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Walking Off the Big Apple
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Walking journal and art reviews by a Texas-born New York resident with entertaining commentary on the cultural life of the city.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'museums'
Upcoming Summer 2008 Museum Exhibitions in New York
My picks for current and future museum exhibitions in New York for May, June, and July 2008. Blockbusters, as noted, are the big shows with catalogues, lots of gift store-related items (posters, tote...
Spring Art Cleaning: Out with the Junk-Yard Aesthetic and In with the Small Paintings
Can you smell the roses and linseed oil? There's a linen-fresh and sometimes, new mossy scent in the spring art air this week, a sign that this season's winter of artfully messy assemblage has started...
The Shadows Cast Upon the Wall: Paul Chan's Luminous Narrative at the New Museum
When I walked by St. Patrick's Old Cathedral on my way to the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery, I had little idea that I'd soon find a relationship between the aged church with the exhibit...
Pack Arts Journalism in the Age of Un-Art: Writing About the Whitney Biennial
Though I have yet to see the newly-opened Whitney Biennial, I enjoy my biennial hobby of reading all the reviews before I go. I'm always looking to test my thesis that something I call "pack arts crit...
Coloring in the Lines: Color Chart at MoMA
After visiting Design and the Elastic Mind at MoMA last week, I wandered into Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today in the nearby galleries on the sixth floor. The exhibit features 44 contempo...
Monday Roundup: Chelsea Planning Tip, Whitney Biennial, Green Peppercorn Sauce, and Other Items
Visiting Chelsea. Maybe the following quick Descent Into Art Hell in Chelsea has happened to others: I hate when I'm in Chelsea and I've just realized I wanted to visit a particular gallery but it's f...
Feed Your Head: Design and the Elastic Mind at MoMA (A Review)
A few months ago, when I read that a certain type of printer was capable of producing three-dimensional objects, I had a hard time getting my head around the idea that I could print out a lost toothbr...
Roundup: The Plaza Hotel, Sondheim's Seurat, the Texas Primary, and the Upcoming Gelato Showdown in the Village
As I gather my thoughts about the Chichester Festival Theatre's entertaining production of Macbeth that I saw last night at BAM, I would like to pass on a few updates and news items:• I've now assem...
Jasper Johns: On the Cold Gray Stones (A Review)
“Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utterThe thoughts that arise in me.” - Alfred, Lord Tennyson"Jasper Johns, the seafaring stranger," I thought. ...
The Aesthetics of "Slow": Reflections on The Slow Movement and the Arts
I'm a slow poke, as they say. I hate to rush, and as the proponents of the Slow Movement advocate, I like to engage in activities that just creep along and force a break with the frantic rhythms of th...
Fifth Avenue and The High Road to Taos: Georgia O'Keeffe at The Met
I went to the Met on Tuesday to look at Georgia O'Keeffe paintings, but first I had to find them. A couple of museum workers thought they had seen one or two in the Modern Art section, but they also r...
Museums As Gyms, Part One: The Met
For the first of my Museums as Gyms series, I must say that the Met, as a fitness center, sets a high bar. This Fifth Avenue art palace features miles of walkable areas, a challenge for even the most ...
Museums As Gyms: A New Art & Exercise Series From Walking Off the Big Apple
Readers of Walking Off the Big Apple know I like to combine walking and looking at art. They also know I don't like going to the gym and staring at myself in the mirror while walking absolutely nowher...
Forthcoming NY Museum Exhibitions: My Short List of Blockbusters, Early 2008
What follows is my selected list of museum exhibitions opening in January and February that should cast away the winter blues.The Met:In the Light of Poussin: The Classical Landscape TraditionJanuary ...
New York Art Highlights of 2007
The opening of the new Roman and Greek Galleries at the Met and the unveiling of the New Museum on the Bowery are two memorable high-profile events from the year, but I also still vividly recall many ...
Weekend Frivolities: Tour de Bears, Real, Imagined, and Stuffed, of Central Park
Now that the winter solstice has passed quietly in the night (approx. 1:08 a.m. EST NYC), I continue to dream of hibernation. I have feasted on nuts and berries and slumped into carbohydrate narcoleps...
Those Fabulous Anarcho-Socialist Ashcan Artists, and A Walk to McSorley's
''Never think of beauty or use small brushes.'' - Robert HenriView Larger MapThree current exhibitions, two in New York and one in Wilmington, Delaware, highlight the work of the Ashcan artists, a coh...
The Pleasures of the Ashcan Artists: An Exhibit at the New-York Historical Society
Many of the most famous paintings by members of the Ashcan artists, such as William Glackens' Hammerstein's Roof Garden and a pair of George Bellows' boxing paintings are currently on display in the e...
Thank You for Not Sketching: Sketching Policies of New York Museums
A time-honored practice in formal art training, sketching art objects in museums can enhance the artistic experience. It's important to know, though, that each museum establishes its own policy with r...
What's In My Wallet: Museum Membership Cards
Even before I saw any art at the New Museum's new home on the Bowery, even before I knew that the café had red velvet cupcakes and the elevators were that shade of green, I joined as a member, findin...
Unmonumental at the New Museum: Just Like Your Favorite Messy Friend's Place (A Review)
Looking at the New Museum of Contemporary Art's inaugural Unmonumental exhibition is like visiting the crash pad of a favorite friend, the one that's creative and stays up all night and leaves dirty d...
Mixing and Matching at the New Museum on the Bowery: A Review
During the rush of pack arts journalism that greeted the opening of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in the Bowery (235 Bowery) last weekend, I read all the reviews but decided to stay home until th...
Tickets Already Snapped Up For The New Museum Opening Marathon
Am I going to the opening of the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery this weekend? I wanted the answer to be "Hell, Yes!,"* but I've learned that all the time-allotted tickets for the Target-...
More on the 2008 Whitney Biennial Selections: The Global M.F.A.
In a previous post I noted, with jolly and jealous sarcasm, that many of the artists selected for the 2008 Whitney Biennial are in their 30s. I think it's not surprising that many are recent M.F.A.s, ...
Best Chance to Get Into the Whitney Biennial? Don't Turn 40
Today, the Whitney announced the artists selected for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the much-vaulted survey of the state of contemporary art. I like to peruse the list, crunch the numbers, ascertain sign...
Walking with Seurat in the Deepening Darkness
Georges Seurat's drawings at MoMA, which continue to haunt me now that I have seen them, trumped so much of the art that I passed leaving the museum that I couldn't bear to look at much else on exhibi...
Seurat Out Walking and Drawing on an Ordinary Sunday
Many people probably think Georges Seurat looks just like Mandy Patinkin, having become acquainted with the late 19th century French painter through Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. ...
Then We Take Berlin: Berlin in Lights Festival Underway
The Berlin in Lights festival is now underway at many venues throughout the wider New York area, celebrating the emergence of Berlin as a dynamic changing city. The rise of Berlin as a cultural center...
The Bowery 2007: The Art World Likes to Fix Things Up
From "On the Bowery, a New Home for New Art" by Carol Vogel, The New York Times, March 28, 2007The board spent a year scouring the city for its new home. “It wasn’t till we saw the empty parking l...
John Butler Yeats (1839-1922): Painter, Father and Personal Trainer to the Stars
Irish painter John Butler Yeats moved to New York in 1907 at the age of 69 and enjoyed what is sometimes referred to as a second childhood. He befriended the Ashcan painters, or the "Eight" - Robert H...
