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Published: December 17th 2018
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Magnificent outside and in!Karen had a
spin classin the morning, and she invited me to come along – a new experience. She and another participant adjusted a bike for me, further adjusted by the instructor. We all warmed up by biking at our own pace, then he began to call out instructions about changing positions and the weight of the resistance, in increasingly difficult intervals. He was good about helping me find the right positions. I could do everything, but the bike ergonomics were putting undue strain on my lower back. After about fifteen minutes, I cooled down at a non-challenging pace and withdrew from the class. To one side of the weight room I went through standing-up versions of my usual stretches, which felt good.
On our way back from the gym, we went into the local branch of the NY Public Library (for Karen to pickup a reserved book on Proust, which we coincidentally have both been reading). Like
Memorial Park Library in Calgary, it is a
Carnegie Library, although on a slightly smaller scale. The interior is rather plain, possibly from the almost inevitable renovations over the years.
A short distance away, a more inventive renovation was at the nearby Corner Book Store,
Payne Witney House 1906
Home of French Cultural Services which was historically a pharmacy. The beautifully carved wood interior was intact, including the surround where the druggist would have dispensed medicines. The historic tooled metal cash register still had pride of place in the centre. Nowadays, much of the stock consisted of single copies of books encompassing a wide variety of topics in politics, the arts, and literature.
Our objective this day was the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Karen showed her hometown knowledge by highlighting many of the buildings, once or currently owned by financial or industrial titans, as we strolled down
Fifth Avenue. We stopped at the
French Consulate where a French language bookstore spread over two floors. Wonderfully, on the second floor was a display of valuable editions for sale at prices such as $2000. One was a very thick version of St Exupery’s novella,
The Little Prince, and I could not understand why the book was so thick, unless it contained actual paintings.
The Met is an enormous building – thankfully Karen knew that a smaller entrance on 84 Street would work much better than the line-ups at the main entrance. With cursory glances at priceless artworks, we made our way to the packed cafeteria for lunch. I had pasta in
garlic oil with some sort of greens - tasty in a mild way. Afterwards, Karen had errands to do and left me to wander in the Galleries.
Although I did divert into a photography exhibition for a few minutes, the first exhibit on the serious list was “Age of Empires”, the special show of art and artifacts from the
Qin and
Han Dynasties at the turn of the zero millennium. Initially, I was disappointed because the items were from the
Xian tombs, which I saw in person many years ago; however, as the many displays of intricate jewelry, grave items, statues and honorifics followed one after the other, awe at the breadth of the culture overwhelmed me. Focusing was hard because hundreds of people, many Chinese, were also in the gallery, all exclaiming in wonder and admiration.
My next goal was the African exhibit, which I hoped would include Nigerian carving but didn’t. Masks and devotional figures from
Mali were prominent. The most astonishing item was a modern sculpture by
El Anatsui, that quite successfully imitated the narrow-width weaving of West Africa using pieces of aluminum cans wired together and shaped to remind the viewer of the heavy, draped fabrics
Between Heaven Earth by El Anatsui
Ghanian metal sculpture that really does look like woven cloth used in
Ghanaian ceremonial clothing. From a distance the details of the cans disappeared and the whole sculpture shone seemingly with precious metals. (In 2018 I saw his
work also in the British Museum.
I fell into the trap of randomly dipping into galleries to see the famous works of Rubens, van Gogh, Monet and others.
The Water Lilies paintings in this collection were disappointing. (How dare I critique?!)
A more deliberate act was to view the Iranian carpet masterpieces. These were displayed in a room with carved window coverings, which put me in mind of Naquib Mahfouz’s
Cairo Trilogy in which the matriarch would rarely venture beyond her similarly covered window. And finally, I moved into the gallery of modern paintings, confirming my relatively new-found appreciation for Mark
Rothko and my longer-standing love for
Jackson Pollock's work. The gallery was limited in its modern collection, possibly because of the prominence of the larger collections in the
Museum of Modern Art, which I will visit in a couple of days
Out of time, I spent almost 25 minutes trying to understand how to get out the front door! Bright sunshine greeted me and hundreds of others sitting on the wide steps. I walked down the opposite
side of Fifth Avenue, again admiring the decadent homes of the rich and the mansion-style private schools for girls. I couldn’t help admiring the rather restrained, although huge, apartment building where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis lived (1040 Fifth Avenue).
After a delicious supper of roast chicken and salad, we left to attend
Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, a hit Broadway musical. Karen and I took the subway to Times Square. I couldn’t get the ticket gate to open when I ran a fare card through the reader. After several times, a wonderfully cheerful person tried to help and finally just said, “I will pay for you”. She ran her card through and brushed off my astonished thanks. The line we were on is the newest, thus clean and modern.
Coming out near Times Square was to be bashed by gigantic megawatt billboards and crushing sounds made by thousands of people and their traffic. We moved through the river of human flesh to the
Imperial Theatre. Because it wouldn’t open until 7:30, we had to wait in what might have been considered the lobby. I couldn’t understand why it looked like a Russian bunker, all grey with crumbling black
Imperial Theater on Broadway
The lights of Broadway do away with night! and dirty white posters printed in Russian
Cyrillic and demands to free
Pussy Riot. Only when we began to move did it finally occur to me that this was deliberately done to take us into another world.
The theatre opened up into wine-red plush and golden colours. The stage, if it could be called that, was on five free-form levels, with audience members seated at tables and chairs in empty spaces made by the swirling shapes. Other members sat at the back of the stage area, facing us. Even at our higher level there was a little drinks table and lamp beside Karen. Star-burst electric chandeliers lit this extraordinary setting.
Simply gazing at all the theatre-goers in such a buzz was exciting. Suddenly, the lights got even brighter. Loudly singing performers danced from innumerable entrances at all levels of the theatre. One sang directly at me, and I was uncontrollably grinning. This was the style of the whole production, with the main scenes taking place in the round on the strangely formed stage. Based on a few scenes in
War and Peace, the entire play was sung.
Josh Groban sang Pierre with unexpected characterization, playing the aging cuckolded husband of a she-devil..
Her amoral brother seduces the innocent Natasha as a diversion from his usual carousing.
Denée Benton playing Natasha sang with a beautiful soprano voice, rich through her entire register.
Coming out from the dark lobby into Times Square caused me visual dislocation! Thousands of people pushed through each other in the over-lit streets, plus cabs and private vehicles tried to roll forward against the tide. Karen always walks to the Union Station subway to gradually let go of the play’s world and re-enter the City’s reality. Gradually we left behind the LED billboards and settled into a comfortable pace.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
A lovely and lively city
Glad you had a wonderful time. We'll be heading back to the city in March.