MUSEUMS

We got started late morning, taking a very slow cab ride up Madison Avenue to the Met Breuer. The traffic stalled a few bocks south of the museum so we decided to pay up and walk for the remaining few blocks through light rain. The featured artist at the Breuer is Vija Celmins, whose work we have followed for many years with huge admiration for its meticulous attention to the detail of each mark and for the overall surface--oceans, desert floors, moonscapes...

We had not seen before, nor were we aware of her extraordinary troupe l'ceil work with simple rocks and children's slate boards.

Breath-taking.

There was still light rain as we walked on up from 75th to 92nd Street, crossing over to the Jewish Museum on 5th Avenue to see the amazing exhibition, Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art. In our ignorance we had not previously heard of Edith Halpert, a passionate and tireless dealer and promoter of the art of her time for a period of 40 years beginning in the 1920s. Her perceptive taste ranged from the likes of Stuart Davis and Arthur Dove...

... and Georgia O'Keeffe...

... to Ben Shan...

... and other socially committed artists and African Americans who might otherwise have been sidelined, Jacob Lawrence and Horace Pippin. A truly amazing career, and one whose importance has been restored by an exhibition that will surely amaze others than ourselves.

The Cooper Hewitt is a mere block south of the Jewish Museum, and the rain had stopped, so we made it our next stop. A bad choice for lunch, but that was not our main purpose for the day. And we enjoyed the current exhibition, Nature, featuring art and design projects by scientists, architects and designers exploring the infinite curiosities of the natural world...

Alternately fascinating and overly intricate for my own non-scientific mind, it required, frankly, more time than we were able to allow it.  We did have some fun in the "Immersion Room", where a handful of young people were playing with a digital machine for wallpaper design...

We walked the entire way back down Madison Avenue from 90th to 47th Street, with a stop for tea and cookies at EATS and another at the soon-to-be-closing Barney's, where there were handbags reduced from $15,000 to a mere $14,500 for quick sale...

 Dinner locally at the Lexington Brass.