The New York Transit Museum

Like most New Yorkers, I take the subway everyday and I take it for granted. Unless the train is running slowly, I never stop to think about how the subway runs, how it was built, or even how metrocard revenue is collected and counted. My visit to the New York Transit Museum today was informative and, more importantly, fun.

To enter the museum, visitors (appropriately) descend down the stairs of a decommissioned subway station at Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street. A friendly staff members sells tickets from a historic ticket booth (I wish they still made them with beautifully varnished, turned wood bars). The museum's first gallery is a passage with a low burlap cloth ceiling, which evokes the feeling of being in an early, unfinished subway tunnel. The passage is papered in historic images that show the construction of the city's first subway. There's also great clips from newspapers of the day that feature quotes from workers who survived freak accidents, the city officials who celebrated the new initiative, and critics who lauded the city's technological advancement. And I was surprised to learn that the subway began as a private enterprise and was not a civic amenity until well into the 20th century.

One of my favorite displays in the museum illustrated the evolution of the subway's fare system, from paper tickets to tokens to today's metrocards. The best part were the examples of fake tokens that people had passed off as the real thing, including a quarter that someone had taken the pains to punch a "Y" out the middle of, just like a real token from the '70s. The board of fakes perfectly illustrated a conversation Sal and I had on our way to the museum. As he tells it, there was a coin in Costa Rica that was the exact size, shape, and weight as the MTA subway token. Illegal vendors on the street would sell a bag of the coins for a few dollars to fare evaders. Still, even the metrocard introduced in 1994 and fully phased in by 2004 experienced evasion kinks when it started. Someone discovered if you creased the magnetic strip just so, the computers in the turnstiles would think a valueless card still had enough value on it for a ride.

In the same gallery as the subway tokens are old station turnstiles. The first turnstiles had heavy wooden arms and were operated by an attendant who pushed a footlever which allowed a passenger to turn the arm and enter the station. It's a far cry from the sleek, polished stainless steel, computer operated turnstiles the MTA uses today. We even learned why the sides of the today's turnstile are slanted and the barred passage is so narrow. The slanted slides keep people from getting a purchase on top, so they can't jump over the arm. The narrow entrance dissuades people from crouching and going underneath the arm. Given that challenge and the opportunity (we wouldn't be arrested for fare evasion in the museum), we took turns sneaking through the turnstile. We also tested the other historic turnstyles and loved that the museum allowed us to interact with and touch the artifacts (after withstanding millions of people year after year, what's a few thousand more at the museum?).

The lowest level of the museum is the decommissioned station's platform, where 19 subway cars dating from 1904 to the present are lined up on the downtown and uptown tracks. Down the center of the platform are interpretative boards with detailed descriptions of the subway's evolution. Outside each subway car is a label telling the car's length of service and context of use. Interesting fact: subway cars were wooden until an accident shattered one and killed 93 people in 1918 After that cars were made of metal. Another interesting fact: subway revenue used to be collected at the stations at night and then taken by specially guarded subway cars on dedicated tracks to a carefully concealed money room in Brooklyn (since 2006, it's taken by armored car to Queens).

The subway cars are open and people are free to wander in and out, sit on the seats, and hang on the straps. In the cars, we spent a lot of time looking at the old maps--graphic design has come a long way--and the old advertisements, which have been around since the very beginning. As we were traveling back to Park Slope, we looked around at the ads in our car and realized that the ads have evolved a lot. There are fewer of them and they're longer and horizontally oriented. Even up until the 1970s, there were more and they were smaller, with a more vertical orientation. Our ads push services , sell tourist experiences, or are sponsored by the MTA to make you feel good about the transit authority. The historic ads sold goods.

I really can't gush about the museum enough (I'm just going to ignore the exhibit on Robert Moses, which I thought had confusing explanations and illustrations of the Triborough Bridge) because I left so energized. I love when I go to a museum and it dynamically teaches me about a segment of the world I interact with everyday. I love that the museum allowed me to explore and touch the artifacts. I liked that my experience interacting with the museum objects was informed by and now informs how I relate to my everyday environment.

Dia: Beacon - The Opposite of a Love Affair

I love MASS MoCA. I hate Dia: Beacon. Both museums exhibit modern and contemporary art in rehabilitated and converted factories. My affection for the former and my distaste for the latter led to an important realization: I feel ambivalent about art from the second half of the 20^th century. To understand and enjoy works of art from this time period, I need interpretation that is both well-written and accessible.

My first, engaged experience with contemporary art was at MASS MoCA, as part of a Davis Museum fieldtrip in college. Although I had never been to a contemporary art museum, I never felt alienated, nor stupid. There was clear, introductory wall text and concise labels throughout which provided information about the artist, the materials used, and often a brief explanation of the piece’s purpose or its context in a greater movement or cultural moment. I was also gratified by the high level of participation the museum encouraged. I still remember my pleasure and delight at being allowed to sit amongst the finches in “Library for the Birds of Massachusetts,” a giant aviary stocked with bird seed and books. Now, every time I get a chance to go to Western Mass, I always go back to MASS MoCA. I’m never disappointed.

So, by the time, I got to Dia: Beacon on Saturday, I felt comfortable looking at contemporary and modern art. I was also looking forward to seeing how another museum rehabilitated and converted a factory space. The physical museum is glorious. There are broad galleries, flooded with natural light from windows and skylights. The floors are luscious, distressed, blonde wood. The ceiling rafters are exposed and in the Flavin gallery, fluorescent tube lights nestle along them, creating a sort a dialogue between those pragmatic fluorescents that light the space, and the artistic fluorescents that are Flavin's artwork.

Despite how enamored I was of the physical space, I was alienated and provoked by the installations’ interpretation. The wall labels are perfunctory—an artist’s name and the title of the work (I'll admit, good for those who like unmediated artistic experiences). For those who need help understanding contemporary art, there are receptacles with laminated, essay-like labels. Unfortunately, those labels are exercises in mental masturbation. The prose is verbose and the sentences are poorly constructed. The label writers try too hard to conform to an academic style that favors jargon over comprehension. “Mythemes of glass, axiomatic status, and the phenomenology of color" are all vaunting phrases--precocious to the point of illogic--that communicate nothing. And, ultimately, the labels made me mistrust the art. The interpretation was so overwrought that I had to wonder, is the emperor naked?

I was also shocked that there was no way to participate with the museum. In fact, one form of engagement—photography—is not allowed at all. Most museums encourage their visitors to take part in some way, whether through picture-taking or in more active, creative ways. At MASS MoCA, I’ve contributed to an exhibition that asked visitors to write on sticky notes and I’ve shared my impressions in (analog) comment books sprinkled throughout the galleries (I've also taken many photographs). At the Brooklyn Museum last week, after viewing a Yinka Shonibare installation, I tweeted my impressions to the Museum's feed on the gallery's computer. After visiting the Met, I became a fan of their Facebook page and I put their hash tag on my photos on Flickr. Social media takes relatively little effort on a museum's part to deploy and provides a number of ways for visitors to engage before, during, and after their visit. It can aid interpretation. It's also becoming vital to audience attraction and retention, especially for a younger demographic.

The audience at Dia: Beacon is a segment that most museums strive to attract—Gen Y. The nature of Dia: Beacon’s collection lures Gen Y to the museum, but I doubt the museum is nurturing long-term relationships. Dia: Beacon does not use any of the new social media to retain or engage a generation which believes that personal expression is an inalienable birth right and that the internet is a democracy that allows any one to tke part in the conversation. One day Dia: Beacons's survival may depend on an engaged Gen Y and it's time they start taking the steps to build their relationships with them. They need to allow photography. They need to create a Facebook page. They should twitter. They should vivify their website. Perhaps if Dia: Beacon uses the new media I might begin to feel like a participant in the museum's mission, and not like a neophyte at the alter of ART.

(Head over to Retrograde Design for Patty's take on our visit.)

The BPL: My New Favorite Place

I've spent the past two Saturday mornings at the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. I'm in love; the place is magical and whimsical.

The building--at first glance--is imposing, with a strangely concave front facade. Yet--on second glance--it is ameliorated by unattributed quotations about the power of reading. The quotations express wonderfully idealistic sentiments about the place of books in culture and the transformative effect of knowledge. The library's very physical shell is an ode to the idea of books as instruments of self-improvement. After reading the library's website, I discovered that the building's physicality is meant to evoke the materiality of a book. "The spine is on Grand Army Plaza and the building's two wings open like pages onto Eastern Parkway and Flatbush Avenue."

The steps leading up to the library are shallow and short, which induced me to skip and skim my way up, just like when I'm hurriedly reading a well-plotted book to figure out what will happen next. Once inside the building and past the first information desk, there's a soaring foyer of gray marble and honey colored wood. It feels deliciously calm, but not at all solemn. Off the foyer is the children's reading room and the literature reading room. On the second floor are the nonfiction reading rooms. All are incredibly large, sunny, and inviting. I spent several happy hours wondering up and down the stacks.

What I especially love about the Brooklyn Library is that, while not a university library, it's still a very serviceable research library, with an extensive and diverse nonfiction collection. Having grown up in the 'burbs of Georgia, I was almost convinced public libraries were architectually welcoming, but largely buildings that only housed popular reading, the classics, and some how-to manuals. I was delighted to wonder in today and pick up a treatise on the condom industry in the US, a historical study of the creation of a teen culture over the course of the twentieth century, and a Brits memoir of the American homefront during WWII. I'm in eclectic heaven.

The 21st-Century Promenade

The City is replete with hip places to see and be seen. The newest and, ironically, most egalitarian is the Highline--a park on the old elevated train tracks that used to run from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street, between 10th & 11th Avenues (see the map). Forget strolling anywhere else in the city during twilight, everyone is flocking to the magical, green oasis in the sky.

For good reason: the park is awesome, which stems--in part--from its novelty. The shocking juxtaposition of vibrant wildflowers with dead-looking city buildings is delicious. The ability to look at architectural details on level is delightful. Then there's the built-in teak benches which overlook the river during sunset. I also particularly like how the wildflower are planted between the old railroad ties.


But, the best part of my visit last week was the unexpected, unofficial jazz band that had set up on the fire escapes of an apartment building that overlooks the 20th St. entrance. The trumpet and trombone players scatted. The drummer rat-a-tat-tatted and the piano player provided the melody everyone started swinging to. New York is the only place where life sometimes really can be a musical--where joy transcends and infuses a moment so that the only thing one can do is sing and dance.

Shakespeare in the Park

You know you have a good friend when... she'll stand in Central Park all day to get tickets for Shakespeare in the Park. Annette was a champ, arriving at 9:30am, to get tickets for Twelfth Night at the Delacorte. Was it worth the wait? Simply put, the show was fantastic. The play was vividly and energetically brought to life.

Most of the show's reviews start with a discussion of the show's headliner, Anne Hathaway. Charles Isherwood, who reviewed the play for The New York Times, certainly did. He spent the first half of his review gushing over her performance. It was mildly nauseating (which makes me wonder just how low his expectations were to fall all over himself like that). She was good, but as I was sitting there watching her be Anne-Hathaway-in-a-soldier's-uniform, I realized just why the Public Theater mounted Twelfth Night so quickly after it's last run of the play (in 2002, Julia Stiles was Viola): Viola may be the character the plot largely turns around, but she's not on stage all that much. This fact makes the play a fantastic vehicle for young, untried-on-stage, film ingenues. If they're good, so much the better. If they're not so good, it doesn't really matter because Viola's scenes are few and far between and it's an ensemble piece--the genius of Feste, the hilarity of Sir Andrew Aguecheeck, and the acerbic tongue of Maria can keep the audience engaged and chortling.

Director Daniel Sullivan hedged his bets, surrounding Hathaway with a superb supporting cast. Julie White was a pitch-perfect Maria. Hamish Linklater, who played the wayward knight Andrew Aguecheek, offered a sincere and hilarious interpretation, imbuing the character with an injured dignity rarely seen in the role. Raul Esperaza managed to portray Orsino's stalkerish and incessant chase of Maria as sympathetic, even noble. Michael Cumptsy, as Malvoli, and David Pittu, as Feste, stole the show. Their scene, in which Festes impersonate the rector Sir Topaz to taunt the imprisoned Malvolio, was squirm-in-your-seat masterful.

Part of the delight of the show was the set, designed by John Lee Beatty, and the way the actors used it. Beatty created a set that was a park within a park, with verdant, rolling hills of astroturf nestled under the night-dark treeline of Central Park. Plus, it just looked fun to be on. The back of the set was about eight feet high and formed a sort of wall, along which was a path lined with trees. A staircase carved out of the hillside allowed the actors to move from the top down to the bottom. At centerstage on the right and left sides were gentle hillocks, both liberally planted with trees. The characters his behind trees. They ran up and down the hills, slid down them, jumped off them, and generally employed the set as an aid to create great physical comedy. Beatty's set was the perfect example of a set designer and a director perfectly merging their talents to create something better than its constituent parts.

Shakespeare in the Park is a gift to the residents of the City and this production of Twelfth Night was well worth the wait in line. Annette, I got your back next time.

Model as Muse

I have a lowbrow proclivity to admit: I love “America’s Next Top Model.” I cannot get enough of Tyra Bank’s modeling competition. Last cycle, I even carefully orchestrated my Manhattan to Long Island commute to make certain I would be home by 7:45, settled down, and in place for the 8:00 start. I can’t even excuse this reality show viewing by likening it to watching a train wreck. I actually like seeing the clothes the girls model. I’m amused by the girls whining about how HARD modeling is and I even get a kick out of watching Tyra swan around the judging room.

Imagine my shock when my lowbrow indulgence actually informed my enjoyment of a highbrow exhibition, “Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion” at the Met. I had no idea that I had learned so much about iconic fashion images and the history of the fashion industry from a reality television show. See team, tv won’t always rot your brain.

Looking at an image from the 1950s of a model in profile, bent over with her arms akimbo, my date exclaimed “Ugh, why is she hunched over like that.” While I trilled at the exact same moment, “Look at those angles!” Nigel, one of the photographer-judges on the show, is adamant that the girls contort their limbs to create more visual interest in an image.

Walking by a wall of Sports Illustrated covers, I started looking for Tyra. As I helpfully informed my date, she had been the first African American model to grace the yearly bikini issue. Sure enough, the cover was there, although I suspect he would have appreciated it even without the historical context.

Strolling along another wall of covers from the late 1970s/early 1980s, I started looking for Janice Dickinson. Sure enough, she was there too. When I mentioned to my date that she was the first supermodel, he naturally asked, “How did she become the first?”

“Oh,” I replied. “She coined the phrase.” I didn’t mention that Janice’s status as the first supermodel was an oft mentioned fact on ANTM, where she had been a judge for a few cycles.

“I see.” He said.

Then because I couldn’t stop myself, I added “She destroyed her face with too much plastic surgery.” I could see him start to wonder how exactly he had been induced to wonder through a fashion exhibition with a woman who could spew idiotic minutia like this. Still, he gamely carried on. Although, really, how hard is it to be a good sport when you get to ogle gorgeous women to your heart’s content?

Even without my hard-won knowledge from Top Model, I would have dug the exhibition. From the very first display—a recreation of Dovima wearing Christian Dior and posed with her arms outstretched next to two elephants—you could tell that the exhibition designer had a field day. The exhibition was exuberantly playful, occasionally reverent, often irreverent, coy, and accessible. The hallway leading into the main galleries were illuminated with photographer’s umbrella-ed lights. Each gallery represented a different decade and each gallery was decorated in the era’s aesthetic—the ‘90s gallery looked like a grunge club with glow-in the dark graffiti on the walls and black lights for illumination. My date and I spent almost as long just checking out the model graffiti on the walls.

Still, he must not have enjoyed himself as much as I thought. He hasn’t call since. I guess I better save geeking-out about model trivia for my girlfriends. Or not.

In Between the Rain Drops

Living in New York lately has felt a lot like living on the planet in Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day"--the rain never stops. At five this morning, I awoke to the steady beat of rain and cursed the never-ending water. Happily, by lunchtime the sky had cleared. Like the children in Bradbury's short story, Patty, Katie, and I scurried out into the sunshine, afraid to miss a moment.

We decided to walk over to the Brooklyn Museum since Katie and I had never been. On our way, we discovered a street fair underway on 7th Ave. It went on for blocks and blocks and there were tons of people out and about. We gorged ourselves on Italian sausages and peppers, Thai spring rolls, and fruit smoothies on our walk. It's just the sort of sustenance once needs for a day of museum viewing. Besides, you can't go to a street fair without experiencing the street fare.

We got a little lost on the way to the Brooklyn Museum, but--happily--we discovered the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Inspired by the glimpses of the roses we had caught behind the wrought iron fences, we decided to scrap the Museum for verdant paths and gorgeous flowers.

Entering the Botanic Garden is like leaving the borough behind. Once you are within the gates, it is a wholly new place. Although the occasional high-rise apartment insinuates itself into the view, the vistas are largely uninterrupted green space. One of the loveliest parts of the Garden is the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden. The calm lake with large koi, the hanging weeping willows, and the simple wooden bridge beguiled us. Beyond the bridge was a charming waterfall. In the pool at the bottom, turtles sunned themselves on a rock. They too were soaking up the sun time.


As we walked along the outer edge of the Garden, we spotted the Brooklyn Museum and decided to pop in for the rest of the afternoon. I must admit, I was slightly mystified by the museum's exterior. Who ruins a beaux art facade by slapping on some tiered-glass spaceship? I suppose it's meant to make the museum more inviting and to draw people in on the ground-level, but I still think it's aesthetically horrifying.


The Museum's facade, it turns out, foreshadowed the juxtapositions within. As nonplussed as I was by the outside of the museum, that's how enchanted I was with the installation of the "American Identities" gallery. In this gallery, decorative arts are juxtaposed with paintings (and sometimes the ceramics or furniture depicted in the painting have a one to one example in a case below the painting). English colonial paintings are displayed next to Spanish colonial paintings, showing the similar ways in which the upper class established their social position. A landscape of Niagra Falls was in dialogue with an abstract painting of water splatters. Both vibrated with the energy of thousands of tons of cascading water.

What I loved about "American Identities" was the sense of excitement. The galleries were painted in vibrant colors. Patty and Katie thought the colors were too saturated and took away from the art, but I thought the colored walls created a sense of dynamism. When I walked into the gallery, it was as if the walls said something is happening here. Then as I focused in on the paintings and decorative arts how they were presented, you could see that there were really exciting dialogues between the displayed objects.

That same dynamism was also on display in the Brooklyn Museum's Luce Center. Unlike the static one at the Met (parallel rows of case after case of furniture, silver, glass, and paintings), the Brooklyn Museum's drew the visitor further and further into it. A display of Tiffany glasses were lit up just inside the entrance. A display with a Murphy's folding chair contained a video screen showing technicians manipulating the chair into its 50 different iterations. Drawers with objects could be pulled in and out, creating a jewelry box sense of excitement. This was the first Luce Center I encountered that was playful.

It was an amazing day in Brooklyn and I'm looking forward to visiting the Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Museum many more times. It would take a year of Sundays to take it all in.