Superfine: Tailoring Black Style is a special exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is put on by the Met’s Costume Institute and brings together examples of Black fashion over 300 years. It ties it to celebrities of different centuries and eras and how the past influences the present.
Seeing the Met’s custom collection is always exciting. New York is the center of America’s fashion industry after all. Over the last 20 years, fashion and cloting as art have made a larger presence at the Met. This exhibit connects high fashion to and the influence of Black pop-culture.
“Sargent in Paris” is a new retrospective at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) showcasing the early career of American painter John Singer Sargent. John Singer Sargent is one of my favorite painters and was a rare American artist who created some of Europe’s most iconic portrait paintings during the late 19th Century’s “Gilded Age.”
Sargent grew up traveling throughout Europe with his parents. He studied art and painting in Paris under famed portrait artist Carolus-Duran. Paris in the 19th Century was the center of the art world. It was also a time when tastes and style were being transformed by Impressionism and the Industrial Revolution.
This retrospective includes works Sargent created while a student and during his travels around Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. It explores contemporaries and influences, and friends like Claude Monet and Rodin, and includes pieces by Renior, Manet, and Sargent’s mentor Carolus-Duran.
The exhibit culminates with the portrait of “Madam X”, a painting that would make Sargent famous, because of the mini-scandal it created in Parisian high society. The painting was presented at the 1884 Paris Salon exhibition and created a stir among the public and Art Critics due to the hanging dress strap as worn by Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau. She was the Kim Kardashian/Paris Hilton of her day.
Washington Crossing the Delaware is a life-sized oil-on-canvas painting by Emanuel Leutze depicting General George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War. This large-format painting hangs in the Gallery of American Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. This painting is 1-of-2 existing versions; the other hangs in the Metropolitan Marine Museum.
This painting is famously used in many American History textbooks. What was surprising to me was the size of the painting, at 12ft x 22ft. The figures are life-sized.
The Fifth Avenue Apple Store is Apple’s flagship store in Manhattan. Opened in 2006 and with its iconic glass cube installed in 2011, this store was built on the site of the General Motors Gardens. It still contains potted trees which are carefully illuminated by sunlight and artificial lighting.
The store was originally designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Its renovation in 2011, which included the construction of its iconic glass cube entrance, was by Foster + Partners and Apple’s chief design officer Jony Ive. It visually harkens to I.M. Pei’s Louver pyramid. The Apple Store sits at the corner of Fifth Avenue opposite Grand Army Plaza at the corner of Central Park.
The Oculus is the architecturally stunning transit hub next to the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan in New York City. It houses the NJ PATH station with connections to 12 NYC subway lines. It also houses dining and stores managed by Westfield. It connects to the NYC Fulton Street subway station, One World Trade Center Tower and Observatory, Brookfield Place, and the Ferry Terminal in Battery Park City.
Designed by famed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. In utility, function, and aesthetics, it is one of the finest transportation structures in the world and certainly the best transit building built in the United States this century.
The 9-11 Ground Zero Memorial is a pair of square fountain cascades that trace the footprint of the World Trade Center towers that once stood in this hallowed ground. Cascading waterfalls drain into the below-ground museum dedicated to the 2,996 who died on September 11, 2001 during the terrorist attack. At ground level, visitors can explore the park that formed the base of the Twin Tower plaza.
I got rare access to the Sky Lobby at One World Trade Center (aka Freedom Tower) in lower Manhattan, New York City. This commercial lobby is not accessible to the general public, used by tenants and clients of the building. I was invited by a friend at NY Life Insurance to tour the Sky Lobby.
Kinokuya is a chain of book stores that started in Shinjuku, Tokyo. In the 1980’s they opened up locations world wide providing Japanese language books to the Japanese business and ex-patriot community. Today they serve American Otakus.
Kinokuya occupies 3 of the lowest floors of the office building. In the basement you’ll find stationary, office supplies, and oddly enough their Studio Ghibli toys. On street level, you’ll find their books (many English language/Western travel books too). On the 2nd floor, are all of their manga, anime toys, Gunpla, and their café.
When I used to work on Madison Ave., my favorite lunch were bento boxes of chicken katsu from take-out shops on 40th St. I would carry them across the street and eating them on the benches around Bryant Park. On less busy days, I’d stroll over to Kinokuya just across the street from the western side of the park. I don’t quite remember as much of a manga or Gunpla is there is today, but I’m glad for it.
While out on the East Coast to produce OP: Bad Blood 2022, I stop in to my old stomping grounds in Midtown-Manhattan to visit the Nintendo Store in Rockefeller Center.
