Page 5 of 6
Brooklyn, New York
Cause we're not so starry eyed anymore
The slideshow keeps going and stays local. These slideshows are always a mix of weekend trips and interesting local destinations and events, and this year a lot was going on locally. Like this Open House New York boat trip to the Gowanus Canal, a really interesting boat trip that annoyed every local it could by causing all of the draw bridges to open up so we could pass. The Gowanus Canal is an interesting area of Brooklyn in terms of history and gentrification, and it is also crazy, crazy polluted. The boat churned up the water, and looking out you could see, um, let’s just say interesting colors and reflections from all of the oils and chemicals hiding under the surface of the water.
We’re going from one polluted waterway to another, although this one isn’t nearly as bad. This is a boat tour of the waterways around the New Jersey Meadowlands, sponsored by my local AIA section. The Meadowlands is huge and still kind of ignored, a lot of it was paved over or cut through, but a boat ride on it gives you a feel for its size and what makes it an unusually special place.
We’re combining recent themes of water and art installations and going underground while pretending we’ve gone underwater. This is Dive by Jane Winderen, which took over the Park Avenue South Tunnel and turned into an imaginary underwater walk through temporary paradise.
The Whiney Museum, designed by Marcel Breuer, is probably my favorite building in the city and now, after all these years they have finally killed their draconian no interior photos policy. With everyone carrying around an iPhone with a built in camera and then using those pictures on social media to promote themselves, its kind of understandable why they just gave in. So here are a few pictures of inside the Whitney, a huge deal for me but maybe not quite as much for anyone else.
While I was all excited about taking pictures of a window or the stairs (I really love the stairs), most everyone else was taking pictures of the big Jeff Koons retrospective called Jeff Koons: A Retrospective. If you discount the porn parts (yes, of course, there are porn parts), the exhibit was colorful and fun and, again discounting the porn parts, family friendly.
We’ll finish up this page of the slideshow with even more Jeff Koons, this time at Rockefeller Center filling in the spot where the christmas tree is. This is Split-Rocker, a giant flowery rocking horse head that looks friendlier from the side than it does from the front.
