Learn Your ABCs (of Fashion)

Posted on April 28, 2012 by MsSusanB

Can you name a fashion designer for every letter of the alphabet? Test your skills by visiting FIT Fashion and Textile History Gallery to see Fashion, A-Z.

FIT uses its street-level gallery to showcase its permanent collection of 50,000 garments and 30,000 textiles, and this time they’ve decided to test your alphabet skills as well, by starting with Armani and Alaia arranging the installation mannequins right through to Yohlee and Zoran.

Boudicca ensemble, Fall 2006, England, museum purchase

If you miss it, don’t worry. This is only Part 1 of the total extravaganza. Part 2 begins May 23.

Oil Drills in Manhattan

Posted on April 25, 2012 by MsSusanB

Have you seen the latest art installation in the Theater District? It’s Josephine Mecksper’s Manhattan Oil Project – two 25-foot tall oil pumps churning away 4 hours a day (twice a day) weekdays and 8 full hours each weekend.

Go to the undeveloped land on the southeast corner of Eighth Avenue and 46^th Street and bring your friends (and camera) before it’s gone.

Sponsored by Yvonne Force Villareal’s Art Production Fund, which produces hard-to-produce artist installations, this one had special help from Sotheby’s and The Shubert Organization, which know a thing or two about mining riches in Manhattan.

Is it actually pumping oil? Feel free to stand there and answer out-of-towners questions on that one.

Bioluminescent Superstars

Posted on April 20, 2012 by MsSusanB

You don’t need to be James Cameron or build your own submersible to peek in at the amazing stuff in the deep, deep ocean. The American Museum of Natural History has pulled together a gallery of some of the strangest creatures of all time for its Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescenceshow.

Credit: AMNH/E. Grosch

In the deep, black depths of the ocean, several varieties of Anglerfish have strange bodies, heads, and hunting apparatus – bioluminescent fishing lures. They can light up these lures and also affect a strange glow due to the presence of their own colonies of bioluminescent bacteria. You can’t make this up.

Want to catch a glimpse fast? Look at the Anglerfish video.

If you want to linger over these unbelievable deep-water superstars, go right to the Flickr Luminous Lures page.

Hey, Socrates, What Do You See?

Posted on April 17, 2012 by MsSusanB

If you’re hankering for last summer’s BMW Idea Lab, zoom in on the conversation on the future of Long Island City and the shoreline near Socrates Sculpture Park at the Noguchi Museum’s visionary show Civic Action.

Noguchi and Socrates have commissioned four artists to work with architects, designers, and urban planners to reimagine the surrounding neighborhood, a mélange of homes, high rises, light industry, and Costco. The proposals by Mary Miss, George Trakas, Natalie Jeremijenko, and Rirkrit Tiraanija are on display at the Noguchi for a few more days. Other related installations will appear at Socrates in May.

If you can’t get to Queens, go virtual by checking out three videos and watch the brainstorming among artists and planners:

How can artists be urban planners? (inspired by early neighborhood artist/homesteaders Noguchi and diSuvero)

What’s been tried before on the Astoria/LIC waterfront?

What’s the vision our artists are proposing?

Enjoy the discussion and contemplate some exciting futures.

Beaton Leaving New York

Posted on April 16, 2012 by MsSusanB

It’s the final countdown at the Museum of the City of New York’s tribute to Cecil Beaton’s New York Years – an installation of scrapbooks, books, drawings, stage costumes, set designs, and photographs by one of the 20^th century’s leading chroniclers of celebrity, night life, and royalty.

The array of fashion, society, stage and screen icons is astonishing – from deWolfe and Elsa Maxwell through Monroe, Garbo, both Hepburns, and right up to Jagger…all shot in New York, many for Vogue (including that famous photo of those Charles James gowns).

You’ll get the idea as you step back in time via this British Pathé film documenting Beaton’s 1968 exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery.

And who knew there was a licensed fabric collection inspired by his work? Check out this blog featuring some his best photos.

Walk the US Fashion Timeline

Posted on April 12, 2012 by MsSusanB

There’s a few more days to walk among 50 years of American fashion history at FIT in Impact: 50 Years of the CDFA, a partnership between FIT and the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

The collaboration includes an interactive timeline that steps through some of the most significant moments in the industry over five decades. If you can’t get to the gallery to play with this iPad production, take a walk through history online, or enjoy E!’s YouTube tour with the show’s curator.

Oscar, Geoffrey, Zac, Carolina – They’re all here. The main exhibition space is lined with 100 iconic work, each chosen by the designer to reflect their best – Halston’s liquid gold strapless dress (1976), Diane’s leopard print wrap ensemble (1974), Ralph’s Navajo-inspired knit jacket and concha belt (1981), and Donna’s wrap skirt with oversize belt and matching cuff (1985).

High-drama awards go to Zac Posen’s sculpted red gown (think Charles James) and Norma Kamali’s parachute fabric and feather creation (think Alexander McQueen).

When Coffee Houses Were Facebook

Posted on April 10, 2012 by MsSusanB

You have one more week to find out what the 18^th century social network was like at the intriguing exhibition at New-York Historical on the events that propelled simultaneous American, French, and Haitian revolutions.

Girodet’s 1797 painting of Jean-Baptiste Belley from Versailles

As soon as you enter Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn at the New-York Historical, you find yourself inside the social hub a Caribbean seaport city in the mid-1770s – the coffee house, where people reread month-old newspapers, asked arriving seamen for news, discussed European imperials, and complained about taxes, trade, and tyranny.

Winding your way through the history maze, you’ll encounter the original penned version of the Stamp Act (1765), the first edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776), and Napolean’s approval to sell Louisiana to the United States (1803). The story line weaves in the slave trade, the Haitian revolution, and the rise of voodoo in the Caribbean – a unique retelling of rebellion in the time of colonialism.

See the artifacts on line, but connect the dots to revolution by dropping into the exhibition this weekend.

And don’t miss the lobby painting featuring New York’s first big-time 18^th c. social network — the Tontine Coffee House on Wall and Water, built by the brokers in 1793 to organize The New York Stock Exchange.

After Easter Bonnets

Posted on April 8, 2012 by MsSusanB

Easter’s over, but the bonnets are still on display for one more week at Bard. Be sure to catch Hats: An Anthology by Steven Jones, with significant historic headwear pulled from the stellar collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

It’s three stories of mini-collections grouped into themed cases for Helmets, Turbans, Hoods, Straw, Paper, Felt, Feathers, and Flowers. The surprise is trying to decide which are contemporary, vintage, or truly antique. Typically here in the States we don’t get to see gems such as a knit wool apprentice cap from 1550 London, and a leather jester’s hat from the 1600s.

More modern chapeaux include a case of NYC designers (Eugenia Kim and Patricia Underwood), a felt beret from Mary Quant, a creation from Lola Hats made entirely of The New York Times, and many, many celeb hats, including those worn by Maurice Chevalier, Gypsy Rose Lee, Leigh Bowery, Mick Jagger, Cecil Beaton, the Mousketeers, and Warhol’s wig.

Perhaps the most startling object in the display isn’t a hat at all, but a facsimile of a handwritten letter (dated November 14, 1960) from Jackie Kennedy to Bergdorf’s custom millinery sales chief Martha O’Conner, describing and sketching the pillbox hats (to be made by Halston) she envisioned for JFK’s upcoming inauguration. In the bottom margin, Jackie adds, “P.S. It was so pleasant when I didn’t have to wear hats. I still feel absurd in them.”

Check out the on-line highlights and the installation views, (or the client salon or the gallery from the original 2009 V&A show) but there’s no substitute for experiencing three stories of creative, delightful, and historic hats in person.

Farming The Grid

Posted on April 6, 2012 by MsSusanB

Did anyone notice that there’s new land and a farm just east of First Avenue and 29^th Street? It used to be a dirt-road exit from the FDR, but not anymore.

If you’ve visited the blockbuster show The Greatest Grid at The Museum of the City of New York, you know that around 1804 this section of Kip’s Bay was being homesteaded by the various Kips relatives before their land got gridded.

Well, the farm has come back, courtesy of Tom Colicchio’s protégé, Sisha Ortuzar, the top chef at Riverpark restaurant tucked back behind Bellevue in the ground floor of the glamorous new Alexandria Center – a biotech high-rise whose tenants include Pfizer and ImClone (remember them?).

Because scientists can get hungry, too, Colicchio opened up his ‘Wichcraft sandwich shop right next door in the plaza inside a bright, shiny, Apple-worthy glass cube.

The farm is producing fresh produce for the Colicchio businesses on site (look at the crop list), and his crew is also giving tours and workshops on urban farming.

Check out the photos of the new land and spring crops. And drop by the farm the next time you’re on the M-15.

itsnewstoyou

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