The Museum of Arts and Design on Columbus Circle is a wonderful museum. They show creative works from all fields and media, ranging from the artisanal to the digital. Visiting MAD is always a stimulating experience that gets one’s creative juices flowing. [1,2,3,4]
MAD has some incredible exhibits going on right now and I’ve been visiting frequently as of late. My favorite is Body & Soul: New International Ceramics, curated by Wendy Tarlow Kaplan and Martin Kaplan. The show features clay work from 25 international artists, using the human figure to explore contemporary pressures societal, political, and emotional. I was lucky enough to get a tour around the exhibit with Wendy and Martin, which was quite a treat.
Within the show are four works by the brilliant ceramicist Sergei Isupov. [5] Sergei’s work is exquisite. [6,7,8] He also happens to be one of the most kind people I have ever met and I am thrilled that we will be working with him at Kasher|Potamkin (opening this summer). Another highlight of Body & Soul were the charmingly macabre porcelain figurines by Jessica Harrison. [9,10] She has a sweet one where the girl is holding her bleeding heart in her hand. I’m thinking about getting it as a gift for my fiancé, so I hope he isn’t reading this.
Another exhibit, titled Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital that explores advances in technology and their relation to art. I had a tiny version of myself printed with a 3D printer, which was very exciting for me. [11,12]
Thursday evening was the opening of Fred W. McDarrah Save The Village at Steven Kasher Gallery. The show is a marvelous retrospective that captures the essence of the downtown New York scene of the 60’s and 70’s. [13,14,15] Photographs of protests, poetry readings and artists in their studios filled the gallery with a beatnik energy that made me want to discuss women’s rights and trumpet my opposition to war. [16] I scooped up a vintage photograph of Susan Sontag that I cannot wait to bring home. [17] Susan Sontag is an inspiration to philosophers and intellectuals alike, but most importantly to women such as myself who like to consider themselves philosophers and intellectuals. I am very much looking forward to living with her.
On Friday afternoon I met a friend for lunch at the SoHo House, a member’s only club of which I am not a member. She ran late, and I was not allowed upstairs until she arrived. This is why I always carry a book, and I would not have minded had I not been sitting in the freezing entry room for over an hour getting kicked by the massive amounts of people waltzing past me. I was not even offered a cup of coffee and I thought it was very rude. But once I got upstairs I did get a kick out of the sign in the bathroom. [18]
Post script: I read in a book once that you can judge a person’s power by how many things can make them upset. I find it helpful to think of this when I start to get frustrated.
