I finally got to the Neue Galerie when it was open. It’s one of those museums with detailed and unique hours of operation. The exhibit many tourists and I were interested in was Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. In addition to being great artists, they both have an agonizing history. They both died in 1918. Klimt made it to his fifties. Schiele, at twenty-eight, died in the flu epidemic. Some twenty years later, Klimt’s work was admired and swiped by the Nazis. Schiele’s work was condemned because he drew the human figure in great detail.
Who knew the Whitney was closed on Tuesday?We arrived about 2 p.m. wondering where everybody was. They weren’t at the Whitney. We had a peculiar lunch in theirground floor restaurant, Untitled. It’s open even if the museum is closed because now every public domain sells food. After a very slim and sleek wait person extolled the Arctic Char Poke and Japanese Pancake we ordered the two dishes. They were tasty if tapas tiny. Their pedigrees were more substantial than the food. It struck us as hilarious. All we had wanted was an open museum and lunch. Instead, we had a near religious experience. We escaped to the nearby High Line, almost deserted because of the inclement weather.
Rated Black: An American Requiem was presented at Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop. Kareen M. Lucas, the writer and performer, was accompanied by a terrific four person choir. Lucas went through the travails of being an American black. Rated Black is part three of a trilogy that examines the life of a black Brooklyn poet. It was rousing and funny. The music was great.
The September 27th Villager has an article on Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, MOMA’s exhibit about the vibrant dances of the 60s created in Judson Memorial Church’s workshops.It runs through Feb. 3, 2019 and features live performances by the following companies: Deborah Hay, David Gordon, Lucinda Childs,
Steve Paxton, and Trisha Brown.
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation is a great organization with an unwieldy name. It’s holding a St Denis Hotel demonstration to save the structure today, Saturday, 9/29/18 at noon. As much as I hate demonstrations, I’ll be at 11th and Broadway in front of the 1853 hotel. Scary, the way glassy office towers are dominating our landscape.
Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder.
Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old, the only witness to the stabbing and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.
Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.
Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School? Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook?