In our previous trips to Manhattan, for the most part my husband Rich and I explored museums situated east of Central Park including the Guggenheim, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design, Neue Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), The Frick Collection and even the rotating exhibits at the beautiful Morgan Library. The one exception has been the Whitney Museum located in the Meatpacking district in the Lower West Side. When planning this trip, we reviewed the current exhibitions on display at these museums but there was nothing that excited us. So in keeping with the main theme of this visit to New York City, we decided to check out museums in the west end of the city which we had never been to before.
When Rich first suggested that we visit the New York Historical Society Museum and Library, I was not that enthused. While I love art galleries, I generally don’t like historical museums which I envisioned would display shards of old pottery and other boring artifacts. Begrudgingly I agreed to go since I know that as a history major, the “History of New York” would be of greater interest to him. As it turns out, I absolutely loved this hidden gem of a museum which is full of art, extremely cool artifacts in its permanent collection and really interesting special exhibits. Unfortunately, I will be listening to Rich say “I told you so” for a very long time.
Founded in 1804, the
New York Historical Society is New York City’s oldest museum focusing on the history of America and more specifically Manhattan with extensive historical artifacts and over 1.6 million works of art. Located on Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets, the museum features a sculpture of
Abraham Lincoln on the steps of its Central Park West entrance and one of former slave turned abolitionist and statesman
Fredrick Douglass at the entrance on 77th Street. The two sculptures reflect the museum’s dedication to presenting the history of slavery in New York with a permanent exhibition on the topic. One of the highlights located by the gift shop is the magnificent 1893
Waldorf Astoria lobby clock made of marble, brass, walnut, mahogany, brass and plated silver and topped by the gilded figure of the Statue of Liberty. On loan from the famous hotel while it is being renovated, the clock first appeared at the 1893 World Expo in Chicago and once told the time in New York, Paris, Madrid and Greenwich England on its 4 faces. On the ceiling above the museum’s admissions desk is the former ceiling from pop artist
Keith Haring’s original Pop Shop on Soho Street which closed in 2005. A subway sign from the Bowery station featuring Haring’s signature crawling baby and barking dog images was also featured in one of the current exhibitions. The museum houses
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, one of the oldest, most distinguished research libraries in the United States.
The museum’s main
permanent collection is displayed in an exhibit titled “
Object Tell Stories” and indeed there are some very interesting objects found here. The full-sized model of Abraham Lincoln’s head that would be used to create the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. towers over the Henry Luce III Centre for the Study of American Culture where rotating treasures from the permanent collection are displayed. A drum-shaped draft wheel, circa 1863, was used in the nation’s first conscription act to secure men to fight in the Civil War. The swirling snakes encircling “Snake Jug” (1871) represent the corrupt members of the Tammany Hall political organization who used bribes and illegal dealings to secure political power. The heads of the snakes depict ringleader William “Boss” Tweed and his cronies. A prototype for a “Workbox School Desk” was created in the 2000s to be used for elementary students to address social issues of the time. It includes a side blackboard for sanctioned graffiti and a private locker to stow clothes in order to prevent the spread of lice. The desk did not make it past the evaluation stage. Cast iron painted mechanical “Novelty Banks” designed by C.C. Johnson (circa 1873) were on display including ones where the doors of a bank swings open to reveal a teller who accepts your coin and deposits it.
One of the highlights of this museum is the impressive collection of over 100 stunning, illuminated
Tiffany Lamps that span two floors of a large gallery. The colourful leaded glass lamp shades include the iconic dragonfly motif, as well as wisteria, poppy, daffodils, peonies and other floral designs. Mostly of the items on display were table lamps although there were a few floor lamps as well. While the Tiffany lamps are renowned for their beautiful stained-glass shades, I was particularly impressed by the gorgeous and eclectic bronze bases. Many of them are designed to look like rooted tree trunks. There is also one with a “blooming cereus oil base”, and others with pieces of blown glass inserted in them. The “Trumpet Creeper” lamp has a second light source inside the base which illuminates the eight ruby-red pieces of pressed glass called “turtlebacks” because of their shapes and curved arms reaching out towards the shade.
Tiffany lamps were invented by
Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of jewelry retailer Charles Tiffany who founded Tiffany & Co. However, many of the more iconic lamps were designed by
Clara Wolcott Driscoll and created anonymously by her team of “Women’s Glass Cutting Department”, dubbed “The Tiffany Girls”. When we took a guided tour of this collection, our guide told us that the more decorative pieces such as the dragonfly and flower designs were usually created by women, while the geometrically shaped and tiled pieces were generally designed and created by men. Louis Tiffany wanted to present the illusion that he was the mastermind behind all the designs, which explained the need for anonymity, even though some of the most prestigious works were actually created by Driscoll and crew. While this may have been par for the course given the male dominated, misogynistic times of the early 20th Century, it seems strange that even today, the informational sign in the exhibition describing Louis C. Tiffany and Clara Driscoll only shows a photo of Tiffany. I had to search the Internet to find one of Driscoll. One unique piece on display was a jewel-studded “Crown Shade” with a bronze tripod base depicting sphinxes that was a specialty order, circa 1900.
The upper floor of the gallery provided interesting facts and displays explaining the various components that went into designing and creating a Tiffany lamp shade. This included selecting the colours, tones and textures of glass fragments and jewels made from pressed glass, the technique of using a metal filigree (ornamental work of fine wire) to provide detailing, tracing out patterns on a wooden lamp shade-shaped mold, pinning together glass segments separated with thin copper foil and soldering them together to form the delicate patterns. One of the most interesting displays was the one asking you to decide which of two similar lamps was a fake. I correctly guessed that it was the one with the brighter (gaudier?) colours with larger jewels for the eyes of the dragon flies and less refined detailing on the wings. The original had a subtle elegance that the fake lacked.
The other permanent exhibition that is a major attraction at the New York Historical Society is “
Meet the Presidents and the Oval Office” which focuses on the seat of power where presidents have executed their duties since 1909. It starts with a model of the White House along with figurines of all the Presidents of the United States from George Washington through to Joe Biden. There is also a portrait gallery with paintings or photographs of each President. But the highlight is the recreation of the Oval Office as decorated for Ronald Reagan’s second term (1985-1989) and features his signature jar of jellybeans on the “Resolute Desk” that was originally a present from Queen Victoria to President Hayes in 1880 and continues to be recreated and used by each president since. Visitors are invited to sit at the desk for a photo opportunity. There are artworks and artifacts scattered throughout the room that reference other presidents, including the bible used at George Washington’s inauguration and a student’s 1962 scrapbook that described JFK’s actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There are also audio recordings of past presidents’ thoughts.
Other interesting items from the permanent collection are scattered throughout the museum. On a landing of the main stairwell can be found Greek “tanagara” or terracotta figures representing the
Four Seasons, created by sculptor and folk art collector Elie Nadelman (ca 1912). Augusta Savage created a magnificent sculpture titled
Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp) for the 1939 World’s Fair. Its overall shape is a harp with 12 young black singers of varying heights forming the strings, a boy kneeling in front with a rectangular plate as the foot pedal and at the back of the harp is the hand of God, acting as the sounding board, implying that the singers are instruments of God. The original 16-foot sculpture was destroyed once the fair was over so only small models like this one made from white metal cast with a black patina remain.
Extreme Times Call for Extreme Heroines (2017) is created by contemporary mixed media artist Betye Saar. It is part of her series of washboards honouring the labour of washwomen who worked 16+ hours a day in hot, steamy conditions. Saar adorns the washboard with the stereotypical Aunt Jemima figure but reclaims and subverts the racist image by arming her with a semi-automatic machine gun. A vintage clock stopped in time represents the lack of social progress since the abolition days. In 2021 during the height of the pandemic, artist Tim Okamura painted
Nurse Tracey-Ann Knight masked and posing in the iconic “Rosie the Riveter We can Do It” stance. The museum has a fine collection of silverware including a pair of beautiful silver
Torah finials (Rimonim ca.1765) used for adorning the ends of a Torah scroll. They were created by silversmith Myer Meyers for the first synagogue to be established in North America.
We visited the grand
Dexter Hall on the second level, where a
rare and treasured theatre curtain that was painted by Picasso is hung. The tempera on canvas curtain was commissioned by the famed Ballets Russes company in 1919 for its
ballet Le Tricorne and features the aftermath of a bull fight where the bull is being dragged away by a team of horses. Interestingly, this happens in the background, and you have to look closely to even see the bull as only his horns are depicted. In the foreground are a seated couple who are staring out towards the viewer as opposed to watching the spectacle in the arena. To the right of them is a young boy holding a pomegranate (the symbol of death) and three females who could represent the Three Fates. The curtain was purchased by the Four Seasons Hotel in 1959 and was on display there until 2014. In looking for a new home for the masterpiece, the stipulation was that it had to be permanently displayed in its own space, and the New York Historical Society was able to meet the requirements.
Also on display in the Dexter Hall was the exhibit
Scenes of New York City, which showed a subset of works owned by the art collectors and philanthropists
Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, who have promised to donate their collection to the museum. As described by the exhibition’s title, the works provide a survey of New York over the years, depicting harbours, skyscrapers, subways, restaurants and streetscapes. To complement the display of the art, the museum asked for commentary about each work, providing a different perspective when viewing them. Leon Kroll’s Broadway Looking South (1919) was painted by the artist looking out from the window of his studio on 80th Street, highlighting buildings in his sightline including the famous Ansonia Hotel which we saw on our
self-guided architectural tour of the Upper West Side. Novelist Lorraine Merkl was a former resident of the Ansonia and recalled that it was the closest she came to experiencing the city’s “good old-fashioned glamour”. In 1937 before he started his abstract colour-field paintings, Mark Rothko painted an untitled depiction of a subway scene although the colour palettes in this painting foreshadow his future endeavours. Elia Hirschfeld conveyed his delight in coming across this work that was “a harbinger of things to come”. A depiction of West 58th Street (ca 1935-45) by Henry Schnakenberg shows a bustling scene dated by the neon sign of Regal Shoes, a traffic signal that only has red and green lights and the clothes of the women crossing the street. The painting Central Park Hack depicting a horse-drawn buggy is commented on by a horse carriage driver as it invokes for him the pleasure of a sunny Central Park in springtime. The 1964 painting of Mickey Mantle in his prime is commented on by a Yankees fan who appreciates remembering Mantle at the height of his power.
The exhibit titled “
Under Cover – J.C. Leyendecker and American Masculinity” explores the works of
Joseph Christian Leyendecker, a prominent and successful gay commercial artist and illustrator who was distinguished for his iconic advertising campaigns between 1898-1930 including illustrations for Arrow Shirts and Collars, Gillette Razors, Interwoven socks, Cooper Underwear, B. Kuppenheimer men’s clothing, Williams Shaving Cream, Ivory Soap and more. He created over 322 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, which was one of the most influential magazines within middle class America from the 1920s-60s. Leyendecker selected beautiful young white male models for his ads to sell products and posed them in manners that, under the 21st century gaze, look totally homoerotic including potentially gay narratives where two men are seated closely and looking intensely at one another. Even the men who appear solo in the ads seem unusually effeminate with their well-coifed hair and stylish poses. It is interesting that none of this seemed to be a problem in Leyendecker’s time. In fact, Leyendecker was declared the “champion of men in art” and President Theodore Roosevelt advocated his illustrations as being “a superb example of the common man”.
Whether this meant that the views towards male sexuality were different in those times is unclear. Was the latent sexuality in Leyendecker’s work tolerated and accepted, or just not recognized? In fact, other advertisements of the same time were even more blatantly homoerotic, as can be seen in comparing “It Floats” ads for Ivory Soap. Leyendecker’s ad depicts a man in a full length flowery robe who (according to the curator notes) appears to be sexually aroused as he gazes at his bar of soap. Compare this to another advertisement that depicts naked men in a YMCA shower being literally ogled by other men. During the first and second World Wars, Leyendecker painted military recruitment and war bond posters for the US Government but even in these situations, the sailors and soldiers still give off a feminine or homoerotic air. Yet once again, another Ivory Soap add espousing patriotism and praising the war effort inexplicably depicts fully naked men being by a swimming hole being casually watched by other soldiers. This must prove that the attitudes towards homosexuality or at least affection and attraction between men were laxer in the early 20th Century?
A final exhibition that I enjoyed was
Kara Walker’s reinterpretation of the
Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War, a book that consists of articles, engravings, and maps from Harper Magazine issues which are meant to provide a profile of the American Civil War that lasted from 1861-1865, “from the firing on Fort Sumter to Lincoln’s assassination”. Kara’s versions comment on the fact that the plight of the African Americans of the time were omitted from this narrative. She does this in her “
Annointed” versions by taking images from the original anthology and overlaying them with silhouetted cutouts of stenciled figures depicting stereotypically exaggerated and derogatory depictions of black slaves. I found these works to be extremely powerful and effective in its commentary on the brutality of slavery and the persistence of racist imagery.
We ended up spending much more time in this wonderful museum than I anticipated. I enjoyed it so much that we will need to return on a future trip to devote more time to some exhibits that we rushed through, even though I will have to admit to Rich once again that “he was right and I was wrong”.
As it was situated right next to the New York Historical Society, we planned to go look at the new addition to the
American Museum of Natural History which was just completed this year. Designed by the architectural team headed by Jeanne Gang, the Richard Gilder Centre for Science is reminiscent of Antonio Gaudi’s Casa Mila in Barcelona. Concrete and cavernous, the building feels organic like it is made from the bones of some large animal. We had planned to sneak a peek at the inside by claiming we wanted to go to the gift shop. But as it turns out, admission to the building is free in its last half hour before closing so I was able to quickly race up and down the various floors to get a feel for the exhibits. It was fun seeing the display cases of stuffed animals including exotic birds, large bats, skeletons of fish, and frogs in a jar. But the real attraction was the architecture of this new wing which felt like a natural organism in its own right.
No comments:
Post a Comment