Midtown
Manhattan
My
boyfriend and I are in the middle of moving. This is the primary cause for the
dearth of posts for the past two months. After living in Brooklyn for twelve
years, we are making the change to Manhattan. Inwood, to be exact. So only
sort-of Manhattan. Like Manhattan for beginners.
We had
been contemplating this move for several months, and I had hoped to visit and
blog about all of the lesser-known cultural institutions in Brooklyn. I was
doing pretty well until Sandy slowed me down by drowning out many of the
coastal sites—so much for making it to the Waterfront Museum located on a barge
in Red Hook…. On the plus side, I will be much closer to everything the Bronx
has to offer, so I’ll finally be able to make it back to the Van Cortland House
Museum.
I have
tired of putting books in boxes. Actually, we’ve run out of books to place into
boxes, which is pretty amazing if you knew how many bookshelves there are in
our home (17). For a much-needed change of pace I have decided to write about
the 2013 College Art Association Conference which took place in the Hilton on
57th Street in Midtown Manhattan.
This was
my first time attending the annual CAA conference, but it was my second time
attending a conference at the Hilton. The first one was for the National Art
Education Association. Obviously, both conferences are for major art nerds,
though the CAA conference was far more pretentious than the NAEA one. This is
because CAA attracts art historians who take themselves way too seriously and
who use words like “simulacrum” in everyday conversation while NAEA is a place
for grade school art teachers who get excited about Model Magic and pedagogy.
Here’s
what I learned after attending CAA: the Hilton hosts tons of conferences and,
while you are supposed to register for them and receive a badge to attend the
lecture sessions, you don’t actually need
the badge to get into the lecture sessions. These conferences are
expensive—the average 3-day conference will cost you a good $150+ to attend.
However, the only time anyone actually asks to see your badge is when you enter
the trade fair section filled with free samples of art supplies and highly
discounted books and materials. No one asks to see your badge when you walk
into a room where a panel of academics are discussing map-making as an art
form.
My point
is, if you have a free weekend and nothing to do, try heading over to the
Hilton to see what’s doing. They post their events on a board in the lobby, so
you can see if an interesting group is holding a conference. True, without
registering you won’t know the schedule, nor will you have a map of the rooms
where the events are happening, but you can easily ask someone for directions
or locate someone’s discarded map or schedule. You’d be surprised how sloppy
and lazy academic types are about properly disposing of their paper trash.
Or you
could just wander around the conference rooms on the second and third floors
and hope to find something good. The sessions are often posted outside the
rooms and the keynote speakers in the Grand Ballroom tend to be pretty big name
art world individuals, like Chuck Close.
Something
else you might stumble upon is free food. These events often host reunions for
individuals associated with certain institutions, like the Smithsonian or
George Washington University. These reunions are generally in a largish room
and are filled with people. If you walk in and act like you belong there, you
can easily saunter up to the buffet table and snag a bagel or some tacos.
Just
don’t try to get into the trade fair rooms. Seriously, there are four large
black security guards standing at the doors waiting to stop you. So don’t even
think about it.
I’m not
doing too much this summer. Mostly painting the apartment. But I think I’m
going to stop by the Hilton every now and then to see if anything of interest
is taking place.
