My First Visit to Museum Mile

New York, New York

Well today I made my way over to what could be my favourite street in NYC.....and believe it or not I can't buy a single pair of shoes on it. That street would be the portion of 5th Ave that they call Museum Mile. Not just a cleaver name. It is in fact home to 8 museums including The Museum of New York City and the Metropolitan Museum of Art more commonly known as The Met.

See........I didn't make-up the whole Museum Mile thing.

It also happens to be home to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum which is where I spent a few hours today.

So the great and famous Guggenheim was.....well a little mediocre today I can’t lie. Don’t get me wrong the place is outstanding but they are in the process of installing 2 new exhibits so there was not actually that much to look at today.

One thing I did see was part of the exhibit dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright. It is just a piece of the smaller exhibit which will open next weekend but showed a glimpse of what you will see. Frank Lloyd Wright is considered to be the greatest American architect of the twentieth century and happens to be the man who designed the museum. What I mostly saw were sketches and ideas of buildings and resorts that were never built or have since been demolished. A couple of these were a community in California and a resort in the desert that were never built (due to an economic downturn….sounds familiar) but were designed to alter the environment the least amount possible. There was none of this blasting away or through a mountain to build a road in his designs but instead he planned to build the road around the mountain.

A look at the Guggenheim. Considered one of Wright's most famous designs.

The museum is also home to a few early works from Picasso, which are very different from his late works. Not very abstract at all and if you just took a quick look at them you would not believe they were Picasso’s at all. They were very similar to some of his work that I saw in DC. There is however also one of his paintings from 1939. You can see the start of the real abstract work he is famous for.

Looking up from the inside of the Guggenheim. This is the only place in the museum where you are allowed to take pictures.

The museum is also home to a Van Gough (which I can now pick out from across the room…his work is very distinctive) and a Claude Monet (all his stuff is starting to look the same but this one was a great scene from Venice so it brought back memories).

And well that was the Guggenheim. Not what I was expecting and maybe a little disappointing but I will try to delay judgement until I get back to the place when the new exhibits are open.

Of course I can't really complain or be disappointed because I got to visit the Guggenheim. Really any day that I can enjoy the arts in this amazing city is a great day.

Julie