Tag Archives: High Line

NYMysteries  Sept. 23 – Sept. 29

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.

Gustav Klimt, Neue Galerie,  Adele Bloch-Bauer

 

 

 

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,

Gustav Klimt, Neue Galerie, The Dancer

 

 

Gustav Klimt, Neue Galerie
Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer

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? 

New York City Blog — April 9 – April 15

Is this Washington Square human sculpture. an expression of our times? Go figure.

 

Washington Square Human Statue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking west on the High Line

 

We New Yorkers know that we can’t predict the weather and therefore often wear a coat in eighty degree weather and shiver in light clothing and no umbrella in a sudden storm. Last Monday was one of our very hot days. I wandered on the High Line, packed with natives, tourists and vendors. – Coney Island on the Hudson.

 

 

 

 

We escaped from the modern world by going to Violist Antoine Tamestit’s Frick concert. It was a lyrical late-afternoon recital. Mr. Tamestit expressed his admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach by playing pieces that had influenced and been influenced by Bach. He began the concert with Heinrich von Fiber’s seventeenth century Rosary Sonata then skipped to the twentieth century with György Ligeti’s Sonata for Viola.

I went to my childhood haunt, The Museum of Modern Art, MOMA, to see In Name Only. It’s a 1939 film with lovely Carole Lombard, lovely Cary Grant and lovely Kay Francis in her very lovely wardrobe.

Happy Passover and Happy Easter to one and all!

COMING SOON:

Graphic Lessons: Recent widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine year old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: something’s eating at him: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case?

Graphic Lessons: Nine year old Dana is the only witness who overhears three people 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?

New York City Blog January 24 – January 30

Isn’t visiting a museum you’ve been in many times like visiting old friends? Each work of art pin points a moment in your own life, That’s how I feel when entering the permanent collection at the New Whitney Museum to be greeted by Calder’s Circus. The circus mobiles date from 1926-1931 and show their venerable age. Joseph Albers’s Homage to the Square series recalls the mid-twentieth century. There’s Joseph Stella’s moody Brooklyn Bridge, Richard Avedon’s classy photography and George Bellows’s fight scenes.

 

Calder's Circus in foreground. Bellows in background
Calder’s Circus in foreground. Bellows in background

 

I returned to the fifth floor to see the other Stella again. Frank Stella rules. It’s a big, brash exhibit, the kind of fireworks NYC museums do well.

Frank Stella
Frank Stella

The New Whitney has views of the former meatpacking district, the High Line and the Hudson River. There’s infinitely more natural light than in the old bunker building. Well done, old friends. The move suits you.

An Impressionist View of the Hudson
An Impressionist View of the Hudson

New York City Blog June 8 — June 15

On a hot summer night a friend and I went to Gigino’s in Tribeca, perched at a little table on the cement porch because the a/c was down. We had a terrific time. Gigino’s has been in existence since 1994 but seems more settled, more of a landmark. I had assumed the charming snapshot of nonno, cigarette planted firmly in the corner of his mouth, running after his grandson, was a family photo. Who knows? Maybe it’s a clever publicist’s stunt to play on the homey quality that the word, trattoria, conveys.

Gigino's Menu
Gigino’s Menu

We then went to Highlights in Jazz at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. It’s NYC’s oldest running jazz series, as we are constantly reminded by the genial host, Jack Kleinsinger. This last concert of the season featured the jazz pianist, Randy Weston and Billy Harper the saxophonist. Alexis Cole, the singer and Dylan Meeks, the pianist rounded out the first part of the evening. We left early and slogged our way through the NYC humidity.

I’m about to breech the new Whitney. As everyone knows it’s in the newest, hottest Manhattan area, the former meat packing district and a stone’s throw from that other trend setter and tourist attraction, the High Line. Did you like the former bunker -er- museum space on Madison and 75th Street? I didn’t. It was more like a prison that a museum. Actually, it could be Rikers East. Can you imagine the reaction of the people in the ‘hood?