Mayseums

Sorry about the title. But here's a post about the two trips to museums I took in May to check out some special exhibits.

Manus x Machina at the Met

One Saturday evening I joined Kristin, Bryndee and Caroline for a trip to the Met to see their annual exhibit of dresses. Every year (hence the "annual" in the last sentence) there's some fashion exhibit at the Met that's really popular, they kick it off with that big gala where all the celebrities wear fancy stuff? Anyway, I'm not sure if I've ever been to the annual fashion show, I definitely didn't go to that Alexander McQueen show that drove the city as wild as Hamilton. The theme was "Manus x Machina", meaning to focus on, like, the intersection of technology and, uh, people? in the making of fancy clothes. I think these themes are pretty bare skeletons to hang a lot of dresses on. And sure, lots of the dresses were cool, but the exhibit was a chaotic zoo of people shoving their way towards each dress to take pictures of them on their phones. So, okay, yes, I took pictures so I'm as bad as everyone else that was there. But it was an entirely unpleasant churning throng of people trying to look at dresses, and I was a part of it.

Before looking at the dresses we went up to the roof to see the house that's up there (every summer there's something up on the roof of the Met) before it started raining. It started raining while we were looking at the house. Perfect timing.

Then it was back down into the museum to check out those dresses. One thing that definitely did impress me were all the old dresses from the 30's and such and how the wall text would say "on loan from Mrs. so-and-so", meaning that someone's grandma wore this dress to a fancy party a long time ago and it's been in some Park Avenue closet ever since and when they heard Manus x Machina was coming up the owners thought "Oh, guess the Met will probably need to borrow Grandma's dress for this."

A dress of black plastic straws.

This was described as a wedding ensemble.

Another wedding ensemble

I dug the pleats

High fashion museum exhibit, high fashion gift shop, get your $300+ t-shirts and fancy purses here

Engaged in a little non-fashion exhibit-seeing, too.

Lost Kristin for a minute. Then found her.

Ramones at the Queens Museum

Then one sunny day Cher and I rode out to Flushing Meadows to see the Ramones exhibit at the Queens Museum. It had been about 7 years since my last Queens Museum visit, it had been totally renovated in the interim. But before museum pictures there's going to be some Flushing Meadows Park photos.

Oh snap, first Mister Softee of the season!

Chocolate Half-Merlin represent representsent

The Ramones exhibit was pretty good...just lots of t-shirts, old photos, and posters. Not giant, not tiny. Perfectly fine little thing.

Giant Sergio Aragones Ramones concert cartoon. I'd buy a poster of this.

Yoshitomo Nara Dee Dee doggy. I dig it.

In one room they were showing a Ramones concert video and my question was: "How loud did they play?" I hope very, very. I'd buy a time machine ticket to that show if you can promise me it was loud.

Post-Ramones Queens Museum browsing. Some of the best art was in the bathroom.

In the Panorama room, Brooklyn was under attack by a gigantic woman with a tiny vacuum

Can you see the plane coming in for a landing at LaGuardia?

There's a little side gallery showing off a few pieces from the largest private Tiffany glass collection. Here's what I learned: those Tiffany Lamps? They were invented/made/designed/whathaveyou by the SON of the founder of Tiffany & Co., the jewelers. So that's the connection. We all knew there had to be one.

Additional art and a glimpse of a panorama of the New York watershed and mural about water coming from the Catskills to the city with beavers in it.