Hall of Fame for Great Americans

Bronx Community College

University Heights, the Bronx

When asked to name a prominent university in New York City, most individuals would likely identify New York University or Columbia. Both NYU and Columbia are prestigious institutions with dreadfully long, esteemed histories. Their campuses are resplendent with the sort of Neoclassical architecture that assures parents paying their child’s hefty tuition that their progeny are attending houses of true learning. Their private art collections are a name-dropper’s wet dream and (in the case of Columbia) the lawn is perfectly manicured.

I doubt anyone would ever list Bronx Community College as one of NYC’s elite institutions of higher learning, yet it possesses a surprisingly large number of beaux-arts edifices that were designed by the celebrated 19^th-century architect Stanford White. The architecture firm of McKim, Mead, & White was responsible for such gems as NYC’s original (and tragically demolished) Penn Station, the Washington Square Park Arch, and Tiffany and Company. Equally surprising is that one of the structures constructed by White at BCC is a 630-foot open-air colonnade filled with almost 100 bronze portrait busts, some of which were made by the same artists who made sculptures for the Lincoln Memorial, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the White-designed Washington Square Park Arch.

The mystery is cleared up when one learns that the campus that is now owned by BCC originally housed NYU’s undergraduate college and now-defunct engineering school. The University Heights campus was founded in 1894 as a way to alleviate overcrowding from its Washington Heights campus. But when NYC’s financial crisis of the 1960s and 1970s threatened to bankrupt the school, New York University sold the campus to the City University of New York in 1973.

So, it was NYU’s striving for greatness that led to a small community college branch of CUNY to be in possession of four buildings designed by White and become the first community college in the country to be designated a National Historic Landmark. The campus isn’t all arches, domes, and columns though. NYU also commissioned Marcel Breuer (the Bauhaus architect of Whitney Museum and Wassily Chair fame) to create four brutalist concrete buildings, which are some of the most depressing residence and lecture halls ever to grace a college campus. Sometimes there are prices to pay for always hiring the latest trendsetter; not all styles age well.

For those of you who think the Hall of Fame for Great Americans sounds like just about the most boring thing ever, let me assure you that it is surprisingly captivating. I, too, had my doubts. I thought I’d be in and out in a few minutes but ended up staying almost an hour, and then continued the wandering throughout the rest of the campus. There’s an element of pure high school history class geek enjoyment in seeing which Great Americans NYU chose to induct into the Hall of Fame. They’re even divided into categories to help you figure out who they are (inventors, statesmen, soldiers, academics, writers), and each bust is accompanied by a personal quote meant to epitomize their place in history. There are spaces for 102 busts, but four of the slots remain open as no Americans have been inducted since the property switched hands in 1973. If BCC ever decided to fill the remaining spaces, I’d be very curious who’d they elect.

I’m not going to lie to you: unless you live in along the western part of the Bronx or Upper Manhattan, getting to BCC is a pain in the ass. And we all know the Bronx isn’t what it used to be (Thank you very much, Robert Moses.). You can get the 4-train to Burnside in the Bronx, the Bx12 bus from Upper Manhattan, or even the Metro-North to University Heights. If you decide to make a trip that combines touring BCC along with a visit to the University Woods park next door to the campus, you know you’re going to spend the entire time in the park stumbling upon the make-shift abodes of homeless persons and trying to avoid the ever-present aroma of urine. Hardly a relaxing stroll through the woods. Instead, you may want to combine it with a trip to the nearby Edgar Allen Poe Cottage or the not-as-far-as-you-think Arthur Avenue, home of Bronx’s Little Italy, which has survived much better than the one downtown thanks to the lack of an ever-encroaching Chinatown.

The best time to make a journey to BCC to explore its surprising architecture and monuments (including several rusty Revolutionary War canons) is a weekend or anytime when classes are not in session. Just make sure the campus is open; you’d hate to be turned away at the gate after going to so much trouble to get there. I imagine it would be much harder to leisurely stroll the grounds and admire the bronzed Americans surrounded by its very rowdy student body. I teach at BMCC, one of BCC’s sister community colleges, and there are few places to find respite on, say, a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of the semester. Although, if you go when school is in session, you might be able to peak inside the fabulous domed library.

http://www.bcc.cuny.edu/halloffame/ 

http://www.bcc.cuny.edu/About-BCC/?p=College-History

Bryant Park and NYPL in the Summer

Bryant Park

Manhattan

Things are finally settled down in the new digs and my weekend classes at BMCC have come to a close, which means it’s time to buckle down and get back to writing. Especially now that summer is around the corner and all the fun free and low-cost activities come out to play.

A foolproof stop is Bryant Park and the main research branch of the New York Public Library located on its east end. They’re good for families, couples, or the solitary wanderer.

At Bryant Park you can take a knitting class, listen to a live pianist, play chess, hear cast members from Broadway musicals perform, even play a giant game of musical chairs. Perhaps the best known event is the free class movies every Monday at dusk, but my personal favorite is the Reading Room. At said “room” (it is, after all, outdoors and has no walls), one can attend talks by local celebrities and receive copies of classic literature gratis. Last summer, for example, I attended a free talk by Michael Ian Black and Meghan McCain promoting their book America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom.

Highlights this year include talks by Dan Savage (Thursday, May 30^th, 12:30pm) and Marc Maron (Thursday, June 13^th, 12:30pm). I, alas, shall be at work because public schools in NYC go a good three to four weeks longer than many other parts of the country thanks to all of the extra holidays taken by our sizeable Jewish population. Not that I’m complaining about getting Passover and Rosh Hashanah off: mazel tov. One more speaker of note is famed Twin Towers tightrope walker and all-around media and attention whore Philippe Petit (Wednesday, June 12^th, 12:30pm).

Every Tuesday evening at 7pm the Reading Room hosts poetry readings by some pretty notable poets. The likes of Galway Kinnell and Gerald Stern have appeared its rather modest and technically nonexistent stage. Surprisingly enjoyable are the weekly book club discussions hosted by local authors every Tuesday at 12:30pm. Sign up for the book club meetings in advance to get rather nice editions of the books from Oxford University Press. I’m looking forward to getting new copies of The Turn of the Screw and The Metamorphosis to replace my old banged up paperbacks.

While enjoying the splendors of Bryant Park, don’t forget to see what exhibition are going on at the Schwarzman branch of the NYPL. The main first floor exhibition hall has a touching exhibition on the poetry and drawings of Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), one of Spain's greatest modern poets and playwrights. Lorca lived in NYC for nine months starting in June of 1929. The exhibition coincides with the release of a new edition of Poeta en Nueva York, Lorca’s last book of poetry that was published posthumously in 1940, four years after his tragic murder by fascist rebels in Granada.

The Lorca exhibit is up through July 20^th. Through June 23^rd, the third floor Print and Stokes Galleries are displaying some of Mary Cassatt’s experimental prints. Despite an exhibition catalog with rather detailed descriptions of printmaking methods, only individuals with actual printmaking experience will be able to fully appreciate how grueling Cassatt’s processes were.

The galleries are frustratingly but understandably dimly lit, yet it is a small price to pay for being able to see several trial proofs of Cassatt’s prints in various states. In one piece she actually completely burnishes a figure off from the plate. One can only imagine the state of her poor hands. Spectators without a printmaking background probably won’t be as impressed, but hopefully they’ll still enjoy the elegant lines and Japanese influence of her later works. Of all of the Impressionists, Cassatt took Japanisme the furthest. And if that’s not your thing, there’s still her rather charming subject matter.

So, come one, come all. Buy some $4 falafel from a vendor nearby and take an extended lunch break listening to Philippe Petit ramble on about how fabulous knots are or Marc Maron ramble on about existence.

http://bryantpark.org/

http://www.nypl.org/locations/schwarzman

2013 College Art Association Conference

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 57^th 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. 

http://www.newyorkhiltonhotel.com/