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New York, New York!
I got to NYC a lot later than anticipated. I was on an 8:54 a.m. flight to LaGuardia, but, as I had nothing scheduled, I volunteered when they asked if anyone would give up their seat in exchange for $400 in travel vouchers and a confirmed seat on the 10:44 flight. How was I to know that that flight would be cancelled due to mechanical problems and that the next not-full flight to LGA would be at 8:31 P.M.? Aaaarrgh. I got them to put me on the next available flight to Newark, which was at 6:00, so didn't get to the hotel until nearly 11:00, and went straight to bed.
Nice hotel, though, the Milburn, on the Upper West Side. Tiny bathroom, but a kitchenette, and the room was surprisingly large for a NYC hotel, with space for a table and chair to eat at, and a comfy chair with an ottoman. Two closets, meaning plenty of hangers. The place has a nice lounge with a lending library, and a continental breakfast is included. Even better, just down the street is a veterinarian specializing in cats, with the most adorable kittens for adoption in the window! I had to stop and say hello every time I passed.
On Sunday, I met up with Greedyreader for brunch, and she gave me her tickets for Master Class, Terrence McNally's play about Maria Callas. I met Annulla at the theatre, and we enjoyed the play very much. I hadn't really been able to picture Tyne Daley as Callas, but she inhabited the role quite well. Afterwards, Annulla and I walked around quite a bit and had a drink at Cipriani's at Grand Central Station (Bellinis, of course!).
Before heading to the theatre, I was walking around the neighborhood a bit, and turned down 71st Street between Broadway and West End, where I stumbled on this adorable little park:
It's called Septuagesimo Uno, which means "71". There are paper flowers stuck in the dirt that say, "Pick me", and have information on them about where you can donate to help put real flowers in the park. While I was there, a young man came in walking a three-legged dog. (He didn't know how it lost the leg, as he was the dog-walker, not the owner.) He said he'd lived in the neighborhood for years, and had just that moment found the park!
Monday
The museums I went to on Monday didn't open until 11 o'clock, so I had a nice leisurely breakfast, and still had a bit of time when I got to the east side. I strolled along Central Park's Reservoir, and then turned back up 5th to go to the Jewish Museum. Saw a couple of great exhibits there, including "Collecting Matisse & Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore". Quite a pair, those two. Unmarried daughters of a wealthy German-Jewish family, they became acquainted with Gertrude Stein (the elder, Claribel, and Gertrude studied at the Women's Medical College at Johns Hopkins at the same time) and later traveled with her and Leo to Florence. They became collectors of many of the modern painters of the day, including Picasso, but are best known for their collection of Matisses, and their friendship with the artist. There was also an exhibit of work by the illustrator and children's book author, Maira Kalman.
I went from there to the Neue Galerie, and lunched at the Café Sabarsky there before going through the Vienna 1900: Style and Identity exhibit. Scads of stuff by Josef Hoffmann, so I coveted a lot, plus many works by Schiele and Kokoschka. There was also a reproduction of Freud's couch, on which one was invited to sit. Fell in love with a gorgeous dress, a copy of one worn by the designer Emilie Flöge. Here she is wearing it. The museum shop did have a lot of reproductions of work by Hoffmann, most of which was way out of my price range, but I did find this little candy dish that was within my budget.
It was my birthday, and I celebrated by going to hear a Chicago jazz singer, Tammy McCann:
(on the right in this photo - from a different event)
She was singing at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, part of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Lovely space, I don't think there's a bad seat in the house, and the bandstand is in front of the windows, so you get a great city view while you listen to great music and eat great food.
Tuesday
Greedyreader had warned me to get to the Met early and go straight to the Alexander McQueen exhibit. I followed her advice and got in line about 9:00 for the 9:30 opening. The exhibit was wildly crowded, but was fabulous! It's great to see the garments so close; you really can't appreciate how well they are constructed or how fine the detail is by looking at runway videos or photos. I started to take notes on my favorite pieces, but stopped because it would have taken my entire journal - so instead I succumbed to the catalogue. The exhibit itself was quite well put together, each room being designed to reflect the ideas behind garments displayed there. My one criticism is that I would have liked to seen more mirrors so that all angles of the garments could be seen (which was the case is some of the rooms). There were also lots and lots of accessories - hats by Philip Treacy and Dai Rees, and work by jewelers Shaun Leane, Erik Halley, and Sarah Harmarnee. The Met's put up a great website about the show.
After that, I went to the Medieval galleries for the show, "Thinking outside the box: European cabinets, caskets and cases from the Permanent Collection", which had marvelous objects ranging from a gigantic strongbox
to tiny nécessaires:
I also checked out the Korean ceramics exhibit, "Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art" - no photos allowed, unfortunately.
After a quick lunch, I went to the hotel to rest up, and met Greedyreader for a bit of shopping and a drink, and then we met up with a friend of hers and had a yummy Italian dinner. Somehow, my cannoli ended up with a candle in it. ;-)
Wednesday
Off to the Morgan, and the exhibit that inspired the trip to New York: Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands. It was very well done, though, me being me, I'd have liked a bit more information about what was going on in the illuminations in addition to the information about the clothing. Whoever wrote the cards obviously had a lot of fun. They had titles like "Alexander the Great Fashionista" and "Salome and Herodias in Killer Clothes"!
There was also a rather curious exhibit, Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, which is exactly what the name says. The items included a grocery list (!), but also a very sweet list by Eero Saarinen of his future wife, Aline's, good qualities!
I loved the Xu Bing installation, The Living Word, and lunched in the café there so I could admire it the more.
Then off to the hotel to meet the shuttle to the airport, and home to my kitty.
Nice hotel, though, the Milburn, on the Upper West Side. Tiny bathroom, but a kitchenette, and the room was surprisingly large for a NYC hotel, with space for a table and chair to eat at, and a comfy chair with an ottoman. Two closets, meaning plenty of hangers. The place has a nice lounge with a lending library, and a continental breakfast is included. Even better, just down the street is a veterinarian specializing in cats, with the most adorable kittens for adoption in the window! I had to stop and say hello every time I passed.
On Sunday, I met up with Greedyreader for brunch, and she gave me her tickets for Master Class, Terrence McNally's play about Maria Callas. I met Annulla at the theatre, and we enjoyed the play very much. I hadn't really been able to picture Tyne Daley as Callas, but she inhabited the role quite well. Afterwards, Annulla and I walked around quite a bit and had a drink at Cipriani's at Grand Central Station (Bellinis, of course!).
Before heading to the theatre, I was walking around the neighborhood a bit, and turned down 71st Street between Broadway and West End, where I stumbled on this adorable little park:
It's called Septuagesimo Uno, which means "71". There are paper flowers stuck in the dirt that say, "Pick me", and have information on them about where you can donate to help put real flowers in the park. While I was there, a young man came in walking a three-legged dog. (He didn't know how it lost the leg, as he was the dog-walker, not the owner.) He said he'd lived in the neighborhood for years, and had just that moment found the park!
Monday
The museums I went to on Monday didn't open until 11 o'clock, so I had a nice leisurely breakfast, and still had a bit of time when I got to the east side. I strolled along Central Park's Reservoir, and then turned back up 5th to go to the Jewish Museum. Saw a couple of great exhibits there, including "Collecting Matisse & Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore". Quite a pair, those two. Unmarried daughters of a wealthy German-Jewish family, they became acquainted with Gertrude Stein (the elder, Claribel, and Gertrude studied at the Women's Medical College at Johns Hopkins at the same time) and later traveled with her and Leo to Florence. They became collectors of many of the modern painters of the day, including Picasso, but are best known for their collection of Matisses, and their friendship with the artist. There was also an exhibit of work by the illustrator and children's book author, Maira Kalman.
I went from there to the Neue Galerie, and lunched at the Café Sabarsky there before going through the Vienna 1900: Style and Identity exhibit. Scads of stuff by Josef Hoffmann, so I coveted a lot, plus many works by Schiele and Kokoschka. There was also a reproduction of Freud's couch, on which one was invited to sit. Fell in love with a gorgeous dress, a copy of one worn by the designer Emilie Flöge. Here she is wearing it. The museum shop did have a lot of reproductions of work by Hoffmann, most of which was way out of my price range, but I did find this little candy dish that was within my budget.
It was my birthday, and I celebrated by going to hear a Chicago jazz singer, Tammy McCann:
(on the right in this photo - from a different event)
She was singing at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, part of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Lovely space, I don't think there's a bad seat in the house, and the bandstand is in front of the windows, so you get a great city view while you listen to great music and eat great food.
Tuesday
Greedyreader had warned me to get to the Met early and go straight to the Alexander McQueen exhibit. I followed her advice and got in line about 9:00 for the 9:30 opening. The exhibit was wildly crowded, but was fabulous! It's great to see the garments so close; you really can't appreciate how well they are constructed or how fine the detail is by looking at runway videos or photos. I started to take notes on my favorite pieces, but stopped because it would have taken my entire journal - so instead I succumbed to the catalogue. The exhibit itself was quite well put together, each room being designed to reflect the ideas behind garments displayed there. My one criticism is that I would have liked to seen more mirrors so that all angles of the garments could be seen (which was the case is some of the rooms). There were also lots and lots of accessories - hats by Philip Treacy and Dai Rees, and work by jewelers Shaun Leane, Erik Halley, and Sarah Harmarnee. The Met's put up a great website about the show.
After that, I went to the Medieval galleries for the show, "Thinking outside the box: European cabinets, caskets and cases from the Permanent Collection", which had marvelous objects ranging from a gigantic strongbox
to tiny nécessaires:
I also checked out the Korean ceramics exhibit, "Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art" - no photos allowed, unfortunately.
After a quick lunch, I went to the hotel to rest up, and met Greedyreader for a bit of shopping and a drink, and then we met up with a friend of hers and had a yummy Italian dinner. Somehow, my cannoli ended up with a candle in it. ;-)
Wednesday
Off to the Morgan, and the exhibit that inspired the trip to New York: Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands. It was very well done, though, me being me, I'd have liked a bit more information about what was going on in the illuminations in addition to the information about the clothing. Whoever wrote the cards obviously had a lot of fun. They had titles like "Alexander the Great Fashionista" and "Salome and Herodias in Killer Clothes"!
There was also a rather curious exhibit, Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, which is exactly what the name says. The items included a grocery list (!), but also a very sweet list by Eero Saarinen of his future wife, Aline's, good qualities!
I loved the Xu Bing installation, The Living Word, and lunched in the café there so I could admire it the more.
Then off to the hotel to meet the shuttle to the airport, and home to my kitty.