Walking NYC

If you are in NYC and want to explore it by foot, I suggest you look up Big Onion Walking Tours. This is a company that has walking tours of all different kinds of neighbourhoods in Manhattan. Their guides all have advanced degrees in history or related fields, and they design their own tours. I took a 2 hour tour of Harlem. Our guide brought photos with him showing the various people he was telling us about, or places as they looked 'in the day'. During our tour, he showed us sites of some less well known history, such as the offices of militant activist Marcus Garvey. We saw a street of older rundown homes, but another a few blocks away was lined with gorgeous brownstones. As with many working class neighbourhoods in NY, this area is being gentrified and much of it's history is in danger of being bought up by outsiders. As we started our tour, a local resident, seeing a pack of mostly white folks (2 young black women and I were the only minorities) led by a young white guy, immediately came up to us and started asking us questions. We later learned that it's not uncommon to find a realtor leading a bunch of potential investors through the area, and the gentleman was concerned that we were such a group.

NYC's smaller museums

I discovered a couple of small museums in NYC. The first one is the Tenement Museum. It's located in the Lower East Side, where tenement buildings are primarily located. Living in a tenement was a fact of life for just about any immigrant to NYC in the late 1800's. Every immigrant group has had a stronghold in this neighbourhood. The Museum is a reconstructed tenement and they use historically accurate objects, as well as research on actual families who have lived in the building where the Museum is located. Visits to the Museum are by scheduled tours which are thematically arranged around specific populations who have lived in the building over the years. The area is currently being gentrified (as is most of working class NYC). A wonderful ice cream shop, Il Laboratorio del Gelato, is right next door.

The second museum is the Noguchi Museum and Studio in Queen's, just on the other side of the East River. It's in a so-so neighbourhood across the street from a Costco. Isamu Noguchi was a Japanese American sculptor who is probably best known for his unique paper lanterns and iconic mid-century coffee table. The studio includes many of his rock sculptures in a serene little concrete building with a Japanese garden. When I was there, there was an interesting exhibit on his friendship and collaboration with Buckminster Fuller (of geodesic dome fame). The little shop inside has many mid-century classics and many books, and a fascinating video showing how the paper lanterns were made.

Chihuly at the New York Botanical Gardens

One of the highlights of my NYC trip was a visit to the New York Botanical Gardens to see the Chihuly glass art installations. The NYBG is located in the Bronx and is very easy to get to via a 20 minute train ride from Grand Central. Dale Chihuly is a glass artist based in Seattle. He has many pieces in art museums however he may be most popularly known for the glass flower ceiling installation at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The installation at the NYBG included Reeds, Chandeliers, Towers, Ikebana and balls scattered throughout the grounds but mainly inside the beautiful conservatory. This place is worth visiting all on its own, and the Chihulys were spectacular in this setting. Particularly noteworthy were the installations in the two lotus ponds. The lotus and waterlilies were just starting to bloom in late June and their bright pinks and oranges were accented by a profusion of glass shapes floating in and surrounding the ponds. Each pond had a different colour scheme, and each one also had a wooden canoe filled to the brim with various glass shapes. Some of the towers and chandeliers were made of hundreds of individual pieces. I've often felt that Chihuly's work could be a little over-the-top, however in this setting, they just fit.

NYC museum renovations

NYC has seen a spate of museum upgrades in recent years. My visit coincided with reopenings of two, and the start of one. MOMA reopened last fall, and I love the new layout. There is a beautiful atrium, and when I visited, they took full advantage of the space to display a series of paintings on metal by one artist that spanned the full three walls of the space (the fourth side is a balcony). The audio guides are now free with admission (good thing given the price) and they sometimes include commentary by living artists whose works are displayed.

The Morgan reopened this spring and now features a new entry way by Renzo Piano. This space is very subdued but there is a glass elevator, which is kind of amazing. Even the doors are glass. There's more about the Morgan in a previous entry. You can also see another glass elevator at the Apple store on 5th Ave., around 60th.

The Guggenheim is currently swathed in scaffolding and netting but they have a very large exhibit of Zaha Hadid's work. She is a very avant garde architect, who hasn't had a lot built until recently. I'm still not sure if I like her architecture but the beautiful paintings that she creates as concept drawings were worth seeing. She also does a very interesting bas-relief out of card stock for some early concept models. This exhibit also highlighted how completely inappropriate this building is to display almost any kind of art. The pathways were crowded and narrow, made even more so by the layout of architectural models.