Give a Girl a Day Off...

We got a surprise day off from the nanny gig last Thursday.  So, what would you do?  Well, we walked 3.8 miles and climbed 9 flights of stairs as we made our way via bus, subway, and foot half way across Brooklyn and two-thirds of the way up Manhattan to the West side of Central Park and back again.  That's 'museum mile' which per foot has to be my most favorite mile in the world.

We took a trip to the Guggenheim.  This is the first 'weird' museum ever built.  It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the man who was the first American to collect modern art.  Guggenheim wanted a venue which would break all the museum building rules.  Well, he got one.  You either love this building or you hate it.  Here's what I mean:

Exterior of the Guggenheim 

Looking down on the six levels
all interconnected - a gigantic wheelchair ramp

Looking 'up' from the bottom floor

The view is of Central Park, but there are no windows.  Thus, there's no 'sunlight' to fade the art work.  The only natural light comes from the ceiling which is a humongous sky light. 

The sky light ceiling

We headed there to see an exciting new exhibition.  The Guggenheim asked six artists, who had previously exhibited at the museum, to dive into the collection and pick paintings and sculptures to exhibit using any criteria they wished.  Each level of the museum hung the choices of one of the six artists.  One floor was paintings hung 'salon' style of famous artists.  The catch was the paintings hung were not in the style for which each artist became famous.  For example:  Representational landscapes by Kandinsky (the first abstract artist).

We'd seen work by only one of the six artists - a Chinese guy who uses gun powder to 'paint' his pictures.  We actually saw a small exhibition of his work in Italy.

A Cai Guo Qiang 'gunpowder' picture -
he was the only artist of the six to hang some of his own work in his area

Another artist chose abstract expressionist paintings from the 1940's, '50's and '60's.  The modern female artist chose to display female artists from the Guggenheim collection.  Another picked collection pieces done in black and white.  Did I like every picture?  Nope.  Were there some jewels I'd never seen before?  You bet.  Some of you will not even bother to look at the pictures, but I urge you to do so.  There are some brilliant pictures and sculptures.    

You could see this exhibition in two ways:  You can gradually walk 'up' the six levels, or you can take the elevator to the top level and walk 'down'.  We chose 'up' because it's actually easier for me to walk up than down, especially if we are doing the walking in a leisurely manner.  ("Down" puts too much pressure on my fake foot joint.)

After touring the Guggenheim, we walked 500 feet down the street (in the pouring rain) to the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design.  This is actually a Smithsonian museum, and it always has fascinating exhibits.   We were not disappointed this trip:  The museum was exploring design in nature.  This was an interesting concept.  One which captured my attention was the 'body burial suit' 

The dead body goes into the 'suit', and instead of a coffin, the 'suit' is buried.  The suit is sewn with some type of mushroom fungus which helps decompose the body.  The picture below shows vividly  what happens after burial in the suit.  This seemed to me to be an excellent idea, but I'd like my burial suit to be RED.     

You have to admit it's a novel idea. 

Without a doubt the goofiest exhibit was the one in which a man created artificial limbs for himself which ended in goat hoofs as well as an artificial stomach which could process grass.  Then, the joined a goat herd for three days; in essence, he became a goat.  Then, he wrote a book.  

I'm so intrigued about this guy; I'm going to read his book!

And, finally, I got to see an entire room of hand done French embroidery from the 18th century.  I was in heaven.  I got so enthused, I gave an impromptu lecture about hand embroidery to a group of  total strangers touring the exhibit.  I'm sure they thought I was a nut bunny.  They didn't run away, but I felt like an idiot afterwards.  Here's an example (not of my idiocy) but of the displayed embroidery.

This is a piece of fabric pre-embroidered by hand.  It's meant
to be cut into a vest to be worn underneath a waist coat

 If the day wasn't thrilling enough, we then took the subway during rush hour from the Upper West side of Central Park to Crown Heights in Brooklyn.  (Crown Heights is our neighborhood.)    If you think you see lots of different people on the streets, well intensify that by a power of ten and you have the subway.  There's no telling who or what you might see on a subway.

We managed to score seats early, so the trip of about an hour was pretty fascinating.  I kept thinking about all those movies of the 1950's (think Judy Holiday) where crowded subway cars are prominently featured.  Subways are the niftiest way to get around town.  There's one major exception:  Don't be on a subway during a New York blackout.  Actually, just try to be home during any major blackout - like we were last week when the blackout of 42 years ago was recreated in quite a bit of Manhattan - and not in a fun way.  We were lucky.  Our tickets to the Lincoln Chamber Music concert was the day AFTER the blackout, so we were unaffected.

I'd say we made proverbial hay with our day off.  As always, pictures links below for anyone who's interested.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/jF7x2s1fiVfcM3Yi8

https://photos.app.goo.gl/T82LQQpPSZvLEeWe6