Indianapolis Art and Theatre

In mid-March, I took a quick trip to Indianapolis to visit family.  While I was there, Mom and I decided to check out the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Sheila and Chris are members, but Mom had never visited. They have an incredible collection. We spent a couple of hours wandering around and didn't see nearly all of it. It's on my to-do list for next time, as well. I asked the guy at the ticket counter what I shouldn't miss, and he sent us in the direction of the Van Goghs. Personally, I think you should go straight to the Caravaggio (there are fewer than a dozen in the US) and go from there. A few highlights:

Mom with a matching Sol LeWitt

Gorgeous Tiffany window created in memory of President Benjamin Harrison by his wife

Erwin Wurm's One Minute Forever (Yogurt Cup), which made me laugh out loud. 

The Caravaggio (Sleeping Cupid)

My favorite painting at the Frick Collection is Bellini's St. Francis of Assisi. The IMA had a visiting exhibition on Bellini and his studio that included this painting of the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist. It seems so modern to me (probably because of the rainbow-colored angels)--it's hard for me to believe it was painted in the late 15th Century. I love how Bellini signs his paintings. This one looks like an unfolded piece of paper he affixed to the base.

This Francis Criss painting of Greenwich Village (including the Jefferson Market) made me smile. I walk around there all the time, and I've been up in that clock tower. (Thank you Open House New York!) 

One thing I think the Indianapolis Museum of Art does better than any museum I've ever visited is the wall cards. You don't just get the artist's name and years, with the title of the work, and you don't get an art historian's thesis on the piece that makes you feel like an idiot. You get several bullet points that help you to understand better what the artist was trying to do. They don't assume you know anything about art, and they don't talk down to you. For example, here is what they tell the observer about City Landscape above:

1. In this composition, Criss distills the structures of Lower Manhattan into basic geometric shapes and overlapping planes of color.

2. The architectural mishmash of an Art Deco prison (NY Women's House of Detention), a Victorian Gothic courthouse (Jefferson Market), and a pre-war Greenwich Village apartment building provide inspiration for City Landscape. Bisecting the scene is the Sixth Avenue El, an elevated railway razed the same year Criss painted the image. 

3. This approach, reducing views of the world into relationships of form and color, was taken up by many progressive artists of the Modernist era.

Usually, I feel like the wall cards are kind of high brow in their language and their tone. For example, at the Nelson in KC, I read this:  The sculpture..."acknowledges the power of human imagination and technological innovation...Its organic tree-like form also speaks profoundly to the dendritic (branching) structures of nature." Here, however, instead of art feeling like something that's only for intellectuals, this feels like something that is for everyone. You learn what to look for, what you're seeing, and how it might connect with other things you'll be seeing on your visit. I loved it.

The real reason for my visit, though, was my nephew, Henry's, starring role in the 8th grade presentation of Peter Pan. He was incredible, if I do say it myself. :) Disney has created a series of junior versions of plays that are perfect for younger kids. The play lasted about 70 minutes but covered all the basic plot points. My sister was the choreographer; she's the queen of 'simple but entertaining' dancing. The kids did a great job! A high school girlfriend brought her two sons to see the show, so I got to catch up with her as well. It was a terrific night!

Flying to Neverland

Getting a talking-to from Tinkerbell

Flying!

The star with his very proud aunt (You'd think his mother would know by now how not to cut off heads in photos...)

Gallery Hopping in Chelsea

In the March 15th edition of the Wall Street Journal, I read about an exhibit by Yuriko Yamaguchi at the Howard Scott Gallery just a few blocks from our apartment. We are absolutely surrounded by galleries, and I never seem to find the time to visit them. So today, spurred on by the WSJ, I did.

On my way, I stopped by David Zwirner's much-hyped new space. It's an incredible building, though the current show is a bit beyond me. Sherrie Levine has taken over the second floor. Some of it I don't get at all:

And other things, like this beach ball and the pig below it, I absolutely loved.

Unfortunately, her art starts at $185,000 and goes up to $750,000, so I'll never own any.

A view of the staircase from below:

And the base of the staircase, with a mirrored sculpture

Me in the mirror

After that, I headed over to 529 W. 20th to check out the Howard Scott Gallery. The great thing about 529 is that it's a 10 (or so) story building filled with galleries and architecture firms. So I started on 7 with Howard Scott, and worked my way down a floor at a time. The Yuriko Yamaguchi show wasn't over-sold--the sculptures are light and airy, and they seem to float off the walls.

ACA Galleries has a show on until April 2 called Paper Through The Ages. In this gallery, you can see large-scale works by Frank Stella:

And small-scale works by George Bellows, Joseph Stella, John Singer Sargent

Jan Matulka (I love this)

And Lyonel Feininger

I stopped at a lot of other galleries while I was in the building, and saw a lot of other works by famous artists, but my favorite painting by far was by a painter I've never heard of. Merced River, 2015 by Tai-Shan Schierenberg at Flowers Gallery. It was sold (and $65,000) but I still covet it. I could stare at it all day.

There are so many galleries around here, who knows how many other hidden gems there are? Maybe someday I'll find one I can actually afford...

A Week Without a Husband (Van Dyck, Met Breuer, Carnegie Hall, NYCFC)

Ed headed off to England for work last week, so I made lots of plans to keep myself busy. But before he left, we went to the Frick to check out the Van Dyck portrait show that's in residence until early June. No photos allowed, as usual at the Frick, so you'll have to swing by yourself. Which you should definitely do if you get the chance--the Frick is its only venue. The things that man was doing at 14 are unbelievable. His portrait of Cardinal Bentivoglio alone is worth the price of admission. Other than the time it spent in Paris when Napoleon chose it to enter the collection of the Musee Napoleon, it has never left Italy. Here's a photo of a photo from the members' magazine (it doesn't do justice to the richness of the original, but still): 

On Thursday, I had my usual Whitney shift (my second and final spent with Andrea Fraser's Down the River, thank God--it is torture to stand for 2.5 hours listening to the banging noise made by Sing Sing prison and its inmates), and then I headed over to Brooklyn for a girls' night with Sally. After swinging by a wine tasting at Dandelion Wine, a really great local spot where dogs are welcome and Sally knows everyone, we headed to the Naked Dog for dinner. I should have asked where the name came from, as you'd never guess from the name that it's a cute little Italian place, complete with lovely Laura from Florence who was our server. Good food, good wine, good conversation...very odd light fixtures. 

Friday, my friend, Leslie, and I checked out the new Met Breuer, the former home of the Whitney. I really hate that building (and all Brutalist buildings), but I thought the Unfinished show was fascinating. We only made it through one floor in the almost-two-hours we spent there. There are some really famous paintings included in the show, including the Flaying of Marsyas by Titian that is your first view off the elevator. 

A Leonardo da Vinci sketch:

An unfinished Klimt

The Death of Bara by Jacques Louis David

The painting left on Van Gogh's easel when he died

And though I'm not familiar with the work of James Drummond, I thought this was fascinating

And if you're familiar with the old Whitney, you'll be pleased to know that the site-specific Charles Simonds piece, Dwellings, is still there, as is its partner piece on the building across the street.

We had lunch at Via Quadronno which was like a little piece of Italy on the Upper East Side. On the way home, I walked through Central Park and had another of those right-time-right-place moments. A ballerina was posing for a photo shoot in a little gazebo.

Friday night, I went to see the NY Pops perform at Carnegie Hall. I had previously taken a tour of the building with my friend Linda (aka Nancy), but I'd never seen a show there. The orchestra was incredible, and they featured Darren Criss (of Glee fame) and Betsy Wolfe (of Broadway fame, apparently). The theme of the show was 42nd on 57th: Broadway Today, and they featured songs from many of the most popular shows of the last 30 or so years. Phantom, Nine, Company, Les Miz, Chicago...and Let It Go from the future show Frozen (opening in 2017). Every time Darren Criss appeared on stage, a huge contingent of teenaged girls would go crazy, screaming like the Beatles had just arrived. He doesn't have a Broadway voice like she does, but he did a lovely acoustic arrangement of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miz.

The view from my seat

Not a good photo of Betsy Wolfe who channeled Elsa in her blue gown while singing Let It Go, but I have Frozen-crazy nieces, so I had to try. You can't tell, but Bobby Lopez, half of the team that created Frozen, is accompanying her on piano. She also had Jason Robert Brown (The Bridges of Madison County, The Last Five Years, Honeymoon in Vegas) as her accompanist tonight on songs he'd composed.

Betsy Wolfe and Darren Criss sing Suddenly, Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors

Saturday, I gave a public tour of the High Line. We had absolutely gorgeous weather this week, and Saturday was in the mid-60s. The tour was filled to capacity - Australians, Londoners, Romans, and Americans, though no New Yorkers. The park is in the middle of spring cutback, so it's a great time to see all the rails. They tend to hide in the plants once May comes around, but this time of year, they're the focus. Saturday night, my friend Janine and I had dinner at Salvation Burger, April Bloomfield's latest project. I'd read mixed reviews, but it was one of the best burgers of my life. I'll be returning with Ed ASAP. One note, though, don't show up hungry. At 7pm on Saturday, the wait for a table was at least an hour, and they only take walk-ins, no reservations.

Sunday, I had brunch and a good catch up chat with my friend, Terri, at the Red Cat, and then the home opener for NYCFC vs. Toronto at Yankee Stadium, with my friend, Jessie. David Villa scored twice in the first half, so I was sure we were going to win, but we had to settle for a tie. I love our new seats. We're back about 10 rows from last year, and we're under the upper deck. We have a TV for replays (and to see how much extra time has elapsed, which for some unknown reason they don't display on the field itself) and we have shade for the brutal NY summer days. It's going to be a great season!!

Op Art at the Museo del Barrio

My first encounter with the term "Op Art" was shortly after I'd graduated from college. A friend referred to a dress I owned as my "Op Art dress", which I promptly started mis-naming my "Art Deco dress". John gently corrected me (read: mocked me within an inch of my life) and I never mixed them up again. (Ask Prof. Lyle Novinski - art history was never my forte.) I now live in a city which is absolutely filled with great Art Deco buildings, and I was delighted to discover The Illusive Eye exhibition during my first visit to El Museo del Barrio.

I'd heard great things about the Museo from my friend Nicolle, but I'd never ventured up there to check it out. It's a surprisingly tiny museum. The Illusive Eye exhibition, though, was terrific. It's on display until May 21st, so if you're an Op Art fan, add it to you to-do list for NYC.

"Labyrinths and mirrors, hallucinatory machines in dervish gyration, hypnotic oculi and rapturous mandalas...kinetic forms in parrallax mystery" (whatever that means). Frank Stella, Josef Albers, Bridget Riley, Carmen Herrera...these were familiar names. But Martha Boto? I'd never heard of her. But this piece (can you see me reflected in it?) really caught my eye. Even more so once the guard turned it on and the discs started spinning. You'll have to check out my Instagram feed if you want to see it in action. Note to self: figure out how to upload videos to this blog...

Other pieces that I really enjoyed...This one made beautiful reflections on the floor as the pieces rotated and swayed in the air. (I don't know who the artist is; I forgot to make a note. But you can see Eduardo Mac Entyre's Seis Formas en Dos Circunferencias through it on the left, and a Frank Stella painting in the distance on the right.)

I couldn't take my eyes off of this Tony Bechara work. I kept looking for patterns in the colors.

Victor Vasarely's Napaura made me think of the psychedelic 60's.

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This Julio Le Parc piece (Continuel Lumiere) is three-dimensional, the small mirrored pieces extending from the wall and reflecting the lights in cool patterns.

A lot of them lose their impact in the photograph. You can't see the way this Alberto Biasi piece changes as you move from left to right, though the target in the center wasn't visible to me when I was looking at the piece itself.

Other pieces have a bigger impact in the photo. The Marina Appolonio piece below, Spazio Ad Attivazione Cinetica 6B, is a completely flat image. You can walk on it, look at it from all angles, but you only get the 3D impact when you take a photo of it. (A very friendly, helpful guard pointed this out to me.)

Once I'd made it through the Illusive Eye, I went in search of the permanent collection. I thought I'd read somewhere that they had a couple of Velasquez paintings, which I was excited to see. I realize now that a museum of Latin American, Puerto Rican and Caribbean art would have no reason to have  anything by Velasquez, so I tried to find the article online. Apparently, it's Eduardo Velazquez they had in a recent show. (I've told you I don't know anything about art!) The permanent collection that was on view was a series of recent acquisitions. The only one I photographed was titled El Jardin del Amor, and that was only because it's an old family joke between Sheila and me. :)

I had been hoping to eat at the restaurant (another Nicolle recommendation), but it's undergoing renovations, so I was out of luck. I guess I'll just have to plan a return trip...