Taking in New York’s galleries

Monday 24 August to Tuesday 1 September

I think we visited the Guggenheim three times.  The first, Evan showed us the outside as part of a walk around Central Park. We returned the following Thursday, but had cleverly chosen the ‘Closed Day’ but finally cracked it for a real visit on the Friday.

An interesting installation ‘Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim’.  Key examples from the 1990s of younger artists articulating the politics of identity and difference. Unfortunately I found it a little too contemporary – it seemed to me that a lot of the artists had their own agenda, but one that was difficult to share with their audience.

Signs were clearly stating that photography above the ground level was not permitted. Amazing how the signs were ignored and most people photographed the installations at will.  We hadn’t dragged our cameras up the ramp, so had to resort to the old faithfull iPhone to record some of the exhibits.

I was however blown away by a small but powerful Kandinsky exhibition, not knowing that I would see a lot more of his work in Bern just a week later.

The Tannhauser Gallery was also brilliant, name a 19th or early 20th century artist and his work was there – Kandinsky, Picasso, Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Pissaro, Van Gough.  The gallery was amazing.

We wore our legs out at the Metropolitan Museum, loved the craft period installations. Evan used one of the pieces as inspiration for his Dailies on 16 October 2015 – #Monumental #Storrs

We have seen a lot of museums and historical sites in our year long journey, so we chose the galleries of New York carefully.  Our last choice was the American Museum of Natural History.  We had been overwhelmed by the natural beauty in Northern America and it seemed fitting to put all of this in perspective. Of course the highlight was seeing a stuffed American Moose, as these creatures had eluded us on our travels.