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New York, New York
You see stars that clear have been dead for years but the idea just lives on
In some ways the idea of a Weekend Trip Slideshow is relatively self evident. I take a trip, it’s on a weekend, I take pictures, and then present the pictures with accompanying text that is sometimes actually related to the photo. In reality things are a little more complex than that. Weekend Trip Slideshows have evolved into a catch all of reasonably interesting things I have done or places I have been. Sure, sometimes they are all about an actual weekend trip (whether work related or not), but sometimes, like here, it’s just a record of somewhere nearby that I may or may not have even been to on a weekend.
This picture is inside somewhere I have wanted to visit for a long time now, weekend or weekday or anytime. This is the long closed New York City Hall Subway Station, the nicest subway station ever built in the city and one that is only accessible twice a year through the New York Transit Museum, or I guess any time you want if you just don't get off the downtown 6 Train as it loops through the station and heads back uptown. a
I signed up for a membership to the New York City Transit Museum specifically to be able to take this tour, and then signed up as a member as soon as they went on sale. The tours meet at the existing City Hall Station on the 4/5/6 IRT Line, and then a special train takes us to the nearby abandoned station. It was as impressive as I hoped, and it would be great to see some way to see this open as a public space, or at least not just available to New York City Transit Museum members twice a year.
The station, which was the original subway’s opening day City Hall station, was absolutely beautiful, and while I did my best to take some pictures in a dark space, I still did my best. Others on the tour were far more prepared, with impressive cameras and tripod set ups, while I just did my best to keep my Canon EOS 20D as still as I possibly could. And if you look carefully in some of these photos, you may see some people holding their hands over their ears. They are doing that for good reason- the 6 train still uses the tracks to turn around, and when it passes through the station it is exceptionally screechy and borderline intolerably loud. Maybe that’s why they keep the space limited to New York City Transit Museum members twice a year.
I have wanted to see inside the new Cooper Union building (designed by Morphosis) for some time now, and finally got my chance with an AIA Architects League of Northern New Jersey tour. The advertisement for the tour clearly stated that no interior photos were allowed, so I left my aforementioned Canon EOS 20D home, which honestly was ok because it’s kind of a pain in the ass to drag around sometimes anyway. Of course once we got inside the building, the tour guide told us that he never heard of this shadow photo ban and told us we could take as many pictures as we wanted to. Armed only with my iPhone 4, I did my best but still regret the resolution and hope that the next time I am inside there, I’ll have a better camera on me and that the strict no photo rule is equally ignored.
As for the building, it was certainly interesting inside with a big central stair, although Morphosis promotes an elevator strategy that kind of breaks up the building into three story blocks. It still allows for its big central stair to have some fun, although not as much fun as it could.
I am all about art installations, and one of my favorite this summer was a program by the Guggenheim called stillspotting nyc, spelled intentionally without the burden of capital letters. It premise was described by the Guggenheim as (t)he ever-present cacophony of traffic, construction, and commerce; the struggle for mental and physical space; and the anxious need for constant communication in person or via technology are relentless assaults on the senses. One wonders how locals and visitors can escape, find respite, and make peace with their space in this “city that never sleeps.”
The reality of stillspotting nyc is that your ticket gets you into spaces where you’ll unexpectedly see a great big balloon or two. Here in Manhattan those spaces included a labyrinth at Battery Park, under a fort at Governors Island and a inside a high floor at Seven World Trade Center. At each space, the big white balloon seemed out of place but also just right, a really great reason to pause and notice something or somewhere about the city you may have raced past before.
I left work early at the start of an actual weekend trip to drive north up the Thruway to see this building, Frank Gehry's Fisher Center at Bard College. Specifically I planned on going on the building tour that is offered daily at 2pm, although daily apparently doesn't start until later next month. Still the nice people at the box office let me wander around most of the good parts of the building on my own, so while I missed the tour at least I didn't miss the building.
The building tour may have been cancelled, but there were still other things to see at Bard. In addition to their fine, free, small contemporary art museum, there was an interesting art installation by one of my favorite living artists, Olafur Eliasson.
Heading north, I allowed for some time on the drive to stop off and see Nicolas Grimshaw's EMPAC at the campus of the hard to spell Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), one of those buildings I had wanted to see for some time now. The building is primarily a great big theatre, designed as a great big wooden form inside a great big glass box. Also visible is a temporary art installation involving floating cups that clanged as they knocked into each other. Fun.
Still on the same weekend and still heading north, we’re now in the Berkshires of far Western Massachusetts, and, more specifically, Tadao Ando’s new building at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. Called the Stone Hill Center, it’s an uphill walk from the rest of the Clark, which one day will look a whole lot different. Ando is planning to pretty much completely replace the existing museum with a brand new, minimalist design that will make the current experience pretty much unrecognizable. Something I’m looking forward to seeing already.
Regular readers of the slideshows know that I like to rank things, despite no one ever actually asking me to. One of the things I like to rank is my favorite art museums. You have to start with MoMA in New York, it’s big and busy and can be annoying, but it has some of the best artwork ever created by humankind. Next up I’ll add the Tate Modern and the Pompidou, both because I really like them and because it makes me sound well traveled. After that, number four is the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which always surprises me and also checks off a box since it’s more of a hidden gem compared to the other world famous big city museum on the list. That leaves me with number five, since you can’t have a top five without it. That spot always seems to change based on where I just was. Maybe it’s the Reina Sofia, or the Whitney, or even LACMA. But as of now, it’s hard not to at least pencil in MASS MoCA, my next new favorite museum.
MASS MoCA, located in western Massachusetts not far from the Clark, is a sprawling complex in an old factory, with a bit of a PS1 vibe but with consistently better art (sorry PS1. just being honest here).
From Massachusetts, we’re now in Connecticut (on a different weekend trip) at New Haven and at Yale. If you haven't been to Connecticut or to New Haven or to Yale, you should go just to see this, the Beinecke Rare Book Library designed by Gordon Bunshaft of SOM. A fantastic interior with thin stone translucent panels that never fails to impress.
Yale is more than the Beinecke Rare Books Library (or the Paul Rudolph buildings or Louis Kahn buildings, not pictured). This time I was lucky enough to join some friends and enjoy standing room only seats for a playoff hockey game at Eero Saarinen's wonderful Ingalls Ice Rink. The game saw the home team Yale Bulldogs fall to the St Lawrence University Saints 4-3 after (almost) 4 full periods of hockey action.
