Last weekend Mr O and I visited family in Westchester Co and took the train into NYC two days in a r0w. We fit more into those two days than I would have thought possible…and everyone kindly let me see everything that I wanted to…
The Chelsea Market was our first stop. Originally the National Biscuit Company complex it is now a foodie paradise just lined with shops and restaurants and lots and lots of people. The photographer in me also enjoyed all the photos by Dave Mead of Magnificent Specimens of mustached men throughout the building. Incredible…and fun.
A walk on the High Line Park from end to end was next…
I had read a lot about this park that opened one year ago and I just love the idea of the community action which made this park possible.
Originally an elevated train track it is now an elevated garden…
Views from the park include buildings by Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel …
…and balconies overlooking the walk.
It really was too hot to sit and relax for long.
CLAUDE MONET
Nymphéas, 1906
Oil on canvas
Next we went gallery hopping in Chelsea. There was a Monet show at the Gagosian gallery which was free and fabulous…rooms full of variations of the lily pond and the bridge in his garden…
We bopped in and out of several galleries in the same area of Chelsea…I don’t remember all the gallery names but I do remember one photography exhibit at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery that I particularly loved.
“…to walk without destination and to see only to see” is the title of Uta Barth’s exhibit of diptychs and triptychs.
“My primary project has always been in finding ways to make the viewer aware of their own activity of looking at something (or in some instances, someone.) ...” Uta Barth
On the way to our last stop of the day my sister in law was sharp eyed enough to notice two of the statues included in Event Horizon. Thirty one of these life size statues can be found around Madison Square Park but we only spotted these two.
By the time we finished a visit to the Morgan Library and Museum to see a show on the architect Palladio I was running out of steam and camera batteries….and slept most of the train ride back.
