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New York, New York
Showed no fear, she'd seen the thing at the young mens wing at Sloan Kettering
Consider yourself warned- you’re almost out of time to get to MoMA and PS1 to see the often wonderful Olafur Eliasson exhibition "Take Your Time." The immersive pieces are evenly split between MoMA and Queens, with the stronger pieces at MoMA but the single best piece at PS1. The show is one of those landmark shows (like Richard Serra's show last year) that needs to be seen to be understood- it is all about light and color and space and time and can not be appreciated through pictures or video or my lame ass descriptions.
Meanwhile even if you miss the big Eliasson exhibition there are still the big Eliasson public art waterfalls, in four locations on the East River and scheduled to run all summer long. I wasn’t crazy excited about the waterfalls to be honest, but that changed when I saw them in person. Ot’s hard to see the water and not see the structure, but even with that the sound and the presence of the water kind of makes up for any visual messiness.
If you wait long enough then maybe instead of having to travel to see a Zaha Hadid building, a Zaha Hadid building just might find its way to you. This is Zaha Hadid’s Chanel Pavilion, a temporary exhibit in Central Park and one that certainly has its moments.
The New York City art installations continue with David Byrne's super fun (though not air conditioned) Playing the Building exhibit at the Battery Maritime Building. After waiting in a long line and then signing your life away (a signed waiver is required for all who enter), you can see inside this amazing, beat up space and watch as someone else plays a piano whose keys activate little hammers hitting the building. It’s way better and far more fun than it sounds.
The “Art Exhibits in New York” theme continues with Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, set up in that suspiciously empty lot next to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown. The idea was to present prefabricated houses by actually presenting some walk through prefabricated houses you could tour. The houses were all interesting, but none so memorable that I would miss them too much when they’re gone.
And finally, Open House New York offered a rare spring event- a reservation only fundraising tour of Tom Otterness' studio in Brooklyn. Even if you've never heard of Tom Otterness chances are that you're still familiar with his work, he's the guy who created all those (often) funny little bronze statues that are crawling all over the 8th Avenue and 14th Street Subway Station. The balance of his work definitely has that same whimsical feel, although the scale and media change from time to time to include things like a full size children’s playset or a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. Otterness himself led the tour, answering generally stupid questions from the crowd while genially attempting to explain how and why he does what he does.
