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Minneapolis, Minnesota
Life outside the diamond is a wrench
We’re in Minneapolis now, where we’re here to see the Walker Art Center, one of my top three favorite art museums, the other four being MoMA, the Tate Modern. Instead of concentrating on the building and galleries, we’re spending out time instead at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden which is home to Claes Oldenberg's iconic Spoon Bridge and Cherry and Frank Gehry's (in)famous glass fish, among others.
Downtown my favorite place in Minneapolis is Jean Nouvel’s Guthrie Theater, which is great from the inside and outside, as well as from the inside looking outside. This time I finally took the backstage tour, something which actually made me like more a building I already loved.
This is Target Field, the exceptionally nice brand new (and non nostalgic) baseball stadium in Minneapolis. This first picture is from the top of the fifth, where the Twins lead the Seattle Mariners 3-0 on a warm but otherwise beautiful summer (late) afternoon. All is right with the world.
We’ve left that perfect afternoon at Target Field and are now back in New York on a tour of The Standard (Hotel) atop the High Line in Manhattan. The tour was a fundraiser for Open House New York, an annual event that I look forward to every October. Pictures include some on-my-own exterior shots, plus some overdone interiors from the tour including glimpses of guest rooms, an overpriced for what you get suite ($1800 a night), the top floor bar and (most importantly) the killer views from the building, still all by itself on West 13th Street.
We’re still in New York, but we left the city to head up the Hudson Valley to visit Castle Rock, a historic house in Garrison with a tower, the one that’s visible off 9D just north of the Bear Mountain Bridge. Built and lived in by a railroad robber baron, the house is in kind of bad shape and in the middle of a renovation, which is why I actually was able to tour it in the first place.
Still in Garrison, we’re now at Boscobel, a historic house from the 1800s, relocated from Westchester to a much nicer site overlooking the Hudson River. In addition to relocated historic houses, Boscobel also hosts an outdoor Shakespeare festival which I enjoyed, although only so much. That has nothing to do with the setting (very nice) or actors (they seemed fine) but with the source material, which I still don’t understand why everyone likes so much. I’m not saying that Shakespeare wasn’t a revolutionary genius, I’m just saying why does anyone in 2010 want to hear a 420 year old play acted in the exact same words used when everyone talked differently. Hard to understand, hard to follow. Just saying.
We’re continuing our journey upstate and are now headed just about as far upstate as you can possible go. This is Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House complex in Buffalo, New York. It’s a partially rebuilt complex of three houses, a greenhouse, pergola and a stable/garage, it was built around the time of the Robie House but is far less well known. One more similarity between the Martin and Robie Houses- both owners eventually went bankrupt and they lost the houses which still bear their names. Coincidence? Hmmm…
