New York City Arts Round-Up #3

Getting ready for the 2017 Open Studios program

Open Studios, 2017

The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council was formed in 1973. I don’t know exactly when it began presenting its now annual Open Studios arts program, or their other major summer festival, the annual River to River music series, but both events provide much needed exposure to dozens of up-and-coming artists, dancers, writer’s and performers. While the River to River festival line-up is yet to be announced, the Open Studios season is begins this coming weekend (April 28-29, 2017), with Workspace Artists-in-Residence.

This free, two-day event shines a spotlight on the work of over 30 artists who are working across all disciplines and genres from painting and sculpture, to poetry and fiction, to dance and theater. The artists have been working in their studios at 28 Liberty Street since last September. They will open their studio doors to the public for two days only, offering a unique, behind-the-scenes window into their creative practices in the visual, literary, and performing arts. 

The opportunity to meet them and see their work is not to be missed. But this is just the beginning. LMCC will host Open Studios events from April through September—click here to see the full calendar of Open Studios this year—all of which are free and open to the public.

If You Go: Open Studios with Workspace Artists-in-Residence

WHERE: In The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Studios at 28 Liberty, 24th Floor.

WHEN: Friday, April 28, 2017 from 6:00–9:00pm

WHEN: Saturday, April 29, 2017 from 1:00–8:00pm

ONLINE: The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council...

"The Silence of High Noon — Midsummer," 1907–08. By Marsden Hartley

Marsden Harley at The Met Breuer

The Met Breuer presents Marsden Hartley’s paintings of his home state, Maine

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), was an icon of American modernism, He was born in Lewiston, Maine, and died in Ellsworth. In the early 1900s, he painted the state’s western mountains in a Post-Impressionist style. In his later years, he aimed to do for Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park what Cézanne did for Mont Sainte-Victoire in Aix-en-Provence. For this exhibition, seven painted views, showing seasonal change, close the show and represent the culmination of a lifelong fascination.

In the 1930s, Hartley became increasingly aware of his legacy and strove to not just paint Maine but to “be recognized as Maine’s greatest modern interpreter,” the show’s co-curator, Randall Griffey, writes in the catalog.

The show at The Met Breuer is a hyper-local collection of rivers, hills, churches, logs and lobster traps. The mountainscapes — and logscapes — are characteristically devoid of people, unlike the Fuji views of Hartley’s heroes Hokusai and Hiroshige, which are sometimes peppered with small figures (eight gorgeous prints are on display).

If You Go

WHAT: “Marsden Hartley’s Maine”

WHERE: The Met Breuer, 945 Madison Ave., at 75th Street

WHEN: Through June 18, 2017

ONLINE: The Metropolitan Museum... 

Read more here…

Is Chinatown the next Chelsea?

Is Chinatown the New Arts District?

Lily Haight, posed the above question this week while writing for Chelsea News. 

Chelsea's gallery district has reigned as the heart of the city's contemporary art movement since the late 1990s. But could skyrocketing rents, coupled to the availability of cheaper options in other parts of the city, mean the district is losing some of its cachet with gallerists?

An August 2016 report by StreetEasy found that real estate prices near the High Line had increased by nearly 50 percent since the park's opening in 2011. Longtime Chelsea gallerists have recently made the move to the Lower East Side, and new galleries are skipping over Chelsea altogether and setting up shop downtown.

However, not everyone is happy with the prospect of Chinatown become the new Chelsea. 

According to the Chinatown Art Brigade's ManSee Kong, residents of Chinatown and the Lower East Side are concerned that the influx of galleries will gentrify the neighborhood and raise residential rents.

“Chinatown is a working-class, ethnic immigrant community. Folks depend on these kinds of immigrant enclaves as a social network of cultural and ethnic resources,” said Melanie Wang, who works as an organizer with the Chinatown Tenants Union. “When galleries come in and are displacing businesses that provide those services and those employment opportunities, it represents a significant threat to the fabric of Chinatown's social community.”

Read the full article here…

Untitled. c.1968, by Alma Woodsey Thomas. In MoMA's current exhibition, Making Space. 

Not Only — But Also in April

• NYCGO’s recommendations…
• The Village Voice recommendations…
• From the New York Times, and Art and Museums in NYC This Week
• And finally, The New Yorker magazine round-up of Art, Music, and Broadway Events in New York City…

New York City Arts Round-Up #1

MoMA: Unfinished Conversations

This is the first of a regular series of posts highlighting the current art scene in New York City. I have long had an interest in the arts, and now visit to New York is complete without spending time in at least one or two the city's great art institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and so many others. If You are a New Yorker, you know you are spoiled for choice when it comes to immersing yourself in the arts there.

MoMA: Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection brings together works by more than a dozen artists, made in the past decade and recently acquired by The Museum of Modern Art. The artists that make up this intergenerational selection address current anxiety and unrest around the world and offer critical reflections on our present moment. The exhibition considers the intertwining themes of social protest, the effect of history on the formation of identity, and how art juxtaposes fact and fiction. From Cairo to St. Petersburg, from The Hague to Recife, the artists in the exhibition observe and interpret acts of state violence and the resistance and activism they provoke. They reexamine historical moments, evoking images of the past and claiming their places within it. They take on contemporary struggles for power, intervening into debates about government surveillance and labor exploitation. Together, these artists look back to traditions both within and beyond the visual arts to imagine possibilities for an uncertain future.

Now through July 30, 2017. More at MoMA…

Rubin Museum: Gateway to Himalayan Art

Rubin Museum of Art

150, West 17th Street, rubinmuseum.org

The Rubin presents art that traverses Asia’s diverse cultures, regions, and narratives. The Museum’s special exhibitions celebrate art forms that range from ancient to contemporary, including photography and multimedia, while its permanent collection galleries are focused primarily on art from the Himalayan region. Of particular interest are two exhibitions: Sacred Spaces: Himalayan Wind… (through until June 5, 2017; and Gateway to Himalayan Art (through until June 27, 2017). Sacred Spaces invites visitors to reflect on devotional activities in awe-inspiring places, while Gateway to Himalayan Art introduces visitors to the main forms, concepts, and meanings of Himalayan art represented in the Rubin Museum’s collection.

Grandma's Closet At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Sara Berman's belongings became an unlikely meditation on immigration, re-invention and feminine independence. By Priscilla Frank, Arts Writer, The Huffington Post

Sara Berman kept her closet in perfect order ― shoes lined up in an unerring row, crisply ironed white shirts stacked one atop the other, her signature bottle of Chanel 19 perched within easy grasp. Her children and grandchildren would gaze into the modest, meticulously organized niche reverently, as if staring at a work of art. Still, they never actually imagined their mom or grandma’s closet would one day, quite literally, find its way into The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“If someone told my mother her closet would be in the Met one day, she would have thought they were crazy,” artist, author and illustrator Maira Kalman said during a talk held at the museum last week, alongside her son, Alex Kalman, and Amelia Peck, a curator of American decorative arts at the Met. And yet, among the period rooms in the museum’s American Wing, most of which display opulent domestic craftsmanship from the 17th to 19th centuries, is Berman’s neat and tidy closet of the 1980s. 

If You Go:

Sara Berman’s Closet… 

Now through September 5, 2017

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park & Fifth Avenue

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Carol Rama: Antibodies at the New Museum

From April 26—September 10, 2017

235 Bowery, New Museum…

Appassionata (1940), by Carol Rama; Photo: Studio Gonella

This exhibition is the first New York examination of the work of the late Italian artist Carol Rama. The exhibition lays claim to being the largest presentation of her work in the US.

While Rama has been largely overlooked in contemporary art discourses, her work has proven prescient and influential for many artists working today, attaining cult status and attracting renewed interest in recent years. Rama’s exhibition at the New Museum will bring together over one hundred of her paintings, objects, and works on paper, highlighting her consistent fascination with the representation of the body.

Seen together, these works present a rare opportunity to examine the ways in which Rama’s fantastical anatomies opposed the political ideology of her time and continue to speak to ideas of desire, sacrifice, repression, and liberation. “Carol Rama: Antibodies” celebrates the independence and eccentricity of this legendary artist whose work spanned half a century of contemporary art history and anticipated debates on sexuality, gender, and representation. Encompassing her entire career, the exhibition traces the development from her early erotic, harrowing depictions of “bodies without organs” through later works that invoke innards, fluids, and limbs—a miniature theater of cruelty in which metaphors of contagion and madness counteract every accepted norm.

More at New Museum…

More Arts Information

Museum of Modern Art…
Rubin Museum of Art…
The Metropolitan Museum of Art…

Village Voice Guide to NYC’s Spring Art Exhibits…

New York City Round-Up #1

LinkNYC by The Numbers

Last year when I was in New York City, I began to notice a number of tall, futuristic-looking kiosks located on Manhattan pavements. I soon learned that they were part of a bold new experiment, funded (and owned) by Google. The kiosks provide free WiFi access to users as well as allow people to make free telephone calls, use USB ports to charge devices, access maps, and initially at least, use the built in browser for the usual online purposes.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to use the kiosks since those that I did find, seemed to have been commandeered by one of the many street people in the city. Not that they didn’t have a right to use the kiosks, but from what I could see, they would sit by the kiosks, sometimes for hours, listening, watching, reading, and accessing who knows what content. Well, as it happens, we do know what some people were accessing (although not necessarily street people), with the result that the internet browser function of the kiosks has now been disabled after complaints that people were using the kiosks to watch pornography.

The installation of the LinkNYC kiosks was just a few months into its schedule when I visited New York over the summer of 2016. After a full twelve months of ongoing work, the system continues to be expanded across the city. Michael Garofalo, in this online article provides the following statistics about the program. All data is current as of the week of February 27, 2017.

• 631 LinkNYC kiosks currently active, of a planned 7,500

• 1,256,450 unique devices connected to the Wi-Fi network to date, approximately one for every seven New Yorkers

• 115 million Wi-Fi sessions served to date

• 870.86 terabytes of data transferred to date, the rough equivalent of streaming 33 years of high definition video on Netflix

• 150 feet wireless signal range of each kiosk

• 600,000 Wi-Fi sessions served in year one by the city’s most popular kiosk, at 1313 Broadway in Herald Square

• $0 spent by New York City taxpayers on the system, which is operated by a franchisee and generates revenue through advertising and sponsorships

More Information

LinkNYC Website…
Here are the current LinkNYC locations...

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Native American Art at The Met, Fifth Avenue

Housed in the old Customs House close to the foot of Manhattan, and across the road from the Bowling Green (4 and 5 trains) subway, is New York City’s National Museum of the American Indian. There is also another National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, and no doubt there are more museums touting their own collections in cities across the United States. 

Not to be outdone or ignored, is the collection of Native American artefacts housed at the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue. 

Mary Gregory reports that: A small but extraordinary collection of Native American masterpieces is in its final days at the Met Fifth Avenue. Consider a visit to this show as a concise course in Native American art history. From the second century to the 20th, from the Plains to the Southwest to the Northwest Coast, “Native American Masterpieces from the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection” highlights some of the best works ever made in each age and place. It’s like a greatest hits compilation, and not a single piece disappoints.

The exhibition ends in ten days—March 31, 2017—so be quick. See it before it ends.

Read more here…

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Leslie-Lohman Museum reopens with 250-work Exhibition

A bit less conventional for some, perhaps is a new exhibition which opened this month at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood.

Clair Wang writes: The large, wooden cross hibernating in the back corner of the spacious studio resembles a cactus from afar. Pinned against a white wall, its body is punctured by dozens of colorful glass vials, each containing an assortment of objects that represent a day in the life of mixed-media artist Edward A. Hochschild.

The “Vial Cross” is one of roughly 250 works displayed at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art’s current exhibition, “Expanded Visions: Fifty Years of Collecting,” which opened March 10. The exhibit is the Wooster Street museum’s first following an expansion that nearly doubled the size of its original space. The effort, begun in October, will allow the museum to operate year-round, offering a mix of ongoing and future exhibitions, film screenings and artist lectures.

IF YOU GO

The Leslie-Lohman Museum…

26, Wooster Street, New York City

Ph: +1 212-431-2609

Metropolitan Museum (NYC) Free Publications

Screen shot of MetPublications Portal

During my 2010 visit to New York City, I paid a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially called the ‘Met’), and made a point of visiting The Cloisters, that branch of the Met Museum devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. The Cloisters was a short 10-15 minute walk from where I was staying in Washington Heights. I wrote about that visit here, so I won’t cover old ground today. Instead I wanted to let you know about a treasure trove of online publications that all art lovers, visitors to New York, and New Yorkers themselves will surely want to explore further.

Like the online publications collection available at the Getty Museum website, the Metropolitan Museum has also made available hundreds of publications through their own online portal via the MetPublications section of the website.

About MetPublications

MetPublications is a portal to the Met's comprehensive publishing program with 1,500 titles, including books, online publications, and Bulletins and Journals from the last five decades. Current book titles that are in-print may be previewed and fully searched online, with a link to purchase the book. The full contents of almost all other book titles may be read online, searched, or downloaded as a PDF. For the Met's Bulletin, all but the most recent issue can be downloaded as a PDF. For the Met's Journal, all individual articles and entire volumes can be downloaded as a PDF.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but when 1,500 publications from one of the world’s leading art institutions are made freely available to anyone with an internet connection, that constitutes a real treasure trove. Back in 2010, I was completely unaware of this resource, and anyway I didn’t have an iPad which would help me make the most of that knowledge―even if I did know about MetPublications. However, now I do have an iPad, and I do know about the Getty Museum publications and those from the Met Museum, so lately I have been making up for lost time by downloading and reading some of the catalogues and bulletins from both organizations. By the way, you don't need an eReader to access these publications, they can be downloaded to your laptop or desktop computer as well.

The Unicorn Tapestries

Which brings me back to my visit to The Cloisters. There are some unique and priceless works of art on display in The Cloisters, and probably none more so than the seven Gothic Unicorn Tapestries the building is famous for. I was familiar with the tapestries (which depict the Hunt For The Unicorn) in a very general way, and as much as I enjoyed seeing them, my visit suffered from a lack of real knowledge about the background and history of these magnificent works. Even worse, I had absolutely no way of ‘reading’ or understanding the importance of the hundreds of individual images woven on to these treasures.

Thankfully, all that changed after I discovered MetPublications and the numerous catalogues and bulletins available there that examine the Unicorn Tapestries in great detail.

I know, I know, you could argue this information came four years too late, but when I return to New York City next year, and return again to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to The Cloisters, I can assure you I will be much more knowledgeable and informed, not only about the tapestries, but about many other works of art, and the buildings that house them.

I will review some of the publications I have downloaded at a future date. In the meantime, why not check out both the Getty Museum and The Met Museum, and see what exciting treasures you can discover for yourself.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Image: Hundreds of visitors spill out onto the front steps of the Met at closing time

I haven’t done a lot of gallery or museum visits during this New York stay. In fact, after six weeks I have only managed to visit the Museum of the City of New York, and the Museum of Modern Art (both for about an hour each), and put in extended visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters (an off-shoot of the Met). It’s not that I have no interested in art or artifacts, I do, but I have been into other things this time around. However, I may yet squeeze in one or two more museums before I depart this great city.

So anyway, I did get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the ‘Met’ for short), where I spent four fruitful hours getting lost amongst several thousand years worth of sculptures, paintings and jewellery; iconography from all the major religions; Egyptian burial items, hieroglyphics and massive sarcophaguses (see image); medieval tapestries and great suits of armour; modern and contemporary art, as well as folk art from every continent; photographic exhibitions; and musical instruments – ancient and modern – including Ringo Starr’s gold plated snare drum!

Image: Massive sarcophagus. Better hope you are well and truly dead when that lid goes on!

I also headed up to the roof to take a look at the Doug and Mike Starn installation, Big Bambu, a massive structure built entirely of bamboo on which only a fortunate few get to explore via bamboo ramps that weave and climb over the whole edifice. Unfortunately, timed tickets for the guided climbs are in high demand and therefore hard to get. As interesting as Big Bambu looked, it was a bit of an anticlimax to only be able to walk under the installation rather than over it.

I couldn’t help thinking, as I wandered through room after room of priceless object d’art: at what point did ordinary objects begin to assume greater value and importance than their makers or original owners gave them? Presumably it is because certain objects have survived hundreds and in some cases, thousands of years that they acquire their worth.

For example, a modern $500 wedding ring, as sentimental as it might be to its owner in 2010, is still ‘just’ a reasonably priced wedding ring. However, if the ring was to survive 500 years – instead of say, 50 – it’s value skyrockets way beyond its initial price. Now it is not ‘just’ a wedding ring, it has been transformed into a rare and precious thing – an artifact from the 21st century, no less. But after 500 years, isn’t it really just an old worn and battered gold ring? Does it automatically become priceless, simply because it has survived 500 years?

Image: The Sphinx of Hapshetsut (circa 1473 – 1458 B.C.)

And another thing. It seems to me that every major museum in the world contains massive collections of Egyptian artifacts. Some are tiny ornaments, others are massive slabs of marble and granite that must have taken great effort to excavate, pack, and transport around the world. I couldn’t help thinking as I examined room after room of the Metropolitan’s Egyptian collection that there can’t be much left in Egypt itself for visitors to look at.

I mean, apart from the pyramids, are there any artifacts left in Egypt worth making the trip for? And what about the locals? What do Egyptians think of the massive plunder that took place during the 1800s especially? They can’t be too happy about the loss of antiquity they have suffered.

Ok. I’m rambling, I know, but these things played on my mind as I wandered through the Met. Besides, someone has to ask the questions.

Anyway, I feel much better now that I’ve shared them with you.

Really.

Image: “We are the knights that say, Ni!”
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P.S. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is well worth a visit, and the admission price of $20. Just make sure you allow plenty of time to explore its extensive treasures. Even after four hours I still missed out on vast areas of its collections.

The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan

Image: The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan
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Finally paid a visit to The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. The Cloisters is literally a 10 minute walk from my accommodations, and I’m glad I went there. It houses the most amazing collection of art from medieval Europe, dating from about the ninth to the fifteenth century.

The building itself was assembled from architectural elements that date from the twelfth through the fifteenth century. The structure and its cloistered gardens are treasures in themselves, and perfectly complement the approximately five thousand works of art housed there. The collection at The Cloisters is complemented by more than six thousand objects exhibited in several galleries on the first floor of The Met’s main building on Fifth Avenue. The collection at the main building displays a broader geographical and temporal range, while the focus at The Cloisters is on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Renowned for its architectural sculpture, The Cloisters also rewards visitors with exquisite illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork, enamels, ivories, and tapestries. [Source: The Cloisters website...]

Image: Floor plan of the main Cloisters building

Located on four acres overlooking the Hudson River in northern Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park, the building incorporates elements from five medieval French cloisters—quadrangles enclosed by a roofed or vaulted passageway, or arcade—and from other monastic sites in southern France.

Three of the cloisters reconstructed at the branch museum feature gardens planted according to horticultural information found in medieval treatises and poetry, garden documents and herbals, and medieval works of art, such as tapestries, stained-glass windows, and column capitals.

I must say, not having a map of the floor plan during my visit made the experience of exploring The Cloisters and interesting one, in that it felt like I was walking through a rabbit warren of old passageways, dark subterranean vaults, and hidden rooms. This was especially the case when examining the exhibitions in The Treasury section of The Cloisters. Housed on a floor beneath the main building, the Treasury is particularly dark and sparsely lit, presumably to help protect the precious works of art on display there from deteriorating any further than they already have. It is for this reason too that flash photography is prohibited, as well as the touching of any sculpture or stonework.

Image: The Unicorn in Captivity

I have a book about the folklore of unicorns back home in Australia, and the image seen here of The Unicorn in Captivity is in that book (as are several of the other unicorn tapestries in the Cloisters collection). I had no idea the original tapestry was hanging in The Cloisters and was delighted to see this work as it should be seen – hanging as it might have been hundreds of years ago in a castle somewhere in medieval Europe.

Of course, the image does not do the original work justice at all. Dating from around 1495–1505, and ‘standing’ some 3.6 metres high and 2.5 metres across, The Unicorn in Captivity is a stunning work, woven in fine wool and silk with silver and gilded threads that vividly depict this elusive, magical creature.

There are seven individual hangings known as "The Unicorn Tapestries," in the Cloisters collection, and these are among the most beautiful and complex works of art from the late Middle Ages that survive. However, it is thought that The Unicorn in Captivity may have been created as a single image rather than part of the collection in The Cloisters or any other series of tapestries depicting unicorns.

Daily Garden Tours
The Cloisters museum has an extensive program of guided tours and talks scheduled throughout the summer. In addition to exploring the beautiful Cuxa, Bonnefont, and Trie gardens, these hour-long tours highlight botanical motifs in works of art. Garden Tours are offered at 1:00 p.m., Tuesdays through Sundays, and are free with Museum admission. Read more about medieval plants and the gardens of The Cloisters on the official blog, The Medieval Garden Enclosed.

Address:
99, Margaret Corbin Drive
Fort Tryon Park, New York
Ph: 212-923-3700
Hours:
Monday: Closed
March--October: Tuesday to Sunday: 9:30am to 5:15pm
November to February: Tuesday to Sunday: 9:30am to 4:45pm
Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day

Admission
There is a recommended admission fee of: Adults $20; Seniors (65 and older) $15; and Students $10. This includes same-day admission to the main Metropolitan Museum of Art building on Fifth Avenue. Members of The Met enter free as do children under 12 (when accompanied by an adult). There is no extra charge for entrance to special exhibitions.

However, having arrived at The Cloisters 90 minutes before closing time, I was clearly never going to visit the main Museum building ‘on the same day’. I mentioned this to the cashier and she seemed happy to accept my contribution of $10.

If was to make one recommendation to The Met, it would be to extend the ‘same-day admission’ offer to at least two days, since a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue would easily absorb a full day. Trying to visit The Met and The Cloisters in one day would be exhausting and only help diminish the pleasures to be had from devoting as much time as possible to the magnificent collections in both buildings.

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Images courtesy of The Cloisters website...