On Christmas Day, we found ourselves on a direct flight to New York, thanks to cut-price tickets from Air New Zealand, and the offer of an apartment in Alphabet City on the promise we take care of its resident corgi.
NYC was exciting, expensive, exhausting and extraordinary. Alongside the dog, our priorities were art, cocktails, food and investigating the city on foot and metro. While the delights of the megalopolis were giddy, it was also not shy of showing us how tough life here can be.
Thankfully, New York’s relentless momentum was not our burden. We met with several friends passing through – Melissa and Matthew Browne (Browne School of Art) at Down & Out, an excellent cocktail bar in East Village, as they passed through to London.
We introduced Heather and Graeme Harris (Gordon Harris) to Goodnight Sonny, a classy bar run by Tui, a first-generation New Yorker whose whakapapa is to Ngai Tuhoe.
It wasn’t all cocktails (also at Stonewall Inn and Pisellino). Our walks through Lower Eastside and Bowery were a visual feast, with every surface coated in spray paint and posters. Then there were the buildings full of the finest art: Photografiska, the Brant, Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim, the Met and the Cloisters, the Neue Gallery and the New Gallery, the Whitney, NY Public Library and the 5Pointz graffiti project.
Brooklyn Museum was the most fun – a community feel in a huge stone edifice, with a moving look at film-maker Spike Lee’s creative sources, Judy Chicago’s magnum opus The Dinner Party, and the fascinating ceramic work of Japan’s Kondo family. Their café was also tops.
A survey show of Ruth Asawa at the Whitney, from her college work to her famous wire sculptures, was our top pick exhibition. Huge paintings by Lee Krasner, also at the Whitney, and Basquiat-Warhol colabs at the Brant were also worth travelling for.
We arrived back fizzing, yet thankful of our more kind-paced life here. And with a new love for corgis.
EVAN WOODRUFFE, Studio Art Supplies www.studioart.co.nz
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Published: February 2024