NYC- Report 2 - The Muse(um)s of NYC

Looking at a Rothko - MoMA

I've been to many museums since getting here last Tuesday.  Each has a unique gift to share.  Some were big, like the MET, and some were small, like PS1.

Wednesday - NY Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) - A true gem of grand size.  I visited this for the first time last year and enjoyed it even more this year.  The two best exhibits were photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography. 

Looking at Vertical - MoMA

Thursday - The Studio Museum in Harlem A canvas with the following poem painted on it.

The smell of your neck in August and
trying to make love on concrete
somewhere between forgiving to easily
and not giving at all the sound
and the hints of you caught up between my fingers
- Concrete - Adam Pendleton

Friday - The MET.  A must see:  American Women: Fashioning a National Identity.  It explores the history and design of fashion for women and how it shaped the identity of American women.  Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950–1980 is another great exhibit.  His photos capture the life of the city in small snippets of existence.  Go see these.

The Guggenheim -  This gift of a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is exhibiting a series called Haunted.  It is a contemporary photography, video, and performance exhibit.  The combined media truly make a unified show as you walk up or down the long spiral ramp in one continuous exhibit. 

Looking through the camera to see the art for later - MoMA

Saturday - The New Museum  An edgy/chic art museum in a funky looking building.  The first exhibit greets you as the elevator opens with two realistic life-sized statues made of wax. The female licking/sucking her  breast in a sensual way.  Beside her is a male statue caught in a moment of self-fellatio.  The museum gets edgier after that.  Some of it was there to just shock, others held deeper conceptual meaning.  The top floor (7th) has an open deck with a chi-chi wine bar and billion dollar views of the city and Soho.

Looking at a shared moment - MoMA

Looking to move on - MoM

Sunday - PS1 MoMA - My favorite of the trip.  It is the black sheep step-sibling of the MoMA.  Both are affiliated, that is about the end of their similarities.  PS1 is in Long Island City in Queens and resides in an old school building.  Where The New Museum is the edgy/chic art museum, PS1 is the edgy crunchy museum.  It sprawls through huge old classrooms with rough paint jobs and art laying about.  Much of it, you touch, interact with, and experience.  The subjects are hard and pushing edges with themes of race, sex, gender/orientation, music, moving image, and many other topics.  One exhibit of Leigh Ledare's documents the sex life of his mother and her lovers, as well as his own romantic interests.  It is graphic, maybe even pornographic, but has so many ways to view it including incest and sexual freedom of an autumn woman.  Another exhibit looks at iconic commercial images of African-Americans with three photos from every year (1968-2008). Many bring back memories that make you smile with nostalgia, but with further reflection, illustrates how in all the images, popular culture over-simplifies and incorrectly represents blacks in America.

There are many more museums, galleries and studios, but they will have to wait until next time.

Art Lovers and Art Fast Movers - MoMA

Photo Notes - I enjoy watching people look at art.  The New York MoMA is very generous at letting patrons photograph in the galleries. 

To all my blog authoring friends - I've neglected my joy of reading your great bogs for too long.  My goal is to start reading them again tomorrow.