Walking Off the Big Apple

As an art destination, Dia:Beacon has long been on my to-do list. Ever since the museum’s opening in May 2003, I've wanted to travel up the Hudson River to Beacon, New York to check out this factory repurposed for art. Housed in a former Nabisco printing plant, the museum's vast interior is known for providing the needed light, space, and air for the Dia Art Foundation's unsurpassed art collection. For whatever reasons, I've delayed going, but recent in-town visits to see the work of Dan Flavin at The Morgan ( see previous post ) and John Chamberlain at the Guggenheim made me want to see more of their work. So finally, this past Sunday, a particularly bright day of clear blue skies and cool temperatures, I made the trip. walking to Dia:Beacon A visit to Dia:Bacon is not only easier than I imagined but also more affordable. The train ride lasts about an hour and twenty minutes, though seemingly faster while gazing at the famous Hudson River Valley landscapes

Several museum exhibitions have opened in New York City over the past couple of weeks, including blockbuster retrospectives of Cindy Sherman and John Chamberlain, but a smaller and more focused exhibit of the drawings of Dan Flavin at the Morgan Library & Museum yields the most surprises. While the big shows at MoMA and Guggenheim provide a great deal of interest, those galleries are filled with works we expect to see. Not so with the Flavin exhibit. While most will know the artist for his fluorescent sculpture, his works on paper expand our understanding. Drawings have a way of revealing the artist in an intimate way, as if we are looking over their shoulder while they look around and think about the world. Dan Flavin (1933-1996) blue trees in wind, 1957 Grease pencil on ledger paper 7 7/8 x 10 1/2 inches (20 x 26.7 cm) Collection of Stephen Flavin © 2012 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photography: Graham S. Haber, 2011 Organized by Isabelle

(updated 2017) While lacking the mystique of nearby Gramercy Park, Stuyvesant Square makes a pleasant destination for a walk. One certain advantage is that the fenced park is open to the public. No key is necessary. Bounded by E. 15th Street to E. 17th Street and curiously bisected by Second Avenue, the park sits on land that once belonged to the Stuyvesant family. In 1836 Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778–1847) made the land available to the city with the understanding it would become a park. Planned in similar fashion to other squares, the park opened to the public in 1850 and became a fashionable residential destination in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The opening of St. George's Church solidified the social standing of the area, especially boosted by the church's chief patron and warden, John Pierpont Morgan . Stuyvesant Square Subsequent renovations in the twentieth century modernized Stuyvesant Square. The eastern side now serves as gateway to many me

(Revised February 2013) The Big Apple has played an important role in the history of the U.S. Presidency, including the two Presidents whose birthdays are near this date - Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and George Washington (February 22). In celebration of Presidents' Day, enjoy this compilation of presidential-themed posts previously published on Walking Off the Big Apple. George Washington, Washington Square Arch, Washington Square Park. night. The arch served to commemorate the Centennial of Washington's Inauguration, an event that took place downtown. The pier statues were added later -"Washington at War" on the left of the arch by Herman MacNeil in 1916 and "Washington at Peace" on the right by Alexander Stirling Calder in 1918. Yes, Calder was the father of the famous mobile artist, Alexander Calder. •   The Reagan-Bush-Gorbachev Meeting on Governors Island: A Debriefing and a Walk On December 7, 1988, President Ronald Reagan and V

The day before the public opening of the New Museum's 2012 Triennial, the museum's second iteration of its generational survey of young artists, a water main broke a few blocks from the museum, gushing water onto the street and creating a lake that temporarily flooded the intersection of the Bowery and Delancey. This literal rupture in the urban fabric halted the normal tidal flow of morning traffic, and it took workers a couple of hours to restore order. The unplanned breakdown and its accompanying visuals - workmen in hardhats tearing up the pavement, multiple police cars with flashing lights, and helicopters surveilling the scene overhead - seemed an appropriate backdrop for the work displayed by the young artists inside the museum. This is their new normal. Living in an uncertain epoch that teeters toward wholesale breakdown in the social and political order, the artists and collectives in the appropriately titled The Ungovernables display an unwillingness to serve as

(Update note, August 2013. This post needs serious updating. Inwood is now bustling with new businesses and amusements, especially in summer.) With the present chilly gray day excluded, most of our winter days this season have been warm enough and cheerily sunny enough for something akin to a hike. Many days have hit the high 40s with several flirting with the 50 degree mark. It's good walking weather. But if more than a simple walk in the park meets one's fancy on such a winter's day, a rigorous walk through Inwood Hill Park and Fort Tryon Park should do. The parks of Upper Manhattan offer the opportunity to engage in the kind of strenuous exercise we typically associate with more bucolic areas farther north on the Hudson. Inwood Hill Park. View of Henry Hudson Bridge. The A train's stop at Dykman Street  is a good place to begin an exploration of both parks. Emerging from the station and into the busy commercial intersection of Dykman and Broadway, visitor

(revised 2017) Photographer Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) made over 8500 pictures of Paris during his prolific life as an artist - the romantic city's cobblestone streets, its windows with store mannequins, luscious but tamed parks, mysterious courtyards, his own neighborhood in the 5th arrondissement , and much more - but he did not take one picture of the Eiffel Tower. Not one. Atget didn't like to pander to the postcard set. His Paris was the ephemeral pre-modern city, a place of irregular streets and organ grinders, and less the modern city of planner Baron Haussmann's domineering boulevards and that new soaring engineering marvel constructed in the Champ de Mars in 1889. Eugène Atget.  Cour, 7 rue de Valence, June 1922. Matte albumen silver print, 7 x 8 15/16″ (17.8 x 22.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden A 2012 exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) titled Eugène Atget: "Documents

(revised and updated) A stroll to  Jane's Carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park   - One of the many charms of living the life of a flâneur , aside from being oblivious to the fact that it's the wrong time (21st century, not the 19th) and the wrong city (New York, not Paris) is to embark on a long walk in a city park without caring about much of anything and then suddenly being struck by a surprising view. The academics among us talk about the notion of visual culture, a relatively new paradigm popular among art historians that suggests that our life is characterized by the tendency to visualize knowledge. Whatever can be discovered and understood will eventually be visualized, in large part because we now have the technology - or soon will have it - to see amazing things. The paradigm that visual culture seeks to replace is the post-modern notion that everything is a "text" that can be deconstructed and read. Visual culture posits the notion that sometimes a depende

(updated 2015) En route to a performance at the either of the main venues of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the BAM Harvey or the Peter Jay Sharp Building, especially near the train stations that service the Brooklyn neighborhood of Fort Greene, it is possible to observe many visitors from other boroughs looking tentatively around in every direction to get their geographical bearings, as if they were lost. I would wager that they are lost. Where Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall are served by immediately adjacent subway stops, making it possible to see these venues right away after climbing stairs to the street, the BAMs are visually obscured and thus take some time figuring out. I would also wager that more than a handful of performing arts patrons fail to make curtain time because of the wily geographical charms of this neighborhood. Walking in the Brooklyn neighborhood, Fort Greene. Intersection of Fulton and South Oxford Street. Let's solve this confusion by exploring