New York City 2023: West End Museums - Arts & Design /Posters / Fashion / Folk Art

Continuing our exploration of smaller museums in West Manhattan that we had not visited before, my husband Rich and I realized that these galleries either had sparse or in some cases no permanent collections to speak of.  It was therefore more important than ever to ensure that the current rotating exhibitions were of interest to us.  We got lucky in a some of the museums that we selected as the current exhibitions were fabulous.  We were disappointed in some of the others but made note that upcoming exhibitions or even ones from the past would have been right up our alley, so we will consider revisiting these places another time if the right shows were being presented.

Our favourite of these museums was the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) at the south-east side of Columbus Circle and 8th Street.  Here we were able to tour not one but two excellent exhibitions, plus an interesting permanent collection.  The items in the gift shop were fun as well with some funky ceramics of a chained up diet coke bottle and a Hello Kitty purse, as well as some 60s styled paper dresses that referenced the exhibitions that we were about to see.

The first exhibition cheekily titled “Funk You Too!” explores humour and satire in ceramic sculptures that were created starting in the 1960s as part of the West Coast “Funk Ceramics” movement, which in itself was a subset of the “Funk Art” movement.  Funk Art was an anti-establishment reaction against Abstract Expressionism, bringing figuration or representation of concrete objects back into art forms.  The ceramics arm of this movement produced purposely functionless clay sculptures that were irreverent, absurd, and often lewd or otherwise inappropriate.   The Funk Ceramics movement was led by American sculptor Robert Arneson who contributed many hilarious and shocking pieces in this style.  His “Self-Portrait of the Artist Losing His Marbles” (1965) was created by accident when his conventional portrait bust of himself cracked down the middle while being fired in his kiln.  Rather than discarding the damaged work, he glued marbles inside the crevice and created a satirical masterpiece.  In another self-deprecating piece that he titled “Klown” (1978), Arneson depicts himself with one gigantic red ear and a goofy expression on his face.  His motto was “If you’re going to abuse someone, it better be yourself.”  One of his most hilarious self portraits and the centerpiece of the exhibition is titled "Portrait of an Artist as a Clever Old Dog".  It depicts himself as a dog smoking a cigar surrounded by brightly coloured turds with a dog bowl engraved with the words “Bob – Portrait of the Artist”.

Arneson’s “Ronny Portable” (1986) depicts President Ronald Reagan’s face inside a TV set, referring to Reagan’s former career as an actor. The piece acts as an expression of disdain for the president and is an anti-war stance.  His sexually explicit work “Call Me Lover “(1965) transforms a rotary dial telephone by shaping the handle as a penis, spelling “Lover” in the dial and adding a vulva in the middle. The work alludes to phone sex while commenting on human dependence on technology for communication.  His message is more relevant than ever in today.  David Gilhooly majored in biology and anthropology before becoming an artist and thus animals and specifically frogs feature prominently in his works. His quirky “Bread Frog as a Coffee Break” (1981) shows a frog balancing bagels, donuts and a coffee cup on his head while “Cowpachino” (1993) puts the frog on top of a cow who is in the coffee cup.  Peter VandenBerge anthropomorphized vegetables to put them in humorous scenes such as his “Carrot on Divan” (1971) depicting the voluptuous root vegetable lounging seductively on a sofabed.  Patti Warashina’s “Pitter-Podder” (1968) grotesquely deconstructs the female form in her two-sided piece.

This would have been a great exhibit even if it only showed the historic works of the original Funk Ceramics artists.  Giving more context to these works, the show illustrates how the movement is carried on today by juxtapositioning works by contemporary artists who similarly use ceramics in subversive and humorous ways. But this new generation often stress more serious social and political issues.  Woody de Othello’s “Still on Hold” (2021) consists of a mirror wrapped with a heavy chain that sits on a stool next to a telephone handset.  The piece represents the frustration of being put on hold by customer service, an experience that we have all encountered, but the open lock on the chain represents hope.  Yvette Mayorga’s “Alligator Boots” (2018) depicts a brown-skinned woman with an American flag draped over her as she oversees Latino immigrants crossing the US-Mexican border.  The bright colours found in the sculpture mocks the concept of the American Dream which belies the reality of the hardships these immigrants will face. At one corner, you can barely see the words “No Wall” written on a plaque.  Sharif Farraq’s “Bouquet” (2020) similarly deconstructs the American Flag at the base of the vase while a pair of black hands reach out from the wildflowers trying to break free.  This work was created at the height of Black Lives Matters protests.  Genesis Belanger’s “You Never Know What You are Gonna Get” is a twist on the famous Forrest Gump line “Life is Like a Box of Chocolate”.  Instead the work comments on the inadequate ways that people show sympathy to others in times of grief with commercial items such as flowers or chocolates as tokens of sympathy.  The standard box of chocolates is replaced with deconstructed parts of a grieving face.  Alex Anderson, who is a Black and Japanese American gay man uses humour to describe a touchy subject (pun intended).  His sculpture “Don’t Touch My Hare” (2019) is a play on the title of Solange Knowles song “Don’t Touch My Hair” which talks about Black women being disrespected and having their personal spaces invaded by this action.  The piece shows a disembodied hand patting the head of a hare while it sticks its tongue out in distress.  “Troubled Waters”, the title of Sally Soul’s piece says it all as she describes the turbulent times that we currently live in.

The second exhibition at MAD titled “Generational Paper: A Fashion Phenom of the 1960s” explores a fad introduced by the Scott Paper Company in 1966 when they offered disposable paper dresses with bright, bold, colourful patterns printed on them as a promotional campaign to advertise their products.  The dresses became a viral sensation and the company sales topped $3.5 million by the end of the year.  The dresses were made from a cellulose material called Dura-Weave that was water and fire resistant to some degree.  When this led to a shortage of paper supplies, other synthetic materials including rayon and Reemay (made by Dupont) were used.  The first dresses were in the style of mini dresses called shifts and sported graphic designs including polka dots, checkerboard, diamond, and floral patterns.  As popularity grew, other companies wanted to get into the action and dresses were printed with advertisements for candy bars, soft drinks, newspapers, the yellow pages, Andy Warhol’s soup cans, movies from 20th Century Fox, images of Bob Dylan and more.  Expanding from the original shift dress, paper clothing for women came in all styles including wrap dresses with belts, pant suits, robes, sundresses, evening gowns, and even beachwear with swimsuits, bikinis, hats and totes although I doubt you could swim in the paper bathing suits.  For a dinner party, a woman could have her dress, earrings, apron, tablecloth and napkins all matching with the same patterns.  Wanting to expand the market further, paper clothing was made for children and although not shown in this exhibit, men’s wear made out of paper was produced as well, including vests, tunic shirts and bell-bottom pants.  Then just as quickly as the fad started, by 1970 it was over due to changes in style as well as environmental concerns since the dresses were not easily recyclable.

Objects from MAD’s growing permanent collection are displayed on a rotating basis.  The current exhibit titled "Craft Front and Centre" represent 60 works dating from the American Craft movement up until present day and reflect a wide range of materials and art forms created by artists from around the world. German artist Anna Mlasowsky created a suit of “body armor” using sheets of shatter-resistant “glass ceramic” cut into 175 thin strips and sewn together to form a cloak-like, sound-producing sculpture that acts like the protective scales of an armadillo.  A video shows a dancer wearing the armour while performing choreography that triggered movement and sound from the scales.  Brazilian artist Amarinhos Teixeira created a polyester textile to mimic the cytoskeleton of a jelly fish although to me, from afar it looked like a large mass of ginger-coloured hair.  There was some pretty beadwork from Kiowa/Italian artist Teri Greeves who added images of Kiowa women and a red hand representing battle to a pair of Converse sneakers and Choctow Nation/Irish artist Marcus Amerman who creates pop references to confront Native American stereotypes including a bracelet depicting the Lone Ranger standing in front of Tonto.  American artist Bisa Butler creates quilts based on portraits, layering fabrics from Africa to reflect her father and grandmother’s Ghanaian heritage.  In a section of the exhibit dedicated to wood carving, I especially liked the shape and design of the beautiful white pine mosaic bowl carved by American woodturner Philip Moulthrop.

Founded in 1944, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) Museum is associated with a state university that focuses on design, as well as business, technology and mass media in relation to the fashion industry.  It is one of the museums that doesn’t really have a “permanent” collection, so you are coming to see the special exhibits.  We were not that excited about the current exhibit that was being held during our visit which is too bad because I would have loved to see an upcoming exhibit titled “Fashion and Food” where food items are represented in patterns and design for clothing and accessories.  The kitschiness of such an exhibit would have really appealed to me.  Even the next exhibit on the schedule titled "Moda Hoy" (Spanish for Fashion Today) sounded more interesting as it featured designs from Latin America.

The exhibit we did see was “Female Designers and Interior Design” which displayed a parade of ladies’ fashion created by female designers from the 19th through 21st centuries, and where possible, showed examples of the interior design of their homes, offices or as commissions for other companies.  Since I have seen previous exhibitions of clothing through the centuries, this was not as interesting to me.  The spin of showing the corresponding interior design of the designers would have been better if we could actually see live examples of interior design or furniture pieces.  Instead we saw a display of pretty dresses and robes over the years, accompanied by a writeup about the designer and occasionally a small photograph of décor that she either designed or had designed for her.  I did like the femininity of some of the older dresses including a yellow-toned floral-printed chiffon “tea gown” (ca.1900) by Fernande Burel and the pink silk chiffon evening cape with ruffles and embroidered metal sequins (1897) by Jeanne Paquin.  My favourite dress was the aqua satin “afternoon dress” with velvet black trim and ecru cotton floral embroidery at the hem (1910) by Madame Percy.  In terms of décor, I liked Jeanne Lanvin’s home which was decorated with rich blue silk inspired by cobalt glass (thus named Lanvin blue).  Her bedroom was reconstructed in Paris’ Decorative Arts Museum which we visited in 2016 and saw it up close through glass windows.  This was much more exciting and satisfying than looking at the small images in this exhibit.

Looking at some of the more recent pieces in this exhibit, the material used in Pauline Trigère’s green and orange double-faced silk stain evening dress and matching cape (1968) seemed to match the coverings on some ottomans in her home.  Barbara Hulanicki designed a printed cotton voile mini-day dress (circa 1970) patterned with psychedelic “mod squad” swirls popular in that era, but her Biba boutique in London was decorated in Art Deco style, as shown in this image depicting model Twiggy sitting on a suede sofa.  Anna Sui’s designs were represented by a black wool dress embroidered with armoires and clocks accessorized with a necklace made of metal, glass and plastic (1997), and a red and gold embroidered polyester tunic with red cotton velvet pants (2012).  Her apartment in Greenwich Village includes stained glass windows, curved doors, hidden rooms, Venetian mirrors and Chinoiserie wallpaper.  This all sounds great.  Too bad we couldn’t see any physical examples of this.

Perhaps because of the time of year that we visited (early May) but there were multiple displays of the works of graduating students of FIT in the front lobby. We saw some of the designs in men’s and ladies couture that were created by the University’s graduating class of 2023.  The menswear was fairly tame, and mostly in blacks, whites and beiges.  The most adventurous outfit consisted of a maroon buttoned shirt topped with a V-neck black and white sweater that came up to the mid-drift and completed with a matching tartaned skirt and trousers.  The women’s outfits were more varied in colour, style and material ranging from evening gowns to sportswear to peasant-chic?  I thought the designs for jewelry and accessories were more interesting and avant-garde.  Some of the more unique items that we saw included a couple of decorative face masks, one which covered the eyes and mouth, while there other one looked like something Cat-woman would wear.  There was some mouth grillz jewelry displayed on a plaster set of teeth, and a necklace whose pendant was shaped like a bejeweled red car.

Another student exhibition presented the works of 2023 graduating seniors from the Packaging Design Bachelor of Fine Arts program at FIT.  Students created branding and packaging designs for fictious products including beers, alcohol, fruit drinks, food products, multi vitamins and more.  I liked the Art Noveau-like floral design for Pistil Gin and being a tennis player, the “Racket” brand that includes a tennis racquet, t-shirt and water bottle in matching bright red and pink hues really appealed to me.  The students did an excellent job as the brand designs were bright, attractive and eye-catching.

Open in 2015, the Poster House’s mission is to present both historical and current posters as a vehicle of mass visual communication and persuasion, while demonstrating their impact on art, culture, commerce and social attitudes.  By their definition, a poster is a “public-facing printed notice meant to persuade, entertain or influence, whose artwork is created specifically for the poster”. Unfortunately the permanent collection on display is extremely small although the museum is working on creating an online catalogue of over 10,000 works that they own, dating back to the late 1800s.  We saw an interesting demonstration of how Jules Chéret, known as the “Father of the Poster” developed a large-format color printing process that allowed him to mass-produce coloured images by applying each colour separately on top of each other.  There were examples of the iconic Belle Epoque posters by Leonetto Cappiello (Father of Modern Advertising) that hawked everything from chocolate to alcohol, as well as multiple examples of the psychedelic style concert posters of the 1960s that advertised the times and locations of a band’s next performance.  We were particularly delighted to see a poster for the Yardbirds since we know one of the original members.  We also saw examples of Letterpress posters which use artistically arranged letters and words to convey their messages.  This small selection from the permanent collection gave a quick run-through of some key milestones in the history of posters.

Given what a small amount of the permanent collection is on display, the Poster House is one of those museums where the main attractions are the temporary exhibits.   Just like at FIT, it is too bad that our timing was such that we missed the next exhibit titled “Art Deco: Commercializing the Avant Garde”, since we love the Art Deco style so this would have been right in our wheelhouse.  The future exhibit titled “We Tried to Warn You! Environmental Crisis Posters, 1970–2020” looked fun as well, if the poster of Porky Pig wearing a gas mask is indicative of what we would see.

Unfortunately we were less interested in the two major exhibitions currently on display during our visit.  The first was “Made in Japan: 20th Century Poster Art” which illustrates the country’s print making traditions and styles that reflected the country’s culture and political ideology following the second World War.  Japan’s image needed a makeover and one of the tools they used to do it both domestically and internationally was through posters.  Like all other countries during the war, posters of that time reflected patriotism, propaganda, and the need to support the war effort.  Post-war, priorities shifted towards industrialization, commercialization and globalization which was reflected in the posters on display in this exhibition.  For the most part, the posters were bright, colourful and alluring, catching your attention from afar and some interesting ones were on display that highlighted Japan's unique culture and marketing strategies.

In 1967, a poster meant to promote a play, which includes an image of the playwright in the top left corner,  was not completed until after the day of the performance.  It therefore failed in its purpose as advertisement and even contains an apology by the artist in the lower right corner.  But this piece by Yokoo Tadanori is still considered a work of art on its own merit.  Sugoroku is a Japanese board game with a pictorial version similar to Chutes and Ladders.  A poster of “Shopping Sugoroku” (1914) was used as advertisement for the opening of a modern department store and added as a pull-out supplement in popular women’s magazines. The board allows the players to make their way through different sections of the store.  Another version of the Sugoroku game was developed for the Japanese version of Playboy magazine and involves trying to reach a well-known female adult film star pictured nude in the centre of the poster.  At each numbered position, players are instructed to perform humorous acts including “remove your belly-button lint”.  In posters advertising Shiseido’s bronze suntan oil, it is interesting to note that the actual product only appears as a small image within the brand’s logo.  It was a practice in Japanese ad campaigns of the time to focus not on the product but on the lifestyle or identity that can be established through the use of the product.  Japanese designed posters were also created for American brands including record album cover art for groups like the Monkees and the Beatles.  The poster “Trees” (1955) is a clever example of typographical graphic design, repeating the Japanese Kanji character for tree to visually create a forest of trees.  The very meta poster was used for tree-planting and Forest Protection campaigns.

By the 1980s through to current day, the focus of Japanese posters shifted again, now adding social conscious messaging to the previous function of commercialization and hawking of products.  Posters now discussed social issues such as the environment, pollution, climate change, sustainability as well as global peace and reconciliation and nuclear disarmament.  The posters in the “Save me, please.  I’m here” (1993) series were created for the 1993 Peace and environment exhibition.  Each depict the grey silhouette of an single animal against a black background, as it if it is fading into the background and possibly into extinction if action is not taken. Several posters in the “Hiroshima Appeals” series by various Japanese artists remind us of that horrific event and advocates for peace in the future.  In 2014, Clothing designer Issey Miyake created a line of clothing based on a series of images by Nagai Kazumasa titled “Life”.  Playing on that title, Miyake wanted to “instill life” into Kazumasa’s static drawings through the movement of people wearing the clothes.

The second exhibition was titled “Branding the Black Panther Party”.  Where the Japanese posters were primarily for commercialization, the Black Panther group used the poster format as a means of propaganda, spreading their message through a cheap form of mass communication. Not having much funding, many of the posters were printed in black and white which was significantly less expensive than colour, and wheat-pasted on walls throughout Black communities.  The posters attempted to rally support for their cause and sway public opinion to see this group as defenders of Black rights and seekers of justice as opposed to aggressors.

A fun activity that you can do while at the Poster House is to insert yourself into an iconic poster and have an image of it sent to your email.  The photo booth lets you scan through and choose from a large collection of posters, takes a photo of yourself and then lets you move/resize your image to fit into your selected poster.  I chose the Rosie the Riveter “Yes You Can” poster as well as the movie poster for Attack of the 50 foot woman.  Unfortunately I didn’t know how to resize myself properly, so I was even larger (the 200 foot woman)? and my legs were cut off from the result.  Rich selected the Uncle Sam “I Want You for the US Army” poster and pointed out towards the viewer.

Of all the museums that we visited on this trip, we were the most disappointed with the American Folk Art Museum, since we were only mildly interested in the two special exhibits that were being shown.  The first was called Material Witness: Folk and Self-Taught Artists which explores the use of regionally sourced materials to create art.  I found the examples to be drab and muted in tones as opposed to bright, colourful and quirky which is what we think of when we consider the term “folk art”.  We saw many great examples of folk art in our East Coast trip to Nova Scotia in 2022 including Barry Colpitt's Folk Art on the Eastern shore of Nova Scotia, which rightly or wrongly, set our expectations of what we hoped to see.

We were more interested in the second exhibit.  Titled “What That Quilt Knows About Me”.  The exhibition explores the personal and emotional sentiments and stories that are conveyed through quilts with many dating back to the 19th Century.  There was a fundraising “Signature” quilt comprised of squares with the names of those who made a donation.  The more you donated, the more squares were embroidered with your name on it.  The “Piety Quilt” includes squares indicating the creator, Maria Cadman Hubbard Age 79, and that it was made in 1848.  Other squares had pious quotes include “Kind Words Never Die”, “Thy Will Be Done”, and “Peace be Still”.  A “Noah’s Ark” quilt created circa (1890-1910) shows pairs of many types of animals that are embroidered onto cotton and silk.  The pair of sheep are actually made of wool, the animals are disproportionately sized (insects are shown as the same size as penguins) and Noah’s entire family is depicted.  Sarah Anne Garges made an appliqué bedspread (where figures are cut out and sewn onto the base) to mark her engagement to be married. The work depicts traditional farm life with a house, barn, animals and activities including hunting, plowing and chopping of wood.

Especially fascinating were the 20th-21st Century riffs on the quilting tradition.  Titled “Vieques” which is a Puerto Rican island, Druenell Levinson’s late 20th Century “quilt” looks like the Puerto Rican flag from afar but up close, you can see that it is comprised of wrapped Durex Gold Coin condoms sewn together and painted to create the image.  Levinson juxtapositions the traditionally female craft of quilting with male-based objects to question gender assumptions.  Geri Forkner created her “365 Days of the Year” quilt (2015) by weaving together everyday trash into strips, creating a record of daily activities including correspondence, ticket stubs, menus, French fry containers, holiday cards, advertisements, and other found objects.  Dindga McCannon designed a tribute to Jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams (2017) combining found objects, photographs, paint and fibers to tell the story of the “greatest woman jazz pianist in the world” who played in Harlem’s nightclubs and composed songs for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman during the Harlem Renaissance.  At the bottom right corner is a portrait of the pianist while the adjacent strips are meant to resemble piano keys.  Each patch of the humorous “Greek Myths” quilt (circa 1955-63) by Raymond Bellamy depicts a deity or figure from Greek mythology along with a pithy saying.  For example, a hand-holding pair of male and female cyclops is captioned by “Making Eyes Cyclops Style”, although “Making Eye…” might have been more appropriate.  Pandora and her box are captioned with “Pandora, what have you done?”

All in all, we enjoyed the six new museums on the west side of New York City that we visited on this trip (including the two that I wrote about in the previous blog).  For the ones where we were less keen about the current special exhibition, we could see the potential for coming back another time when an exhibit more in line with our interests would be on display.  So we will definitely keep these museums on our radar for future trips.  And the extra benefit is that since they are not as well-known or popular as some of Manhattan’s big hitters, it is usually less crowded and you can spend more time up close and personal with the art works.