Museum Hopping in New York

Well...a short hop. The Newark Museum trip was to the Guggenheim for the exhibition of "The Third Mind .. American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989" and to the Asia Society exhibition of Yang Fudong, "Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest." This is a 5-part film lasting about 5 hours, so obviously in our one-hour tour of the collections, we could only watch a few minutes of each segment. Perhaps sometime before the exhibit ends in September I'll go in and make a day of it, or then again, I may buy the DVD (if there is one). It's in black & white, and there are many beautifully composed scenes. I bought the catalog for the stills it contained and as a bonus, it was autographed by Fudong.

This was not a photo-op day. Guggenheim did not allow photos above the first floor; the Asia Society not at all (which I found out after I took the Buddha photos. We had a great lunch at the Atlantic Grill, but I was so busy enjoying the food, I neglected to take pictures
(which were allowed)!

No...this is not a bunch of eight microphones waiting for the band to appear...but.....

This is Paul Kos' installation Sound of Ice Melting (1970), in which you listen to the amplified sounds of two 25-pound blocks of ice melting.

Last week we saw an Aferro Gallery (Newark) installation by an artist who put microphones into a small tank with a couple of tropical fish and amplified them so you could hear the fish sounds.

In the Ironbound Section another artist dipped strings in pigments, froze them, and then hung them above watercolor paper, so patterns were created as the strings defrosted and dripped down.

I'm working on an installation in which a robotic arm dips into a bucket of paint, applies it to a large canvas with a small fan aimed at it...it's called Watching Paint Dry (2009)...look for it in a show coming to your neighborhood museum!

These are the few photos I was able to get on Wednesday.....The gold leaf piece in the lower righthand corner of the collage was really quite striking, with the scattered gold leaf surrounding the bier. It's James Lee Byars piece, The Death of James Lee Byars (l982/1994). According to a NY Times article, Mr. Byars would occasionally lay on the bier "practicing death." Five small crystals take his place on the bier since he died in 1997.