Limited Access Visit #3: the Whitney

On September 6th I took advantage of having come downtown for church and went over to the Whitney afterwards. Seems I have no proper establishing shot for the visit, I just get right into it. The big thing happening at the Whitney right now is they have this triple-A exhibit on the 20th century Mexican muralists and their influence on art throughout the Americas. This show was supposed to be a blockbuster “big deal” show with reserved tickets and giant crowds BUT then the lockdown happened. But now the Whitney is back open and you can just go in (with a reserved ticket, of course) and see this big deal show.

I like that one parrot

One of the best things about the Whitney: those terrace views!

There was also a very fine “craft in art” show.

There was also a show about this artist Agnes Pelton. A lot of her work seems to be the inspiration for Trapper Keeper art.

Finally, a visit to the permanent collection, where they always keep a great mix of old favorites and pieces you haven’t seen before on display.

Ok so you know what I think? I think the Whitney is my favorite museum in New York. Great building in a great location, perfect size where you can see everything in a 2-ish hour visit, interesting shows plus a great permanent collection, PLUS those terraces? Consider me very Whitney-gang.

Oh, and how’s their Covid situation? Very good. You must have a reservation to get in, they take your temperature as you walk by a sensor, ticket stuff is all contact-less, elevators are available at request but otherwise they ask everyone that can take the stairs. The number of people at the museum seemed to be what you should expect on a lazy Sunday, no bustling, but definitely not as abandoned-feeling as the MoMA.

Limited Access Visit #2: the MoMA

The morning of September 1 I took a trip to the MoMA

with my brother Greg!!

There was a whole lot of this…in fact, after visiting 4 Limited Access cultural institutions so far, NO ONE comes close to the distancing in effect at the Museum of Modern Art. They’ve got the lowest percentage of people allowed in and it showed. Very very very few people in the museum and it was awesome.

We started on the top, where there was a big Donald Judd retrospective, and worked our way down through the whole museum.

The best example of the non-crowdedness of the MoMA was that we were the only 2 people in the gallery where Starry Night is. Never have I ever not had to elbow my way through this room.

Ok now art w/o interruption:

OK and that’s it for my MoMA visit! Good to see all the art and walk around the expansion, but it’s a shame that the expansion is just: more rooms. You wouldn’t even know you were in it if you didn’t know you were in it. And I don’t know but also I feel like I’ve seen every thing they’ve got at the MoMA. No surprises, no discoveries, nothing really got me going. MoMA: get some new art? Or rotate some of it? OR maybe, even with a 6 or 7 month break, I’ve been too many times?

Anyway, I’ve got Whitney and Met visit posts and takes coming up so I hope you’ll come around for those, too.

Limited Access Visit #1: the Bronx Zoo

A great thing that’s happening in New York is that our cultural institutions are reopening. A “great” thing about the pandemic is they’re all reopening with limited access and you have to make a reservation ahead of time. It is very nice to walk around popular places without very many people (or school groups!) in them at all.

My first such visit was to the Bronx Zoo, which I had never even been to before, a few Wednesdays ago. Wednesdays are free days at the Bronx Zoo. It was a perfect storm of planning ahead.

Here are a bunch of pictures of animals. Almost all of these pictures were taken with the new used 90mm lens I got for my M. It’s a f/2.8 and at first I wondered if I wouldn’t want more speed than that, but now that I’ve been using it the thought of trying to focus a 90mm lens at f/2.0 or below is, nope! Not interested!

The Fordham Road gate is the classy way to enter the Bronx Zoo, which turned out to be: Very Big. There’s a lot of walking between animals. I think that, for standard zoo-visiting, I prefer a more compact zoo. I like to be looking at penguins and then I turn around and I’m looking at tigers.

Ok, now, presented with limited interruptions, animals, statues and buildings:

A thing that was a real drag about the zoo was that so many exhibits cost extra money to see. Monkey house, butterfly house, jungle house and more. I did shell out to ride the Bengali Express Monorail through Asia because I can’t resist a monorail (or a chance to sit down). An odd thing about the monorail is it turns about just about every animal you see way far away on the monorail s also available to be seen close up in a exhibit. But still. Sitting. In a monorail.

This red panda is named Linus.

Aaaand here is Linus’s son, Chestnut, up close in a normal exhibit.

Now I was about to leave when I saw there was about no line to get into the Madagascar exhibit (which, for some reason, didn’t cost extra money) so I decided to check it out and I’m so glad I did because they had great lemurs, tortoises, and red birds in there!

And after that I left the zoo through the 183rd street gate which is not as classic looking as the Fordham Road gate. Also of note: I walked to the zoo, walked around the zoo, and walked home from the zoo…it was a 26,000 step outing!