Tag Archives: museum mile

Museum Mile 2023

Posted in Cultured, Gallery by

I can’t believe that the last time I did the Museum Mile Festival was in 2011, but here we are, twelve years later and I’ve finally made it out once more to the festival.

For a bit of background, there is a stretch of museums that runs along 5th Avenue between 82nd and 110th Street, this stretch was given the name “Museum Mile” and once a year 5th Avenue shuts down as museums along that strip open for free from 6pm – 9pm. I found out about the event in 2010 from a friend and wanted to make a tradition of it, but here we are 12 years later finally visiting the museums again!

The first year I went to the Guggenheim, and the following year I visited the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York. This year my friends wanted to go to the Guggenheim and El Museo del Barrio.

I got to 5th Avenue first so I joined the line for the Guggenheim which wrapped around the block1! At 6pm they started letting people in and it took us 20 minutes to get to the front of the line. Given the layout, it didn’t feel very claustrophobic, but I have visited the museum during regular hours and it was definitely more packed. Along the spiral, they had work from Gego – a Venezuelan visual artist. The photo doesn’t do it justice, but her work was very geometrical and it appealed to my instinctual need for order. There was something genuinely relaxing about observing her work.

We also dipped into the gallery with the Picassos2 and visited the A Year With Children 2023 gallery which had art from public school kids. What an experience that must have been for these kids to see their art in a museum, it was a fun and colourful display.

Later we took a stroll to El Museo del Barrio, passing several DJs and bands along the way. At the museum we took our time walking through the galleries, the block print works were among my favourites, but then I saw this stunning work by Eloy Blanco3, it had tiny stick figures on the red background; I loved it.


The night ended at the Shake Shack, with good laughs and conversations. Let’s see if I do this again next year!

~*~

1. The end of the line for me was Madison and 89th Street!
2. Every time I posted a Picasso from that day online I added “Ok, I like it, Picasso“, and then found it highly hilarious when the Guggenheim liked one of my tweets. What is the internet?
3. Another Venezualean artist!

Museum Mile 2011

Posted in Cultured, Gallery, My New York by

It's fun to walk - and take photos - in the middle of 5th Avenue

Yesterday was the 33rd Annual Museum Mile Festival in New York City.

Last year I visited the Guggenhiem Museum which is known for it’s spiral shape and was also the most expensive Museum. It was crowded! We took about 30 minutes to get into the museum itself and spent another hour or two browsing the collection. Afterwards I ran into my Aunts and mom … what are the odds?

This year, I decided that it was time to visit museums I wouldn’t usually visit, so we visited the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Museum of the City of New York.

While waiting in line to enter Cooper-Hewitt we bumped into one of my aunts! I suppose the odds aren’t that slim.

The Cooper-Hewitt had two large exhibits. The second floor held the Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay exhibit. There were a lot of patterns and prints done by Sonia Delaunay that was made into fabric and the fascinating thing was its similarity to the prints in today’s fashion.

The first floor of the Cooper-Hewitt held the Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels exhibit and this was a hit, mostly amongst the ladies. I love jewelry as much as the next woman, but I found a lot of the pieces too grandiose – which, I suppose, was the point. I did enjoy the butterflies though and the jewel-encrusted dancers.

The Museum of the City of New York had a Joel Grey/A New York Life exhibit on the second floor. In this exhibit I realised that Academy and Golden Globe awards aren’t large, even though they seem large on the television; that sometimes pictures of rusty chain links on a pink, flaky wall can look extremely artistic. Also, that I should have married a wealthy man in the 1800s if I wanted to have a fancy drawing room, complete with picture table and decorative fireplace.

The first floor contained a dollhouse which was exquisitely decorated. Which I wanted to take home. Which in turn reminded me of this – Grace White also has an Etsy shop, which I plan on browsing often. I think this was my favourite thing of the night!

The first floor also contained the The American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis exhibit, which is wonderful to view. It’s fun to imagine society in colonial times.

We must have walked at least three miles, so we ended the night with Shake Shack burgers and fries (yummy). Now I’ve visited four museums in the Museum Mile, just 6 more to go.

[photos courtesy of Cate!]