At the exhibition "
Dutch Seen" at the Museum of the City of New York today I was wowed by some enormous portraits by Hendrick Kerstens. They command the eye the way Dutch Golden Age portraits do, but on closer inspection prove to be very contemporary. Don't know what I'm getting at? Know that these are called "Napkin" and "Bag," respectively.
I actually went up there with my friend J to see the exhibition of the
Mannahatta Project, which was also worth the trip. It was full of interesting information, like the comparison of land use below - we'd never thought about the space sidewalks take up but lo, it's comparable (when other paved areas are added in) to the space occupied by roads!
Here's the Lenape village at the Collect Pond, where City Hall now sits.
The exhibition was moralizing but in an unexpected way. The central ecological concepts used in the project were applied straightforwardly - non-metaphorically - to the human ecology of contemporary New York, as in the mini-sermon on diversity below. Is this also a claim of causality, or a call of filial piety to the underlying diversity of this place?
Some of the torrential rains which have been soaking NYC today delayed our departure from the museum, so we headed upstairs to see the Stettheimer Dollhouse, which J knew but was new to me. Someone Stettheimer spent 20 years on it, and was well connected: the artwork hanging in its rooms is all genuine, much of it by renowned artists.
(Not Chuck but close.)
At the exhibition "Dutch Seen" at the Museum of the City of New York today I was wowed by some enormous portraits by Hendrick Kerstens. They command the eye the way Dutch Golden Age portraits do, but on closer inspection prove to be very contemporary. Don't know what I'm getting at? Know that these are called "Napkin" and "Bag," respectively.
I actually went up there with my friend J to see the exhibition of the Mannahatta Project, which was also worth the trip. It was full of interesting information, like the comparison of land use below - we'd never thought about the space sidewalks take up but lo, it's comparable (when other paved areas are added in) to the space occupied by roads! 
Here's the Lenape village at the Collect Pond, where City Hall now sits.
The exhibition was moralizing but in an unexpected way. The central ecological concepts used in the project were applied straightforwardly - non-metaphorically - to the human ecology of contemporary New York, as in the mini-sermon on diversity below. Is this also a claim of causality, or a call of filial piety to the underlying diversity of this place? 
Some of the torrential rains which have been soaking NYC today delayed our departure from the museum, so we headed upstairs to see the Stettheimer Dollhouse, which J knew but was new to me. Someone Stettheimer spent 20 years on it, and was well connected: the artwork hanging in its rooms is all genuine, much of it by renowned artists. 
(Not Chuck but close.)
