vip in the city

New Museum opening

Technically, the first snow of the season arrived on November 19, but that ephemeral dusting was so slight as to hardly register. The snowfall on Sunday morning December 2 was more substantial, and seemed to inaugurate the true start of winter.

Since its founding by the late Marcia Tucker in 1977, The New Museum has demonstrated a commitment to showing visionary, daring work by living artists. Over the next three decades, the museum would be housed in a series of roving spaces: a staff of three began with an office in the TriBeCa Fine Arts Building on Hudson Street, hosting exhibitions offsite at donated galleries at the New School, later working out of spaces on Broadway, and more recently occupying temporary quarters at the Chelsea Art Museum.

For its first permanent home, the museum commissioned a building with a relatively modest budget of $50 million by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Tokyo-based firm SANAA (an acronym for Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates). Prior to their hiring in 2002, SANAA had not yet built outside of Japan, which made the firm an unusual choice in this era of starchitects.

The results have been well-received: a seven-story stack of shimmering two-ply silvery grey boxes each teetering slightly off center, with three floors of exhibition space, levels for educational and administrative purposes, and a top floor offering open, spectacular views of downtown.

To commemorate the grand reopening of the New Museum, beginning at midnight on December 1, the museum was open to the public for 30 consecutive hours. We registered for tickets on Sunday morning, and at 10:00AM, we made our way through the falling snow to the Bowery to tour the new space.

The museum’s inaugural exhibition concentrates on works that are purposefully Unmonumental, the kick-off to a three part, five month long exhibition that explores sculpture, audio, and collage by some of the most prolific and relevant international artists today. Not particularly my taste: sculptures made from a bundled pillar of old clothes and stuffed animals (“Bale Variant Number 001”) by New Yorker Shinique Smith, a plywood box through which was threaded flea market belts (“Split Endz (wig mix)“) by Glasgow-based Jim Lambie, an arched sculptural stack of broken wooden chairs (“Myth Monolith (Liberation Movement)”) by Marc André Robinson… well, actually I did think that last one pretty cool, if precarious-looking.

The stark white galleries, hallways, skylights, and hidden stairways were a destination unto themselves, though: a marvel to be contained within the museum’s 71’ by 112’ footprint.

The view out through the metal mesh:

New Museum staircase:

For those who missed the grand opening in December (and who wish to bypass the usual $12 admission fee), the New Museum still offers free hours on Thursdays from 7:00-10:00PM.

Tags: museums, New Museum, snow

Fat Cat Billiards birthday

For J’s milestone birthday, his dear wife had arranged a surprise gathering of friends and family at Fat Cat Billiards in the West Village. J suspected that a secret plan was afoot when PL requested his assistance with the family’s move from the Upper West Side to Edgewater, New Jersey that Saturday morning. (More defectors!) J gamely agreed, little knowing then that the request was, in fact, entirely serious. It must have been quite a letdown to arrive on the scene expecting a celebration and finding only heavy moving boxes. Worst surprise party ever!

The real festivities, of course, began later that evening, and did not involve manual labor. We paid the $3 cover for access to the subterranean pool hall/game room, with its décor reminiscent of a Disco-era suburban basement rec room… but in a good way. This isn’t one of those sceney pool lounge spots — just a low-key place to down cheap beer and shoot stick with friends. Dim lighting, live jam sessions, worn couches, mismatched tables, and strewn throughout: billiards and ping pong tables, shuffleboard, foosball, and board games galore. New York magazine named Fat Cat Billiards the city’s “Best Pool Hall” in 2001.

We arrived early to commandeer the seating area behind the bar — a space which we shared with the owner’s large, friendly dog. I’m still not sure whether he actually liked us, or the John’s of Bleecker Street pizzas we had ordered in.

Later that night, in the homier environs of the Upper East Side, we toasted the man of the hour over a beautiful Black Forest cake from SoHo’s Ceci-Cela Patisserie — a delightfully potent, almost victorious, confection of Cointreau-sponged chocolate cake, brandy-soaked cherries and airy layers of vanilla whipped cream.

Tags: birthday, cake, Ceci Cela, Fat Cat Billiards, foosball, pizza, pool, West Village

Iphigénie en Tauride

Sadly, I missed the big Winter’s Eve festivities in my neighborhood last night, which kicked off with the Lincoln Center Holiday Tree Lighting. It was such fun last year, but with the holiday season officially now in full swing, there just isn’t time enough for everything.

Tonight was to be something of an event: the gala premiere of Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck‘s Iphigénie en Tauride. This new, much-celebrated Metropolitan Opera co-production with Seattle Opera is directed by Stephen Wadsworth (recently named the first Director of Opera Studies for the Juilliard Opera Center) and conducted by Mostly Mozart musical director Louis Langrée, in his Met debut. Americans mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and tenor Paul Groves, who opened London’s Royal Opera House season, took up the roles of Iphigénie and Pylade again tonight with the incomparable Plácido Domingo starring as Iphigénie’s brother, Oreste. (This Met production was also broadcast live on December 8.)

I knew nothing about Iphigénie en Tauride going in to the evening, though I had vague recollections of the Euripides’ drama that inspired it. Gluck’s opera premiered in Paris on May 18, 1779, but did not have its United States debut at the Met (in German) until 137 years later, on November 25, 1916. Since then it has only been staged five times, the last in 1917, so tonight was an occasion indeed.

We had planned on a special evening: the tuxes, furs and glittering jewels were out on display tonight, and how many opportunities do I get to don an evening gown, after all? Unfortunately, the lack of sleep these past couple of days finally took its toll tonight, and I ended up in the upper balcony, exhausted before curtain, and passed out in my seat by Act II. Now that’s embarrassing. No fault of the performances, though, which from what I recall were quite beautiful… and apparently very soothing.

As I slipped out during intermission, I passed Tyne Daly on the spiral staircase, whom depending on your reference point, is best remembered as Detective Mary Beth Lacey from 80’s cop show Cagney & Lacey or Maxine Gray from the 90s judicial drama Judging Amy. Did anyone else besides me have trouble distinguishing that latter show from Providence?

Tags: Iphigénie en Tauride, opera, The Met, Tyne Daly