Day 4: The "Thank You" Tour Begins

As promised, I'm spending the rest of my week making liberal use of my free museum visit privileges. This work ID is a wondrous thing! I'm getting to do so much right now without expending funds that it's helping balance the outlay from earlier in the week. Somewhat.

I thought I'd start my museum visits with the NYC museums to which I applied but was not granted an internship for the summer, just to say a little thank you for leaving me open for the wonderful opportunity I now have. First on that list is the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. I've hoped to visit the Cooper-Hewitt at least twice before, but I've been foiled each time. I made sure it was the only museum on my list today.

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum was founded in 1897 and has been part of the Smithsonian and has been since 1967. It is housed in the Andrew Carnegie Mansion on 5th Avenue (Museum Mile) in NY. The mansion is gorgeous, athough you have to make a concentrated effort to pay attention to it since there are so many interesting things to see inside! The only pictures from this museum will be exterior shots as photography isn't allowed inside.


I started my visit in the garden, where the Corning Museum of Glass currently has its GlassLab set up. I adore glassblowing, and this was a lovely setting in which to watch it. The folks from Corning are collaborating with various designers to demonstrate teh potential of hot glass for rapid prototyping of design. So the glassblowers were conferring with the designer, showing the results of various phases of the work, and moving on based on the response. Michele Oka Doner was the designer working with them during the time I watched. My pictures from this aren't great, because the protective shield was quite reflective even without flash. Just know that my experience in person was much the same, leaning to avoid glare and see between other viewers. Lots was going on at the same time, but there was little narration, unlike other demonstrations I've seen them do when GlassLab was set up other places. There was a moment when a bowl being removed from a blowpipe didn't attach to the molten glass blob that was supposed to pull it off, instead hitting the floor with a loud "clunk" instead, and the audience uttered a collective "ahhhh!" They picked up the bowl and went on, however. Later I poked my head out again just as they were triumphantly lifting a fluted green bowl (perhaps the "floating" bowl meant to hold glass flowers I had heard the designer describing) to applause, so there were triumphs as well.

(Just before the bowl fell to the floor with a thud.)


(Making a long glass rod.)

Next I went through the one-room exhibit Campana Brothers Select: Works from the Permanment Collection that will be up through late August. This is one in a series of exhibits by guest curators, and it included a piece commissioned by the Cooper-Hewitt from the Campana Brothers. The exhibit is described as an exploration of "interwoven ideas and unconventional materials" in more than thirty works (I didn't count) dating from the 16th-20th centuries. I appreciated this exploration of a theme through otherwise unrelated works, and it provided a pleasant introduction to the types of holdings the Cooper-Hewitt offers.

Downstairs, in an exhibit I almost missed, was an array of samples used to demonstrate to customers the variety of wares in a variety of wares. Multiple Choice: From Sample to Product gave a nod to the process of design and included a fascinating array of sample products that I never even imagined existing. Dishes with patterns in color wheels were with fabric swatches and prototype designs. I'm glad I didn't miss this.

The rest of the mansion's main two floors currently houses Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008, which will be up through July 6, 2008. True to its title, the exhibit traces the curving elements prevalent in the Rococo style through Art Nouveau and Pop art permutations. (I also realized that the designs that most often make their way into the margins of my notes show strong Rococo characteristics.) The ground floor focused on the history of Rococo and the national differences that developed as it transferred from region to region. Connections between artists were also highlighted in much of the labeling on this floor. I thought the links between these national interpretations and artists/designers were very helpful. I loved seeing Rococo manifested in a variety of genres, from porcelain dishes to silver service to ironwork, furniture, and wallcoverings.

Upstairs, pieces from the Pop art movement and artists working now demonstrated how the curve has remained an important artistic element, despite vastly different realizations. From flowing lettering to sinuous materials to the triumph of structure over nature, the curve showed up in surprising and beautiful places. One of my favorites was the flourish designed to be hand and footholds for wall climbing. While I found the links from Rococo to the contemporary pieces more tenuous than the transition to Art Nouveau, I still enjoyed seeing how the curators made connections and was glad for the education about the various art styles.

It's hard for me to imagine how an exhibit like this went together. I imagine that multiple curators collaborated, each taking a particular section of the exhibit. There were just too many pieces, too many rooms, too many interlocking themes for me to conceive of it coming together any other way. One other thought relating to my own curating experiences: I was somewhat comforted to note that even labels at a prestigious national museum sometimes have small discrepancies, such as "in the drawing shown to the left" when the drawing is, in fact, mounted to the right of the piece and label. That's probably bad of me, but it makes me feel relieved that I'm not the only one that little things like that happen to.

Although the Cooper-Hewitt is a comparatively small museum, I still spent over two hours on my visit and felt a bit rushed. Granted, I like to read EVERYTHING, but there was a lot to see and read and learn! It was a delightful visit, and I'm glad I finally made the trip over.

After leaving the Cooper-Hewitt, I began walking to the New York Public Library to attempt to get a library card. The NYPL, like the Cooper-Hewitt, is on Museum Mile, so I thought I'd just walk straight down along the park after my museum visit. Twenty or so blocks later, however, I took another look at the address and realized I wasn't even halfway there, so I backtracked one street and retreated to the subway. There's a lot to know about the NYPL besides the lions out front, and one of the things I didn't know was that you get library cards not at the research library, but at the branch library across the street. But since I had already gone through the security check at the research library, I decided to stick around long enough to see part of another exhibition entitled Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City.



I enjoyed the variety of media presented in this exhibit and love the fact that the NYPL (like the LOC and many other libraries and archives) hosts such exhibits. Personally, I am in favor of more collaboration and cross-purposing between libraries, archives, and museums, as I think they can all be served by emulating each other's strengths. This was a great way to share some holdings in a way you wouldn't typically associate with a library.

My favorite parts of the exhibit were Glenn Ligon's Housing in NY: A Brief History which consisted of large painted labels on the wall describing the apartments Ligon has lived in since the 1980s. It demonstrates both a change in NY housing trends generally and in the types of housing we choose at different phases of our lives. After my recent frantic perusals of Craigslist searching for housing of my own, I recognized a lot of the neighborhoods he mentioned. Bettina Johae's Borough Edges, NYC were series of photographs with maps on the back showing, literally, the boundaries of different NYC boroughs. These were mounted in flip frames that stuck out from the wall, grouped by borough. Another powerful installation was Reiner Leist's Window, which showed the view out the photographer's window for a series of days in September (perhaps the 10th through the 15th? I've forgotten) over a series of years. These were arranged in a grid with the years running one direction and days running the other, with an accompanying legend to allow you to locate a specific day. Black frames indicated the few days in this selection of days (part of a much larger series) that the photographer was out of the apartment, and they also emphasized the events around September 11th. An interesting concept, I thought, that simultaneously emphasized continuity and ongoing change.

After that, I left the research library to go to the public library. The mid-town branch wasn't as different from other public libraries as I had imagined. It was five stories, had security going in and out, and the desks were quite disaggregated, but otherwise, it wasn't really out of the ordinary. Luckily, the identifying information I had brought with me was enough to qualify me for my library card. Hooray! After a few attempts with the online card catalog, a discussion with an employee at the information desk, and a frustrating re-orientation to the Dewey Decimal system (grr), I finally decided that the non-fiction books I wanted to check out aren't currently available. I'm in the middle of one of the books I brought with me, so I didn't really want to take out a fiction title just yet. Eventually I decided that I'd accomplished enough for one day, so I'll hold off on actually checking out a book. If you have any suggestions for what my first NYPL check out should be, just post them in the comments.


(I <3 reading! Happy reader with new library card and book not from library!)

PS: I found the "Soup Nazi" place; it's around the corner from the library. For those urging me to track it down: This counts, right? I don't actually have to brave it, do I?