New York 2023: Harlem Renaissance Tour

As part of our exploration of the upper west side of Manhattan, my husband Rich and I looked into the possibility of getting a tour of Harlem, which runs from 110th street north to 155th Street between 5th Avenue and the Hudson River. On our first visit together to New York City in 1999, we took a hop-on, hop-off bus tour around the city to get a feel for what was available to see.  As the bus passed through Harlem, the bus driver warned the passengers that we could get off if we wanted to, but he advised against it.  Between the 1960s to the end of the 20th century, the area was rife with drugs, crime and poverty.  Since then, large parts of this area have been cleaned up and gentrified significantly. Harlem is now a thriving community that is safe to visit.  It also boasts a fascinating cultural history that we were interested in learning more about.

During the pandemic, my friends and I entertained ourselves by researching and giving weekly art talks on Zoom.  One of my topics focused on Jacob Lawrence, an African-American painter associated with the “Harlem Renaissance”.  This was period in US history spanning 1918-mid 1930s that saw a burst of creativity from the African American community especially in New York’s Harlem district in the areas of art (e.g. Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, Augusta Savage), music (e.g. Duke Ellington, Fats Waller) and literature (e.g.Langston Hughes).  Thus we were delighted when we found a walking tour of Harlem that was titled “Harlem Renaissance plus Lunch” and quickly signed up for this.  We took the subway to the West 125th  station, then walked back to 122nd St. where our tour would start, taking note of the vibrant street art on the bustling streets along the way.

While walking east on West 125th Street to the starting point of the tour, we crossed two major boulevards named after important figures in African American history.  The first boulevard is named after abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass whose sculpture we encountered at the New York Historical Society. The second is Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, named in honour of the American Baptist pastor who served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives for almost 3 decades and acted as a powerful national spokesperson on civil rights.  His statue stands in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office where the boulevard intersects West 125th Street.  We would pass by this building again on our tour.  We also took notice of the elegant sign for the old Victoria Theatre which has been converted into a restaurant, bar, ballroom, event space, hotel and eventually, spaces for live theatre.  Images of the restaurant show a staircase that honours the old jazz greats including Louis, Ella, Billie, Duke, etc. (no last names required).  We also went by the striking building of the “Greater Refuge Temple” founded in 1919 and moved to its current location (formerly a dance hall known as the Harlem Casino) in 1945.  The colourful façade consisting of multi-hued elongated vertical panels were added in the late 1960s.

When we finally reached the house where the tour would start, we were amazed by the gorgeous brownstone buildings in the area.  We still had our 1999 impressions of a Harlem that had rundown buildings in desperate need of repair.  This might still be the state in different parts of Harlem but certainly not in this neighbourhood where the beautifully restored buildings featured intricate, ornate designs carved in red sandstone.  Today many of these buildings would be subdivided into multiple apartment units.  We entered the apartment that was the meeting point for the tour and found the interior also renovated with a brick wall covered with African masks and a cool spiral staircase leading to a second floor.  On the coffee table was a Harlem version of Monopoly where the squares represent important historical sites relating to the Harlem Renaissance period.  Our tour guide Doris had lived in the neighbourhood her entire life and pointed to the steps or stoop where she would play double-dutch (a skipping game) as a child and have her hair braided.

Across the street from our starting point was a sculpture of “Mother” Clara Hall, a humanitarian who founded Hale House Centre, a home for disadvantaged children including those born addicted to drugs due to drug use by their mothers.  From there, we were off on our walking tour which would take us from West 116th north to West 135th Street between Frederick Douglass Boulevard to the west and Lenox Avenue, which was co-named Malcolm X Boulevard in 1987, to the east.  Since 1984, West 125th Street was also co-named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard so that the major roads in Harlem honour significant Black figures from American history.  At West 123rd St is the Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church which poignantly has a sign saying “This Church is not affiliated with the church on the corner. WE support President Barack Obama”, distancing themselves from the adjacent Atlah World Ministry Church which displayed hateful signs railing against both Obama and homosexuals.  Continuing on, we reached Marcus Garvey Park which is named after a publisher and activist for black nationalism.  It is also known as the Mount Morris Park after the historical district that was first settled by the Dutch in 1658 in the area they called Nieuw Haerlem.  That would explain the Dutch architecture in the surrounding homes.  Doris pointed out the field in the park where Prince Harry played baseball with a group of children in 2013.  As we walked by, she also showed us the former house of poet and civil right activist Maya Angelou on West 120th Street and the bakery that Oprah frequents when in the area.

We next saw the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz Mosque, a Sunni Muslim mosque also known as Mosque #7.  It was renamed in 1976 to honour the memory and contributions of Malcolm X.  We actually spotted the unique green dome from afar and wondered what it was.  There are so many buildings of worship in Harlem that represent different religions and denominations.  It is fascinating to see the different architectural styles of each of them.  We had already passed the colourful Greater Refuge Temple and the Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church which happens to be on an intersection (23rd and Malcolm X Blvd) where the Ephesus Seventh-Day Adventurist Church and the St. Marks Holy Tabernacle can also be found.  On our tour, we also passed by the First Corinthian Baptist Church and the Mount Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church, each beautiful in its own right.  We actually didn’t make it as far north as the Abyssinian Baptist Church where both Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Jr. were ministers.

Minton’s Playhouse is a jazz club and bar located at the corner of West 118th  Street and St. Nicholas Ave., inside the Cecil Hotel.  Founded by saxophonist Henry Minton in 1938, it is known as the place where the jazz style bebop was developed.  Artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk held jam sessions there.  To commemorate the importance of this location, a special street sign designates this corner “Bebop Blvd”.  At West 122nd St. and Frederick Douglass Blvd can be found the memorial to abolitionist and Underground Railroad leader Harriet Tubman, a slave in the South who not only escaped herself but returned multiple times at great personal risk to lead other friends and family to freedom in the North.  The large-scale 13-foot-tall bronze sculpture, known as “Swing Low”, depicts Tubman as a metaphorical freight train barreling forward despite the roots of slavery at her back trying to hold her down.  Imprinted on her skirt are the faces of former slaves who Tubman helped to escape while plaques at the base of the sculpture depict events from Tubman’s life.  A few streets north at the corner of West 125th street is a beautiful mosaic by Louis Del Sarte titled “Spirit of Harlem”, commissioned in 2005.  For a brief period of time, the mural was bricked over by Foot Locker who took over the building whose wall it was on, but public protest quickly led to a reversal of this undertaking.  What a great example of the spirit of the people of Harlem in action!

Heading east on West 125th St., we finally reached the Apollo Theatre, arguably the most famous cultural landmark in Harlem.  Open since 1914, the Apollo played an important role in promoting jazz, swing, bebop, rhythm and blues, gospel, blues and soul music.  Plaques on the sidewalk in front of the theatre boasts some of the more famous performers including Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Little Richard, Smokey Robinson, Lionel Richie and more.  Continuing down the street, we passed the Hotel Teresa, a historical landmark that was a vibrant centre of African American life in the mid-20th Century.  As one of the few prestigious hotels to accept black guests, famous musicians, athletes, performers and businessmen stayed here including Malcolm X, Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mohammed Ali, Jimi Hendrix, Dorothy Dandridge and Ray Charles.  Even Fidel Castrol stayed at Hotel Teresa during his visit in 1960.  Passing by the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office for the second time, we next stopped at  a large mural spanning the side wall of the Corner Social Restaurant.  The original work was a result of a mural contest in 2012 that was won by artist Paul Deo.  His mural, painted to resemble a collage, depicted Harlem’s history, culture and landmarks.  It featured famous and inspirational figures such as Josephine Baker, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou and more.  The Apollo Theatre was highlighted as a hotspot for Harlem night life.  The mural seems to have been updated since then, but the overall themes remain the same.  From this vantage point, we could see the building where after his presidency, Bill Clinton kept an office from 2001 through 2011.

We were promised lunch as part of this Harlem Renaissance tour, but we actually had a couple of eating experiences before that official meal.  Walking along Malcolm X Blvd., our tour guide Doris bragged about Mo’s Famous Burgers food truck which offered the cheapest hot dog in Manhattan.  This was a Harlem culinary experience that we needed to participate in, so our tour group lined up for a hot dog and large drink, which came to $4 including a small tip.  Next Doris brought us to Lee Lee’s Bakery where she bought us each a delicious handmade rugelach, a Jewish treat of a croissant shaped pastry filled with chocolate or apricot (Rich and I shared one of each).  Owner Alvin Lee Smalls has been running the shop since 1988.  Then after walking all over Harlem for a few hours, we finally stopped for lunch at Jacob’s Soul Food Restaurant.  Each person was given a box to fill with options from a large buffet that included fried chicken, oxtail, candied yams, collard greens, fresh salads and fruit and more.  We had a lovely meal on the outdoor patio and thought that this was the end of the tour.  Rich and I gave Doris a tip, thanked her for a wonderful tour and prepared to leave when she asked whether we were staying for the rest of the tour?  There was more to come after lunch!

Soldiering on, we next visited the National Museum of Jazz, which is a not-for-profit museum aimed at honouring the Jazz greats of the past who frequented Harlem including Duke Ellington, Benny Carter, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, John Coltrane, and Billie Holiday.  Its mission was also to continue fostering interest in jazz music in the current day by holding regular concerts as well as educational events and lecture series. One of the prized possessions of the museum is a piano once owned by Duke Ellington while the tenor saxophone of Eddie “Jawlock” Davis is also prominently featured.  A large poster titled “Sounds of Harlem” illustrates a map of all the night clubs that used to be popular including “The Cotton Club” starring Cab Calloway’s Band, La Fayette Theatre, Club Hot-Cha and more.  Photos and posters of jazz greats such as Billie “Lady Day” Holiday are on display as well as books, recordings and documentaries. Several displays reference the recent Pixar animated movie Soul about a piano teacher who dreams of playing Jazz professionally.

Our final stop was at the Schomburg Centre for Research in Black Culture which is a division of the New York Public Library system that focuses on research, preservation and exhibition of materials related to African American experiences.  It features a large collection of artifacts and diverse programming promoting Black history, arts and culture.  A portrait of scholar, historian and collector Arturo Schomburg is hung in the lobby of the centre.  The donation of his personal collection formed the basis of the institution that was named in his honour.  The “Langston Hughes Lobby” is named after the American writer, activist and innovator of the literary art form “jazz poetry”.  A steel book-like container containing his ashes are buried underneath the lobby floor, which is decorated with an art piece called “Rivers” that contains text from Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”.   The Aaron Douglas Reading Room is dedicated to the American painter and visual arts educator who was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance.  Four panels of  his murals titled “Aspects of Negro Life” are hung in various spaces throughout the building including in this reading room.

The major exhibition on display during our visit was titled “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration” which explores the impact of the U.S. prison system on contemporary art including pieces created by prisoners during their incarceration, as well as artists who reference the penal system in their works. Between 2014-2022, Prisoner Mark Loughney created a series of over 700 portraits of other inmates which he drew using graphite and ink on paper.  In contrast to the mug shots taken at their time of arrest, these beautifully drawn and personal portraits humanize the inmates.  Gilberto Rivera created a collage made of prison clothing, prison reports, newspapers, floor wax and acrylic paint which he titled “An Institutional Nightmare” to protest the dehumanization he felt during his imprisonment.   Also in the exhibition was a sculpture made from prison cafeteria trays.  Another sculpture created to resemble the tables  and stools found in prisoner visiting rooms was created by Sable Elyse Smith based on her experiences as a child visiting her father while he was in jail.  The work is created in blue as a reference to “prison blues”, blues music as well as the colour of her father’s prison garb.

There were many very impressive paintings in this exhibition that depicted prison life.  The use of different media was interesting.  Following his incarnation, Henry Frank created a Lego sculpture titled “Mind Prison” showing the different experiences of prisoners who received visitors versus those who did not.  While in his cell at night, Dean Gillispie created a series of amazing miniatures that reflected his memories of his rural youth including a 1960s Airstream diner, ice cream parlor and gas station, all made from materials he could find in prison such as cigarette wrappers and tea bags, plus any contraband materials that he could procure.  Another inmate created images using quilting techniques that reflected his heritage in Pennsylvania where generations of his family were quilters.

After touring the Schomburg Centre, our lengthy tour was finally over.  Exhausted but chastened by the fact that our tour guide who probably had 3 decades on us did not seem the least bit tired, we made the trek across West 135th Street back to the subway.  Along the way, we passed one last reminder of the Harlem Renaissance—two gigantic street art murals of Dizzy Gillespie in honour of what would have been his 100th birthday.  We want to return to New York next year for the upcoming exhibition on the at the MET titled “Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” to learn more about this thrilling and culturally invigorating time.

New York 2023: Dining in Hell's Kitchen and around Manhattan

There were so many good restaurants in the Hell’s Kitchen area where my husband Rich and I were staying, and they were not as touristy as the eateries located in the Broadway district.  We selected an eclectic group of restaurants that gave us a variety of tastes and dining experiences.  New York is one of the few cities that rival Toronto in terms of the range and variety of ethnic restaurants to choose from.  I wrote in a previous blog post about all the different ways that various restaurants processed credit cards.  It still boggles the mind that a cosmopolitan city like New York cannot create a standardized payment system.

Our first dinner on this Manhattan trip was at 44 and X, a great continental restaurant located at the corner of  West 44th Street and 10th Avenue (thus the name of the restaurant) that offers meats and seafood entrees with interesting sides.  We started off with a cocktail and loved the selections which were all cleverly named after the current slate of shows on Broadway.  These included &Mule-iet, Rum Like it Hot, Tequila Mockingbird (very punny), Bad Ginger-ella and Camel-latte (after Camelot).  We selected a Ginberly Akimbo (gin with rosemary syrup, grapefruit juice and prosecco) in honour of the first Broadway show that we would watch and wondered whether the same drinks get renamed as shows change or if this restaurant comes up with new recipes repeatedly?   There were so many starters to choose from that it was hard to decide, but we eventually picked the pan seared diver sea scallops with roasted celery root purée with grilled sweet Italian sausage and a sherry port wine reduction, as well as the ravioli stuffed with lobster, lump crab, baby spinach, roasted wild mushroom, melted Manchego cheese, and ancho chili and coconut broth.  For my main course, I chose the pan roasted mahi-mahi with wild mushrooms, baby spinach and goat cheese risotto, topped with a bourbon chipotle barbeque glaze while rich had breaded black cod with seasonal vegetables.  The food was excellent, but the most memorable part of this meal was the hilarious drink menu.

Our favourite meal of the trip was at Lumlum (49th St. and 9th Ave.), an authentic Thai restaurant in a small, intimate setting with fun, kitschy décor and fabulous dishes that were unique and bursting with flavour.  The walls were covered with bamboo sticks, the seats were made of wicker and the light fixtures were covered with woven straw that gave the place a tiki-bar feel.  We only allocated 1.5 hours to have our meal and get to our Broadway show so initially we just ordered main courses.  These included Crying Tiger, consisting of Thai-styled spiced ribeye steak cooked medium rare with garlic fried rice, fried shallots and a marinated raw egg, stir-fried morning glory (a Chinese water spinach) covered with fried shallots, and the highlight of the meal, a crispy roasted duck in green curry sauce with Thai eggplant and basil.  We were busy feasting on these dishes when we saw the crispy fried chive dumplings with chili sauce go by en route to another table.  They looked so good that we could not resist ordering some for ourselves.  Luckily the appetizer came quickly and was definitely worth the wait.  The dumplings were crispy on the outside but chewy on the inside and so good!  This restaurant should be “YumYum”.  We want to come back here on our next trip to try some more dishes.   We did not order a cocktail (Rich ordered a lager beer) but we spotted a cool drink at another table.  Reading the menu, we think it was the Siam Smiles, made with vodka, lychee, and yuzu (citrus fruit mix between lemon, bitter grapefruit and sweet orange).  I’m not sure I would want to drink it, but it certainly looked fascinating with the large pieces of lychee around the rim.

The next evening, we had Spanish tapas at Bouqueria West 40 (40th St. and 8th Ave.), a lively, Barcelona-inspired tapas bar serving Spanish classics and seasonal specials. I love tapas (as well as dim sum) since you get to sample a small amount of a lot of different foods. We allocated two hours for this meal so that we could savour the many dishes before heading out to our next show.  We started with seasonal Sangria which was mixed with pineapple juice before settling into our variety of dishes.  We had Escalavida (roasted eggplant, red pepper, onion, yogurt, herbs and olive oil served with Foccacia bread), Ensalada de Alcachofa (crispy artichokes, arugula, Mahón cheese, lemon zest and garlic dressing), Croquetas de Setas (mushroom croquettes with truffle aioli), Esparragos con Romesco (grilled asparagus, grilled hazelnuts, romesco cheese, lemon zest and Manchego cheese),  Gambas al Ajillo (shrimp, garlic, brandy, lobster reduction, Guindilla pepper in olive oil), and Iberico con Salbitxada (premium Iberico pork seared medium-rare, Marcona almond, Salbitxada sauce, sherry, vinegar, fried egg).  This last dish was about four times more expensive than any other dish because of the special pork featured in it. The pork comes from “Spain’s prized pure-bred black Iberian pigs allowed to roam the hills of Andalusia eating grass, roots and acorns resulting in rich nutty flavours and distinct marbling”.   I think these pigs had lifestyles that rivaled the Japanese Kobi beef cows until their time was up!  We finished off our meal with Buñuelos Dulces (anise fritters with lemon curd and sugar) and cafes con leche.

On our fourth night, we went to a high-end Chinese restaurant named Chai (46th St. between 8th and 9th Aves.) and once again we only allocated 1.5 hours before our show since for some reason, Rich decided that Asian restaurants took less time.  Perhaps he was thinking of the Chinese restaurants back in Toronto, but this was not the case for the ones in Manhattan.  The meal started off well enough with our appetizer order of crispy duck spring rolls arriving almost immediately.   But then we waited and waited for the rest of our order, chatting to pass the time.  After 30 minutes while watching others who came in after us get their food, we repeatedly tried to flag down a waiter, but it did not help that there was no specific waiter assigned to our table.  They all seemed to float around interchangeably.  In the meantime we had noticed another table being served a vial of reddish-purple juice that turned out to be homemade plum juice osmanthus, which is a flowering plant.  Finally getting the attention of a waiter, we asked to check on our meal and also ordered a vial of the plum juice.  Another 15 minutes went by without food and by now it was too late for us to eat it and still make our show.  We flagged down yet another waiter, who admitted that the first waiter had forgotten to place our order and now the kitchen was backlogged.  Quite annoyed but now late, we asked to be billed for the food and drink that we did get and to cancel the rest of the order.  This brought out a really apologetic manager who told us to forget about the bill and to please come back another time. This was a wise gesture that tempered our opinion of the restaurant.  Despite the poor service that we received, the one dish that we got to eat was actually really good and the rest of the food on the menu looks great.  So we may try it once more on our next trip, but maybe not when we are rushing to see a show.

Our dinner at Sardi’s (8th Ave. and West 44th St.) in the heart of Broadway was not as memorable for the food as for the over 1000 iconic caricatures which are hung in multiple rows on every wall of the two-storied restaurant.  It was so much fun scanning the restaurant to see whose portraits we could identify.  Many of them were actors and actresses from before our times and unrecognizable by us.  But we did see ones that we knew, although some likenesses were a bit more nebulous than others.  In some cases, it helped when some of the drawings were autographed by the subject.  Right above our heads at the table where we were seated, we spotted Carol Burnett, David Hyde Pierce, Chita Rivera, John Lithgow, John Goodman, and Kathleen Turner.   Wandering around the ground and second floors (enroute to the washroom, but really to see more images), I found Bob Hope, Barbara Streisand, Shirley Jones, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, Alan Cummings, Josh Groban and more.

In one of the few caricatures that depict multiple images, the recently deceased comedian and satirist Barry Humphries was drawn along with his famous persona Dame Edna.  This was so entertaining that the meal became almost incidental.

However, in addition to all the second-hand star-gazing, we did actually eat at Sardi’s and surprisingly, for a place that has the term “tourist trap” written all over it, the food was not that bad and was not that expensive relatively speaking.  Rich started off with a Sidecar (cognac, triple sec, lemon juice) which seemed fitting in with old fashioned feel of the restaurant which dates back to 1927.  For appetizers, ordered the Sardi’s sampler plate which consisted of tomato bruschetta, prosciutto and melon, asparagus rolled in smoked salmon, roasted bell peppers, mozzarella and capers; truffled chicken liver pate; grilled shrimp with green olive tapenade.  We both ordered pastas for our main courses. Rich had the Ragu Bolognese Lasagna made with veal, beef, pork and bechamel sauce while I had the Cannelloni au Gratin which was a combination of beef veal and pork flavored with porcini mushrooms rolled in a French crepe with supreme sauce (white sauce with chicken stock and cream).  For dessert, I had the Espresso chocolate mousse with raspberry coulis while Rich got the crème brûlée cheesecake.

Our final dinner was at The Marshal (West 45th St. and 10th Ave.) which describes itself as a “cozy, rustic-chic spot with a wood oven firing farm-to-table New American dishes”.  Rich started with a Manhattan cocktail (whiskey, vermouth, bitters and a cherry) to celebrate our last night in the city.  Our appetizers included deviled with yolks infused with basil pesto and garlic, then garnished with duck prosciutto and drizzled with walnut pesto, along with the local Burrata served with herbed breadsticks, peso, aged balsamic and cherry tomatoes.  For the main course, I had the wood roasted Icelandic Cod (not quite local?) served with local mushroom and cherry tomato ragout with more cherry tomatoes and herbed butter.  Rich went for the “Marshal’s Famous Wood Fired Meatloaf” consisting of beef stuffed with kale, root vegetables and local blue cheese, served with onion gravy”.  Rich always goes for the “specialty” of a new restaurant.  It is interesting the menu items stress how local the products come from by naming the farm or ranch that the vegetables or meats are sourced from (e.g. Veritas Farms, Happy Valley Ranch, Blackhorse Farm, etc.)

We were looking for a hipster breakfast spot that would serve us something more interesting than just the traditional bacon and eggs, and we found one just down the street from our hotel.  The Blue Dog (West 50th St. and 8th Ave.) had so many interesting items on their breakfast menu and was such a fun place to eat at that we went there two mornings in a row, including our last breakfast before heading to the airport.  On our first visit, we were seated immediately in front of a screen that was showing old black and white TV shows and movies.  In this case, we watched an episode of The Addams Family while we ate.  The freshly squeezed orange juice that we each ordered came in mason jars so large that we could easily have shared one (which we did the next day).   I ordered the pumpkin-stuffed French toast which came as a sweet brioche bread which is stuffed with pumpkin cream cheese puree and covered with a fruit compote and a fried orange slice.  This was the most unique version of French toast that I ever saw, and it was delicious.  As a side, I also ordered strips of fried shitake mushroom “bacon”.  Rich had the Croque Madam with honey ham, melted cheese, béchamel sauce and two sunny side eggs on sour dough bread, served with a mixed green salad.

When we returned to the Blue Dog the next morning, Laurel & Hardy were up to shenanigans on the viewing screen. This time Rich went for the Crunchy French toast, made from pullman bread with rum-flambéed bananas while I chose the Crab Cake Benedict consisting of two poached eggs topping home made crab cakes sitting on English muffins, smothered with Hollandaise sauce and served with roasted potatoes and mixed greens.

All in all, we dined very well on this trip to New York City and did not really have a bad meal.  There were some memorable dining experiences and places that we would not only recommend to others but would like to go to again on a future trip.  And we would definitely stay again in the Hell’s Kitchen area which has no shortage of great restaurants to try.

New York City 2023: Broadway Shows - Kimberly Akimbo, Bad Cinderella, Shucked, Some Like It Hot, Fat Ham

 

My husband Rich and I love live theatre and especially musicals, so a trip to Manhattan would not be complete without going to at least 2-3 Broadway Shows.  To make up for the COVID years when we could not travel, we decided to splurge on this first post-pandemic visit and watch four of them, one for each night in the city other than the first (in case of flight delays) and last nights.  Because we were traveling in early May when many of the new plays and musicals were just opening up, we did not have the luxury of waiting for reviews.  We picked our shows based on the current buzz and past reputation of the composer or writer, then secured good seats for each one using the website telecharge.com, which offers the best service charge rates. Unfortunately, by the time reviews came out just before our trip, it became clear that we had picked three Tony-nominated winners but one dud!  In a last spur-of-the-moment decision, we decided to re-jig our plans and add a fifth show to our lineup, slotting in a Wednesday matinee which would make that day a “double-feature” in terms of theatre-going.

The musical that we added at the last minute was Kimberly Akimbo, which actually ended up winning the Tony award for best new musical.  We had not selected it initially because its subject matter seemed both daunting and potentially depressing(?).  Kimberly Levaco is a 15-year-old girl with a rare disease that causes her body to age four times faster than normal.  Moving to a new school for reasons revealed later, Kimberly befriends a new group of kids including Seth who is passionate about creating anagrams out of people’s names.  He figures out that the letters of “Kimberly Levaco” can be rearranged to spell “Cleverly Akimbo”, thus explaining the musical’s title.   Akimbo is an interesting adjective for Kimberly since it literally means standing with hands on hips. In slang, the akimbo stance has come to represent fierce defiance, which is how Kimberly deals with to her condition, facing it head-on and not letting it get her down.  With a life expectancy of 16 and her birthday approaching, Kimberly is determined to make the most of her remaining days and live “in the moment” despite the insensitivity and lack of emotional or financial support from her selfish parents.

Kimberly dreams of a family trip to Disneyland.  When told the family can’t afford it, she and her friends succumb to her larcenous aunt Debra’s plan to steal cheques from a postal box and “wash” them.  This leads to the best number in the musical, a jazzy, hilarious number called “How to Wash a Cheque”.   Debra’s instructions to the clueless and clumsy kids include “Tie a fish line, open the mailbox, drop the glue trap, get a bite …”.  Joining Kimberly and Seth in this potential caper are Delia, Martin, Teresa and Aaron who form a sweet teenaged circle of unrequited love for one another—Teresa likes Martin who in turn likes Aaron, but Aaron who likes Delia who only has eyes for Teresa.  Brash and insensitively direct as always, Debra cuts to the chase of the situation by pointing at them and saying “Straight, Gay, Straight, Gay .. Get it??”.

This show would not work without the stellar acting job of 63-year-old actress Victoria Clark who plays Kimberly with long awkward limbs, quirky movements, a sparkle in her eye and a mischievous grin that totally sells the allusion of a teenager with a rare aging disease.  Rather than depressing, the story is told in a touching, sensitive and at times, even humorous manner.  Each of the parents gets a song that shows pathos and gives their characters depth despite their severe character flaws.  In their own ways, they love Kimberly but are scared for her and don’t know how to handle her impending death.  Kimberly Akimbo ends on a positive note with Kimberly and Seth taking off on a “Great Adventure” to help her fulfill her dreams while she still can.  The message is clear and echoes Jonathan Larson’s prophetic theme in Rent--“No Day But Today”.  For Kimberly, it’s “Live for the Now”.

The show that ended up being a dud was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest offering, an updated take on the age-old fairytale Cinderella.  The musical originally played in London’s West End before coming to Broadway with a revamped script and retitled as Bad Cinderella after one of the songs.  Enjoying past musicals by this prolific composer, we bought our tickets without waiting to hear reviews.  Unlike the late Stephen Sondheim who tried so hard to be innovative and unrepetitive that half his catalog was not commercially successful, Andrew Lloyd Webber usually stays with a tried and true formula, resulting in crowd pleasing but derivative works that often even have a similar sound to them.  So I thought “How bad could it be?”  As it turns out, the reviews were scathing, admonishing us that we were forewarned by the title itself that the show would be “Bad”!  Writers take note.. do not use the word “Bad” in the title of your show unless you are sure you have a winner.  Otherwise you make the job of the critic way too easy!

As with many contemporary adaptations of past works, the trend these days is to inject either gay characters or female empowerment into old stories as a way to modernize them. In its own clumsy way, Bad Cinderella tries to do both.  Instead of the helpless damsel of the traditional tale, this Cinderella is spunky, defiant and considered “bad” (as opposed to badass?) by the townspeople for her non-confirming appearance and rebellious actions including defacing the memorial statue of Prince Charming, the missing-in-action heir to the throne. Cinderella’s romantic interest is instead her childhood best friend Prince Sebastian, who is Charming’s low-key younger brother who has become the heir-apparent.  Other than this new spin, the rest of the story falls in line with the wicked stepmother and two selfish stepsisters vying for Sebastian’s attention, the ball where he must choose a bride, the fairy godmother and the slipper until a twist ending (mild spoiler) sees the return of Charming.

To be fair, there were a few catchy tunes that I liked including the titular song in Bad Cinderella although the music that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote for it reminded me of melodies from Song and Dance and Evita.  I firmly believe that he plagiarizes from his old work when writing new ones.  My issues lay mostly in the storyline which did little to improve upon the original classic, as well as the cheesy spoken dialogue and song lyrics, and most of all the over-the-top acting that led to much emoting and shrieking by the main characters, and cringe-inducing primping and over-sexualized posturing by both the female and male background dancers.  The costumes selected for the Broadway version did not help with the female villagers in low cut dresses, short shorts, and plunging necklines to accentuate their pushed-up bosoms, while the male villagers/guardsmen were inexplicably bare-chested in many scenes.  Worst of all, Cinderella herself was anachronistically dressed like a grunge-punk version of Neo from the Matrix with her long coat, tight pants and high boots.  Actually no, worst of all was when Prince Charming finally showed up with his bare chest exposed and flexed until his chest muscles popped.  On top of all of this, there was no chemistry between Cinderella and Sebastian, so it was difficult to root for them.  Overall, this was not a good show and I think the changes made between the UK and the USA versions were not for the better.  However this was not the worse show that I’ve ever watched, and I found the music more appealing than the musical New York, New York which was nominated for a Tony but closed after only a few months just like Bad Cinderella.

While we liked Kimberly Akimbo and admired its lofty theme, the show that we had the most fun watching was Shucked, a musical comedy about corn.  The isolated residents of the tiny fictional village of “Cob County” face a crisis when the corn crop which sustains their livelihood starts to fail.  Farmgirl Maizy decides to head to the “big city” of Tampa for the first time to find help, much to the dismay of her fiancé Beau who thinks they can fix things on their own.  In Tampa, Maizy encounters a sleezy podiatrist (corn doctor, pun intended) who pretends he can heal the corn crop in order to get access to precious minerals that he mistakenly believes are found in the village.  This is an ultra-charming, laugh-out-loud tour-de-force with groan-inducing dad jokes zipping around a mile a minute as well as a few pearls of wisdom that you almost miss due to the uproarious laughter.   Some of my favourite lines include “If life were fair, mosquitos would suck fat instead of blood”, “You don’t realize how many people you hate until you try to name a child”, and “Family is telling somebody to go to hell, then worrying that they get there safely”. 

The theatre term “11 O’Clock Number” refers to a big show-stopping number that occurs late in the second act of a two-act musical, where a major character has an important realization.  Some iconic songs that meet this definition include “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy or “Being Alive” from Company.  In Shucked, the extremely talented non-binary actor Alex Newell brought down the house and prompted a standing ovation with the character Lulu’s song “Independent Woman”.  The only thing is that the song was sung about 2/3 of the way through Act 1, making it an unusual “9:15” number?   Shuck also had a very uniquely choreographed “dance” number involving a corn-cob Chorus Line.  Shucked is such joy that you leave the theatre on a high that lasts for days.

Rich and I agreed that the favourite of the five shows we watched on this trip was the jazzy musical Some Like It Hot, adapted from the iconic 1959 film of the same name starring Jack Lemon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.  But before talking about the musical, I want to gush about the beauty of the Shubert Theatre.  Built in 1913 in the Italian Renaissance style, the 1502 seat theatre is decorated with elaborate plasterwork and theatrically themed murals on the ceiling surrounded by floral designs.  A plaque declared A Chorus Line the “Longest Running Show in Broadway History” which it was at the time with 6137 performances between 1975-1990.  The record has since been eclipsed by six other shows including the current record holder The Phantom of the Opera which ran on Broadway for over 14,000 performances before finally closing in 2023.

Following relatively closely to its source material, the musical Some Like it Hot begins with musicians Joe and Jerry, who witness a mob hit and need to go into hiding.  They do so by dressing up as women to join an all female band who are traveling across the country by train.  Joe falls in love with Sugar, the lead singer of the band, but cannot express his feelings while dressed as “Josephine”.  Meanwhile Jerry, aka Daphne, is wooed by eccentric millionaire Osgood Fielding III.  In the movie, Joe and Sugar’s pairing provides the romance while Jerry and Osgood are played for laughs.  The musical version modernizes the story by having Daphne come out as a transgendered character who finally feels whole and right for the first time in her female persona.  The show ups the ante by casting non-binary actor J.Harrison Ghee in the role.

Some Like It Hot brings us back to the golden age of musicals where it is enough to enjoy singing and dancing and to just have fun watching a show without having a serious message bludgeoned into your head.  Everything about this show was sumptuously wonderful, from the beautiful Art Deco set design to the gorgeous costumes of the era, to stellar singing, dancing and acting by all the main performers.  The final “chase” scene between the gangsters and our protagonists involves a lengthy farce-like tap dance number where the characters repeatedly go in and out of hotel doors and weave around one another as the doors themselves spin in and out of place.  The choreography of this sequence has to be seen to be believed.

Our final show, Fat Ham, was a dramedy based on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  But instead of a Danish prince, we have a fat, black, gay young man named Juicy who lives in somewhere in America, probably North Carolina (the playwright's home town).  Fat Ham initially follows the storyline of Hamlet, although the setting is at a backyard barbeque to celebrate the wedding of Juicy’s mother Tedra to his uncle Rev, a mean bully who denigrates Juicy for his sexuality and “soft” emotional nature.  Juicy’s father Pap was a violent man in jail for murder where he himself was stabbed and murdered.  Pap comes back as a ghost to inform Juicy that Rev had him killed and wants his son to seek vengeance.  Adding a bit of humour to the play, at one point the ghost of Pap appears by popping up out of the barbeque.  That Pap and Rev are two sides of the same coin in terms of masculine toxicity and brutality is accentuated by having the same actor play both roles.  Both characters act as a foil for Juicy who is gentle, rational and intellectual.

The other main characters in Hamlet are represented in Fat Ham.  Juicy’s cousin Tio represents the Horatio character and is the first to see Pap’s ghost.  Siblings Ophelia and Laertes and their father Polonius appear in the form of family friends Opal, Larry and mother (not father!) Rabby.  Opal, who is rebellious and independent, and Larry, a marine with PTSD and a secret crush on Juicy, are both closeted gays who hide their natures from their church-going mother.  Larry also acts as a foil for Juicy since he outwardly portrays himself as a tough, masculine military man but his façade falls when he lets his guard down and kisses Juicy.

Juicy quotes directly from Hamlet throughout the play, sometimes out of context and sometimes verbatim in asides to the audience.  When Rev waxes poetically about his marvelous barbeque rub, Juicy hilariously interjects with “Ah there’s the rub”.  When Tedra wants to talk to Juicy about his deceased father, Juicy throws in the line “The King, my queen, is dead” to which she responds, “You watch too much PBS!”.  Later Juicy turns to the audience and quotes Hamlet’s “What a piece of work is man” speech to highlight the craziness in the family dynamics around him.  And like Hamlet, Juicy tries to trap Rev into admitting his guilt by watching it be acted out, but in this case, in a round of charades as opposed to a play.  Here he quotes “guilty creatures sitting at a play have .. proclaimed their malefactions.”

We reach the end of the play, when if following Hamlet, all hell would break loose, and everyone dies.  In Fat Ham, this is represented symbolically in a moment of frenzy where the entire stage is lit in blood red hues and Juicy states that this is when the killing happens ..isn’t it?  When asked why, he replies “Cause this is a tragedy. We tragic”, alluding to the cycle of “generational violence and trauma” that plagues black men from poor families. Instead, taking a page from Tio’s drug-infused dream about choosing “pleasure over harm”, Juicy chooses a different path of acceptance and joy, breaking the cycle.  Opal and Larry embrace their identities and come out to their mother while Rev accidentally gets his just desserts.  Larry’s emergence is big, bold, joyous and unexpected, resulting in a fitting finale.  James Ijames won the Pulitzer prize for drama for Fat Ham and there was a post show talk about his writing journey and what it meant for the actors to participate in this play..

It is interesting to note that every one of the five Broadway shows that we watched had some sort of connection to the LGBTQ community, whether it was having one or more gay characters in the show, or having a role that was played by a non-CIS actor in real life.  Three of the shows (Kimberly, Cinderella, Shucked) involve some declaration of female power and independence. Every one of the shows included at least one person of colour, not just in the background but as one of the main characters. At least on stage, it seems like parts of America are getting more “woke” and inclusive.

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.