What to see online + in the city this week
Including a totally biased fundraiser fair shoutout...
Hi everyone!
I’m coming to you this week with a few recommendations for things to see in New York City + some odds and ends on the internet for those of you outside of New York.
Top order of business: if you’re looking for something to do in New York this Sunday, I’d like to recommend the fundraiser fair I’m co-hosting with my friend Samantha Klein. It’s called NY to LA and it’s taking place at Common Mollie’s in Williamsburg.
There will be all kinds of great clothing, artwork, baked goods, and other finds for sale. My astrologer friend Emily Thompson will be doing sliding scale birth chart readings and there’s also going to be collage materials and plenty of room to sit down and get crafty. Plus sponsored drinks available at the bar. All of the profits will be donated to verified GoFundMes for people who lost their homes in the LA wildfires. I hope you’ll come and say hi!
More recommendations in the city…
Anytime I recommend cultural institutions in the newsletter, if they’re not already free, I’m going to mark whether or not they’re available on CulturePass. If you’ve never used CulturePass before, it’s a system that you can access online with a Brooklyn, New York, or Queens library card. It provides free tickets to museums and other cultural destinations across New York, you just need to make a reservation in advance. Some destinations book out very early once tickets are released on the first of the month, others you can get tickets on the day you’re hoping to visit.
CulturePass can be a great way to try out new spaces and it’s honestly just an awesome discovery platform, too. Reservations for many institutions cover entry for multiple guests, so it’s also a useful tool to have in your back pocket for when visitors are in town. New York is expensive, so having a way to reduce the financial strain for people who aren’t desensitized to New York prices is wonderful!
The Whitney’s Edges of Ailey
Cost/CulturePass notes: The Whitney is generally available on CulturePass, but I’d be surprised if there are passes available before Ailey closes. Worth checking! Otherwise $30 GA, free for 19-25 years olds.
I know I’m very late to getting around to seeing it, but the Alvin Ailey exhibit at The Whitney was truly incredible. I went with Marian Bull of
and our consensus was that it was “pleasantly overstimulating,” to paraphrase her.The show occupies an entire floor and there’s only soft separation between sections. A string of videos plays at the top of the wall along the entire central portion of the exhibit, displaying dances that Alvin Ailey choreographed and other archival footage. This method of installing the video allowed for dance and music to be central to the entire experience, rather than just asides that you need to slip headphones on and to experience. It completely transcended a typical exhibition experience. It was one of those museum experiences that really reminded me of the exciting and lively and juicy art experiences I had as a kid that made me fall in love with museum-going in the first place. If other exhibitions are an open mic night, it was a stadium show. The curators were really firing on all cylinders!
It’s up until February 9th—if you’re in New York, go while you still can!!!
The Cooper Hewitt’s Making Home Triennial
Cost/Culture Pass: Available on CulturePass. Otherwise $22, free for 18 and under.
You have a ton more time to make it to the Cooper Hewitt design triennial—it’s up through August 10. I’d heard mixed things, but after going myself, I felt generally like I do with all biennials/triennials: there was some stuff that didn’t hit for me, but ultimately enough exciting work to make it worth a visit. I’d recommend giving yourself plenty of time to make it through the show (like at least 3-4 hours imo).
Something I appreciated in particular as someone with chronic pain/ankle problems was the abundance of seating. In my current physical condition, spending multiple consecutive hours standing is really hard on my body. It’s really rare that I feel like needing to sit down is intended as part of the experience and not a personal need that’s detracting from it.
Read Diana Budds’s Wallpaper piece on the show for the full scoop!
MoMA’s Pirouette
Cost/CulturePass: Available on CulturePass. Otherwise $30, free for NY State residents from 5:30 to 8:30pm every Friday night.
I went to the MoMA's member preview of Pirouette last weekend with a group of four friends. We arrived at 11am and 4 out of the 5 of us were hungover, which only magnified the feeling of field trip loopiness brought on by our large group size. The show was a lot of fun! The general organizing principle is that each of the objects represents a turning point in design. There are fonts, emojis, chairs, clothes, smaller consumer goods—a really wide range of pieces.
I was most excited to see Grete Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt Kitchen, which is the original modern kitchen, designed in the ‘20s. Given that it really was a turning point, I encounter the Frankfurt Kitchen a lot in books and articles but I don’t think I’d ever seen it in person.
The Ridley Scott Apple commercial was also in the show. I't’s coming up all over the place for me lately and it always gives me a chuckle because I would obsessively watch this commercial on YouTube as a kid.
Odds and Ends
I went to the launch for Molly Lambert’s Double Acts In Pop last week. Everything from the ‘10s internet blends together in my mind, but I discovered Lambert’s work at some point around 2014 or 2015. Maybe it was through a Grantland piece (ex: her great piece on Calabasas), maybe through Pitchfork, maybe not until she was at MTV? Regardless, I’ve loved following Lambert’s career through the years. (She worked on Everybody’s In LA, which I wrote about in this newsletter just a couple weeks ago!)
Double Acts in Pop is a type specimen that showcases the library of Commercial Type, a company publishes retail fonts and the book’s publisher. The variety of fonts makes for quite the lively reading experience! Grab a copy here.
I started my day by finally listening to “Why the Brutalist is a Terrible Movie,” a podcast episode that breaks down the problems with the Oscar-nominated film. It’s a discussion between architecture and culture writers Mark Lamster, Alexandra Lange and Carolina A. Miranda who were moved to record the episode because of how much the film irritated them. (They don’t otherwise podcast together.) It was validating to hear that they share a lot of the frustrations with the movie I have, like the fact that the timeline of the film’s central character László Tóth being like, the first modernist architect in Pennsylvania just doesn’t add up. Worth a listen even if you enjoyed the film, IMO.
I’m so obsessed with the AD tour of Cold Picnic founders Phoebe Sung and Peter Buer’s home. Truly scrumptious pictures by Seth Caplan!
Lastly, I present to you a truly absurd production design anecdote from the March 16, 1987 New York cover story on the making of Elaine May’s Ishtar.
