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.
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.
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 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.
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 is the arrival of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, located between Stanton and Rivington streets. Its new building, an exciting structure of off-axis stacked boxes by the hot Japanese architecture firm SANAA, opened on December 1. 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 first exhibit is entitled “Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century” and focuses on sculptural assemblage, including works by such artists as Isa Genzken, Tobias Buche and Claire Fontaine. It will run through March 23, though going forward the curators plan on changing shows much more frequently; as curator Richard Flood told the New York Times: “We want the museum to be alive every day of the week.” Through January 31, New York-based artist Sharon Hayes’ performance art piece “I march in the parade of liberty, but as long as I love you I’m not free” will be shown.
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.
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.
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).
This mecca for passionate foodies offers some of the country’s...
