Museum Hopper

i went to the neue gallery with my college sister. i had wanted to go for a while. the first time i wanted to go, there was a line out the door and i ended up going to the whitney instead. i found out later it was one of the first weekends for a new exhibit. well, this time we went, unbeknownst to us, but a new exhibit on klimt was opening the weekend we were there as well. we were able to get in no problems, but as we were leaving we noticed that a line (again) out the door had developed. the museum itself is quite small, which i think causes this out the door problem. we really enjoyed the museum. it was just about the right size and pretty easy to navigate. they limit the number of people in it because it just would get to hard to move. the klimt exhibit itself was quite nice. my sister knew a lot more about klimt than i did. i recognized some of the paintings, but my sister knew much more about his background. the museum did a nice job putting the exhibit together

i went to the new museum of contemporary art one mild afternoon when i needed a walk. this museum is at a place were it is shorter for me to walk there than take any form of public transportation so off i went. the mu seum is in a brand new building. it just opened in early december, i believe. it looks like a bunch of boxes balancing on top of each other. it's very industrial feeling in the museum, but...i thought the way the museum looked was the coolest thing about the museum (sort of my feelings on the guggenheim as well). the art...well some of it was interesting to look at like the mattress completely covered in buttons. my favorite piece were a stack of chairs in an arch about 10 feet high. that was pretty much only interesting to me because i (as an engineer) wanted to figure out how they got them in the arch without them falling down. so, my advice, look at the museum from the outside, come inside, look around on the first floor and do not pay to go upstairs... ti

i went to the new york historical society by myself to view their exhibit on new york and the slave trade . it seemed like a stretch to me at the time and i was interested to see what they would say about it. the exhibit covered the time period of early settlers through the civil war. it linked wall street to investing in plantations, etc. it was quite through. they also had some lovely paintings of the state of new york and of famous new yorkers. they have one huge long painting of some new york shoreline. on the top floor, they have collections of stuff. they have busts of eagles, china, buggies, more paintings, etc. my biggest complaint is that finding the entrance of the main exhibit was not well marked. therefore, i went through a very chronological exhibit backwards. i ended in the early 1600s as opposed to starting there. times visited: 1 time in museum: 1 1/2 hrs overall: B

i have been to the museum of modern art at least 5 times. i have gone by myself, with friends, with family, just to look in the gift shop. all combinations. so, this museum was "recently" remodeled (i think in the last 5 years) so it is the best laid out museum of all of them. it is easy to navigate. items are well spaced, arranged well. the order of the art in the permanent exhibits makes sense. you can find the exhibit you are looking for quite easily. no getting lost in the moma. the permanent exhibits (floors 4 and 5) are well done although some of the items in it, i am not sure why they are there exactly...don't get me wrong, the picassos, van goghs, dalis, matisses, monets (even though, i don't really know why they are in moma) are beautiful. i don't really understand how 4 boxes of different colors belongs in the room next to monet's water lillies . they have a ton of picassos...a couple of rooms seem to be devoted exclusively to them. it

the rubin museum was quite a pleasant surprise. it is a museum that focuses primarily on himalayan artwork. i went with a coworker who is indian, so she knew a lot more than i did. this museum is the real deal. a speciality museum that has the funding and enough space to convey its message. the second floor of the museum is devoted to "what is himalayan art?" it really educates you as to what you are looking at. they had artwork, statues and weavings from as early as 1200s when we were there we saw an exhibit focusing on bon , which is the indigenous religion in tibet. the detail in the art is unbelievable. the rubin museum has its own artist in residence as well to show how it is done in person. they also had an exhibit displaying some of the large items from the rubin collection. my one complaint/suggestion: no one directed us to start at the bottom and move up, so we got to the "what is himalayan art?" last. i was pretty lucky since my friend had

i went to the skyscraper museum one afternoon along with 2 other museums that are downtown (the native american museum and the fraunces tavern). it was worth the free trip. the current exhibit was a futuristic view of what a skyscraper city would like. most of the renditions were done 1950s-1960s of what nyc would like in about 2050. good material. they also had (what i am assuming) is always there a few drawings and things on the skyscrapers of nyc like what makes a skyscraper, how do you classify them, etc. they also had a spotlight on the world trade center twin towers. my one complaint with this museum was the layout. it was very cramped and hard to traverse through without feeling like you were missing important details. it was also hard to tell what order the exhibit was supposed to go in. times visited: 1 time in museum: 1/2 hr overall: B

i have been to the whitney twice. the first time they were celebrating hopper's art and the whitney's 75th "birthday ." the second time was to see the exhibit " The Summer of Love ." so, both spectacular exhibits. the summer of love exhibit was so popular that they ran out of brochures for it and there was a line out the door around the building to buy tickets to get in. i think the value of this museum varies greatly on if you like the exhibit that is being shown at the time. from the website it looks like they have about two stellar exhibits a year, which makes up about 6 months. to give you an idea, in the past 1 1/2 years, they had the hopper and birthday exhibit, a picasso exhibit, and this "summer of love" exhibit. so, check to see what's there before you head out. the layout of the museum is nice. large spaces, easy to navigate even when crowded. the guards don't seem to be super uptight either, which is nice. most of

i will preface this by saying that the morgan library is my favorite "small" museum in new york. i have been to this museum three times. once by myself, once with my parents, my high school sister and my roommate and once with my sister in college. most recently, it had a great exhibit on van gogh . it looks like they have one coming up on art from the uffizi in florence. the stuff they have all the time: printed: 3 out of the 11 remaining gutenberg bibles, original shakespeare, jane austen, emily and charlotte bronte, mark twain, babar (the elephant), thoreau, dickens, einstein, jefferson, milton, newton and hemingway. music: mahler, brahams, mozart, chopin, debussy, beethoven bibles: they fill one 5x7 feet wall (just a note: the stuff rotates so they don't have all on display at once) the museum was just reopened about a year ago converting most of the house into a more usable museum, but some of it still orginal (the Morgan library and study). it is

i went to the museum of art and design today with a my roommate's sister (a 26 year old accountant). they had an exhibit on embroidary and goblets! the museum itself is in a great location, big spaces and easy to get to (it's right across the street from MoMA). it is moving at the end of 2008 to columbus circle. some of the embroidery was beautiful. the stuff that didn't take itself too seriously. there was beautiful netting with little daisy flowers on it. some of it was pretty funny: there was a series of needlepoints of "my mother said..." some of it was bad: a spill on a tablecloth with an embroidered outline. yes, that is considered art. they also had an exhibit on goblets . we appreciated the goblet exhibit a lot more than the embroidery since we didn't have a clue as how you go about making something like that. some personal favorites were sequined red bull goblets, frog goblets, and just some very elaborate glass goblets. the museum gifts shops a

so, i am going to try this blogger thing. most people seem to do the deep talking or political rampages, all very well written of course. since i am the engineer, i will write about what i seem to be doing a lot of these days... museum hopping! i will be doing some posthumous museum posting... and yes, i have no formal training on pretty much any of the museums i have been to, but my current nyc museum visit count (including repeats) is about 38.