Tiny Natural History Show Has Eyes Bugging Out

Posted on January 26, 2014 by MsSusanB

Asaphus, from St. Petersburg, has eyes bugging out (Ordovidian, 490-440 mya). Photo: ©AMNH/R.Mickens)

Confined to a tiny case in the “canoe” rotunda at the American Museum of Natural History, some extinct species from more than 400 million years ago are putting on quite a show, thanks to two trilobite lovers from the heavy-metal music and vert paleo worlds.

Andy Secher and Martin Shugar went through their massive trilobite collections (Andy has 4,000 in his Manhattan apartment and Martin turned over 200,000 fossils and shells to AMNH) and picked out fifteen “best of the best” from each of the six geologic periods that hosted these little waterway critters – from the Cambrian to the Permian (521 to 240 million years ago). It’s quite something, considering there are over 20,000 recognized species lingering in 281 million years of rocks around the world!

When the exoskeleton of Dicranurus disintegrated in the Lower Devonian, it left a fossilized cast that is so perfectly prepared you think you’re watching him in action

When the exoskeleton of Dicranurus disintegrated in the Lower Devonian, it left a fossilized cast so perfectly prepared you think you’re watching him in action

The tiny show, which is in an open-ended run, is a “wow” due to the spectacular preservation and preparation of each of these little snubs of rock containing fossilized “casts” of animals whose exoskeletons disintegrated soon after they expired millions of years ago. The state of preservation of even the most delicate features is pretty remarkable.

Consider Asaphus kowalewskii from Ordivician rocks near St. Petersburg (490-440 mya), whose long eye stalks are truly a wonder of nature, evolution, and behind-the-scenes prep that make this character’s eyes pop. Trilobites invented complex, multi-lens eyes, and this Asaphus provocatively suggests the ability to check things out above the sediments where they burrowed, sort of like a horseshoe crab equipped with a modern submarine periscope.

The little Olenoides on display hails from British Columbia’s famous Burgess Shale and has long antenna curving back along its sides. He’s also found in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Utah, and other places in Cambrian rocks 450-490 million years old. For all those AMNH visitors asking where they can see the Burgess Shale, here’s your chance to commune with a critter and some rock from the same formation that so inspired uber-naturalist Stephen Jay Gould.

Olenoides of British Columbia’s Burgess Shale (Cambrian 450-490 mya)

Walliserops has a full trident sprouting out of his head –a unique apparatus that adapted him for who-knows-what in Devonian life in what-is-now Morocco. Is this where Neptune got the idea of what works best down under the sea?

The hometown favorite is Arctinurus boltoni, first found in upstate New York in the early 1800s during the construction of the Erie Canal. The AMNH has an entire website showcasing these upstate wonders from the Rochester Shale. See them all and take a peek behind the scenes into the AMNH collection drawers on the image gallery.

Andy and Martin’s enthusiasm for trilobites puts them in good company. Tom Jefferson and Ben Franklin are said to have collected them. Trilobite fossils were hawked on 15th century European streets and several trilobite websites say that 25,000-year-old European burials were found with these fossils, too.

Trilobites with tridents and horns. Walliserops is found in Morocco’s Lower to Middle Devonian strata.

Although AMNH has terrific trilobite blog and a page with “Twenty Trilobite Fast Facts,” why not go for the slick YouTube video tour? Watch as AMNH’s Neil Landman, Andy, and Martin talk about their passion and show the cabinet-sized exhibit in close-up. You really need to come, meet the trilobites, and journey back to a time on Earth before animals had even colonized land.

AMNH Honors America’s Super-Early Explorers

Posted on December 30, 2013 by MsSusanB

Ronnie Cachini’s 2006 acrylic, Ho’n A:wan Dehwa:we/(Our Land), Source: AMNH/ of A:Shiw A:Wan Museum

Long before John Wesley Powell steered his boats down the rapids and mapped the Grand Canyon for the US Geological Survey, another set of intrepid explorers had walked, mapped, documented, and guided travelers through the entire Colorado River system. Climb up to the hidden Audubon Gallery on the Fourth Floor of the American Museum of Natural History before January 12 and get a fresh perspective on pueblo cartography in the special exhibition, A:shiwi A:wan Ulohnanne: Zuni World.

The show features 31 paintings by seven contemporary painters from the Zuni Pueblo of New Mexico – one of the ancient tribes whose ancestors built the cliff dwellings and multistory wonders of the Four Corners.

Installation view in the “quiet gallery” on the Fourth Floor of AMNH

After 500 years of seeing their sacred places renamed by the conquistadors, Spanish land owners, government mapmakers, and the National Park Service, Zuni cultural leaders thought it was high time to start creating maps that reflected traditional Zuni place names, stories, and symbols. They asked some leading Zuni artists to choose the story, sacred sites, and landscapes that would “map” Zuni cultural history. According to some of the artists in the show, the exercise required them to look at what they knew in an entirely different way.

The Zuni people consider their place of origin to be the Grand Canyon. Back in deep time, the Zuni ancestors were instructed to find “the Middle Place”, so groups set out in journeys to the north, south, east, and west. The northern group, for example, settled in what is now called “Navajo National Monument” and eventually built multistoried dwellings inside the most spectacular red-rock shelter in the American Southwest.

Cliff dwellings in Betatakin alcove, a NPS site at Navajo National Monument where pueblo elders continue to hold sacred ceremonies. Photo: Dan Boone/Ryan Belnap, Bilby Research Center, Northern Arizona University

Cliff dwellings in Betatakin alcove at Navajo National Monument, where pueblo elders travel to hold sacred ceremonies. Photo: Dan Boone/Ryan Belnap, Bilby Research Center, Northern Arizona University

Each painter’s style is different, but when you take it all in, the exploration story is one of fairly mind-blowing proportions – the Zuni ancestors explored the entire Colorado River system, carved petroglyphs in canyons to point travelers to nearby communities, and even journeyed south to the “land of endless summer” –Central America’s coastal communities.

Although the paintings depict myths and symbols in the Southwestern landscapes, East Coast art-lovers should be aware that the Zuni expedition story isn’t fiction: Chaco Canyon’s great archeological sites contain the evidence — tropical shells, stones, Scarlet macaw skeletons, cacao, and the network of banked, engineered roads (circa 850 – 1100 A.D.) that actually lead to many of the places depicted by the Zuni painters.

Geddy Epaloose’s 2006 acrylic, The Middle Place. Source: AMNH/ of A:Shiw A:Wan Museum and Heritage Center

Geddy Epaloose’s 2006 painting The Middle Place features an aerial view of Zuni’s Middle Village with sacred trails spiking out in all directions. Colorado River by Ronnie Cachini includes the edge of the distant ocean. Other paintings include the Zuni’s version of their Great Flood, the spiritual importance of their salt lake, and even unmarked lines representing some modern paved roads. Unless you’re Zuni, you’ll have to read the captions on each of the paintings.

Hunted deer is honored with a Zuni necklace

AMNH has one of the largest collections of Zuni artifacts in the country, and has a good, close working relationship with that pueblo. Entering the Audubon Gallery on the Fourth Floor feels like a sacred space. You’ll be greeted by a hunted deer honored with a necklace of precious stones and ceremonial rods festooned with pieces of traditional Zuni clothing loaned by the painters and their children for us to see while their work is on display in New York.

Make a pilgrimage to this hidden gallery on AMNH’s Fourth Floor and learn about some remarkable people, places, origins, and cartography. (And stop into the First Floor rotunda to see some of the museum’s Chaco Canyon treasures.)

Enjoy this short YouTube video featuring Jim Enote, the director of A:Shiw A:Wan Museum and Heritage Center, who describes the exhibition when it debuted iat the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.

Magritte’s Surrealist Train Departing MoMA for Houston

Posted on December 21, 2013 by MsSusanB

Magritte’s 1938 oil, La durée poignardée (Time Transfixed) from The Art Institute of Chicago’s Winterbotham Collection. © Charly Herscovici ADAGP–ARS, 2013

One of the most recognizable trains in the history of modern art hasn’t left the station. It’s coming out of the wall at MoMA until January 12 as part of the tribute to Belgium’s only big-time Surrealist painter, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938. But don’t worry – this intriguing tribute chugs on, arriving at The Menil in Houston on Valentine’s Day (February 14) and at Chicago’s Art Institute on June 25. Catch it, because it’s loaded with new revelations, in person and on line.

In person: So many of paintings are icons of 20^th century art, that it’s shocking to think that one anarchic visual artist had the chops to turn out so many great works in such a relatively short period of time. Walking through the first couple of galleries, you’ll recognize many famous images, but check out the dates on the labels: 40 were done in just his first three years in Paris between 1927 and 1929! He was so prolific, it makes you wonder when he made time to hang out at cafes, discuss dreams, and publish with Breton and the rest of the crew.

Jasper Johns owns the small version of Magritte’s 1935 oil La clef des songes (The Interpretation of Dreams), which uses English. © Charly Herscovici ADAGP–ARS, 2013. Photograph: Jerry Thompson

Jasper Johns owns the small English version of Magritte’s 1935 oil La clef des songes (The Interpretation of Dreams). © Charly Herscovici ADAGP–ARS, 2013. Photo: Jerry Thompson

Magritte liked making the familiar unfamiliar, playing with fact and fiction, probing dreams and reality, and appropriating pop culture into an art context.

Like Andy Warhol, Magritte began as an ad illustrator, and MoMA’s curators have included a few of his early fashion illustrations. It’s surprising to know that phrases that he injected onto his canvas (like “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”) were written in a script that was one of the most recognizable fonts used in European newspaper and magazine ads in the Twenties.

Was appreciation of Magritte’s ground-breaking cultural appropriation and subversion lost on our own American Pop pantheon? Not really, and the evidence is that one of the best examples of Magritte’s sly presentation of an everyday-object grid with ironic words was lent by the midcentury grandmaster, Jasper Johns.

So much contemporary pop culture and advertising art has reinterpreted, reimagined, and referenced Mr. Magritte’s images that it’s easy to forget that they rocked the world in the Twenties. His reverberation with our beloved 1960s Pop masters (and this show) reminds us that Mr. Magritte truly blazed an innovation pathway in taking the everyday and turning it into art.

MoMA discovered something lurking beneath the surface of its Magritte’s 1936 oil, Le portrait (The Portrait). Gift of Kay Sage Tanguy. © Charly Herscovici ADAGP–ARS, 2013

MoMA discovered something historic lurking under Magritte’s 1936 , Le portrait (The Portrait). Gift of Kay Sage Tanguy. © Charly Herscovici ADAGP–ARS, 2013

And speaking of pioneering, check out the amazing interactive site that lets us enter Magritte’s mind; learn how he turned nature, desire, dreams, language, and symbols into troubling, evocative, subversive works; and see the behind-the-scenes conservation and curatorial work. The beautiful, musical experience is designed by Hello Monday, and should probably win a Webby Award. See it now.

You’ll see how MoMA took off the old varnish, examined the canvases under ultra-violet light, and did detective work of which Magritte and his silent-movie-icon inspiration, Fantômas, would be proud.

Spend time letting each painting’s mini-site load into your browser window, click to hear the curators talk, and keep scrolling down to see what the conservators discovered. You can even toggle back and forth to see the surface of the painting and X-ray.

As a preview, here’s the YouTube video about the “lost” Magritte painting that conservator Cindy Albertson found lurking underneath The Portrait.

And while you’re at it, you might take a minute to see what technology was at work in possibly Magritte’s most famous image:

When Whales Walked Explained at AMNH

Posted on December 11, 2013 by MsSusanB

Whales exhibit tells the evolution story. Courtesy: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Right inside the exhibit, Whales: Giants of the Deep, the American Museum of Natural History answers two questions that have stumped centuries of nature lovers – how did the world’s largest sea-loving mammals ever evolve from land animals, and who are their closest relatives?

In the last 20 years, DNA experts and paleontologists have been hacking away at these questions, and the show provides some startling visuals and answers: Whales (a group that includes dolphins and porpoises) came from four-legged animals that hovered close to shore lines, snapping up fish. Oh, and their closest relatives on the Mammal Tree of Life are…get ready…hippos. See the show before January 5.

Clue to solving the mystery – the skull of Andrewsarchus, three feet long, found in 1923 by Kan Chuen Pao on AMNH’s second Gobi expedition. Courtesy: AMNH/R. Mickens

The first thing you’ll see is a massive skull of Andrewsarchus, a 45-million-year-old whale cousin, who would have stood over six feet tall at the shoulder. He was found in Mongolia on the famous AMNH Central Asiatic Expedition in the 1920s (remember the dinosaur eggs?) and to this day is the only one found.

The paleo team compared the features on his skull to other mammals, ran their analysis through cladistics software, generated a family tree, and learned that Andrewsarchus falls somewhere near the evolutionary point where whales and hippos had a common ancestor, a key clue.

Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Pakicetus, the oldest known ancestor to whales

A huge discovery in Northern Pakistan in 1983 began to unlock the rest of the mystery. Found in 50-million-year-old Eocene rocks, remains of the enigmatic, four-legged, fish-eating Pakicetus were discovered at the edge of what was once an ancient sea. It was deemed by scientists to be the earliest known modern-whale ancestor. Many specimens were unearthed, with ear bones looking like modern-day dolphins, but ankle bones more like a pig’s, giving scientists a reason to place his ancestry in the “artiodactyl” category, which includes hippos, pigs, antelopes, camels, and other even-toed hoofed animals. Subsequent finds and DNA analysis of modern whales further solidified the hippo-relation hypothesis.

Cladogram showing family relationships of whales and artiodactyls from the AMNH guide for students in grades 6-8

The show includes a full replica of his skeleton, along with other fossils from the subcontinent showing the transition of four-legged wolf-sized animals to the streamlined bodies that we now associate with ocean- and river-going cetaceans. You’ll see a terrific video that animates the transition from longer-snouted, web-footed fish-eaters that paddled through estuaries (Ambulocetus), to more streamlined sea-going mammals whose front legs became flippers and back legs disappeared nearly completely. Kutchicetus (43-46 million years ago) shows evidence that it probably did some deep dives, and Durudon (37 mya) had nostrils at the top of his head, flipper-hands, and apparatus at the end of his tail that suggests a support for flukes.

A clue from India. Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Kutchicetus, dweller in ancient tropical seas

A clue from India. Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Kutchicetus, who lived in ancient tropical seas

The show was originally organized by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and features a mix of AMNH and Te Papa artifacts and insights.

There are many other wonderful biological, historical, and cultural details to the whale story, as the YouTube below shows (84K hits and counting), but shout-outs must be given to the two stars — large Sperm whale skeletons (think Moby Dick) on display, lovingly named and transported here by the Maoris, who found the stranded duo, prepared, and blessed them for special appearance in New York.

Meet American Legends at The Whitney

Posted on December 5, 2013 by MsSusanB

Charles Demuth’s precisionist take on the grain elevators in his hometown, My Egypt, 1927.

Five reasons to cozy up with the stars in the American Art Walk of Fame in the Whitney’s top-floor show, American Legends: From Calder to O’Keefe before December 15 when they come down to make room for the next batch of legends from the Whitney’s massive collection:

#1: Charles Demuth. See how he turned the industrial landscape of his Lancaster, Pennsylvania hometown and flowers from his garden into magic. Experience Demuth’s oil, My Egypt, a pristine oil that looks like it was painted yesterday. He captures the monumentality of the local grain elevators and uses his title to channel the greatest architectural feats of the ancient world. The beautiful floral watercolors were some of Ms. Whitney’s favorites.

A Joseph Stella masterpieces: The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme, 1939.

#2: Joseph Stella’s interpretation of 1930s New York, including one of his best-known works, The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme, 1939. Here, the painting evokes a cathedral’s stained glass window but it’s actually a love letter to the iconic structure that he painted so many times in his career. If you’ve never walked across this bridge, listen to a civil engineer interpret Mr. Stella’s work on the Whitney’s audio guide.

#3: Immersion into bygone New York. Check out Coney Island’s main attraction in 1913 via Mr. Stella’s Luna Park (here’s the audio). Also, the show has many Reginald Marsh works of life during the depression, including Why Not Take the “L”?, and the original “ten cents a dance” girls in his 1933 portrait of taxi dancers.

#4: The whimsy of sculptor Elie Nadelman, whose large, rounded, folk-art-inspired figurative sculptures could certainly work in Mr. Calder’s crazy circus (which is here, too), if they could only be shrunk down to fit into his tiny, tiny circus ring.

Reginald Marsh asks commuters a question in Why Not Use the “L”?, 1930

Mr. Nadelman looms large in the Whitney collection, and it’s nice to have a great, big room to dance around all his sculpted people.

#5: Georgia O’Keefe shares a gallery room with Marsden Hartley, a nice pairing of visual mystics captivated by symbols, nature, mysterious abstractions, and the evocative power of landscapes.

There’s a lot to enjoy about many of the other featured legends, so hurry over to drink in the colors of Stuart Davis, watercolors of John Marin, the sharp visions of Ralston Crawford, and eight other anchors of the Whitney collection.

Stella’s 1913 take on the magic of Coney Island’s main attraction, Luna Park

Who will be featured next on the top floor? We’ll see who the curators pick on December 21, when they reveal their next group of Legends.

Oldest Painted Theater Curtain in America on View in NC

Posted on November 25, 2013 by MsSusanB

The original 1858 William Russell Smith drop curtain, displayed in Thalian Hall’s Parquet Hall

Lincoln was prepping for his sixth debate with Douglas in Illinois when the curtain went up on October 12, 1858 at Thalian Hall in Wilmington, North Carolina – the same curtain, still on display, that is considered to be the oldest existing theater drop in America, painted by Philadelphia-trained landscape artist William Russell Smith.

Back in the 1850s, major theaters up and down the East Coast were in pursuit of the classically trained Smith to create romantic, ethereal landscape images on the gigantic canvas curtains that audiences saw when they entered opera houses. Typically framed by an ornate proscenium, the drop transported theatergoers to the work of make-believe, Moliere, and Macbeth – staples of the touring companies and troupes of the time.

Detail of original drop curtain, done in distemper on 30-foot canvas

Detail of 1858 curtain, distemper on a 30-foot canvas

Today, except for Wilmington’s Thalian Hall treasure, those grand masterpieces are gone, victims of time, decay, and impermanence like the superstars of yesteryear. It’s quite a miracle that Thalian’s original curtain has still survived, considering that it’s not painted in oil, but distemper – a less permanent, water-soluable medium, essentially colors ground into glue. When an artist applies the wet pigment, he sees the opposite color, which gradually turns into the “true” color when the paint dries. It’s a process that could only be executed by a skilled master, particularly on a 30-foot wide canvas. The surface of the curtain holds the granules (like a piece of paper holds pastel fragments).

Wilmington, NC’s Thalian Hall, built 1855-1858, one of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the South

No wonder Smith purpose-built a huge studio in his home with poles that could be raised and lowered as he worked on a gigantic scale first with a charcoal sketch, then with distemper (move over, Chuck Close!). When Smith finished painting his commission, he carefully folded the canvas, rolled it on a long pole, and had it delivered to the opera house.

Thalian Hall received its long-distance delivery this way, because Smith never set foot in North Carolina. The new opera house was designed by New York architect John Trimble, who built Barnum’s Museum and many New York theaters of the mid-1800s, including the New Bowery. Smith’s curtain was the finishing touch, depicting an Aegean sailing ship arriving at classical islands filled with temples dedicated to Apollo, evoking commencement of the ancient Olympiad.

Detail of Thalian Hall’s beautifully restored proscenium and box

The curtain was in service from 1858 until 1909, when a restoration was planned. Historians know it was hung again by 1938 (see the photo in our Flickr feed). It got hurt a little in the 1940 WPA renovations, and was known to be back in place in 1947, but disappeared after 1963. It was rediscovered in 1979, when Mrs. Juanita Menick, the president of the board, told the new Thalian director that she might still have an old curtain that she took years ago to her home for safekeeping. Thank goodness for those large, Southern homes.

Although only 15 feet of the original 30-foot drop remained, tribute was paid to the historic artwork. The fragile canvas was used as part of the set for Thanlian Hall’s 125^th anniversary celebration, and now hangs, ready for its closeup, in the luxurious entry to the theater’s orchestra section.

Hear how executive director Tony Rivenbark rediscovered it, and watch historian David Rowland’s talk about the life of William Russell Smith (at 4:20), whose romantic landscapes of New England somewhat predated the Hudson River School; the imagery used in the magnificent theater curtains (at 30:22); and the astonishing discovery recently made in Smith’s grand studio (at 35:30) in this YouTube video.

Thalian Hall’s balconies and orchestra

You can read more about the historic theater on its website (and check out the video on Thalian’s “thunder roll” device, another “only remaining in America” theatrical wonder). Glimpse more of this theater’s grandeur and photos of the illustrious performers who have trod its boards on our Flickr feed.

In Wilmington, you can view this remarkable piece of theater history any time during box office hours.

History Twist in Brooklyn’s Period Rooms

Posted on November 8, 2013 by MsSusanB

Hegarty’s “activation” of the Cane Acres Plantation dining room: Still Life with Peaches, Pear, Grapes and Crows; Still Life with Watermelon, Peaches and Crows; and Table Cloth with Fruit and Crows. Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Hegarty’s “activation” of the Cane Acres Plantation dining room including Still Life with Watermelon, Peaches and Crows. Photo: Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum’s Period Rooms are again the focus of a rip-roaring, history-tearing, upside-down interpretation by an installation artist. Go before December 1 to see what’s happened to three rooms up on the museum’s Fourth Floor in Valerie Hegarty: Alternative Histories.

The dining room from the South Carolina’s Cane Acres Plantation is alive with dozen or so papier-mâché crows that are chowing down on the faux watermelons and peaches that you imagine to have been so beautifully arranged on the long, grand table.

Peering into either of the two plantation doorways, it’s disconcerting to see how the delicacies are being ripped apart and strewn about. The fruit literally pops out of the frames in this cross-referenced mash-up of Hitchcock terror, racial segregation issues, and classic still life painting.

Hegarty’s Pendleton carpet in the Cupola House parlor.

Hegarty’s Pendleton carpet is growing in the Cupola House parlor.

See how Hegarty created it all out of wire, glue, foil, foam, and everything else you can purchase at Michael’s on the Brooklyn Museum’s Flickr feed.

She was equally ambitious in two other rooms from the Cupola House, originally built in Edenton, North Carolina: The 1725 parlor room focuses on a visual “conversation” between General George Washington and Pawnee Chief Sharitarish, featuring a Native American-style Pendleton parlor rug that is “growing” grass, flowers, and roots to make you think about what happened to the native culture over the last few centuries.

She kicks the Manifest Destiny discussion right where it hurts in the Cupola House “hall” (where guests socialized) by letting two Pileated and Downy Woodpeckers have their way with everything valuable in the room, including (a reproduction of) Thomas Cole’s 1846 painting The Pic-Nic. Nature is getting out of hand.

The Downey Woodpeckers take over the Cupola House hall. Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Get over to Brooklyn and encounter a new twist on what you were taught in grade school history, but watch out for Hegarty’s flying bullets and birds.

Go Underground and Outside at Grand Central

Posted on October 25, 2013 by MsSusanB

Hiroyuki Suzuki’s dramatic black-and-white view of the massive $8.2B project

See New York above and below in two unique photography installations at everyone’s favorite train station right now.

At the New York Transit Museum Annex, you can glimpse your future path to the Hamptons in The Next Level: East Side Access Photographs by Hiroyuki Suzuki through October 27. Suzuki takes you over 14 stories below Grand Central to see the tunnels, sandhogs, tunnel boring machines, and chasms of the huge construction project that will allow 160,000 daily LIRR riders to arrive on Manhattan’s East Side when it’s done in 2019.

Suzuki had never before visited New York before starting his project, but he considers it a thank-you for the relief work done by the US Armed Services following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit his home country of Japan in 2011.

Underground view of East Side Access by Hiroyuki Suzuki

Contemplating the more than 50 black-and-white images, you can feel the monumental achievement happening underground, feel the damp, hear the light sloshing of men and machines moving through slightly damp tunnels, and see the miles of spaghetti-like cables illuminating the gigantic spaces where trains will soon thunder.

Suzuki made four trips down there during the project, and you may not even get to make one, so drop in and take a look at the engineering marvel happening right beneath a good patch of Midtown East. You’ll see supports labeled “48 Street” or “FDR” for orientation in the black wilderness.

Beautiful Hudson River photograph by Robert Rodriguez, Jr. from the one-day exhibition in Vanderbilt Hall

Speaking of wilderness, get over to Vanderbilt Hall sometime today to experience the opposite – gorgeous landscapes of the spectacular Hudson Valley. To celebrate the achievements of an historic environmental organization (and encourage you to buy a train ticket to see scenery that inspired generations of artists), there’s a one-day-only photo spectacular — 150 images by Annie Leibovitz and 12 other photographers whose subject is the beauty of the Hudson River.

On Time and Place: Celebrating Scenic Hudson’s 50 Years, sponsored by Metro-North and Scenic Hudson, has traveled to five cities to celebrate this historic environmental organization’s 50 years of success. The photos are in Vanderbilt Hall from 10am until 4pm.

Rich & Famous at Green-Wood’s 175th Anniversary

Posted on October 11, 2013 by MsSusanB

Show entrance featuring Green-Wood’s spectacular Gothic architecture.

It’s big, green, historic, beautiful, and has more celebrities inside than you could ever imagine possible in an out-of-the-way spot in Brooklyn. Any day of the week, you can take a trip out to the lush woodlands, hills, and statuary gardens of Green-Wood Cemetery (and you should!), but every NYC history geek needs to visit the Museum of the City of New York’s A Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery before October 13 to plumb the riches that have been assembled to celebrate its 175-year history.

We’re providing a walk-through on our Flickr feed, but the virtual experience is no match for the first-hand encounters with objects associated with the New York titans that are interred within the 478 acres of hills and countryside of Green-Wood itself – Tiffany, Duncan Phyfe, Boss Tweed, and even The Little Drummer Boy.

The floor map and vitrines with items associated with Green-wood’s most famous

Consider the retail giants and brands: All five Brooks Brothers (who invented ready-made suits in 1849), the six Steinways who made pianos in Queens, Ebhard Faber (remember pencils?), the Domino Sugar owners (who once had 98% of the entire US market and who gave most of their vast art collection to the Met), the creator of Chiclets, the founder of Pan Am, and even F.A.O. Schwartz (yes, it’s a person).

MCNY has put the map of Green-wood on the floor of the gallery and has placed vitrines with objects associated with the rich and famous sort-of where they would be in the actual cemetery. Walking through the show is like random-access memory. You don’t know what or who you’ll stumble upon.

The tribute includes artists (from Currier & Ives and Asher Durand to Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, and Jean-Michel Basquiat); composers (Frank Ebb, Mr. Bernstein, and disco legend Paul Jibara); and inventors of things like the safety razor, the sewing machine, soda fountains, and the safety pin (think about that). Yes, it all happened in New York.

Spanish-language poster for “The Wizard of Oz” as a tribute to Frank Morgan, who played The Wizard

Green-wood is New York’s equivalent of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, full of vistas, trees, paths, lakes, works by celebrity sculptors, military memorials, and elaborate, ornate above-ground tombs. Lachaise spawned an international mania for sylvan-glade cemeteries when it opened in 1804, and when Mr. Pierrepont was laying out the Brooklyn street system in the early 1800s, he left a big, open green spot in the plan, where Green-Wood is today. It opened in 1838, predating Central Park, and grew into the No. 2 tourist attraction in the United States (after Niagara) by the 1850s.

An 1875 Howe Sewing Machine by the inventor of the sewing machine, Elias Howe.

The show’s front hall has spectacular landscape photos taken last year by Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, serving as luring calling cards to take the actual expedition to Green-Wood and its celebrated trolley tours led by uber-historian Jeff Richman.

Find Lightness of Being at City Hall

Posted on October 7, 2013 by MsSusanB

Alicja Kwade’s bicycle sculpture, Journey without arrival (Ralegh), 2012/2013

No, it’s not the mayoral race. As long as the nice weather holds up, get down to City Hall Park and poke around among the trees and plaza to see the whimsical sculpture that the Public Art Fund has on display in Lightness of Being. There’s plenty of time before the show closes December 13.

Take a look at what you can find on our Flickr feed.

Everyone will have their own favorites, but you’ll have to look closely to catch some of the work, since you can easily walk by and not notice – David Shrigley’s nearly hidden Metal Flip Flops near the fountain and Alicja Kwade’s delightfully twisted bicycle sculpture that’s hopefully not how your Citibike is going to end up. People walk right by them and then do a double-take.

At the foot of the park, Dalniel Buren’s Suncatcher functions more like an impromptu stage for fun-loving toddlers, but the true stars of the show are the six fantasty characters holding court nearby.

Buzzing it Down, 2012, by UK artist Gary Webb

Get out your cameras for Olaf Breuning’s installation, The Humans. They’re some of the craziest marble statues you’ll ever meet, forming a circle to evoke the human evolution from “fish” to “fisher king.” Enjoy the contrast they make to the Park’s other, more traditional marbled details.

Poke around behind Nathan Hale to see Franz West’s whimsical forest of bulbous growths, and don’t miss the super-intriguing sculpture by James Angus. He’s made a full-scale John Deere tractor in steel and cast iron, but instead of being a faithful reproduction, he stretched it digitally and left it toppled among the trees near Broadway. It makes you think back to the pre-industrial 1660s when this land was used as a livestock pasture, and reflect on where agriculture is today.

One of six fantasy characters in Olaf Bruening’s installation, The Humans, 2007.

One of six fantasy characters you’ll meet in Olaf Bruening’s The Humans, 2007.

The show will delight, make you think, and turn you into an urban explorer probing the nooks and crannies of the southern portion of the park’s nine acres.

And if you take your camera and get any good shots, you can contribute them to the Gallery on the Pubic Art Fund’s site.

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