay. Video still from The Clock. 2010. Single-channel video with sound, 24 hours. © Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

If you didn’t get to see it last summer in the Atrium at Lincoln Center, Christian Marclay’s The Clock is back, just in time for the countdown to the New Year.

MoMA is offering the first 24-hour screening of the 24-hour art film tonight on New Year’s Eve, so art lovers can experience the 24-hour countdown of clocks in real time. To keep its guests satisfied, MoMA is extending café hours until 1am and keeping its espresso bar open all night.

If you have other plans for this New Year’s Eve, don’t worry. The Clock screens at MoMA until January 21 and you’ll have ample opportunity to catch the non-stop action. On subsequent Fridays (January 4, 11, and 18), MoMA will start The Clock at 10:30am and keep it ticking in the Contemporary Galleries until 5:30pm the following Sunday.

First come, first served, with no time limits.

Warhol’s New Year’s Eve Finale at the Met

Posted on December 29, 2012 by MsSusanB

Andy Warhol. Big Campbell's Soup Can, 19¢ (Beef Noodle), 1962. Acrylic and graphite on canvas, The Menil Collection, Houston. © 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Andy Warhol. Big Campbell’s Soup Can, 19¢ (Beef Noodle), 1962. Acrylic & graphite on canvas, The Menil Collection, Houston. © 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ARS, New York

New Year’s Eve is the last day of a major tribute to the man who encouraged us to view brands, news, celebrities, identity-shifting, multiples, and commerce as art – Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years.

The curators have organized the big, second-floor galleries along these themes, and paired Andy’s work with the work of fifty contemporary artists whose own work is indebted to Andy’s redefinition of modern life.

As the show begins, it’s almost as if Andy’s contemplating the implications of the upcoming fiscal cliff talks with the wall quote, “Buying is much more American than thinking.”

To prove his point, you’ll find Andy’s little-seen Dr. Scholl’s Corns (1961) (a gift from Halston to the Met), alongside better-known Brillo boxes and other brand icons from the Whitney, Menil, and Warhol Foundation collections. The curators have included Tom Sach’s Chanel Chainsaw (1996) and Hans Haake’s political pop masterwork, a giant cigarette box created in 1990 in response to Jesse Helms’s attack on Mapplethorpe and the NEA with the cigarettes wrapped in the Bill of Rights and branded “Phiip Morris Funds Jesse Helms”.

Fragment of Andy Warhol’s silkscreen on canvas, Ethel Scull 36 Times. Jointly owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Gift of Ethel Redner Scull, 2001

Alongside Andy’s Screen Test films are portraits by Tillman, Close, and Avedon, as well as a needlepoint of Liza in her heyday and a brilliant Sugimoto portrait of Fidel Castro (except that it’s a wax museum likeness). Andy’s dollar-sign print multiples are hung near another quote: “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.” An entire wall covered in Takashi Murakami and Koons multiples stand in evidence.

If you can’t celebrate in person at the Met, download Rebecca Lowery’s timeline of Warhol’s impact from the exhibition catalog. Or watch the 90-minute video featuring the curator Mark Rosenthal debating if Warhol actually is the most influential artist of the last fifty years. Or, view the films and listen to the music that the Met streamed live last October: The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Dean and Britta—13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests.

Hidden New York Christmas Trees

Posted on December 24, 2012 by MsSusanB

New York Public Library’s nature-inspired Christmas tree in Astor Hall on 42nd Street

Although Rockefeller Center has New York’s most popular tree, don’t forget to check out two others that are on the list of everyone’s favorites.

The grand tree inside the main entrance of the New York Public Library this season is an Age-of-Innocence wonder that has become the new favorite photo backdrop of New York City visitors this season It’s never crowded inside Mr. Astor’s grand hall, so there’s plenty of time to pose in front of the tree to show the folks back home what a beautiful time they’re having in City splendor. It’s in an intimate, spectacular setting with grand staircases, blazing illuminations, and ornaments evoking the natural world.

Now that Theodore Roosevelt has taken up residence in his Memorial on the First Floor, the American Museum of Natural History has moved one of the most charming trees in the City to the Grand Hall at the 77^th Street entrance.

The fun of the Origami Tree is to get close enough to identify each of the 500 folded-paper ornaments by species. This year, the scientific theme is groupings of animals. You’ll find suspended origami doves circling a tree decorated with spiders, dinosaurs, lemurs, skunks, pelicans, cultures of bacteria, jellyfish, and many more surprises inspired by the vast holdings of the AMNH. Volunteers have been working since July to create this delightful menagerie.

If you haven’t seen these holiday wonders, check them out before they disappear.

The base of the AMNH Origami Tree features groups of ring-tailed lemurs and flock of doves

Brooklyn Holiday Art Mash Up

Posted on December 20, 2012 by MsSusanB

Details of four works in Connecting Cultures, from top: Korumbo Gable Painting, 20th century, unidentified Abelam artist; Girl in a Japanese Costume, circa 1890, William Merritt Chase; Mosaic Head Pendant, 700–800, unidentified Maya artist; and Life-Death Figure, circa 900–1250, unidentified Huastec artist.

Details of four featured works, from top: Korumbo Gable Painting, 20th c. by unidentified Abelam artist; Girl in a Japanese Costume, c. 1890, William Merritt Chase; Mosaic Head Pendant, 700–800, unidentified Maya artist; and Life-Death Figure, c. 900–1250, unidentified Huastec artist.

A big mix-up has happened on the First Floor of The Brooklyn Museum, but it’s OK. In fact, if you like rambling around the Brooklyn Flea, the Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn exhibit is less congested but just as much fun.

The museum curators clearly enjoyed picking and choosing objects from their wide-ranging collections, and packing a gallery full of juxtapositions from different centuries, cultures, and countries. The designers made great use of the soaring space of the Great Hall, creating floor-to-ceiling murals, maps, and display shelves that provoke, delight, and mystify. Check out the museum’s Flickr photostream. As a visitor, you feel as though you’ve wandered in on a modern version of a Victorian-era World Exposition.

Gaston Lachaise’s modern Standing Woman bronze is installed near Nick Cave’s Soundsuit, Picasso’s cubist Woman in Gray portrait is hung next to Huntington’s classical portrait The Sketcher, and Ikea-clean wall grids house ornate pitchers from many cultures and time periods. Catch a glimpse of the variety in the installation views on Flickr, or peruse the objects in Brooklyn’s on-line database.

As an added bonus, the Museum has established both human and social-media feedback options for visitors. It’s nice to use the terminal to input comments on the show (posted on the exhibition site), but maybe it’s even nicer to have staff members positioned inside the exhibit to chat, answer questions, and elicit your comments.

The installation is reflected in Pistoletto’s Standing Man, Standing Woman with Hat, a 1980 silkscreen on stainless steel.

Installation as reflected in Pistoletto’s Standing Man, Standing Woman with Hat, 1980 silkscreen on stainless steel.

The Museum has been collecting since 1823, and there’s both an on-line chronology and a pictorial history slightly hidden away inside the show.

Upcoming and news flash: Brooklyn Museum is going to continue it’s Target First Saturday tradition into the New Year (next on January 5), but for the time being, it’s cancelling the dance party portion of the festivities. Get there for the rest of the night.

1950s and 60s Vintage Rolling through Midtown This Week

Posted on December 10, 2012 by MsSusanB

GM Model 5106 (1958-mid-1970s)

Christmas shoppers in NYC’s Midtown are in for a special retro-treat this week. For $2.25, they can take a trip back in time, as New York City Transit shuttles 42^nd Street travelers from Twelfth Avenue to the East River on its collection of vintage buses.

It’s a fun way to travel to two of the best holiday markets in the City – Bryant Park and Grand Central Terminal – by enjoying a “good old days” vibe, complete with vintage ads.

The antique buses are due to roll east along the M42 route at 8:30am, 11:30am, and 2:30pm. If you aren’t in the vicinity of 42^nd Street, look for parked antique buses opposite Macy’s (at Sixth and 35^th Street) and across from Union Square between 10am and 3:30pm all week.

Transit will be featuring six styles of vintage buses from its collection, including five models from General Motors and one from Mack Truck and Bus. The earliest model is GM’s Model 5101, which ran the streets from 1949 to 1966; the most recent vintage is GM Model 5305A, which debuted in 1968 and ran until 1984.

Even though MetroCards are “new” (they debuted in 1993), they’ll work on the retro-buses. Check out this 1949 Rapid Transit movie to feel the way it used to be, and be sure to catch one of the retro-subway trains every Sunday until December 30 on the M Line between 2 Ave and Queens Plaza.

Mayans Dispute 2012 Ending

Posted on December 4, 2012 by MsSusanB

Illumination translates glyphs into numbers on stele, marking the end of the Long Count cycle on December 29, 775 CE

One of the best things about the Penn Museum’s “Maya 2012: Lord of Time” exhibition is the manner in which the curators meld the ancient, the mathematical, the historic, and the modern to answer the question “Will the world end at the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar in December 2012?”

The exhibition is built around the spectacular work that Penn’s archeological teams have done for decades in Copan, an ancient Mayan city located in today’s Honduras not far from the Guatemalan border – excavating tombs, uncovering clues to the succession of rulers, and figuring out exactly what all the once-cryptic hieroglyphics tell us. Check out the Flickr photos.

It turns out that the rulers kept a tight rein on the calendar, astronomic phenomenon, and various time-counting cycles to assert their right to rule. As some of the most spectacular stele show, the stone monuments actually enabled kings to embody dates, such as October 21, 731 (Copan Stele A).

Censor lid depicting founder of the Copan dynasty (695 CE)

The towering Quirigua Stele C from Guatemala associates the ruler with December 29, 775, the last time that the calendar flipped to the number 13.0.0.0 to signal the end of the Long Count.

There are many beautiful altars, sculptures, and pieces from the Penn’s collection, but the curators also went further, including the famous Dresden Codex, the Popol Vuh, and a phenomenal digital blow-up of a map showing how and where the Aztecs and Spaniards brought down the Maya. But one of the best contributions to the show are the video interviews with contemporary Maya commenting on their still-thriving culture and debunking the worries of their global neighbors about events later this month.

It’s obvious the view that Penn is taking, since the show is scheduled to run through January 13, 2013. Here’s Penn’s YouTube preview:

Holiday Rush for Christopher Columbus

Posted on November 30, 2012 by MsSusanB

Greeting visitors in his apartment 75 feet in the air

It’s the holiday season in New York, with art lovers rushing to see the spectacular apartment that Tatzu Nishi has created (courtesy of The Public Art Fund) for Christopher Columbus, the man at the center of things near the Time-Warner Building.

He’s been standing atop that column since 1892, so it’s about time that he had us over to see his taste in décor, books, and light TV viewing. Here’s the Flickr feed, which takes you on a 360-degree view of his digs.

Who knew Captain Columbus was into pop culture? He even has a copy of one of Andy’s early cat lithos in his bookcase. Enjoy the holiday views that Columbus is enjoying, and get your free tickets now, because you won’t be seeing the City from this view again!

What Columbus is reading inside his apartment

NYC Spider Theater Due to Close

Posted on November 20, 2012 by MsSusanB

Bronze Spider 1, 1995 by Ms. Bourgeois lurks at the show’s entrance

About the best spider theater in town is about to close in a few weeks – the live-animal floor show inside the American Museum of National History’s Spiders Alive! exhibition, where an actual spider-handler enthralls the crowds with myth-busting tales while introducing the arachnid star of the show, a Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula. Nearly 20 live species are crawling around the terrariums, but crowds are flocking to the live demo/theater area of the show and sitting spellbound until intermission. Go see it!

Since the AMNH never does anything second-rate, it’s fitting to note that welcoming visitors to the show is an art-world superstar. Lurking inconspicuously in the “canoe” lobby area outside the show is one of the smaller bronze spiders crafted by Louise Bourgeois. It’s smaller than the babies that graced the 1999 opening of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London (and later the Guggenheim in Bilbao and Rockefeller Center), but who cares? Stop by for a glimpse.

Robert Cuccioli, AMNH curator Norman Platnik, Reeve Carney and multiple Spider-Men take in AMNH’s “Spiders Alive!” © AMNH\R. Mickens

And lest you think that AMNH ignored the other obvious art-world connection, it didn’t, as shown by this amusing photo in September, when the cast of that other spider-themed show came to visit AMNH curator Normal Platnik for a walk-through.

Check out the opening-day YouTube promo below, but go meet the spiders up close and personal before they leave after January 6. If you’re a sci café geek that wants more, go poke around the AMNH World Spider Catalog.

235 Years of Veteran History in a High-Tech Park

Posted on November 12, 2012 by MsSusanB

Open again after the hurricane, best-kept-secret BLDG 92 has opened its doors to honor veteran, industrial, medical, and military history at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center.

The stunning displays of over 235 years of history in New York Harbor inside are nothing compared to the experience of traipsing around by bus and foot to poke in and around the mix of crumbling 19^th-century architecture, active dry docks, overgrown campuses, historic streets, and state-of-the-art sustainable design.

Take a look at the sights seen during the sunny days of summer on the Flickr feed, and book your trip now. It’s an adventure to get there (subways aren’t exactly close), but you will feel amazing to walk in the footsteps of so many heroes of American history and innovation, like Commodore Perry, Dr. Squibb, the North Atlantic Command for WWII, and Rosie the Riveter.

If it all feels and looks a little like a back lot, it is. (Boardwalk Empire shoots at the Steiner Studios and SNL builds sets there.)

Check out the photo of the tugboat under repair in the third oldest dry dock in the country – right where the Monitor was built for combat during the Civil War. And if you’re a Navy history buff, immerse yourself in BLDG 92’s Flickr stream courtesy of the National Archives, stereoscopes and all.

What have you been missing? Just check out this video, and then go see the real thing on foot, by bus, by bicycle, or on an industrial tour:

itsnewstoyou

Susan B's advice on what you shouldn't miss in NYC and other museums