What to do with the kids now?

With almost every school in New York closed, parks closed and almost any outdoor activity out of the question, it will be hard (but not impossible) to find ways to entertain the kids over the coming days. Here is a short list of some ideas on where to go with them. Hope it will help!

Museums:

• American Museum of Natural History - reopens Thursday November 1st;
• Children's Museum of Manhattan - reopens Thursday November 1st;
• Moma (they offer some family programs over the weekend) - opened normally;
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art - reopens Thursday November 1st (they offer some daily family programs, check their website for date and time);
• Whitney Museum of American Art - reopens Thursday November 1st (they also have some family programs);

Shows/Theaters/Concerts:

• The New Victory Theater - reopens Friday November 2nd;
• Puppetworks - normal showtimes on Saturday and Sunday;
• Movie Theaters - most of them are operating normally. Check Fandango for more information;
• Jazz at Lincoln Center - Family Concert: who is John Coltrane - Saturday at 1pm and 3pm;

The Obliteration Room by Yayoi Kusama

The Obliteration Room,  The Guardian (Photographies by: Mark Sherwood, Stuart Addelsee and Natasha Harth)

The Tate Modern, in London, is currently hosting a major exhibition from Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. If you happen to be in London (which unfortunately is not my case), it seems to be one of those unmissable things to see.

However, the reason I'm really writing about it, is because of The Obliteration Room, which is part of the main exhibit Look Now, See Forever. Yayoi Kusama had this fantastic idea of making a fun interactive project for the kids. It started with a completely immaculate white room (including furniture and objects) and each person who enters the room is given a sheet of colored stickers dots and is asked to stick them wherever they want. How fun is that?

Weekend achievements

For a first timer I think they were quite successful

I think we did pretty well. Here's what we managed to do this weekend.
From my list:

• Homemade chicken broth - CHECK
• Chocolate chip cookies - CHECK
• Movies - CHECK (The Iron Lady - Meryl Streep is as always A-M-A-Z-I-N-G, the movie is so-so)
• Read and rest - as usual... less than I should

The boys helping me with the chocolate chip cookies' dough

Out of my list:

• Visit to the Met - F and I went to see the Arms and Armor collection, as well as the Egyptian Art collection. I thought it was a good outing to do with a boy who loves to play with his fake swords.
• Central Park on Sunday - It was a little bit chilly, but it was sunny and the park was wonderful.

Have a nice week!

New Museum - Carsten Höller - New experience

New Museum - picture of the façade (from the museum's website)

Today I went with a friend to see a totally different kind of exhibition at the New Museum. It had been a while since I wanted to visit this museum, mainly because of its architecture. The building was completed in 2007 and designed by Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, who won the Pritzker Price in 2010 (this is the equivalent to a Nobel price for Architecture).

The museum is the only one in Manhattan specialized exclusively in contemporary art. By looking at the picture above, you may see that the architecture of the building is quite simple and looks like piled up boxes. Inside is no different. The rooms are white, windowless and spacious. And the museum doesn't have a permanent collection. All these features makes it very attractive for contemporary exhibitions that usually require more space. And this is exactly the case for the one they are currently showing, Carsten Höller: Experience.

The description of the exhibition in the museum's website will explain much better than I will what it's all about. But, basically, the artist wants the public to interact with his art by "experiencing" time and space. So he plays with the viewers senses throughout the whole exhibition. The main works exposed included a carousel, a "Giant Psycho Tank", a fake corridor that would make you dizzy when the walls moved and a huge slide going down from the 4th floor to the 2nd floor. There are also some strange goggles that have mirrors inside, so they make you see everything upside down.

Here's my point of view. The carousel is the opposite of a traditional carousel. It's all white, there is no music and it turns at a very tedious pace - thus quite boring. The tank is a huge white box where you can go inside and float in saline water - I didn't try it so I can't comment on that. But the idea would be that after going there you would feel very relaxed and weightless. We asked a girl that had just been inside and she didn't look very convinced about those sensations. The goggles are interesting, but just for 5 minutes. Finally, the slide is fantastic. It goes very fast and it makes some unexpected turns at some point. Really really fun. It is worth going just for the slide. 

I was telling my friend while we were at the museum that sometimes I have some difficulty to understand contemporary art. I know that artists use Art as a way to express themselves, their feelings, their views on a certain matter or to make us feel something new, look into an object through a different point of view, make us aware of a dysfunction in our modern societies and so on. But I have to confess that I don't always get the artists' messages and I usually feel that their work is a little bit pointless (I'm referring here to current artists).

However, I still want to learn about contemporary art. So here's something that I've been willing to do for some time and I hope I'll start to do soon: visit art galleries that are specialized on the subject, but with someone that understands it and explains it to me. As I said in a previous post, we need to educate our eyes so they can become more sensible and appreciate new forms of Art and sometimes it takes some time and studying. So maybe this is what I've been missing.


The slide between the 4th and 3rd floor with someone inside

Me using the Upside Down Goggles

Under ten? No Frick for you!

Marimekko

Apparently children under 10 cannot enter the Frick collection. Can you believe this? I personally think it's outrageous. Parents should be able to educate their kids to appreciate Art since an early age. I've been taking my kids to museums since both were just a few months old and of course I know that at their age they don't understand the importance of a Picasso or a Rembrandt or to distinguish a Pollock from a Matisse. Nonetheless, I'm quite certain that little by little I'm educating their senses, guiding their eyes, inculcating a notion of Beauty so later on they'll be able to appreciate all form of Art and understand it. Museums and galleries are part of our daily life. We don't usually stay for long hours, because young kids (and even adults) get tired pretty quickly. Therefore, I usually do frequent but short visits. Hence my discontentment with the Frick's decision of not letting children have access to its beautiful collection - we probably wouldn't have stayed for more than half an hour.

Here's what happened. This morning, my mother, P and I, left the house very excited about our plans and the (cold) bright sunny day. We would first go to see the Picasso's exhibit at the Frick and then we would take P to Central Park. Well, plans didn't went accordingly. Since P is only 2, we weren't allowed to enter the museum. When the doorman told me that children under 10 weren't admitted I was very surprised and asked him if it was a recent rule. I was even more surprised when he told me that it had been in effect for years. I replied that the information was wrong given that I had already been there several times with my older son (who's only 4) when he was a baby. He looked at me as if I had imagined the whole thing and told me that it was just impossible. No children under 10 had been allowed in the galleries for many years, but if we wanted, we could still buy one ticket, so one of us could go inside, while the other would wait with the baby in the stroller. We laughed at the suggestion and we left frustrated.

Since I'm pretty sure that I had been there before with F, because it is (should I say was now?) one of my favorite museums here in New York, when I checked the museum's visit information last night, clicking on the admission option never crossed my mind. Lesson learned, I will always check that now. We ended up taking P to the park and he had a great time while we were freezing (Winter has arrived without giving any warnings). There is this very nice playground inside the park at 72nd street and fifth avenue, where I take the kids from time to time.

On our way back home, to cheer us up a little bit after our frustrating morning, we stopped at Marimekko on third avenue. Our new darling. Yesterday we had already been to the new flagship store on 5th with 23rd street. Patterns, patterns and more patterns. Beautiful and joyful patterns everywhere.