PDX Moment in NYC!

I just returned from a fun visit to New York, where I truly meant to take pictures. I only took a couple, but they were of my friend Amy and me. She was visiting from the glorious Portland, Oregon, and it was so wonderful to see her. I've mentioned her here before--you may have visited her website:

Amy Steel's Website

I met some of her charming classmates, some of whom will also be graduating with their MFAs this very semester! Congratulations in advance, Amy and friends!

Anyway, here is my only photo-documentation of the trip:




But I have other things that I could tell you. On Wednesday, I went to the ICP, where there's an excellent exhibition curated by Okwui Enwezor, which is entitled Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art.


On Thursday, I got to tag along with Amy and her group to a tour of the Whitney Biennial. One piece that was at the museum, Omer Fast's The Casting, has remained on my mind a lot over the last few days.

This year, for the first time, the Whitney hosted installations and performances at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the Biennial. The Armory would be a fascinating place, with or without the contemporary art. Definitely go to the website, and read about its history. Here is a taste:

From the Armory's website:
Located on Park Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets, in the heart of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the Amory was designated an exterior city landmark in 1986 and an interior landmark in 1994. The New York City Landmarks Commission has described the Armory’s magnificent reception and company rooms, designed by leaders of the American Aesthetic Movement, as the single most important collection of 19th-century interiors to survive intact in one building. In 2000, the Armory was named one of the 100 most endangered sites in the world by the World Monuments Fund, the only New York venue on the list.

I'll return to the Armory in a bit.

On Thursday night, I went to Newark, New Jersey, where Suzanne Gott was speaking in conjunction with the exhibition, Glass Beads of Ghana, that she co-curated with Christa Clark on Krobo beads. The exhibit was great, and I really enjoyed Suzanne's talk. If you can make it, definitely check out the Newark Museum, especially the Krobo exhibit. They also have some neat programming coming up for the summer. They've also invited Cedi to speak.

On Friday, I made it to P.S. 1 for Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution and the Metropolitan, where I saw a show on Courbet.

That night, I headed back to the Armory for a performance piece by the amazing artist and writer, Coco Fusco. It was one of the most incisive and thought-provoking responses to the Iraq War that I've seen. The piece is entitled A Room of One's Own: Women and Power in the New America, and the book associated with it, A Field Guide for Female Interrogators, will be available soon.

A Field Guide for Female Interrogators

After that, I went out with friends to a jazz club, and then I groggily made my way back to Ithaca yesterday. And here I am, taking a break from the aforementioned very important work activities, to share with you what I did on my trip to New York.