Last(?) New York Trip

As I indicated, I am beside myself with despair on the terrible choices the US has made.  I haven't made a solemn pledge or anything, but I don't think I will travel to the US again after Jan.  Maybe I will make an exception to pick up a few things from my stepmom in North Carolina, but that is not guaranteed.  Indeed, I am thinking I may well make a one-day trip to Buffalo in mid Dec. to see Marisol at the Albright-Knox, and then put my passport away for a long time.

I thought I would organize in my own mind how next week is going to look.

On Tues. I will be at work, and I even decided to go see Timon of Athens at the Theatre Centre.  Perhaps a mistake, though I think this is a somewhat shortened version.  Then on Wed., I wake up quite early and catch an early Porter flight to Newark.  It will then take an hour or so to get into Manhattan proper.  I will only need to buy a one-way NJ Transit ticket this time, however.

The plan is to go up to the Met first and see the various exhibits.  They don't have any blockbuster exhibits on, but I definitely want to see the Mexican print exhibit and the photographs by Anastasia Samoylova and Walker Evans.  I had thought there was a new book about Samoylova, but now I don't think so.  I will then run over to the Guggenheim, at least in part because I get free admission there!  But the exhibits look at least somewhat interesting.  

This will likely take the full day, but if I am exceptionally efficient, I may have a couple of hours to hit the MoMA.  I hadn't planned on going on this trip, but it might be my last visit for a very long time.  I also am intrigued by their small exhibit on German expressionism, and the fact that they have a Beckmann triptych (Depature) on view and the Met has The Beginning on view as well does make it more appealing.  There is no question I would go if I had the time, but Thurs. I have quite a few things that will eat into my museum time, so if I can't squeeze it in on Wed., I probably can't go.

Anyway, I'll meet up with a friend for dinner, and then we are off to see the Pacifica Quartet at the 92 St. Y.  (This performance is being live-streamed and you can watch up to 72 hours later, so I am toying with the idea of purchasing the live-stream as well for when I get back.  I also found out that Abdullah Ibrahim is in NYC on Friday and at the Y!  But his performance is not available as a live-stream, which is incredibly disappointing to me.  So I will not be able to make up for missing him in Markham a few years ago.  I might have rearranged the whole trip had I realized he was playing so soon after Pacifica.  C'est la vie...)

Then I go crash at the Youth Hostel for the night.  (Even though my bag will be pretty full, I do need to remember to bring my lock!)  Then I will probably head over to the Strand at 10, and then I meet someone from work and go sit in on one virtual meeting at the office and then I think I will probably head over to Bleeker St. Books and Howl Arts.  However, I could perhaps run over to MOMA first and then these bookish places afterwards and then make a short visit to the Whitney.  (I used to have free admission to the Whitney, but not any longer.)  As it happens the Whitney is open longer than any other museum on Thurs. (until 6 pm), and there is one Jane Dickson painting on view in their Shifting Landscapes exhibit.  

Jane Dickson, Heading in—Lincoln Tunnel 3, 2003

But I probably wouldn't spend more than a couple hours at the Whitney, so maybe I will fit everything in after all.  It's a bit hard to tell at the moment.

Anyway, I have a ticket to see McNeal, which is Ayad Akhtar’s new play starring Robert Downey, Jr.  So it's a fairly hot ticket, and I waited a bit too long to commit to going, so the ticket prices were pretty high.  I actually found a reasonably priced ticket on Stub Hub.  However, I had just completed the purchase when I read that they were going to send me a physical ticket rather than an e-ticket, and I felt sick to my stomach.  It is being FedExed and it should be here Sunday or Monday, but so much can go wrong.  I absolutely would not have ordered this if I had realized that was the situation.  So one more thing to stress me out.

Then I head over to the Amtrak station.  There is a night train that leaves at 11 pm, and gets in to DC at 6 in the morning (it actually pulls over somewhere near Philly for a couple of hours).  Basically everyone just sleeps on the train.  And the ticket costs only $25!  Wild.

Friday I will likely go to the Hirshhorn, maybe the Freer and Sackler Galleries, then the National Gallery.  I should be able to meet someone else from work and we'll chat and look at art, which sounds like fun to me anyway.  I see that Beckmann's triptych The Argonauts is on view, which is great, but Falling Man is not.  I have not seen this in a very long time, which is getting more than a little frustrating.  

I will keep my eyes peeled for one new acquisition, a Remedios Varo painting, which I don't believe was part of the Art Institute of Chicago exhibition I saw last year.

Remedios Varo, Banqueros en acción (Bankers in Action), 1962

There also appear to be a few Joseph Cornell boxes on view, and I always enjoy looking at those.

The current plan is then to head to the Smithsonian's American Art Museum, as it is open the latest of all the Smithsonian museums.  Then I am staying somewhere in Adams Morgan, which I picked because I like grabbing Ethiopean food there.  Then I have a fairly early flight Sat. morning (at least it's out of Reagan National, not Dulles!).

I'll probably stop briefly at the Toronto Reference Library book sale on the way home, then crash for a bit.  Then I have a TSO concert that evening.

Sunday, there is a small chance I'll have to take my daughter to a volunteer opportunity, but mostly likely I will sleep in a bit.  I am then off to see Shakespeare Bash'd doing a staged reading of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, and if I am not completely wiped out by that point, I may go to the Paradise to see Varda's Murs Murs.  I don't think I've seen the whole movie, though bits and pieces of Murs Murs showed up in her later works.  So I think I will end up completely exhausted from this trip, though what else is new... 

Edit: I took a quick look at some other museums in NYC.  The Neue Galerie has an Egon Schiele exhibit up, which looks somewhat interesting but I think I did see enough of his work in Vienna.  I'm a little more torn by the Guston exhibit at the Jewish Museum.  This exhibit focuses almost exclusively on Guston's KKK paintings and then the critical response by Trenton Doyle Hancock, an African-American artist.  I find his KKK paintings to be less interesting than a lot of his other late paintings and also I've probably seen almost all of these already at the big Guston exhibit in Boston in 2022.  However, I should write to see if they have In Bed as part of the exhibit.  I would probably go to see that, esp. as I could hit the Jewish Museum after the Guggenheim.  Actually, if the Broadway show was 8 (instead of 7 pm) or indeed if my tickets doesn't reach me in time(!), there is a talk between Hancock and Musa Mayer, Guston's daughter, on Thurs at 6:30.  That would have been worth checking out.  Ah well.