I’ve taken a few breaks from working here in Manhattan and here are the results:
- Metropolitan Museum: Very interesting Civil War shows, especially oil paintings by Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson and by a Confederate artist (name escapes me).
- International Center for Photography: Triennial show. My favorites were the collages by Sohei Nishino, a young Japanese photographer working in an old style. He captures photos with a 35mm film camera, makes contact prints, then cuts them up to make a collage (see this one of New York).
- Guggenheim Museum: James Turrell turned the core of the museum into a totally different experience looking up from the ground floor. (Unfortunately the show gets less interesting on higher floors.)
- ET Modern gallery: the Feynman Diagrams realized as wall sculpture will fascinate anyone with an interest in science and art.
- Erben Gallery, on the fourth floor of 526 W. 26th St.: photographs by Tom Wood (you won’t be emigrating to the U.K. after seeing these)
- Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, with film star Sigourney Weaver (good), TV star David Hyde Pierce (amazing; he is best known for being Niles Crane on Frasier), and stage star Kristine Nielsen (great). The play doesn’t seem likely to have enduring appeal, but the actors and overall competence of Broadway make it come to life.
Do go and visit the Tom Woods photographs as the Erben Gallery. In the distant past, I lived next door to Tom in New Brighton (Merseyside in the UK) and remember him and his extraordinary ability to photograph ordinary people. His street portraits were always up close and intimate. A fantastic talent.