Page 4 of 5
New York, New York
Got a chicken that’s clucking and it never shuts up
The first page of this local trips slideshow was all about night photos, the second page was all about building tours, the third page was all about staying super local and this fourth page is all about art and museums, starting with the incredibly fun giant pigeon sculpture on the High Line Plinth.
The incredibly fun giant pigeon sculpture has a name (it’s Dinosaur) and a sculptor (it’s Ivan Argote), but the magic of it is that it doesn’t feel like a piece of art created by an artist but instead feels just like a giant pigeon, and an incredibly fun one at that.
Our next art installation is Portal, and it is well named since Portal is in fact an actual portal. Installed in front of the Flatiron Building and created by Benediktas Gylys, Portal consists of a great big circular screen with a live stream from another city, which in this case is Dublin, Ireland. Famously inappropriate behavior caused Portal’s portal to be shut down shortly after it opened, but when I was there everyone on both sides just sort of looked at each other and didn’t do that much more.
This year I finally made it out to Queens to see the Museum of the Moving Image, a place I had on a shortlist to see for seemingly forever, and by “seemingly forever” I really mean well over a decade. I have no good reason for deferring this trip for this long, other than that it’s in a part of Astoria that I have had no (other) reason to visit, which considering I have lots of reasons to visit the city (work, Open House New York, Archtober, art installations, museums, concerts, restaurants, just exploring, etc.), sounds unlikely in retrospect.
When I finally got there, what I saw was pretty damn impressive, from the downright magical model from the opening scene of Blade Runner, to the creepy disembodied Natalie Portman head from Black Swan, to the collection of Muppets from the big Jim Henson exhibiti. Makes me wonder again why I waited so long to actually get out there to see it all.
I have been to Union Church of Pocantico Hills before. It’s in Tarrytown, New York up by Kyukit and was the church that the Rockefellers who lived at Kyukit attended. Even if you didn’t know that already, there’s a clue and that clue is the stained glass windows. Not only was the rose window designed by Henri Matisse (not pictured), but the church also contains a collection of stained glass windows by Marc Chagall, some of the best he ever did. And while I have been to the Union Church of Pocantico Hills before (I already said that just four sentences ago), the last time I went it was so long ago that interior photography was still strictly prohibited. Today of course most places with photo bans just don’t have them anymore (unless it’s a performance) since it’s hard to stop everyone taking high quality pictures with their phones, as well as all of those annoying people (like me I guess) who then want to share every little detail of every interesting place they ever go to. So while I had already been to the Union Church of Pocantico Hills before (this is the third time I said this), it was the first time I came back with photographic proof that such a place and such beautiful windows actually exist.
The Whitney Biennial was this year, and it’s something I try to always see every two years, which after all is what the word biennial means on the first place. The Whitney Biennial two years ago was my all time favorite Whitney Biennial, so going in this year it was fairly likely that this year’s show would be a letdown of sorts and this year’s show certainly did not disappoint, although maybe I mean to say that it did in fact disappoint. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it or that it (or parts of it) weren’t good, but rather to say that just as I expected, it’s just pretty damn hard to follow up a best ever Whitney Biennial with another best ever Whitney Biennial.
If I was really paring down this page more than I am and only had decided to show one art installation or museum from 2024 (which I very easily could have done), it would be Jenny Holzer and the Guggenheim. There are actually two different Jenny Holzer Guggenheim installations to talk about, and this first one is For the Guggenheim, and as you can tell by looking at the pictures, it featured words projected on the exterior of the building, which looked exactly like you think it would.
Inside the Guggenheim was the feature attraction- Jenny Holzer: Light Line. As you can also tell by looking at the pictures, it featured a continuous ticker that spanned the entire length of the continuous railing at the continuous ramps of the always spectacular Guggenheim Museum. The effect was wonderful and one of the best uses of that space I have ever seen. There was other artwork scattered about as part of the show, but none of it matched the ticker, which included text that changed color and style and, more interestingly, changed the feel of the entire space.
It may be hard to believe but there are a lot of things that I left out of this slideshow, but one that made it was this installation I happened to came across at the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place. This is Evanescent by Atelier Sisu which looked great up against a (very) late afternoon sky as I passed through on my way to the ferry terminal outside. It also reminded me an awful lot of an installation I happened to come across last year in Seoul which, as it happens to turns out, may have been this exact same installation, albeit in quite a different setting.
Just like Evanescent, I happened to come across this Dia de los Muertos ofrenda at Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal. It was designed by Raul Avila, the guy who designs the floral displays for the Met Galas, and a guy who must really like marigolds because he used a hell of a lot of them. It was free and really just a promotion for a tequila company, but also kind of surprising and really quite well done.
I have a love/hate relationship with The Shed, the Diller, Scofidio + Renfro designed museum at Hudson Yards. I love it from the outside, but am disappointed as to how boring it feels inside, as if its flexibility made everything except the lobby become too generic to be interesting. I also have similar feelings about their programming. I joined as a member for its first year and barely went, and in subsequent years I’ve really only gone a few times. Once was to see a Kung Fu musical (Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise) that was, well, bad, and another to see Sonic Sphere which was interesting and a great use of the space, although The Shed rushed you in and out so fast you could barely appreciate the actual sonic sphere. So I carried all of these past experiences with me into the current big exhibition at The Shed: Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy.
Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy is an artist designed carnival that premiered in Germany in 1987 and then sat in storage afterwards for years and years. There are some big names who contributed to this- Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat- and despite the tempered expectations that I brought with me for anything at The Shed, I ended up enjoying it more than I expected. The rides are unfortunately all unrideable, but they do turn them on every so often, and dressed up performers were there to harass guests, something which actually added to the overall atmosphere. And they even opened up a higher level of the building where you could look down on the main section and enjoy a snack. Overall probably the best experience I’ve had at The Shed, but one that also really points out exactly what I don’t like about the building. The large moveable shed piece of The Shed- which looks great from the outside- looks terrible from the inside. Despite standing on the plaza only steps away from (the) Vessel, there is no visible connection to the plaza, and the entrance to The Shed is just so, so far away from the shed part of The Shed, if you can even find it. Maybe if they brought the 100% blackout shades to like, I don’t know, maybe 85%, something that allowed just a hint of the rest of the plaza from both inside and out, or if they ever used the built in doors of the shed part to actually enter or exit to where all the people are that might help. Anyway I’ll stop my rant and get back to slideshow. To summarize: Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy: good, The Shed: still not living up to its potential.
We’re finishing up this museum exhibition and installations page here at the Museum of the City of New York, starting here at Starlight, an impressive light installation by Cooper Joseph Studio right at the entry.
It had been some time since I was at the Museum of the City of New York, not because I don’t like it but because it’s just out of the way and in an area I rarely find myself in. Since that last visit (which I think was in 2012 for the great The Greatest Grid exhibit), the museum has gotten much better, and I really loved what I saw including a wonderful video compilation of films from New York called You Are Here, and an equally wonderful film about the history of New York called Timescapes. I was also really impressed by this, the original wood model of Raymond Hood’s RCA Building, better known as 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The wood model was gorgeously detailed (just like the full sized building) and had everything except for a little tiny christmas tree out front and all of the massive crowds that accompany it.
Finally this fourth page comes to an end at the Museum of the City of New York’s Gingerbread NYC: Great Borough Bake-Off, an exhibit of gingerbread buildings on display for the holidays. The selection of buildings were quite impressive, and pictures below include the Dakota, Macy’s Herald Square, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and an Empire State Building that features a (generally) to scale King Kong and a tremendously out of scale Spiderman.
