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Walking Off the Big Apple
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New York walking journal, neighborhood guides, maps, lists of affordable hotels, and art reviews with entertaining commentary on the cultural life of the city.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'artists'
A Cultural Guide to West 57th Street: A Walk and a Map
It began in 1891 with the opening of Carnegie Hall, the symbol of music world success that Andrew Carnegie paid people to construct on 7th Avenue between West 57th and West 56th Streets. A year later, the Art Students League moved into the new Americ...
A Walk to See Carl Jung\'s Red Book: A Journey Into the Psyche
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (July 1875 – June 1961) embarked on an extraordinary journey in the years before World War I, a dangerous adventure that took him inward to the deepest recesses of his psyche. At the time he embarked on the journey he h...
A Walk Through the Studio Museum in Harlem - Hurvin Anderson: Peter’s Series 2007-2009
During the next three weeks or so, I recommend a visit to The Studio Museum in Harlem to see several exhibitions from the museum's summer season that have been carried over into the fall. Hurvin Anderson: Peter’s Series 2007-2009, the first solo U....
Art "That Doesn't Even Exist": Dave Hickey Explains Ennui; and Upcoming Lectures on Art and Art Criticism
"Do y'all mind if I listen to my Ipod?" asked art critic Dave Hickey in a twang, just before striking the first notes of his freewheeling lecture at the packed SVA Theatre on. W. 23rd St. last Thursday evening. "I just put T. Rex The Slider on it." ...
Art and Spectacle in Nineteenth Century New York
In the spring of 1857, artist Frederic Church (1826-1900) traveled throughout Ecuador, making sketches of the country's mountainous landscapes. Two years later, working in his studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York, he painted a large...
The Tenth Street Studio Building and a Walk to the Hudson River
The Tenth Street Studio Building at 51 W. 10th Street was demolished in 1956 to make way for an apartment building. Though not as high profile as the destruction of McKim, Mead, and White's Penn Station, the Greenwich Village building nevertheless he...
An Unconventional Summer in New York: When Geography, Nature and the Weather Dominated the Conversation
The summer is not technically over until September 22, 2009 at 5:18 p.m. (for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere), the date of the autumnal equinox, but with the nearness of Labor Day (Monday, September 7) and the subsequent start of the school...
The Educated Artist: A Guide to Continuing Education Classes and Workshops in the Fine Arts in New York City, Fall 2009
Living in a city with so much art, it's not surprising that so many people who are not professional artists occasionally like to draw, paint, sculpt, and take pictures. So it shouldn't be surprising that many area arts schools, colleges, and other in...
New York Museum Exhibitions, Fall 2009: A Selected List, with Openings in September, October, and November
Celebrations of abstraction, several fine drawing exhibitions, a major Kandinsky retrospective, a visiting Vermeer, an imaginative filmmaker, and the continuing celebrations of the New York in its 400th year of discovery highlight the fall cultural s...
A Guide to Gramercy Park: A Checklist, But Not a Key, & Dining Suggestions
From Summer 2009"At noonday the landscape is just as fine, just as mysterious and just as significant as it is at twilight." - Robert Henri, The Art Spirit (1923)The scene is cool, summery and inviting, but this attractive corner of Gramercy Park is ...
American Cultural History on Walking Off the Big Apple: A Chronological Guide to a Selection of Posts From the Last Two Years
Over the course of the last two years writing Walking Off the Big Apple, and it's been two years this week, I realize that many posts situate themselves in a category that would best be described as American cultural history. While I spend most of my...
Aernout Mik at MoMA: Something is Happening Here, But I Don't Know What It Is
Last weekend, when I stood for two hours with a crowd behind barricades watching the Secret Service and police accompany the First Couple's motorcade to the restaurant on Washington Place for date night, I thought about the video installations I had ...
Drawing Sessions: The Walk-In Ateliers of New York
An accomplished figurative artist friend came to visit this week, and it was quickly decided that we should spend a night drawing from life. While she has taught life drawing for many years and shown her work in solo exhibits, I'm am occasional sketc...
New York Museum Exhibitions, Summer 2009: A List, with Openings in June, July and August
Some people plan trips to New York based on the appeal of blockbuster museum exhibitions, especially the ones that gather work under the same roof for a brief amount of time and that will not likely occur again in one's lifetime. That's a good reason...
Revisiting Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party in the Age of The Da Vinci Code
The Dinner Party, a multimedia work created by Judy Chicago and many volunteers between 1974-1979 and now permanently housed, or perhaps the word is enshrined, inside The Brooklyn Museum, is essential viewing for fans of art. The monumental installat...
When the Cherry Blossoms Fall: A Walk through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
A walk through a spring garden in New York during cherry blossom season at just the right time can be an exquisite experience, but sometimes personal schedules and the weather can throw off a well-timed visit. If you're slightly late, you're still lu...
Gustave Caillebotte: Impressions of Water
People often lose umbrellas, but I've held onto a special one for many years - a large parapluie (literally, for the rain, in French) with a wooden base and curved handle that upon opening reveals the painting Paris Street, Rainy Day by painter Gusta...
The Lomo/Leica Walk
LOMO: Several years ago, around the spring of 2005, I got caught up in the Lomography craze. I bought one of the Colorsplash cameras, took a bunch of fun images with the interchangeable filters, and took the film (yes- FILM!) to the developers. I enj...
New York Museum Exhibitions, Spring 2009: A List, with Openings in March, April and May
What follows is a preview of selected museum and other art center exhibitions opening in New York City in March, April, and May of 2009. Collectively, these forthcoming exhibits promise to make a strong season in the visual arts.American Academy of A...
The Tree Huggers on Myrtle Avenue: Public Art on a Mainstream Street
A tree is hugged in Brooklyn.I had every intention of visiting the Chelsea art district today, but wanderlust overtook me for the greener (though winter now) pastures of Brooklyn. Curious about the Myrtle Avenue Public Art Program's ambitions to inst...
After the Boom, Assessing the Contemporary Art Market in New York: Thoughts and Links
It seems to me that artists should be able to weather a severe recession. Creative types routinely make art anyway, come hell or high water, and the lack of any conventional means of support does not ordinarily diminish the urge to create. Artists li...
The Light in Edward Hopper: The Sunny Side of the Great Depression, and A Walk
Edward Hopper achieved fame relatively late in life, with his art career gaining momentum during the early years of the Great Depression. After years as a working artist, the Met, MoMA, and the Whitney started acquiring his paintings. Hopper turned 5...
The Light in Hopper: The Years on Washington Square North
Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) lived at 3 Washington Square North, in what is commonly called "The Row," in Greenwich Village from 1913 until the day he died in 1967. He was almost 85, and presumably, he saw many changes during the co...
WOTBA New York Cultural Events Calendar for February 2-8, 2009, With News of Staten Island Chuck's Forecast
Our metropolitan groundhog, Staten Island Chuck, did not see his shadow this morning. Happy happy joy joy. Spring must be around the corner (but the corner looks to be full of snow, according to this week's forecast). Punxsutawney Phil, on the other ...
The Curious Lines of Animals and Leaves (A Review)
Man may be the measure of all things, but what of dachshunds, blind owls and antelopes? While the drawings from the Thaw Collection currently on display at the Morgan Library & Museum feature many images of human beings - Gauguin's Breton girls, a ma...
WOTBA New York Cultural Events Calendar, with Events for MLK Day and the Inauguration: January 19-25, 2009
• CELEBRATION. 23rd Annual Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mon, Jan 19 at 10:30am. BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. BAM, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York present N...
William Eggleston and Alexander Calder at the Whitney
A body of sustained and consistent work over a lifetime separates real artists from poseurs. Real artists make art because they can't help it. It's a fever, an obsession, often the only way they know to express themselves. Sometimes, artists make wor...
Madison Square Park: When the Cold Weather Offers Advantages
From January 2009I took this picture at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, and yes, while the day was nicer, weather-wise, than other days this week, you will notice the lack of a line at the popular hamburger stand. Cold we...
Walking Off the Big Apple: A Reader's Guide (Updated)
Occasionally, it strikes me as a good idea to jump into the flow of things on Walking Off the Big Apple and talk about new features on the site. As I'm one for experimentation, I sometimes rearrange page elements, try different styles and fonts, and...
Inside 590 Madison Avenue Last Week: A Curious Convergence of Pop Art, Stock Cars, and Cheese
From Walking Off the Big AppleWhile out strolling along the Fifth Avenue store windows last week, I wandered into the Trump Tower atrium for a bit to look around, and then I walked into the adjacent atrium of 590 Madison Avenue (formerly known as the...
