Suggestions

We were in NYC this weekend and I have a few new suggestions for you if you go:

1.  Go see Come From Away:  The musical about the "plane people" grounded in Gander, Newfoundland when the US closed its airspace on September 11 is AMAZING!  Touching, tender yet powerful, funny, energetic.  We loved it.  It plays without intermission so the emotion of the show is not interrupted.  And there are a lot of those!  Grief, frustration, sadness, confusion, love, peace, hope.   (I left with the belief that we should just let Canada be the leaders of the world.)  The show follows about a dozen different characters, with more making cameos, all played by the core cast.  And they do a remarkable job at distinguishing the different personas through accent, gestures, and costume changes.  We had been enjoying the soundtrack, but the show was just so much better.  We laughed, we cried.  It was better than Cats.  And afterwards, we stage-doored.  The kids got autographs from every main member and at least one musician.  Sis told the actress who played the animal-lover that she was her favorite.  Mama told the actress playing the firefighter's mom that she brought her for tears.  And we all gushed about Jenn Colella, who played one of the pilots, Capt Beverly Bass, actually the first female captain of a major airline.  Colella was wearing a love trumps hate shirt and was really engaging.  And after signing everyone's program, she just rode off into traffic on her push scooter!  If you get a chance to see the show, definitely go.

2.  Eat at BXL:  Mama found this Belgian restaurant on 43rd and the menu sounded great.  It was even better than that!  First, it doesn't look like a touristy Time Square trap; it felt like a small English pub, with distressed wood and lots of soccer.  But despite having a prominent bar, it is family-friendly (the owner and friends spoke French the whole time, so if they were cursing the game, we didn't know.) And the food was extraordinary:  truffle croquettes, goat cheese with honey on toast, delicious dressing on fresh insalata, steak frites with this amazing pepper dressing, croque madame, all kinds of mussels, a really good spaghetti bolognese, and delicious tarte tatin and pot du chocolat.  Oh, so good.  And there were so many things we didn't get to try.  Definitely a do-again.

3.  Explore Gulliver's Gate:  On Saturday morning, we were some of the first at Gulliver's Gate, an astonishing miniature exhibition near the Mariott Marquis in what was the Discovery Museum.  I'd been hearing good things for awhile and would second all those and more.  What a wonderful place!  It's to scale but not exactly geographically correct, but the models and figures and all the details evoke places all over the world, with the first whole room dedicated to NYC.  There are also big displays of England, Russia, and Israel.  There's even a working Panama Canal with locks and REAL water!  There are also lots of famous figures and icons hidden--Yoda, the Obamas, the new 13th Doctor, Wonder Woman, Spider Man, Batman, and so many we didn't see, like the Fiddler on the Roof (there's not exactly a list; ask the staff.)  There are also spaces dedicated to the art of model making, and on our day it was staffed.  The artist talked about making grass with a hair dryer/flashlight-like aparatus which ionized this green material and made it stand on end before it hardened in the glue.  He also showed us a bamboo forest complete with pandas that will be added to China--it even has two figures in the treetops, straight out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (and he was very impressed we knew that.)  AND we had our photos taken in a special pod with 200+cameras that will then digitally convert us into teensy 3D models with a digital printer.  Mama and I stood together and elected to be placed in Grand Central.  Sis wants to be in Stonehenge.  And Bud opted for the Brooklyn Bridge.  Can't wait to see the photo of us in situ.  You should go look for us.  I know we'll be going again.

Lastly, I should add that we stayed at a hotel which used to be my old dorm building when I was in graduate school!  I knew it had been converted into a hotel--Gommie has even stayed there--and I'd been in the lobby, but this was our first night to sleep there.  No, not in my old room--804, which just has one double bed apparently--but in the penthouse with views north and south! (We got an upgrade for some reason--and it was bigger than our own first floor, with two full bathrooms!)   The southern view was just like my old one albeit a few stories up.  You can see the Woodstock (where the crane from the Conde Nast tower fell and killed a woman in her apartment on the top floor during construction), but many of the buildings out the window were new.  It really was rather surreal.  I could also see the air shaft which was the view of a few of my friends.  The elevators are exactly the same--very slow and small.  It was quite a treat.  And I was just thrilled to be back "home."  Mercy, I loved living in NYC, right there in Times Square.  A lot of my old neighborhood has changed, but I always love going back.

Downtown

When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go downtown
When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

So go downtown
Things will be great when you're downtown
No finer place for sure, downtown
Everything's waiting for you

-=-=-=-=-=-

Yep, we went downtown yesterday.  Well, really Midtown, but you get the idea.  Yes, NYC was our special outing--to the Discovery Center in Times Square to see not only the Star Wars costume exhibition but also the Vikings exhibition.  And we had a great time!

First, it's always great to be back in my old neighborhood, though it's changed so much.  Still, I feel 25 again and filled with the positive memories of my time in the city.  It's like going home.

The SW show was good, too.  I've seen other SW shows, namely "The Magic of Myth" in both Milwaukee (on my own) and Brooklyn (with Mama in 2002); it had costumes plus models, props, and blueprints.  This show was all costumes (plus a few blasters and lightsabers.) We got to see all the standards, from both trilogies.  I especially liked seeing Princess Leia's white dress from New Hope.  I wish they'd had the Hoth, Cloud City, or Endor clothes, or even especially the Force Awakens outfits.  Still.  There were all the various Jedis, Han Solo, Chewie, C-3PO, R2-D2, BB8, lots of stormtroopers, various Senate officials, Yoda, and Darth Vader.  There were more elaborate gowns for Amidala than you could shake a coathanger at, but they were lush and complex, even if I don't like the movies.  I was amazed at how small the infamous metal bikini is; no wonder they had trouble keeping it on her--there isn't anything to it!  Bud said that costume always makes him feel uncomfortable.  Me, too, and I think that was the point.  We liked seeing Rey, Finn, and Poe at the end, their clothes continuing many of the trends started in the first three films.  

We had lunch just a few buildings down from my old home, at the barbecue joint Virgil's.  Quick, reliable, tasty.  And NYers just don't eat at 11:30 so we got a table easily.

Then we went back for the Vikings exhibition.  I've also seen a few major Viking exhibitions--at the American Museum of Natural History and at the British Museum--and this one actually compared, though it was smaller.  It had some great artifacts--brooches, swords, amulets, needles, axes, even dried bread--plus a few stele (though I think they were all reproductions.)  And of course the "ghost ship," which is suggested by rivets hanging on strings, since the wood was all lost over time.  There were several interactive kiosks and some lovely photos of reenactors and museums in modern-day Sweden.  Plus, there were even some Nordic dogs, in town for the Westminster Dog Show, that were like the dogs the Vikings would have had.  Sis and Bud enjoyed seeing them.  The exhibition was all about the daily life of Vikings--which never included horned helmets!--and so went out of its way to separate them from the marauding Beserkers who attacked Lindisfarne, etc.  This shift in the scholarship has been a long time in the making, but I didn't realize until now that "viking" is actual used to reference the activity of going on an expedition "to go Viking" or to "be on a Viking."  It's NOT the name of a group of people, like we use Swedish or Icelandic or Norwegian.  It was an activity.  Still, in a few ways, the exhibition did too much to erase the more violent aspects--the reason there are graves everywhere and lots of trade is because of their offensive maneuvers and plunder.  But, it was probably not much like the tv show, "Vikings" (which I like anyway.)

We picked up some cupcakes from the Discovery Center cafe and headed home through Friday afternoon traffic.  All things considered, it was a great day, and, even more, a good distraction from our sadness.

Fun with Forms!*

Or, "Silliness with Stanchions!"

("Vivacity with Vitrines"?)

*Credit for the title goes to my co-volunteer, Miss S!

I was privileged to assist with a small, local exhibition in the last few weeks.  One of my historic house friends was on the exhibition committee and, because of my museum background, asked if I'd like to help out.  The timing wasn't great, but the request was tempting.  So I said yes.  And I'm so glad I did.  Besides the actual experience of creating and installing an exhibition, I especially enjoyed meeting and working with some wonderful people, whom I hope I see again soon.

Of course, in my museum career I was an educator--not a curator, an exhibition designer, a registrar, or an art handler.  But I know how to write label copy and have strong opinions about didactics.  So, I helped write some explanatory text.  Short, concise, coherent.

And then I helped with many other things, from choosing the objects to assisting with the design plan, from discussing the theme of the exhibition to exploring accessibility issues (spacing, label font size), from considering installations (which topic where, groupings of objects) to considering exhibition design (like backdrops), from mounting text and photos to installing objects.  It was great fun . . .particularly because I wasn't in charge of anything, knew none of the politics, and came and went as I could.  I was like a guest at a museum buffet.

And it was good.

So, why "fun with forms?"  Because several times I helped dress mannequins, having to pin them together, rearrange drapery, relocate dress forms, stuff batting up sleeves, and, most amusingly, use batting to turn a female dress form into a man!  By then, my co-volunteers and I definitely had the giggles and nothing could have been funnier.

In many ways, this was much more fun than actually working in a museum with objects and exhibition professionals could ever be . . . and I know--because I was often shushed away by tense registrars and handlers, much less ever allowed to touch anything!