John D. Rockefeller III founded this international non-profit with the goal of increasing Americans’ understanding of Asia. The organization’s NYC headquarters, fresh from a $30 million renovation and expansion, houses Rockefeller’s extensive collection of Pan-Asian art and hosts a number of contemporary art exhibits, lectures and panel discussions throughout the year
Located in an old brownstone, this design museum organizes two or three small, highly focused, deeply researched exhibitions a year, on topics ranging from aquamanilia (medieval hollow-cast vessels) to antique-inspired 19th-century Italian jewelry to the contemporary weavings of Sheila Hicks. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 A.M. to 5 P.M., Thursday until 8 P.M.
A SoHo stalwart—and a revered institution—is the Drawing Center, an ever-surprising venue for contemporary and historical drawing exhibitions.
Like so many of the robber barons, Henry Clay Frick was an unabashed shopaholic when it came to Old World treasures. During his life, he amassed an astonishing assemblage of Old Master paintings, 18th-century furnishings, Limoges enamels and French and Italian porcelains; the list goes on. His compulsion is our gain. At the Frick Collection you can study works by art giants like Rembrandt, Ingres, Turner and Whistler as they were meant to be seen—that is, in domestic settings. Of course, few homes are this opulent, but you’ll be surprised by the cozy atmosphere, the ample natural lighting and the friendly scale of this limestone mansion. Take a few moments to enjoy the garden court—it’s one of the city’s most serene public spaces. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Monday and major holidays.
The Guggenheim name has long been associated with modernity and celebrity. Some might even argue that its birth coincides with the rise in our culture of modern celebrity. When philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim founded his first museum in 1939, the “Museum of Non-Objective Painting” in a former car showroom on Manhattan’s East 54th Street, it took him only a few short years to realize that bringing in starchitect Frank Lloyd Wright to design the museum’s permanent space would also usher in visitors, prestige, and attention to his impressive collection of early modern art. (This collection included, among other great works, a sizeable chunk of Kandinsky works now assembled to perfection in one of fall’s hottest cultural lineups.) Indeed, after nearly two decades of planning and construction, controversy swirled at the Guggenheim’s 1959 opening. What was this new massive, conical structure, seemingly drilled like a giant white bolt into the ground on just outside Central Park? It was organic yet cutting-edge, a shade below blinding white; and it was strangely spiritual—or so the architect said. Above all, it was undeniably wrapped in a tinge of Wright’s colorful celebrity. Sadly, he died shortly before the museum’s autumn opening, in spring.
Still, the Guggenheim’s inception was somewhat debaucherous and most certainly a triumph for the city. The now-iconic structure has become a monument to artistic innovation, and it testifies to a time when New York City was churning in artistic fervor and bursting with new design. Inside, the museum’s collection contains an impressive range of works from the Impressionist era and also continues to acquire contemporary pieces. (Still, many remark from both within and without the museum that the building itself is “the most important object in the museum’s collection,” as architectural critic Paul Goldberger noted in his tribute to the building’s fiftieth anniversary.)
Showpiece or no, the museum’s collection is certainly a worthwhile visit. Natasha Schlesinger, art historian, former Christie’s specialist and Indagare Insider, rates it as one of her favorite places to visit with kids, because the space “offers itself brilliantly to many different exhibitions and art works.”
In general, the Guggenheim name is synonymous with vital cultural centers around the worldwide, each city granting its own Guggenheim varying heights of profile. All are worthy of a visit. Some, like Bilbao’s groovy undulations crafted by architect Frank Gehry, are world-renowned landmarks like New York’s; others, like Venice’s spectacular, bite-sized Collezione Peggy Guggenheim are packed to the gills with their artistic import, offering Picassos, Pollocks and Ernsts. And still some, like Las Vegas’ Rem Koolhaas-designed Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, are simply glimmers of curatorial hope in otherwise fast-paced destinations.
In New York City, stick your head in the Guggenheim with children or simply stroll past it on your way down the East Side’s Museum Mile. You’re likely to encounter some megastar wattage on the walls: exhibitions on Frank Gehry, Giorgio Armani, and even the Art of the Motorcycle have been recorded as its most popular. But of course its record-breaking exhibit was the one that brought the city face-to-face with Oz of Guggenheim himself: 2009’s “From Within Outward”, a retrospective on Frank Lloyd Wright, had city-dwellers clamoring for a look inside the head of one of America’s first modern celebrities. Sun–Wed 10 a.m.–5:45 p.m. Fri 10 a.m.–5:45 p.m. Sat 10 a.m.–7:45 p.m. Closed Thurs. Some galleries may close prior to 5:45 p.m. Sun–Wed and Fri (7:45 p.m. Sat).
For those keen on traces of the romantic SoHo of the 1970s, when trips up creaky, wide stairways in ancient buildings led to cutting-edge galleries and artists’ studios, there are still some remnants to be enjoyed. Recently, the foundation of the late minimalist artist Donald Judd opened his studio and home, in an 1870 cast-iron building, to small tours. It’s the only privately owned cast-iron building in the neighborhood. Learn how Judd worked here and developed his theories about the placement of art, which eventually led to his art installations in the remote Texas ghost town of Marfa. Tours every Friday at 11 a.m.; reservations necessary.
New York resident author Judith Stonehill calls this National Historic Landmark, given to the city of New York in 1986 by The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, a “wonderful surprise.” Says Stonehill: “The greatest jazz musician of all time lived in this modest red-brick home in Queens; best of all, he recorded conversations, reminiscences, and sometimes the sound of his trumpet – which can all be heard on tapes as you tour the house.” The Corona neighborhood residence was built in 1910 and served as home to an Irish-American family until newlyweds Louis and Lucille Armstrong bought the house in 1943. Following Louis’ death in 1971, Lucille continued to occupy the home until her death, in 1983. A young museum, it now houses the foremost private Armstrong collection in the world, though it opened only in 2003. The snug space is shown strictly through guided 40-minute historic house tours that start every hour on the hour; but no appointment is necessary, except for groups of 8 or more. Open Tuesday through Friday, 10 am – 5 pm; Saturday through Sunday, 12 pm – 5 pm.
The energy and enterprise of its immigrants have always contributed mightily to the vitality of this city. While it’s charming that NoLita is today chockablock with stylish boutiques, a century ago it was a slum, teeming with immigrants desperate for a new life. There was nothing glamorous then about its tenements, which were so overcrowded that apartment dwellers had to sleep in shifts! At the Tenement Museum, you can see life as it was for those souls who braved a trip in steerage to get to this country. If you don’t have time to physically go, pay a visit to the museum’s website; it’s surprisingly hip, especially its digital tour of the storefront temples of Chinatown.
The permanent collection of this famed museum contains more than two million works of art. Don’t miss the stunning wing that now houses the extensive collection of Greek and Roman antiquities (extensively renovated in 2008) and the American Wing, unveiled by Michelle Obama in May 2009. With the recent renovation of the museum’s 19th century galleries, many well-known images images have been reinstalled, such as those by Degas, Monet and Renoir and a few significant additions including Scandinavian, German and American artists. As a result, the galleries now allow for a more interesting way to tour one of the most comprehensive collections of French Impressionist art outside of the Louvre as well as 19th century art movements and styles, including Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Barbizon school, and Realism.
Indagare tips: If you’re introducing children to the massive museum, consider going with Natasha Schlesinger of Art Muse, who specializes in making art come alive for kids. If you’re looking for a nice lunch break nearby, consider Sant Ambroeus, the restaurant at the Carlyle or taking a picnic to Central Park. During the summer months, come late on a Friday or Saturday, when the museum is open until 9 pm, and have a drink on the rooftop terrace that overlooks the park and the Upper West Side. Closed Mon. Open Tuesday–Thursday: 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday: 9:30 a.m.–9:00 p.m.; Sunday: 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
The Morgan Library and Museum used to be one of the city’s little-known gems—financier J. P. Morgan’s personal treasure trove of antique drawings, prints, artifacts, manuscripts and books, including a Gutenberg Bible. He housed his collection in a freestanding library, a stunning Renaissance-style palazzo he commissioned from Charles McKim and considered his masterpiece. After Morgan died and the library was opened to the public, it accrued a series of adjoining buildings but not much of a following. A new, expanded architectural presence—conceived by Renzo Piano, an architect celebrated for his subtly crafted, daylight-distilled museums—is finally getting the library the attention it deserves. Seldom are a building and its contents so richly rewarding.
The museum reopened on September 27, 2008 in brand-new digs at Columbus Circle, already home to the Time Warner Center that houses top restaurants Per Se and Masa. The transformation of Edward Durrell’s famous modernist building at 2 Columbus Circle, by Allied Works Architecture, was a controversial project (critics voiced concern over the drastically altered facade). In its new home, MAD will also have three artists-in-residence studios as well as extensive educational and research facilities. There’s also a new Tiffany & Co. Foundation Jewelry Gallery, underwritten by a $2 million grant from the famed jeweler, which displays contemporary jewelry on the second floor. The $15 entrance fee is certainly competitive with the city’s other big hitters, like the Museum of Modern Art and the Met. The museum store on the ground level is sure to become a hot spot for unique, design-oriented gifts.
A favorite pick of Judith and Alexandra Stonehill’s alternative new guidebook, New York’s Unique and Unexpected Places and a top ten attraction for the fall season 2009, the MOCA museum stands as one of the most absorbing and unique new museum spaces in the city. Its brand-new exhibition space is a mere five blocks from the smaller, dimmer, 19th century public school facility it once occupied (which now serves as its vital archives and research center). But the minor move makes a world of difference for the museum’s rotating 60,000 items, which tell a vibrant and human story of Chinese immigrants in America. Artist Maya Lin, a longtime supporter of MOCA, designed the new museum space. Lin is best known as the prodigious and controversial 21-year-old talent behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. – that dramatic V-shaped wall of black granite stone cutting sharply into grassy earth. At New York’s MOCA, her work takes airborne directions but to no less capacious effect: at the central interior of the museum is a handsome, brick-lined courtyard with a soaring skylight set atop it. Thanks to a new arid, light-filled spine and an overall six-fold expanded capacity for curation and preservation, MOCA’s myriad articles from generations past—including documents, photographs, memorabilia and orated histories—are finally breathing at full capacity. Open Mondays and Fridays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Thursdays 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
If New York is the center of the art galaxy, it’s due in part to the preeminence of the Museum of Modern Art. You could argue that its founding director, Alfred H. Barr Jr., codified the history of the modernist movement. The original box of opaque glass and white marble with strip windows and porthole canopy by Philip Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone—now an element of the new building’s façade—was once the signature statement of the International style. The museum’s placement amid staid brownstones only heightened “the shock of the new.” While there were several additions to the building over the years, the intimacy of its galleries was always preserved. Many New Yorkers visited weekly, treating the museum as a personal retreat. When Yoshio Taniguchi was selected for MoMA’s ambitious expansion in 1997, the hope was that he could endow the mammoth structure with the taut, subtle poetry that distinguished his other museums’ designs. He didn’t succeed. Cavernous and cold, the new galleries suck the life out of the paintings, even holy terrors like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Nevertheless, I say visit. It’s one of the greatest art collections in the world. And how many times do you see an $858 million failure? Ironically, the museum’s restaurant, the Modern, run by restaurant legend Danny Meyer, is exquisitely designed—as serene and sophisticated as Philip Johnson’s fabled Four Seasons—and its French-American cuisine is superb. Open Wednesday through Monday, 10:30 A.M. to 5:30 P.M., and Friday, 10:30 A.M. to 8 P.M.
MCNY was the brainchild of Henry Collins Brown, a native Scotsman who, like many before and after, developed an intense love affair with Manhattan. The museum was originally housed in Gracie Mansion, now the official mayor’s residence, before moving to its current address in a pretty five-story Georgian building on the northern end of Museum Mile (at 103rd St.). Permanent exhibits include Perform: A History of New York Theater and New York Toy Stores, a collection of over 300 dolls, toys and piggy banks, all owned or made by New Yorkers (Another once highly popular permanent exhibit, New York Interiors (1690-1906) has been taken down due to the museum’s ongoing renovation and expansion). Throughout the year, number of lectures, discussions, film screenings and children’s programs are open to the public.
As a young man, Ronald Lauder was seduced by the beauty and romance of the Vienna Secession. Wistful for a world long gone, he sought to recreate it. With an exacting eye and enormous billfold, the cosmetics heir assembled one of the finest private collections of paintings, drawings and decorative objects from early 20th-century Austria and Germany in either the New World or the Old. When he decided to share this astonishing collection with the public, he bought a suitably sumptuous Louis XIII Beaux-Arts pile by Carrère & Hastings, the designers of the Frick, in which to showcase it. A visit inside this gorgeous mansion alone is worth the price of admission. While the Neue Galerie remains an under-the-radar treasure, it has begun to attract more traffic since Lauder made headlines last summer, spending $135 million for Gustav Klimt’s blockbuster portrait of the seductive Viennese saloniste Adele Bloch-Bauer. The museum’s Café Sabarsky serves up some of the best Viennese fare in the city in a wood-paneled room with elaborately carved moldings, outfitted with original fixtures by Josef Hoffmann and furnishings by Adolf Loos. Open Thursday through Monday,11 A.M. to 6 P.M., except Friday, 11 A.M. to 9 P.M.
A sure sign, or maybe guarantee, of the Lower East Side’s fast-forward gentrification was the arrival of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, located between Stanton and Rivington streets. Its building, an exciting structure of off-axis stacked boxes was designed by the hot Japanese architecture firm SANAA. Expectation are nothing short of colossal for this showstopper dedicated to revitalizing New York’s contemporary art scene in all its subversive, raw and pioneering glory.
The curators plan on changing shows frequently; as curator Richard Flood told the New York Times: “We want the museum to be alive every day of the week.”
If the history of this city fascinates you, put the New-York Historical Society at the top of your sightseeing list. Established in 1804 to preserve materials related to the history of the country and state, it boasts the largest collection of John James Audubon’s watercolors in the world, countless Tiffany lamps and stained-glass windows, masterworks from the Hudson River School and the archives of the storied architecture firm of McKim, Mead & White. Its curated exhibitions are excellent. When the current show on the city’s long and deep involvement in the slave trade opened, it shocked many liberal New Yorkers. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M, except Friday, 10 A.M. to 8 P.M.
Indagare’s Simone Girner recently visited this remote Queens museum and was stunned by its Japanese serenity and beautifully thought-out displays. Founded by Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi to house his archive, the complex is part outdoor sculpture garden, part indoor museum. Noguchi, who worked and lived here for many years, is one of the only artists in the world to have created a museum before he died; how the pieces are displayed is precisely to the artist’s specifications. The museum also shows works by artists who were influenced by Noguchi. Some Noguchi designs, including his famous paper lantern-lamps, are available for purchase in the fabulous museum shop-cum-café. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
It’s the Long Island City–based P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center that produces the exciting, audacious exhibitions that were once the trademark of its Midtown affiliate, the now venerable and monolithic Museum of Modern Art.
Natasha Schlesinger, the owner of ArtMuse recommends: “The Rubin museum is one of my favorites because it really has created the best teaching environment for either a novice or a scholar to visit, learn and appreciate Buddhist art.”
Architecture mavens and urbanists should definitely visit the Skyscraper Museum at the tip of Manhattan (in the same building as the Ritz-Carlton hotel). It offers superb, insightful shows on the history of the high-rise and the development of the modern city.
Those who want to know more about the city’s seafaring heritage should visit the South Street Seaport Museum.
The juggernaut of fashion museums, with some 30,000 costumes. Its annual benefit gala, held in May and hosted by Vogue, is known for starlets and socialites in spectacular attire.
Author of New York’s Unique and Unexpected Places Judith Stonehill tipped Indagare to this “distinguished club for bibliophiles in midtown.” She raves: “Its main gallery, which is open to the public, presents interesting exhibitions on books and the graphic arts. The Grolier’s library has a collection of more than 100,000 books about books.” Founded in 1884, the Grolier Club is America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles. Since my days in Cambridge perusing the shelves of the tiny Grolier Poetry Bookshop, its larger, urban forebear has loomed heavy on my conscience as the indisputable Mecca for lovers of the printed word. Indeed, Grolier Club’s rotating exhibitions, discussions, and lectures heed the lofty objective stated in its original Constitution: “To foster the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper, their art, history, production and commerce.” Named for Jean Grolier, a famed French Renaissance collector known to share his astonishing and extensive library with friends, the Club is housed in an elegant setting that unfolds somewhat like a series of gembox rooms: the largest room, the Exhibition Hall, showcases original high ceilings and white columns stationed at the back. The smaller, sixth-floor Council Room features floor-to ceiling dark-wood paneling and bookcases lining the walls. Finally, the smallest room, the fifth-floor Phillipps Room, is close to claustrophobically book-jammed—and appropriately so, since it’s dedicated to the notorious bibliomaniac, Sir Thomas Phillipps, who hoarded the largest collection of manuscript material of the 19th century and thereby crippled his family with the debt required to support his severe book-loving disorder. The Library is open Monday through Friday, 10 am to 5 pm; however it must be visited by appointment. It is closed in August.
Art industry VIPs from all over the world flock to the Whitney for its Biennial, which showcases works by cutting-edge and lesser known American artists. Throughout the year, though, this Madison Avenue museum houses one of the worlds’ most impressive collections of 20th century American art, including major works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Jasper Johns, Reginald Marsh and Edward Hopper. The Whitney’s cantilvered granite building, designed by Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer, is itself considered a modernist work of art. The bar is, thus, set high for Renzo Piano, architect of the Whitney’s downtown outpost (scheduled to open on Gansevoort Street in 2012).
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