Category: Manhattan

Art & Eating in Manhattan

JWF Leave a comment

CURRENT MUSEUM EXHIBITS

Surrealism Beyond Borders

One of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current exhibitions brings together Surrealism works of art from around the globe from Egypt to Mexico to Europe.  Most of the artists I did not know.  I also don’t know that I liked these paintings and objects but they are different, often provocative, and sometimes chilling.  

Body Snatcher in Switzerland by Enrico Baj

At least one, Salvador Dali’s black telephone, has some whimsy.

Lobster on Telephone by Salvador Dali, 1938

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror

The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art are jointly presenting the largest retrospective ever of Jasper Johns’ work.  Prolific since the 1950’s, he is 91 and still producing.  There are many rooms of paintings on display at the Whitney.  I agree with the critic who stated that the Whitney might have showed two-thirds of what is here.  

Flag above White with Collage

Lots of American flags in different color combinations; several maps of the U.S., some multi-colored, some black or gray; and various paintings including real objects (tableware, used paint cans) or string and pieces of wood.  I especially liked the colorful version of the United States, the placement of tableware along a frame, and the fifteen monotypes of a Savarin coffee can filled with paint brushes.

Map, 1961
Frame detail, Dancers on a Plane, 1979
Savarin, 1982, one in a series

Seeing gallery after gallery, one appreciates Johns’ recurring themes and recognizes the repetition of certain elements. I wish we’d been in Philadelphia long enough to see the other half of this massive exhibit!

EATING AROUND

Marwin Thai

A nice addition to the Upper East Side, Marwin has about five tables and offers on site or takeout dining for lunch and dinner.  We enjoyed a satisfying and modestly priced meal from the special lunch menu.  Between us, we had Thai dumplings and spring rolls to start.  The Chief Penguin tried pad Thai while I sampled the green curry with chicken.  His pad Thai was good and my curry very satisfying.  It’s a brothier curry with less coconut milk and lots of green peppers, bamboo shoots and basil.  And since Happy Hour runs from 11:30 to 7:00 pm, we decided on beer—Singha and Stella d’Artois—$5.00 apiece.  

Canyon Road

Occasionally, I have a yen for some good Mexican food and prefer to patronize a restaurant that isn’t part of a chain.  Canyon Road on the Upper East Side fit the bill for a recent casual dinner.  It’s decorated with colorful square flags and strings of little white lights and has a comfortable feel.  

We ordered the requisite original margaritas and the house guacamole.  Both were very good, and the guacamole had a lively kick.  I tried the chicken tacos (three small corn tortillas on a board and plenty of food).  The Chief Penguin, who’s a fan of quesadillas, had the shrimp and jalapeno one which came with salsa, sour cream, and a bit of guacamole.  We went early so there were only a few other diners.  Service was excellent.  It’s now on our yes, return list.

Note: All photos by JWFarrington. Header images is Squash with Pan de Muerto by Maria Izyquierdo, 1947.

Manhattan in the Fall

JWF Leave a comment

RETURN TO MANHATTAN

Manhattan in late May was quite lively; Manhattan in October is brimming with energy.  Yes, there are a sad number of empty storefronts, but people are out and about and bustling here and there.  Outdoor dining structures remain popular while many restaurants seem to have been re-discovered.  Having to show proof of Covid vaccination to eat inside provides a welcome sense of comfort.  Waiters also are masked. 

Before arriving, we downloaded the NYCCOVIDSAFE app to our phones and added photos of our driver’s license and vaccine card.  Easy to do and easy to show this when entering a restaurant.  So far, we’ve dined at several favorite or familiar restaurants and one new to us. We also ventured to 34th Street to eye the old post office building, now transformed into the grand and soaring Moynihan Train Hall.  Such a magnificent improvement over tired Penn Station!

RESTAURANT REPORT

August

August’s attractive dining room

This small Upper East Side restaurant is cozy and welcoming. With mirrors on the back wall and above the bar, the space has a bit of an Art Deco feel about it.  Patrons were a mix of ages and gender with several couples, a table of four, and a single woman diner.  

Service was efficient and the menu intriguing.  Tempted to try several new dishes, we over ordered.  The warm cornbread came cut in pieces in a cute square cast iron dish.  A wire basket of zucchini strips looked like the world’s best skinny fries.  Both were very good!  

Zucchini strips

For entrees, we sampled the ahi tuna on crispy rice and the sole meuniere over spinach and marble potatoes.  They were also tasty.  Based on this one dinner, we will return to explore more of the menu.

Glazed ahi tuna

RECENT READING

SCIENCE IN THE TREE CANOPY

The Arbornaut:  A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees above Us by Meg Lowman

Meg Lowman (canopymeg.com)

Decades before I knew Meg Lowman, I read a review of her first book, Life in the Treetops in the New York Times. I bought the book and read it and thought about using it as part of a presentation I was going to give.  We were in Florida around that time, and realizing she worked nearby, I contemplated contacting her to chat about her career.  I didn’t and the years passed.

Fast forward to late 2013 and I had the opportunity to meet Meg.  The Chief Penguin hired her at the California Academy of Sciences.  We got to know her and consider her a friend.  Early on, we celebrated New Year’s Day, January 2014, with a memorable picnic in Myakka River State Park.  Having grown up in winter climes, the idea of a picnic in January was unheard of, but appealing.  Meg was chief organizer.  We met some of her friends, ate well, and then climbed the canopy walkway she helped design.  On the tower, you are 75 feet up overlooking the trees and greenery below.

Meg’s new book, The Arbornaut, is partly memoir, partly science, and completely engaging.  From a childhood in upstate NY spent outdoors, to graduate school and research in Australia, to stints as a professor/single mom at two colleges, to field work and being an international ambassador for tree conservation, it’s a multi-faceted, varied life.  As one of the few, and sometimes the only woman, in class or out in the field, Meg faced discrimination, indifference, and occasional sexual harassment.  Yet her love of trees and her passion for saving this key planetary resource kept her plugging away, always creating partnerships for future collaborative work.  Along the way, she made it a priority to include and mentor girls and young women in her branch of science.

In person, Meg is exuberant and an enthusiast for her cause.  Her infectious spirit comes through on the page too.  I learned a LOT about the kinds of leaves in various tree canopies and about which or how many insects nibbled, chewed, or put holes in them.  Her explanations of the field work and her research studies are accessible and tinged with the occasional humorous bit.  

For her adventuring spirit, no challenge is too much.  Individual chapters on the treetop BioBlitz in remote Malaysia, preserving the church forests in Ethiopia, and tree climbing in Kansas with disabled individuals are all fascinating.  By the end, the reader is well acquainted with Meg the person and Meg the field biologist.  Highly recommended! (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo of the Queensboro Bridge and the food-related photos are ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Manhattan Moments: Addiction & Art

JWF Leave a comment

MASTER WORK

Empire of Pain:  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

For anyone who’s read Radden Keefe’s book about the Irish Troubles, Say Nothing, you know him as a nonfiction writer who draws you in with meticulous detail and creates a novel-like reading experience.  His latest work, Empire of Pain, is equally meticulous and an absolutely fascinating study of the self-absorbed, greedy, and corrupt Sacklers.  How many museums or universities here and abroad have Sackler Wings?  The family was eager to put its name on and in buildings as a condition of its philanthropy.  But they were secretive to an extreme about not having the Sackler name appear anywhere in relation to their business ventures.  

The first hundred pages of this hefty work are the history and legacy of Arthur Sackler, older brother to Mortimer and Raymond, and the individual responsible for crafting the questionable marketing practices later adopted by Purdue Pharma.  Purdue Pharma, as is well known today, is the maker of Oxycontin and was controlled and micromanaged by the Sackler brothers and their children.  Their total denial of any connection between their product and addiction and their singular lack of any remorse for the opioid epidemic are appalling, as is the almost complete lack of any penalty for their actions.  

It’s a case study of a family living in their own bubble aided and abetted by a cadre of loyal staff and easily manipulated government officials.  Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

WORKS OF ART

Museum of Modern Art

Fruit Dish, 1908-09, Pablo Picasso

This was our first visit to MoMA since they added on to their building in 2019.  We were pleased with the larger space and the chance to see more of the permanent collection on display.  We went during the members’ hour on Monday and had many of the galleries to ourselves.  We spent our time on the 5th floor and delighted in seeing familiar works (Monet’s huge water lilies in their own room) along with ones new to us.  I especially liked a Picasso still life in greens against brown, a bold flower-dominated canvas by Stettheimer, and a colorful lady in the park by August Macke.  The latter one really captivated me. 

Family Portrait, II, 1933 by Florine Stettheimer
Lady in a Park, 1914 by August Macke

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer by Edgar Degas

There is so much to see at the Met that we went back for a second visit.  This time, we were interested in viewing the Impressionist collection and other works of that period.  I was struck by this striking bronze sculpture of a young dancer wearing a tutu made of cotton.

I also very much liked two ladies in pink by Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.

The Pink Dress, c.a. 1870 by Berthe Morisot
The Cup of Tea, c.a. 1880-81 by Mary Cassatt

Central to these galleries are the marvelous paintings from the Annenberg Collection.  The Philadelphia Museum of Art had hoped to be the hometown beneficiary of Walter and Lenore Annenberg’s collecting, but alas for them, it was not to be.  Once loaned to the Met for six months each year, their collection then was given to the museum in a bequest.  

Bouquet of Sunflowers, 1881 by Claude Monet

Here is gallery after gallery of Renoirs, Cezannes, Manets, Monets, Pissarros, and Van Goghs.  They are a treat to behold!  And since we went first thing in the morning, the galleries were empty for for awhile. 

FOOD FARE

As I have mentioned before, our most frequent go-to place for dinner is the small French restaurant, Sel et Poivre.  It’s comfortable, quiet, with relaxed service, a nicely priced prix fixe menu, daily specials, and other tempting dishes.  Recently, we’ve made more selections from the main menu.  Here are two of them:  a white asparagus special and tomato and mozzarella salad.  Both appealing on the plate and both very good!

Note: All photos by JWFarrington. Header photo is a flower box near Rockefeller Center.

Return to Manhattan & More

JWF Leave a comment

RETURN TO THE BIG APPLE

The Chief Penguin and I are back in Manhattan after almost a year and a half.  And it’s different.  Covid-19 has taken its toll with more empty storefronts, favorite restaurants shuttered, fewer people on the streets, and less traffic all around.  But, and it’s a welcome but, the city is becoming alive again!  The Upper East Side seems more active than the West Village, possibly the difference between residents and schools in one area and more tourists in the other.

Dining space at Via Carota

Restaurant dining is reviving.   We appreciated and benefited from the creativity shown in the various outdoor structures that have been built in the street or on the sidewalk. 

 We dined at two favorites, Sel et Poivre, very distanced from other diners, and Via Carota, which is serving exclusively outside.  Sitting at a sidewalk table, we also sampled a Mediterranean restaurant new to us called A la Turka.

Fancy dining structure at JoJo

Reservations are essential since dining capacity is still limited by NYS rules.  That can mean you need to reserve farther ahead (2 weeks out) or not until a day before.  Overall, we’re delighted to be here, enjoying the bustle of the city and spending time with our marvelous granddaughters.

WATCHING AND READING

IN-DEPTH BIOGRAPY SERIES

Hemingway (PBS)

Ernest Hemingway was an incredibly complex man.  Product of a dysfunctional family, whose father committed suicide, he, nonetheless, was a superb storyteller and masterful stylist whose novels made an indelible impression on American literature.  Filmmaker Ken Burns has a reputation for delving deeply into whatever topic he presents from baseball to the Civil War.  Here, this attention to detail and nuance is focused on one man’s adventurous life.  

Hemingway had four wives and other women along the way, he fought in several wars, he loved Spain, and he lived in Cuba.  Aside from his personal life, this 3-part series provides a close examination of each of Hemingway’s works from early novels to his account life in Paris (A Moveable Feast) to late works such as The Old Man and the Sea.  Literary scholars offer additional analysis, but I found most intriguing the comments from other writers like Tobias Woolf and Mary Karr, but especially those of the Irish novelist, Edna O’Brien.  It’s a fascinating journey from beginning to end!

WORLD WAR II MYSTERY

Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear

I’ve read all the Maisie Dobbs mysteries, and this is one of the best.  I’m even wondering if it’s Winspear’s swan song for Maisie.  But there’s an historic event at the end that leaves the door open.

Freddie, a young messenger boy, witnesses what appears to be a murder.  Did he really see it?  No body is found.  While haunted by Freddie’s experience, Maisie is primarily working for Scotland Yard vetting special agents for Resistance work in France.  Two young women she knows are among the interviewees.  Maisie’s personal life is also more complicated. She has a young daughter and an American friend and love named Mark Scott.

This novel details more about what’s involved in fighting a war in 1940 when England is regularly being bombed.  It feels more personal than Winspear’s earlier works with a minor theme of friendship and love. There’s a poignant quote about whether war makes one too brittle to relax and accept love.

If you like mysteries that focus more on the people and procedures with less high drama, then this is for you.  I find Maisie endlessly fascinating! (~JWFarrington)

More colorful tulips!

Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).