Guest post sent by Lori Z from
New York – 22/Nov/2006 12:30
Window dressing seems to be an art form that is taken very seriously only in New York. Bergdorf Goodman’s window design department not only occupies an entire floor of their 57th Street store, but also inhabits a large warehouse across the river in Queens.
Each season, Director David Hoey’s elaborate visions enliven the corner of 5th Avenue and 57th Street- adjacent to Central Park and the Plaza hotel. The windows have become more than just a place for showing off the wares for sale at Bergdorf’s, but a venue for exquisite installation narrative art. Using designer clothing, antiques, original art works and other borrowed props (this Halloween features a skeleton horse!), the windows are somewhat of an art gallery on their own.
I am a big supporter of art for art’s sake, which seems to be less common in the United States as opposed to Europe...
More»
Guest post sent by Keith A. from
New York – 21/Nov/2006 12:30
When you look at a list of the world’s top paddling spots, it’s unlikely that you’ll find Brooklyn, New York.
And it’s even less likely that you’ll find the Gowanus Canal, a narrow sliver of water that cuts its way from Gowanus Bay through the industrial zones of Red Hook, South Brooklyn, and Park Slope. It’s not exactly what you might call scenic, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. It’s lined by crumbling warehouses, generating plants, shadowy factories, Coast Guard fuel depots, and even a Home Depot. It meanders beneath the Gowanus Expressway, one of the busiest highways in New York City, and has been referred to as the most polluted waterway in America. A slick, rainbow film of oil and other chemicals gives the water in the canal a colorful, shimmering candy coating that would be beautiful at sunset if it didn’t smell like cold metal and gunpowder and leave a disturbing acrid taste in the air. Visibility in the water is almost zero, and any trip across it is highlighted by an overpowering fear that you might get some on you. And yet still, people put paddle to battery-scented water and get both a unique view of New York and a first-hand understanding of how a neighborhood and an ecosystem can flourish, die, and then struggle to be reborn...
More»
Guest post sent by Lori Z from
New York – 09/Oct/2006 01:20
Until 1986, the site of the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens, was an illegal riverside landfill, abandoned and ugly.
Fortunately, a group of local artists got together and decided to turn the area into a park and outdoor museum.
More»
Guest post sent by Ree from
New York – 17/Mar/2006 23:00
Did you know that every Friday night at the MoMA (New York, of course)
“Target” sponsors an event known as “Free Friday” from 4-8 p.m.? Yep, neither did I, when I showed up to explore the collection’s new digs in midtown Manhattan, and to visit my favorites in the painting/sculpture galleries before heading out for a night on the town.
It seems as though le tout New York had the same idea, along with a few outsiders such as myself (and several thousand other tourists). As it turned out, this became more of a social visit than a serious conversation with the paintings, but it was an opportunity to see the new building in action -
not just housing art, but welcoming people (and as mentioned before, it was a LOT of people).
More»
Guest post sent by Ree from
New York – 02/Mar/2006 23:00
The Museum of Arts and Design in New York is located directly across the
street from the Museum of Modern Art, and lives completely in its
shadow. You know it’s a bad sign when the gift shop is more crowded than
the museum. I should have known better, but went blithely ahead into the
(3 count ’em 3) galleries. Red light number two was when the guard
responded, upon questioning, that it might take 30 minutes tops to see
everything.
More»