NEW YORK CITY DAY 1: DUMPLING GALAXY, THE SCULPTURE CENTER, MOMA PS1, AND TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ON BROADWAY

February 14, 2020

In February 2020, about a month before the Covid outbreak in the United States, we flew to New York City for our sixth visit. We had two main purposes for the trip. First and foremost, we wanted to see an art show in which our son had a major piece of work. Second, Bob had given me tickets to Hamilton on Broadway for Christmas (and after Christmas we also picked up tickets for To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway).

We took a JetBlue red-eye flight, which is our standard method of travel to NYC, and made our way to our hotel in Queens, where we dropped off our luggage and showered. We met up with Andrew and set out to find some lunch in one of our favorite NYC neighborhoods: Flushing (the real Chinatown), which Andrew had introduced us to when we visited in August 2018.

On our way to lunch, we peaked inside the Flushing Post Office, completed in 1934, the middle of the Great Depression. The murals were painted by Vincent Aderente, an Italian-American muralist.

We had lunch at a place Andrew recommended named Dumpling Galaxy. New York Magazine calls it Flushing's best restaurant. It is located on the upper level of a shopping mall full of Chinese stores.

Just looking at the menu was worth the visit. So many yummy options!

Actually, I'm not sure about these two pages. The one on the left, from top to bottom, offers chicken feet, spicy pig feet, black ear mushrooms, cucumber salad (the one normal thing on the page), and spicy duck head. I'll pass on all of those and on the sauteed frog in hot wok on the right.

One of my favorite sides at good Chinese restaurants is scallion pancakes, which we first ate in Beijing. These were very good.

Supposedly the restaurant has 100 different kinds of dumplings. We tried duck meat and mushroom pan-fried dumplings that were good but not too memorable.

The show-stopper was the steamed Lamb soup dumplings, an off-menu item that Andrew somehow knew about. These little purses of dough were filled with rich lamb broth and seasoned minced lamb. Truly divine.

Less divine were the garlic spareribs, which were too crispy and overcooked for our taste:

On the other hand, the braised pork turned out to be chunks of tender, flavorful pork belly in a delicious red sauce:

The crispy pan-fried sole garnished with red peanuts and chilies was good, especially the moister sections near the middle.

Yes, we ordered a lot of food. We like to try lots of dishes. We left a fair amount of it behind, but it was a marvelous tasting adventure.

We had to go back to Queens for Andrew's art show, but first we stopped in a Chinese grocery store. I was fascinated by the noodle section, but had to take this picture surreptitiously because I had already gotten in trouble for starting to take a photo in the fish section of the market.

As we neared The Sculpture Center where the art show was, Andrew pointed out a recently commissioned artwork entitled Sunbather by an Israeli sculptor named Ohad Meromi. Apparently it has been quite controversial. One reviewer called it an "ambiguous sunbathing humanoid . . . endowed with neither gender nor age." He points out that "Its dimensions approximate the chassis of a Fresh Direct delivery truck. . . . It looks like something a pre-schooler might construct out of hot-pink pipe cleaners, magnified a millionfold."

Personally, I like that it made me stop and look. Lots of public art is just part of the scenery. I liked the intentional distortion and the jarring color. 

The Sculpture Center was founded in 1928 and has been located in several different spots. Since 2001 it has been in Long Island City in Queens. A not-for-profit contemporary art museum, it generally funds three exhibition cycles per year, one for mid-career artists, one for emerging artists, and one for solo and group exhibitions. We were there for the emerging artist exhibition, which had something like 800 applications from which 15 or so artists were given a commission to create an artwork.

The museum underwent a $4.5 million renovation and expansion in 2014, and the exhibition space was really fun.

This is the piece we came to see. Our son prefers that I don't put anything in my post that makes it searchable for his art, so I will forego sharing the details of this life-sized fireplace/artwork (note that it is suspended above the floor) and its name. Suffice it to say that it was by far my favorite piece in the show, and I don't think it was just because I am the artist's mom.

With Bob in the picture, you get an idea of size.

This is very much a three-dimensional piece of art. The detail is pretty incredible.

I think my next favorite piece was this found-object sculpture, and while it doesn't hold a candle to the fireplace, it is quite charming.

Sadly, the Covid-19 pandemic hit before this show had its full run and it was shut down early. Total bummer for our son as it was such a huge thing to have been included in the show.

Back outside, we headed to another art museum, passing this mini park in front of a skyscraper. New York does a good job with their urban forestry.

We eventually made it to MoMA PS1.

Public elementary schools in New York City are typically referred to as PS number (e.g., PS22). In 1976, the PS1 Contemporary Art Center was opened in a deserted public school building built in 1892. It had been the first school in Long Island City but was closed in 1963 and turned into a warehouse. In 2000, PS1 Contemporary Art Center and New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) merged.

Since its purchase in 1976, the building has been remodeled a few times and now includes 125,000 square feet. What a wonderful space for an art museum!

Even the boiler room is part of the exhibits:

MoMA PS1 is not afraid to tackle tough contemporary issues, such as the Gulf Wars. They had a large show entitled Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011.

Left: Gulf War (1991) shows a sculpture of a Sumerian king and a young woman standing in front of it, both riddled with bullets. Right: War Painting - The Destruction of Iraq (1991) depicts a weeping angel missing one lower leg and carrying a black flag. Both paintings are by Afifa Aleiby.

Guerrilla Girls is a group of feminist activist artists who retain their anonymity in order to keep the focus on their message. They created these two posters in 1991.

Another piece shifts to "The War at Home," a long poem painted on a blood red background by Karen Finley.

Here is a selection from about the middle of the piece:

It's the American Way

Every 3 minutes a woman dies from an illegal abortion

It's THE AMERICAN WAY

For what we now have is a war at home

Don't worry you can still be part of this war

If you don't have health insurance

You can die for this country

If you get stage 3 breast cancer

and they won't let you have RU486

that could save your life

You could di for your country

If you're denied a legal abortion

You can die from an illegal one

If you're not educated about condoms and don't know the true facts

About AIDS, yeah, YOU CAN DIE FOR THIS COUNTRY

It's the AMERICA WAY

Tonight, I can't go to sleep for I hear babies cry

I hear fear. I hear bombing.

We're the 911 of the world

We just make things worse with our response

Our cruelty, our hunger & thirst for violence is part of our culture

No arts on the TV except when it is on censorship or sensationalism

But we have sports on the news every night.

The War We Won (1991) by Roger Brown shows Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush shaking hands to celebrate the end of the Cold War. Boris Yeltsin and Ronald Reagan look on.

I love these ceramics. Though at first they seem very simple, check out the patterns on the clothing and the distinct facial expressions. 

Two of my favorite artworks in MoMA PS1 were these silhouettes found on staircase walls. I don't know anything about them, but aren't they wonderful? They are like shadows from the past.

This reminds me a lot of the building where I attended junior high. Can you picture these hallways filled with kids?

This display was intriguing--an almost life-sized doll house decorated with items and images from the 1960s.

Nearby, another poster created by The Guerrilla Girls sometime between 2003-2007:

And for the girl (or guy) who has everything, how about this enormous gold CNN necklace?

Back outside, we parted from our son and started making our way towards Times Square.

We picked up some potato chips for a snack on the way: Black Pepper Rib Eye Steak-flavored, Avocado-flavored, and Grilled Squid-flavored. Fun stuff.

I have no idea which subway stop this is, but isn't it wonderful?

Iconic Times Square . . . 

. . . and the Shubert Theatre.

Spectacular!