Greenwood Cemetery (or, my new favorite place)

There's a park in Brooklyn where no one goes. There are verdant vistas, untrammeled grass, and empty paths--in short, paradise in an overcrowded city. Of course, the reason it may be so empty is because it's a cemetery. For some reason people tend to be creeped out about hanging out around the dead. It's their loss--Greenwood Cemetery is awesome (and strangely life-affirming).

A group of us put together a self-guided tour of the Cemetery today. We were each responsible for finding a min

ute or two of things to say about a grave or landmark from a

pre-compiled list. We all took it seriously too, sussing out interesting tidbits to share with the group. I spoke about the amateur Egyptologist Albert Ross Parson's mausoleum, which is a miniature pyramid decorated with a fascinating mix of Christian and Egyptian iconography. The juxtaposition of motifs make a lot of sense when you consider that he wrote a book called, "New Light from the Great Pyramid" that explored how ancient Egyptian culture and religious beliefs could elucidate different teachings from the Bible.

Katie spoke about the quaker parrots that have taken up residence in Greenwood's gates. Ornothologists believe they somehow escaped from a crate being unloaded from a plane at JFK in the 60s. The bright green, loud birds spread all over the city, apparently, but the Parks Service routed them out of Central Park unmercifully because they were afraid they'd force out the native species. The folks at the Cemetery let the birds be and were actually rewarded for their salutary neglect. The parrots did displace the pigeons who roosted in the gate and whose corrosive droppings were eating away at the stone (apparently, quaker parrot poo doesn't harm stone).

Kate gave us a rousing talk about the Battle of Brooklyn, which took place on the Cemetery's highest hill. That battle is credited as being the point at which Washington could have lost it all. The British were trouncing the Americans. Washington needed to retreat and regroup. He left 400 men on the hill to hold the Brits off as he got the rest of the troops to safer ground. All but 9 of those men died defending the hill. But their effort was not for naught--Washington and his troops escaped, evading the Brits, and continuing our nation's fight for independence. Kate also introduced us to a statue of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, who stands in direct line with the Statue of Liberty. Minerva eternally raises her hand in salute to Lady Liberty.

Everyone in the group gave great talks (and Allison did a great job leading us around) and we realized that there's still way more of the cemetery to see and enjoy. We're definitely planning on going again en masse. in the meantime, I might just need to go visit on my own. It's such a beautiful, calm place.

Brooklyn Museum

Last weekend, Katie, Patty and I went to the Brooklyn Museum to see the costume show, American High Style. It was excellent, but then exhibitions of old clothes almost always are. There is something innately fascinating about costumes from another period; they are so familiar, yet so other.

While we were there, I dragged them into the newly installed Egyptian galleries for a quick look around and to see Melvin the Mummy, who had gotten a write-up in The New York Times. I was underwhelmed by Melvin, but pretty intrigued by the galleries because of my work on the Tut exhibition. It was nice to finally have some context for the objects I blow by on a weekly basis as I chase down errant cameramen.

This afternoon, I went back to the BM to look around and read the wall text in the Egyptian galleries at my leisure. I didn't find the the layout of the galleries intuitive and wasn't quite sure how to move through them to move through time and read the interpretation in chronological order. So, I abandoned that and just did a lot of looking and read a lot of object labels--I became most interested in the materials the objects were made of. Most of Tut's stuff is gold, wood, or some form of alabaster. The objects at the BM were more work-a-day with many being some type of ceramic or carved stone. Not surprisingly the craftsmanship of objects made for non-royals wasn't as fine either. It must have been nice to being a living God on earth and have a God's send-off into the afterlife.

While I was at the Museum today, I also went and paid a visit to my favorite work of art in the collection, Martinque Woman by Malvina Hoffman. It's an arresting black marble sculpture of a larger-than-life woman's head. The interplay of textures and color--her smooth, flawless, dark black skin juxtaposed against the rough, stippled carving of her grayish white hair--is delicious. She gazes at the entrance of the gallery, pulling the viewer in and demanding their consideration. It's a powerful piece in a gallery of exceptional artwork.

In fact, I had forgotten how much I liked her gallery, a sort of hodge podge of late 19th/20th century paintings and sculptures located in front of the American Wing's Luce Center. It's the eclectic, thoughtfully curated nature of the gallery that makes it so gratifying. At the front of the gallery, are folk-art sculpture of animals--a giraffe's painted head, and two fierce lions, carved from salvaged railroad ties and whose whiskers are made of wires. Beyond them is a marble statue of a woman, a late-19th century interpretation of classic Greek statuary. It's not very good (actually), but it's juxtaposition against the untrained folk art carver and across from Hoffman's statue, shows the range of sculptural work happening in America within a 60 year period.

Rounding at the gallery's look at sculpture is John Koch's homoerotic painting The Sculptor. The foreground depicts a naked, male model lighting the cigarette of the sculpture who is taking measurements of his calves and thighs with calipers. In the background stands a monumental sculpture, depicting a Grecian figure (perhaps Hercules?) battling some sort of monster. The focus of the painting is the finely rendered model's back, with it's rippling back. The figure is more sculptural than the sculpture in the background, which acts almost as a mere placeholder.

I'm pretty darn lucky that I'm only a 10 minute walk from the Brooklyn Museum. It's become my defacto hangout when I have a spare hour or two. Every time I am delighted and charmed. It's, honestly, a privilege to become familiar with a collection through repeat viewings.

"Restoration" at NYTW

I’m tickled when theatre looks at the art world. It’s no surprise then that (after I got over my opening scene heart attack) I enjoyed “Restoration” at New York Theatre Workshop on Friday.

As a prelude to my heart attack: the play is about an art conservator who has fallen out of favor with the “establishment”. Forced to the sidelines of the conservation field, Giulia practices in a garage in Brooklyn and teaches at the maligned Brooklyn College. She labors in near obscurity, but due to her commitment to research and the support of a persuasive old mentor, she is given the career-changing opportunity to clean Michaelangelo’s David in honor of his 500^th birthday.

So, my chest clutching: Let’s not ignore the fact that Giulia works in what looks like a space without temperature control. When Giulia was done doing work for the day, she pulled down her large magnifying glass until it was only 6 inches above the painting. UGH. AGH. No conservator worth her salt leaves any sort of instrument hanging over a painting. Conservators envision disaster. They know that a magnifying glass could topple over a painting at any instance. Until the scene ended I squirmed in my seat and wondered if this was a first indication of lazy research during the play’s conception.

Happily, things swiftly improved, including the lead actress’s performance. The playwright, Claudia Shear, plays Giulia, a brash, whip smart, Italian-American art conservator. The first scene opens with Giulia alone in her studio addressing the audience as she explains how was she drawn to the field. It’s not a badly written monologue, but Shear is not a subtle actress and she has not written her character in a nuanced way. The play might have been better served by an actress who did not know the character intimately, was not her creator, and who needed to find ways to connect to her. To be fair, the character does go through a transformation and Shear does do a fine job of portraying that arc. She is softened during her time working on the David and by the joshing friendship she forms with Max, the macho, yet sensitively cultured head guard at the museum (played by the excellent Jonathan Cake). She learns that no woman is an island and only statues can stand apart from humanity forever.

Still, despite my above quibbles there is something oddly charismatic about Giulia. She cares about him vengefully and idealistically. She recognizes that this is her opportunity to blow raspberries at the academic conservation world that rejected her (something about a confusing slander case involving another conservator), but she also cares deeply about cleaning the David well and ensuring his survival for future generations. There is a moving scene at a press conference, where the director and PR manager try and coerce her into reading a press release about repairing the holes in the David’s back. Giulia deviates from the script to forcefully and eloquently defend the importance of preserving a piece of art’s history—in this case the holes from the stones thrown at the David as he was carted to the Palazzo del Signoria.

The audience never actually sees those holes, nor do they see the entire David until the end of the play. For most of the play, the statue is hidden behind scaffolding with only an assortment of visible body parts. The set designer, Scott Pask, plays with scale so that a foot is uncomfortably close to the tushy. The sculpture’s penis is at chest level and prominently displayed, leading to the compulsory awkward (well, the playwright couldn’t not go there) and hilarious cleaning session.

There are a lot of wonderfully funny moments in the play, tempered by poignant moments where the characters reflect on the David’s role in their lives and art in general. The audience members are the beneficiaries of their considered and heartfelt insights. It’s a play worth seeing and it’s a play worth mounting again, now that New York Theatre Workshop has given it its first legs.

Photo Courtesy of www.sdnn.com. Ticket courtesy of Annette.

Fighting my inner curmudgeon about social media

On an institutional level, I think social media is a pretty neat thing. On a personal level, I wish someone would permanently crash the servers at Facebook and Twitter.

I've been thinking a lot about social media lately. A couple of weeks ago, I attended Social Media Art Camp, a two-day conference that took a broad look at the cultural landscape and discussed how social media could become a pivotal transformation point for how arts organizations engage with their audiences. It was all very kumbaya (and predictable) as the speakers discussed how different platforms on the web can create a virtual gathering places, allowing people to share their thoughts and come together to discuss common interests, desires, thoughts on past programming, and ideas for new events.

I should like social media. It's useful and taps into a collective knowledge. It's democratized the cultural conversation, allowing anyone to participate. It's made our cultural institutions appear more transparent and customer-service oriented. Unfortunately, when practiced by hundreds of individuals as a part of their personal lives, I often find it nauseating as we all strive to prove to our friends and followers the meaningfulness of our lives and the uniqueness of our own perspective (I do recognize that I have a blog and a Facebook account and that I'm a hypocrite).

Arts institutions and individuals have different goals. Institutions are self-perpetuating machines. In the most basic Darwinian sense, they ensure their survival always. Social media might eventually be the tools that most successfully allow them to retain audiences outside of their hallowed halls. Of course, they still need to create great experiences inside those halls.

Social media makes clear an odd tension in the human psyche, both the desire to stand out and the desire to fit in. We all participate because of the herd mentality (and because some real-life people have achieved popular media fame through the great equalizer--we all are waiting to be the unique exception plucked from obscurity). What's the cost of our new interconnectedness?Is the momentary pleasure from discovering that the vain cheerleader from high school gained 50 pounds worth the now life-long commitment to having her as a "friend"? Not all people are supposed to stay in our lives forever. In fact, it's sort of freeing to leave a few behind. Moreover, do you really want to discover how self-involved your acquaintances are through their status updates? As for Twitter, boiling down observations to 140 characters doesn't make your quotidian interesting. In fact, it's sort of depressing. It's the moment when I most wish the conversation hadn't been democratized.

So, is there anyway to just have arts orgs use social media and leave everyone else behind? (I didn't think so, either).

The Snarks

This weekend, instead of watching theatrical magic, I'm actually getting to create some of my own. I'm volunteering with the Snarks, an amateur all-female theatre troupe that just celebrated it's 100th birthday. They're producing "Mornings at Seven," a 1939 comedy by Paul Osborne.

The Snarks (mostly women in their 50s, 60s, and 70s) share space with the Amateur Comedy Club, which owns an adorable carriage house on Lexington and 36th. On the first floor is a tiny stage and seating for about 75. The second floor houses the work room, dressing rooms, meeting room, and kitchen. The first time I entered I felt like I had gone home. The spirit of the place reminded me so much of Wellesley's Shakespeare Society, where women did everything and ran everything together.

Yesterday, about 20 women and a few men gathered to finish building the set. Even a simple set takes a lot of work and we had our work cut out for us. My partners and I screwed homasote to the stage floor and glued down green carpet squares for grass. Grass laying was the best part, the "lawn" areas weren't square, so we had to cut the square up as if we were making a jigsaw puzzle.

It was wonderful to be back in a theater and to get my hands dirty. It was nice to feel the sense of instant camaraderie that a show produces and to come together to create a unified artistic product. I'm really looking forward to running the lights next weekend.

So Impressed with BAM

Last night, a representative from BAM called me. He began by noting that it was my first time buying tickets for a production there and he wanted to know what I had thought about As You Like It. My first response was shock, my second response was to begin speaking as quickly as possible. I've never had the opportunity to tell a professional theatre what I thought of their production (and I've certainly never taken the initiative to write to one after seeing a performance). That I hated the performance was beside the point; I felt all warm and gushy inside because I got to share my thoughts and, in some small measure, they counted. Someone at the organization actually cared.

Before my phone died (I couldn't believe it, I was so enjoying myself), the BAM representative and I had a wide ranging discussion (or was wide-ranging as you can get in 5-8 minutes) about directorial choices, competent Shakespearean training, and name-brand actors vs. relative unknowns. Throughout the conversation, I made it clear that I took issue with director Sam Mendes's choices and placed the blame squarely on his shoulders. My dislike of the production, at this point had nothing to do with BAM as an institution. Still, I think the rep was slightly taken aback-- after I had leveled the first criticism he did say, "Well, tell us how you really feel." To which I might have responded: sugar-coating my disdain doesn't do you any good.

Still without that call, I'm not sure how soon I would venture back to BAM. I certainly have no desire to go see The Tempest, the second play in the Bridge Project, directed by Mendes, and which starts in rep soon. I also didn't even know what was next in their season until that call. But after the call, I'm curious to see something else. I'm even hoping that I get called again. I like that this place called me. I'm just one of the unwashed masses, but BAM has democratized the experience. Even though I only bought a $31 ticket in the balcony, my opinion matters. They are blatantly cultivating my patronage and I love it.

BAM, I'll be back soon. Thanks for listening and for being so gracious about my informed dislike of the production. This is the start of a sustained interest in you as an institution and your productions. I'm looking forward to forming my second impression of you.

As You Like It

On Thursday, Annette and I went to see BAM's As You Like It. We were pretty excited since we had both worked on it in college; I had directed and Annette had been my stage manager. We love the text and had high expectations for this production. They were quickly dashed. The director Sam Mendes squeezed everything joyous and lovely out of the script. It was cold, dark, and depressing.

Actually, it shared quite a lot in common with Sir Peter Hall's production, which I had seen in Boston my junior year, and which was equally as disappointing. Both Hall and Mendes's versions embraced the cold elements of the play--emphasizing the harshness of the world and man's precarious place in it. Both featured snow covered stages and modern-slob dress. Both downplayed Rosalind, making her almost an appendage to the male characters, who they clearly found more interesting. Frankly, it made me yearn for a professional production by a woman director.

To me, the play has always been a study in artifice. A play which sets a cast of characters in a court where they must use their wits and smarts to survive. Rosalind must be an exemplary, tough as nails woman who does not show the psychic damage of being the daughter of a banished duke. Outside of the court she must pass herself off as a man in order to protect her physical safety. Orlando is a youngest son forced to hide his light under a bushel so as not to provoke the rage of an eldest brother who is not as intrinsically good as he. Touchstone and Jaques may place themselves in the positions of fools, but they are the cleverest and most clear sighted of the bunch. Ultimately, it is the vividness and truthfulness of Rosalind and Orlando's characters that forces them beyond artifice to embrace who they truly are and restore peace to Arden.