New York

Sunday 18 May 2008

OK, I can finally say I’ve seen a museum on this trip (the flood museum in Johnstown notwithstanding). As arranged, Peggy Backman met me at the Guggenheim where I gazed up at the inside of this amazingly spiraled building but decided not to wait in the very long cue to spend an exorbitant amount of money to go any further. On one of the bus tours I was on, the guide had said that because the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, didn’t like New York he proceeded to design a round building because it’s difficult to hang art on round walls . . . Don’t know if it’s true but it’s an interesting ‘tour guide’ thing to say.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was a short stroll down the road and, surprisingly, there was no cue to speak of. It’s a magnificent example of what a museum can be, with room after room of amazing things to see. There was an ancient Egyptian section displaying partial ruins of the “Temple of Dendur”, set within a kind of a moat. Very dramatic. As the name would suggest, it wasn’t a general ‘history’ museum, but dedicated to art from all over the world: painting, sculpture, decorative arts, musical instruments, furniture, photography, drawings, prints, ceramics, bronzes, screens, textiles, glass, metalwork, miniatures, costumes, native carvings, ancient weapons – historical, modern, and contemporary. Peggy told me that ‘modern’ art includes people like Picasso, Warhol, etc. who are deceased. ‘Contemporary’ indicates the artist is living.

This is not the sort of museum you can see in one visit. To do it any justice at all, you would need to visit it on several occasions, taking in one wing per floor at a time. We pretty much whizzed through from room to room, picking one or two exhibits that Peggy thought would be of interest – and were – for me. It’s very easy to get lost in such a huge space, but Peggy said she has come across many an interesting and, hitherto unknown, exhibit by doing just that. One of the current exhibits is “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy” which was fun. They had the actual costumes worn by Toby Maguire in Spiderman, Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, Cat Woman, Mystique from X-Men, the Iron Man armour worn recently by Robert Downey Jr, and many more fantasy costumes. As I’m a bit of a sci-fi fan, this was something I enjoyed.

However, all that wandering around worked up an appetite and we waited in another cue to be seated for a late lunch in the lovely Petrie Court Café and Wine Bar overlooking part of Central Park. What we saw was rain – and lots of it! It must have bucketed down for a good 2 hours and I wasn’t looking forward to leaving the museum to get wet. So, when Peggy left, I spent time in the gift shop. Not surprisingly, lots of umbrellas were being sold . . . I ended up with a new mouse pad (curiously shaped like a hippopotamus) to replace the one I had bought in 2000 at Gaudi’s Guelle Park in Barcelona. The last of the big spenders, that’s me!

By the time I left the museum, the rain had stopped and I decided to walk back the way I had come. It was a number of blocks but, after yesterday, I really felt I could do with the exercise. I was in for more than I had bargained for when, out of a city of 8,000,000 people, who should I run into at that very time in that very place, but Jill! She was looking a bit tired by then, so I thought she might like to be ‘pushed around’ a bit more. We made it back in time to pack up for tomorrow’s departure for Framingham, Massachusetts. Eight days in New York has been good to meet the three people I had arranged to meet with, and to enjoy a bit of ‘down time’. I’ve even decided it’s not as unfriendly or threatening as I remember from a brief 2 day stopover in 1989. But it’s busy and heavily populated and can be an absolute assault on the senses, so a slightly slower pace would be a welcome change.