As our adventure draws to an end we made our way up to the Lincoln Square area, Broadway and 9th Avenue (Columbus Drive up here). The NYC Folk Art Museum had a couple of bizarre exhibits. More on them later.
Before this though I headed out on my own again for a long city walk.
Mardi’s cough and chest infection just won’t get better, so she stayed home again.
So I headed out, firstly way across town to 9th Avenue and downtown to 34th. The extraordinary B and H Photo store is here. A massive electronics store as complex to get into as the process to buy goods is, but still an experience.
I needed an adapter for my head phones for the plane, yes I lost my original adapter, you guessed it, on a plane. I was also picking up an accessory for s mate, got it safely Mick.
So buying something in store is different to buying something online for pick up. Two queues, the locations and literally dozens of staff helping me out. Oh, the cane comes in handy sometimes.
Goods secured I then headed east side along 34th and walked from 9th to Lexington. Then from 34th up to 61st. Wow, that’s a long way. But a great walk. The best way to experience the city.
I wandered around this area for a while and took some photos. The Bloomberg building is pretty cool with its internal circular edifice and Christmas tree. I was going to head across to the park, but the rain started to fall. So I wander along 59th for a bit for trying the subway. My preference is to only ride the subway with Mardi. It’s safe, but can be confusing. Anyway I hopped on a train and found my way back to 42nd street. The advantage of where we are staying is all trains pretty much end up at 42nd at some point.
I popped into Walgreens and got some tissues for Mardi and a hot chocolate. I got home, we had our hot chocolate and then we then headed up to the folk art museum.
We found the museum easily, the giant folk art museum sign helped.
The exhibits were bizarre as I said earlier.
Firstly we had Securing the Shadow: Posthumous Portraiture in America, then we had the Epitaath Project and finally an installation of postmortem daguerreotypes from the Stanley B. Burns MD Family Collection and Archive. What does all this mean?
Well the portraits were paintings from 1770 to 1820 of basically dead people painted after they died so the family could remember them. Remember, no cameras and Facebook, instagram back then! The interesting part of this exhibit was how people were portrayed.
Sorry, no photos allowed. Check the website for more and read on.
http://folkartmuseum.org/exhibitions/securing-the-shadow-posthumous-portraiture-in-america/
I’ve also clipped a couple of photos to give you an idea.
Images of children with one shoe/sock missing to indicate they had died, the heavy use of the colour red and black, lots of cats strangely – most of the dead children had a cat near by or were holding a cat. Family portraits of parents hugging children still alive and the dead ones standing near by. A group of children, alive in colourful dress, while their brother, dead stands and watches dressed in black. A number of kids, one holding a dead bird, she had died, another with a dead plant, she had died, while the other three played with toys or had animals eith thrm. It was compelling imagery and a way families coped with the death of children. Remember infant death was rife with dysentery everywhere.
As part of this exhibit was an installation of actual photos taken later on of family members staged with dead loved ones. Mothers with babies, twins in some cases. A husband holding his dead wife. Each photo state so the dead looked almost alive. Creepy, but also heartwarming to think that people wanted to remember dead people in this way. It must have been a tough time to live.
The epitaph project was a little ordinary, no real head stones, a large display of random headstones.
When we finished st the museum we headed downtown to the library. The shop inside the library has some cool and quirky gifts, Lisa Smith, we got you something very cool. I also grabbed a couple of photos of the Chrysler building. A great perspective from the library, well the garden of the library that I’m sure I shouldn’t be trampling, but what do you do when a good shot beckons.
We were also hoping to catch up with Bob and a Cathy today, but their dog, Ginger, is very unwell, so was Bob and Mardi is also a bit crook so that didn’t happen.
When we finished at the library we headed home, more packing and a light dinner in tonight.
