Went to the new New Museum this weekend. It's the first new museum building to be put up in NY since the Whitney in 1966. Right now, it's sort of two experiences: seeing the building from the outside (pretty good) and then going in (no big thrill).
It's located at Bowery and Prince, a few blocks too far east to really be Soho. It's basically the Restaurant Supply Neighborhood, where everyone goes to buy their twelve-burner ranges and heavy-duty kitchen storage.
From the outside, the building looks like a series of six stacked boxes, shrouded in mesh. It's high-tech and hard-edged, both a childish stack of blocks and a uber-architecty comment on same. Not as lovely as the new Gehry, it shouts its minimalism at the neighborhood, but the neighborhood holds its own pretty well.
From the outside, the building looks like a series of six stacked boxes, shrouded in mesh. It's high-tech and hard-edged, both a childish stack of blocks and a uber-architecty comment on same. Not as lovely as the new Gehry, it shouts its minimalism at the neighborhood, but the neighborhood holds its own pretty well.
The "Hell Yes!" rainbow sign isn't permanent--it's art, and it's temporary. It's amusing and engaging and, alas, one of the best pieces on display at the moment.
Inside, the gallery spaces are stripped down and aggressively uninteresting. I can live with that, mostly because I hate the opposite aesthetic even more (architecture that competes with the art, as in the new MOMA). However, they decided to open the museum with a 3-floor exhibit called Unmonumental, which is as aggressively uninteresting as the interior spaces are by themselves. The brochure has a lot of blather about "unskill" and so on, but what you're left looking at is a lot of sloppy art that is neither conceptual nor visual, but a tepid combination of the two. Two of the better pieces: a knit vase embedded in a concrete block and an artfully heaped pile of chairs. Downhill from there, as we hurry past a sofabed skewered with a fluorescent light, a giant mobile of construction debris, a clump of neon tube trees. Basically, it's a lame collage here and a pile of sundry stuff there.
The top floor is the library and has some nice windows and a bunch of Internet terminals. I find these attempts to integrate Internet and museums awkward at best, but at least the views through the mesh are nice.
Oh, I liked the bright green color inside the elevators.
So, it'll be a nice place to visit on Thursday nights (when it's free) when there are better shows to be seen.
Inside, the gallery spaces are stripped down and aggressively uninteresting. I can live with that, mostly because I hate the opposite aesthetic even more (architecture that competes with the art, as in the new MOMA). However, they decided to open the museum with a 3-floor exhibit called Unmonumental, which is as aggressively uninteresting as the interior spaces are by themselves. The brochure has a lot of blather about "unskill" and so on, but what you're left looking at is a lot of sloppy art that is neither conceptual nor visual, but a tepid combination of the two. Two of the better pieces: a knit vase embedded in a concrete block and an artfully heaped pile of chairs. Downhill from there, as we hurry past a sofabed skewered with a fluorescent light, a giant mobile of construction debris, a clump of neon tube trees. Basically, it's a lame collage here and a pile of sundry stuff there.
The top floor is the library and has some nice windows and a bunch of Internet terminals. I find these attempts to integrate Internet and museums awkward at best, but at least the views through the mesh are nice.
Oh, I liked the bright green color inside the elevators.
So, it'll be a nice place to visit on Thursday nights (when it's free) when there are better shows to be seen.
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