Category Archives: art

General arts and culture posts

Guggenheim as a Club

Posted on by


A two-for-one Friday night will satisfy your clubbing and art craves—or at least the Guggenheim Museum in NYC attempts to do so one Friday night a month. This past Friday there was blaring music, people dressed to the nines, and The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia. How could this great combination go wrong?

  • By being a well-lit, lame music club experience with only sporadic fits of dancing

  • By displaying an underwhelming exhibition

The crowded atrium was filled with people pushing to get to the round bar in the center, a space that should have been left open for dancing. It was as bright as day, which hardly lowers people’s dancing exhibition. In addition, the Guggenheim, unlike the Museum of Natural History, didn’t hire a good DJ. Pure 80s cheese could have topped their mediocre mix and been much more fun. That said, there were drinks and not a few people were inspired to bust a move from time to time. It had the potential to be a great party but couldn’t live up to it.


Many of the pieces in the Chinese-influences on American Modernism show required more thought than the drinks inspired. The opening piece when you first ascend the ramp is stunning, a huge room of gold flaky paint called The Death of James Lee Byars. Continuing on, Minimalist canvases of white and stripes required a more subdued attention. I would have appreciated more information on the selected works, and the connection to Asian art.

Despite being one of many museums in New York City that offer late Friday nights, with drinks and dancing, the Guggenheim still has no problem filling Wright’s impressive interior spiral, and the mix of people (and outfits!) was a joy to behold. On the other hand, for $25 dollars you could go to a real club. For nothing, you can go to most major New York City museums, as they have sponsored free or pay-what-you-wish Friday nights.

Am I glad I went? Yes. Would I go again? No, not without a specific reason.

Yoga Invades MoMA

Posted on by
Pippilota Rist’s video and sound installation Pour Your Body Out at MoMA is a engrossing and delicious experience. Lights fill the white walls, and people lay back to watch the film with their shoes off. (The smell of feet is the only disquieting element.) This kind of exhibition could be enjoyed lounging, hungover, and–according to Jerry Saltz at New York Magazine–doing yoga.

To increase engagement with the installation, artist Cheryl Donegan arranged an impromptu yoga demo at MoMA that had museum goers doing triangle poses. If only I had been there! I second Donegin, that audience participation at the exhibition and at theanyspacewhatever exhibition at the Guggenhiem could have been greater, especially at the latter exhibition.

Museum goers are so used to feeling like an audiences that it can be hard to break out of that mold and touch the art and think about space playfully. Saltz describes the experience, in jealousy-inducing terms, thus:

On Friday night, I arrived to find the darkened atrium teeming with hundreds of people; Rist’s wonderful droning, chanting soundtrack filled the air with drowsy delirium, and her images of gigantic naked floating bodies, lush undergrowth, and water filled the walls. A few minutes before the appointed starting time, a dozen or so people, almost all women, shed their coats to reveal work-out clothes. At 7:00 p.m., the tall, fit, and charismatic Auder, outfitted in a gold-lamé leotard and striped leggings, announced that she was leading a free yoga class.