First Stop: Brooklyn Museum. It turns out the Brooklyn Museum is closed on Tuesdays. So my streak of having lived in this neighborhood for a year and a half without going to the museum that's a 5 minute walk away remains intact. Booya!
Second Stop: Chelsea. I didn't want to just do the major museums, I wanted to see what artists are up to today, so I went to Chelsea, where it turns out the old industrial buildings are ALL art galleries now. I spent several hours here going to many different shows, and the details of each show would reveal very little about my experience and probably be a terrific bore for both reader and writer. But here are some thoughts and reactions from my time there.
-Modern art doesn't have to be horrible any more than experimental theater has to be masturbatory. It's just that it usually is. But there were shows that, despite (and maybe even because of) my lack of education or training in the art form, I enjoyed very much. It occurred to me that their aim in creating these installations is very similar to my own aim in the theater I'm involved with, which is to create a context for a visceral experience, rather than to challenge the mind to figure out meaning. Now many of the shows I saw were unsuccessful to that end (like the one showing a video tour of concentration camps in a dark, enormous warehouse-type space), but a few actually did hit me. I hesitate to try and say what the experience was or what the piece was about, because to try and put words to it is to miss the point entirely.
There was one show that by its very nature seemed to lend itself to writing. It was one of the bigger galleries I went to, and it was full of books open to specific pages, and very simply but deliberately set up, each as its own sort of sculpture. The books were, for the most part, art textbooks from the 70's that contained instructions on how to create a piece of art. Some of them would instruct you to look at objects in a certain way and then draw from that inspiration, and some were more along the lines of "Drink coffee. Now undrink the coffee while keeping it in your stomach. Good job." So just to recap, these were sculptures of books of instructions for art, set up as art themselves. Intellectually challenging maybe, but all in all pretty strange.
-I am nowhere near cool enough to spend a lot of time in Chelsea. Aside from the "what-art-class-that-you're-only-taking-for-a-distribution-requirement-in-order-to-get-your-business-degree-from-NYU-sent-you-to-me-the-unluckiest-of-gallery-receptionists" looks that I got in most places I went, there were other little hints that I didn't belong. Like the big, strange door that, when I went in to see what was on the other side, was met by a perky greeter (a walmart for trendy people if you will) who, sensing immediately who I was, said, "clothing store" with the smile reserved for fun misunderstandings with out-of-towners.
-Photography, like modern art, doesn't have to be a vapid art form, but when the photographs are just pictures of pretty scenes, or photos taken from a different angle than you normally see them, put it in a photo album, not an art gallery. If I want to see pretty scenes, I won't go to the meatpacking district.
Third stop, Museum of Natural History--After a few hours of art galleries, I needed a change of pace, so I trekked up to the upper west side for a look at some dinosaur bones. And, you know, other stuff too I guess. Highlights from that excursion include ceremonial masks from Amazonian tribes, a life-size replica of a Blue Whale (there are simply no words to describe how absurdly large this creature is), and a very brief history of the movement of early man across the land bridge in the Bering Strait and into what is now Alaska, and then south into the rest of North America...an important discovery in the history of man, which, if I remember my elementary school history right, happened in the year 1492.
By the time I was done there, places were shutting down for the day, so I headed home to watch the state of the union at a local bar. I was hit with a cruel reminder that I'm no longer in Portland when I was unable to find a single bar that would even put it on their television on silent. So I went home to find a kitten adorably trying to assure that I would never go on another trip without her.
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