Day 3.2 – Getting Guggy

We worked out way through Central Park, which is pretty much everything people say it is. With the leaves turning colour, the grass still green, and the sky mostly blue, it was a great day to be in the park.

We all know Central Park has trails and ponds gardens and trees and running areas and bike paths and benches and young couples knoodling in the bushes, but I didn’t know there we such beautiful outcrops of gneiss of the Cambrian Manhattan Formation. Here we took a break from our knoodling to get a gneiss picture of Tig.

Our ultimate goal was on the other side of the park, to the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum. Now, I mentioned my irrational cult-like adoration of Carl Sagan last post, this time I get to mention Tig’s irrational cult-like adoration of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. For those who have no idea who these people are, the Guggenheim is an art museum, funded by the estate of Solomon Guggenheim, and designed by Wright. It was one of the last buildings Wright designed (it was not completed until after his death). It was testament to Wright’s reputation and attitude that he could build an art museum almost completely bereft of vertical walls. (making it rather difficult to hang pictures!)

Needless to say, we looked at some of the art, but to Tig and I, the building is the star of the show here. Built around a single, long, spiral ramp, the idea is to allow visitors to start at the top and work their way down the ramp, with art along the outside walls. Of course, the walls are canted outward about 15 degrees, and the floor of the ramp is a constant 3 degree slope, so there is nary a rectangle to be seen. Even the lone staircase is triangular.

Although there are wings (added after the fact) to allow more…uh… traditional displays, the main installation during our visit was a large mobile constructed of the collected works of Maurizio Cattelan, which is, apparently, a “a profound meditation on mortality”. There was enough interesting, funny, and bizarre stuff hanging there that every trip around the ramps of the Gugg brought more things to view.

So that is about it. Three Fast days in the Big City. We had some great food (Pho in the Village, Mexican-fusion in Hells Kitchen) some OK food (wings etc. at a sports bar, Thai food near Times Square, Turkish grub in Chelsea), rode the Subway a lot (and only accidentally crossed the East River once) didn’t see any shows (other than the streets of New York themselves!), and did not buy a single thing! (we are so bad at retail).