Tag Archives: culture

Ride the M-15 to the 19th Century

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The SBS M-15 (First Avenue) bus drops you right at the door to the 19th century lifestyles and handiwork inside the South Street Seaport Museum’s Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions show, mounted by the American Folk Art Museum (which has just hired a new director and is now on better financial footing after selling its 53rd Street building to MoMA and decamping back to its space near Lincoln Center).

The Seaport (currently under the management of the Museum of the City of New York) invited the Folk Art folks to curate a show for four of its newly opened galleries, and it’s a joyful, informative stunner. Stacy Hollander, senior curator, selected art that reflects the spirit of the Seaport’s Schemerhorn Row, a series of six 1810 buildings that originally housed coffeehouses, hotels, and other small businesses serving the bustling sea trade.

Whale ivory and bone canes (1860); AFAM

In the Exploration gallery, you’ll encounter a vibrant folk-art menagerie, evoking the exotic adventures awaiting seafarers, who would be gone for years at a time, carvings done during the voyages, whale-bone walking canes, and imports from China. In the “social networking” gallery, the Seaport has exposed an original wall, covered in 19th-century graffiti, from the coffee houses of old downtown, when Water Street was the actual East River waterfront.

Everyone should support both of these museums (and get free admission if you sign up for the Seaport’s mailing list). The Museum and the SBS M-15 are in operation seven days a week.

Girls Who Wear (Google) Glasses

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DVF’s Look #17 for Spring/Summer 2013

When Diane von Furstenberg and her models walked the runway at NYC’s recently concluded Fashion Week, they decided to give the world an inside peek at how it feels by recording the experience with Google Glass, the still-in-Beta avant-eyewear.

The innovative accessory shoots video, snaps pix, streams messages, and apparently looks good, so Diane decided to snap on the specs and take you with her (and her posse) on a fashion-tech flashbulb-popping stroll.

What’s cooler than Diane’s embrace of the new? Her Spring/Summer 2013 collection and her attitudes about life, potential, and empowerment. Take a look. Thanks, Diane!

Historic Silver Hoard on 77th Street

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Silver coffeepot by Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers (1775-1776) sold by Gouvernor Morris to Robert R. Livingston, his successor as minister to France. NYHS, Gift of Mr. Goodhue Livingston

The New York Historical Society has done it again, hauling out all sorts of ornate, expensive, lovely silver items to tell the City’s history in the soon-closing exhibition Stories in Sterling: Four Centuries of Silver in New York.

Every time you peer into the reflections of dozens of silver pieces, the curators draw you into an historic event, person, or point in time in our collective urban history – silver brandywine bowls used by 1700s Dutch women to celebrate new babies, silver German medals modified into “passports” for travelers crossing Indian land in the 1750s, a silver coffeepot sold by Gouverneur Morris in 1801 to Robert Livingston after Thom J turned it down, and an elaborate 1863 Tiffany sugar bowl presented to the heroic engineer manning the guns on the Monitor in its showdown with the Merrimac the year before. Take a look at the on-line gallery.

Silver subway controller handle (1904). NYHS, Gift of George B. McClellan, Jr.

Did you know that consumer culture of the 1880s required that up-to-date Victorian families have specialized serving implements and devices for every food imaginable? To prove this point, NYHS features just a smidgen of the 381 silver dinner service items presented to Commodore Perry in 1885 by the City’s Chamber of Commerce as thanks for his success in opening up trade with Japan — silver berry spoons, asparagus tongs, mustard spoons, nutpicks, bonbon dishes, and a zillion other things.

Most unexpected item: the Tiffany silver subway control handle that Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. used to drive our first subway train in 1904. He was supposed to take the IRT only as far as 42nd Street, but couldn’t let go of this slice of silver until he reached 103rd .

Virtual Trip to Design Island

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Let me guess. You didn’t get to see the spectacular design show that ended yesterday on Governor’s Island. While their mansion up on 91st Street is being renovated, The Cooper-Hewitt (a.k.a. Smithsonian) outdid itself by mounting a show inside Building 110 on New York Harbor’s hottest party-picnic location.

Graphic Design: Now in Production gathers great design produced since 2000 to feature what creative minds are offering. The summertime crowd loved it, and people flowed right from the ferry into the show and through the aisles where works were grouped around themes like storefronts, branding, typography, and print (it lives!). Check out the action on the Flickr feed.

The show is vibrant, interactive, mind-blowing, provocative, and fully documented in a 10-minute walk-through video with the curator Elleln Lupton that pretty much replicates the experience.

If you’re in LA, the show opens September 30 at UCLA’s Hammer Museum before migrating in 2013-2014 to Grand Rapids, Houston, Winston-Salem, and RISD.

Among our favorites are Brand New’s display, which asks visitors to vote (“before” or “after”) on redesigned corporate logos, and CognitiveMedia’s “RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms.”

Get Out Your Credit Cards for FNO

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Better use the holiday weekend to rest up, since Fashion’s Night Out happens next Thursday!

The tents are going up at Lincoln Center, the stores are getting ready for the onslaught, and the NYPD is gearing up for crowd control everywhere in the City.

Check out the New York event listings at the web site, or (if you’re not in NYC that night) the FNO worldwide or elsewhere US sites. Hey, there are even events planned in Wyoming and online, so there’s no excuse not to shop, contribute to a cause (by buying stuff from the collection), and have fun all night!

If you’re in NYC, start early, have a strategy, and be prepared for crowds. The web site lets you sort the 800-plus events by neighborhood, shopping category, and the type of event you’re hankering for (pop-ups, fashion shows, new product launches, charity-focused, DJs, designer appearances, and block parties).

Check out the video to get in the mood.

Hidden Iranian Gems at The Met

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Contemporary Iranian Art installation at The Met with Tanavoli’s sculpture and Farmanfarmaian’s mirrored glass mosaic.

You really don’t expect to find stunning contemporary art works way, way back in a remote corner of the Islamic Art wing, and you really don’t expect to see new, sparkly stuff from Iran. Surprise!

Once you make your way back on the second floor, past the 13th century enameled and gilded glass from Syria, you’ll spy a secluded gallery with shimmering light. It’s Parviz Tanavoli’s dramatic Sufi-inspired sculpture at the center and Flight of the Dolphin, a mirrored mosaic by Iran’s most famous female artist casting its magic.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, who made the mirrored mosaic, is probably Iran’s best-known female artist. In 1944, she studied in New York at Cornell and Parsons and got to know art-world luminaries like Pollack, Stella, and Warhol. It changed her life and her art, as you’ll hear in this video shot inside the gallery by ArtAsiaPacific.

Detail of Still Garden (2011) by Afruz Amighi.

Last weekend, the tiny show enjoyed a steady stream of visitors. Most were captivated by another truly remarkable piece – Afruz Amighi’s Still Garden. The closer you get to the wall-size hanging, the more amazement you’ll have. Afruz has cut intricate patterns into thin polyester fabric that’s commonly used to construct refugee tents and has projected white light through it. The light-shadow play inches behind have a mesmerizing effect that you just have to experience in person.

Although everything’s now in the Met’s permanent collection, it’s worth making the journey through the Arab Lands upstairs and experience the light from Iran at the end.

Weegee’s New York Nights, Gangster-Style

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Weegee, With Bomb, 1940. © Weegee/International Center of Photography.

See for yourself if much has changed in New York since the late 1930s, when Weegee worked the night beat, listening on the police-band radio for unfolding action, zeroing in on lurid murders, capturing the stares of bystanders, and doggedly getting the photo-story every night.

Check out the final days of the exhibition Weegee: Murder is My Business to see plenty of action. Weegee (Arthur Fellig) slept in a cold-water flat across from Police Headquarters downtown and sold his photos to one of twelve dailies published in the City in the late 1930s. He tried to “humanize” the news, so lots of the photos in the show feature reactions of bystanders to sensational crimes and scenes of mayhem.

The show occupies most of the International Center of Photography’s lower level, and is filled with a recreation of Weegee’s room, his camera equipment, flash bulbs, press passes, and terrific interactive displays that bring you closer to one New York’s great documentarians of the Thirties and Forties. There’s even a set of photos of a gangster rub-out alongside the actual police crime ledger that documents what happened in Little Italy that night.

Installation view of Weegee’s flat. © International Center of Photography, 2012. Photograph by John Berens.

Maybe the curators are having fun with us, but it’s interesting that there’s a slightly out-of-the-way wall of Weegee photos of cross-dressers being arrested in 1939 alongside a gallery of 19th-century images of Jefferson Davis in a dress (President in Petticoats!), and another gallery with Christer Strömholm’s gorgeous shots of the early Sixties “ladies” working the Place Blanche in Paris.

It’s all sensational(istic) and Weegee would approve.

Christer Strömholm, Belinda, 1967. © Christer Strömholm/Strömholm Estate.

Pub Finale to NY Beer History Walk

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Although we missed Brooklyn Brewery’s ’05 Black Chocolate Stout yesterday, there was plenty of beer and ambiance to welcome weary time-travelers relaxing in the beer hall at the finale of New-York Historical Society’s exhibition Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History –a friendly (and informative) barkeep, giant pretzels, and Brooklyn’s finest.

It’s a walk through time, starting with the American Revolution era, where taverns could be found everywhere in lower Manhattan with their own unique recipes for spruce beer and table ale.

Because we take water for granted today, the show emphasizes how important it was for breweries in the City to have access to a steady supply of fresh water and features a collection of 1804 wooden water pipes installed by the Manhattan Water Company in 1799. (Spoiler alert: Aaron Burr was an investor.)

Section of Manhattan Water Company wooden water pipe, ca. 1804. Source: NYHS

Hops growing became a key crop around 1808, but it wasn’t until the Croton Aqueduct was built in 1825 at Fifth and 42nd (yes, where NYPL is today) that brewing could really take off in quantity. Wagons loaded with ice rolled in from Rockland Lane (north of Nyack).

Of course, German immigration in 1835 really blew the lid off, and by the 1890s, the City was chock-a-block (literally) with beer halls, gardens, breweries, and bottlers. And who knew that our ubiquitous beer bottle cap was born with the 1892 advent of the “crown” cap?

1950s ad shows Rheingold beer representative at work. Source: NYHS

You’ll enjoy lots of historic bottles and experimental beer containers, Miss Rheingold of 1956’s gold gown, and plenty of other colorful memorabilia to whet your thirst for real thing from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and upstate New York (in the beer hall).

Museum as Model with Temple and Condo Plans

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Did you miss the Francesca Woodman show at the Guggenheim? You can catch one of her spectacular pieces at the Met in the small contemporary photography exhibit, Spies in the House of Art.

Francesca Woodman’s Blueprint for a Temple, 1980. Diazo collage. Gift of George and Betty Woodman to the Metropolitan Museum, 2001.

The show features works by photographers, filmmakers, and video artists inspired by museums, collections, and exhibitions. The standout (Cindy Sherman’s Italian history portrait notwithstanding) is the epic piece by Woodman:  the large-scale Blueprint for a Temple made up of 29 photographs on blueprint paper. The piece uses live models as caryatids and everyday stuff to evoke classical architecture, and it’s an experience.

The Met’s also given over a large, dark exhibition area to show Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer’s film shot with strobes late at night when the Met’s ancient-art halls look particularly magical and spooky. Perhaps the most startling aspect of the installation is the medium. We’ve become accustomed to digital projection, but this experience is enhanced by the sight and sound of a 16mm film loop clicking through a 16mm projector.

For some fun, be sure to sit down, put on the headsets, and listen in to Andrea Fraser’s 1989 fictional museum walk that’s also part of the show. And check out Peter Nagy’s 1985 work done when there was a citywide kerfuffle over the MoMA’s plans to renovate (remember that?). Nagy layers condominium floor plans over the old layout of the MoMA galleries. It’s hilarious.

380-Year Old Dutch Girl Plays House

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When the Brooklyn Museum invited four artists into their period rooms for Playing House, who knew that one would be channeling her own family history, complete with her ancestors’ dramatic flight to America over 380 years ago and a tribute to the first girl in her family born in New Amsterdam?

Mary Lucier’s video Still Life #1 atop the table inside the 1675 Jan Martense Schenck House in the Brooklyn Museum

Mary Lucier created a compelling multipart installation above, around, and inside the Jan Martense Schenck House (1675), which stood in Brooklyn for about 275 years and is currently the oldest “home” in the gallery. Lucier evokes the 1572 persecution of the Huguenots in Europe through a clip from D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance overhead, and invites visitors to sit in a modern replica of an old Dutch chair to watch a slide presentation about the Rapaljie family – a story that also happens to be her own.

The chronology takes you graphically from the religious wars in Europe to a 19-year old couple who escaped, to their colonization of Albany in 1624, and to the 1625 birth of their daughter Sara at their homestead in Wallabout Bay (now the Brooklyn Navy Yard). Lucier’s video installation inside the older Schenck house evokes New Amsterdam; her transformation of his grandson Nicholas’s house (right next door in the gallery) depicts the faces and stories of Sarah’s over one million current descendants 380 years later.

Take a look at my Flickr feed to glimpse installations by Lucier, Ann Agee, Ann Chu, and Betty Woodman. Then go to Brooklyn’s site to see all four at work installing their art in the period rooms.

When the 1675 Jan Martense Schenck House stood in Brooklyn. From the digital archive of the Brooklyn Museum of Art

If you have time, browse through Brooklyn’s digital archive for the Schenck house and what it took to get it installed inside the museum in 1971.