NEW YORK CITY 2026: MAGAZZINO ITALIAN ART MUSEUM, DIA BEACON, AND A HOME-COOKED MEAL

 May 30, 2026

On my second day in New York, A and M had a great out-of-city excursion planned. We started by catching a train in the iconic Grand Central Station. If you look closely at the picture of A and me on the left, you'll see a red dot on the ceiling. It's a heart-shaped mylar balloon that floated there months ago (maybe Valentine's Day?) and hasn't wanted to return to earth! Those things last forever.

We took a 1.25 hour train to Magazzino Italian Art Museum in Cold Spring, New York, a village about 50 miles north of Manhattan with a population of approximately 2,000 and located across the Hudson River from West Point.

The museum, which contains a collection of postwar and contemporary Italian art owned by married art collectors Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu, opened in 2017 at the site of a former computer chip factory (Magazzino means "warehouse" in Italian). It consists of two buildings, the original warehouse and a second building opened in 2023.

I tend to go a bit crazy in an art museum. I like to take a lot of pictures that I can then examine in more detail on my computer at home. Here are a few of the photos I took of my favorite pieces.

They had an exhibit by the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti that I especially liked. On first glance, you see a mercator map of the world.

But look closer and you'll see the world depicted by the national flag of each country. The embroidery for this and other works by the same artist was completed by Afghan women in refugee camps.

NEW YORK CITY: THE WHITNEY MUSEUM AND LITTLE ISLAND

May 2023

New York City is possibly one of the best places in the United States if you are an art lover. There are at least 36 art museums in the city (see this list) and a bazillion galleries. On this trip we spent a bit of time in the Whitney Museum of American Art, which contains more than 23,000 works of art by more than 3,400 artists. 

We began with the retrospective for American artist our son is the studio manager for. 

It was especially fun to see this show, which took up two floors of the Whitney, because of our son's connection to it. Here are a few representative pieces:

Make-Believe

Contagious Unemployment 
(and the two below)

Wrapping Things Up

Creative Hands

NEW YORK CITY: THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE

May 2023

I am blown away that I have a son who enjoys opera. He didn't get that from his dad, that's for sure. When he suggested we could all go to the Metropolitan Opera House to see a performance of Verdi's Aida, I was on it right away, and Bob reluctantly agree to come with us.

The "Met" opened in 1966 and has a capacity of over 4,000 guests, making it the largest repertory opera house in the world. It is also one of the most technically advanced and has astounding acoustics.

It is located in the Lincoln Center, a complex of buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I don't know how the LDS Church was able to get the property for the temple just a block away, but what an amazing location. The Juilliard School of Music is also just around the corner from the Met.

This is Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic. There are 35 large paintings that comprise a temporary artwork on the side of the building. Collectively, they are entitled "San Juan Heal" and celebrate both Lincoln Center and the Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood (named San Juan Hill) that was displaced when the performing arts complex was built.

NEW YORK CITY: NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM THE DONALD JUDD STUDIO AND HOME

 May 2022

Andrew suggested two more places for us to visit while he and Michaela were at work. The first was the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) on Manhattan's Upper West Side across from Central Park. 

The AMNH campus is HUGE. There are 20 interconnected buildings and 2.5 million square feet of space. Obviously, we weren't going to be able to see it all, so we had to be choosy about where to go. On Andrew's recommendation, we headed for a new insect exhibit, the "Insectarium."

This is the "Pollination Portal," which shows how pollination works.

I loved the butterfly displays. We've recently traveled to several tropical areas where the butterflies are much more plentiful than they are in my desert area, and I have become more interested in the many varieties.

The magnifying glass means you can spin the wheel and look at butterflies and bugs up close.

The huge model of multiple combs of a beehive is unique.

NEW YORK CITY: DELECTABLE DINING

May 2023

One of the best parts of going to New York City (besides visiting our loved ones) is eating there. I think it might be my favorite city in the world for pure culinary joy, and this trip was no exception. Here are a few of the places (but not all) where we enjoyed a meal or a treat. 

How have we never known about Chelsea Market before?  It is a food hall, shopping center, and more located on the West Side. It was built in the 1890s as the home for the National Biscuit Company (aka Nabisco) and is where the Oreo cookie was invented and first produced. It was redeveloped about 30 years ago into its present form.

It occupies an entire city block and is full of multicultural dining and shopping experiences.

NEW YORK CITY: ARCHITECTURE BOAT TOUR AND CENTRAL PARK BIRDING

 May 2023

There are two things we did in New York City that we were not familiar with before this trip: an architecture boat tour and a birding tour of Central Park.

1.   MANHATTAN ARCHITECTURE BOAT TOUR

Andrew and Michaela had recently taken a boat tour around Manhattan Island with a focus on the city's architecture. They loved it and encouraged us to take a similar tour while they were at work the day we arrived in NYC. We thought it might be a good way to work through our jet lag after our red-eye flight, so we booked tickets. 

It's been hard for me to envision Manhattan as an island, so this trip really helped me get my geographical bearings. Separation between the island and the mainland isn't very wide at the top, but the Harlem River definitely separates Manhattan from the mainland. 

There were about 50 passengers, each group seated at their own table. At some point during the cruise, we were served a soft drink and a snack, part of the tour price.

We had a guide who I believe was an architect himself who narrated our "cruise" around the island with details about architecture and engineering landmarks from all eras of the city's history. He was well-amplified, very knowledgeable, and had a great delivery.

We started our tour at Chelsea Pier (horizontal arrow about 1/3 the way up from the bottom, west side) and traveled clockwise around Manhattan.

NEW YORK CITY: WORLD TRADE CENTER NEIGHBORHOOD

  May 11, 2023

We made a quick trip to New York City to visit our son Andrew and his girlfriend Michaela on Mother's Day weekend. We took the red-eye Jet Blue flight out of Ontario, and arrived in NYC early in the morning on Thursday. We had booked a room in the World Center Hotel, which is just a block or so from the 9-11 Memorial at One World Trade Center. There are a lot of different subway lines that connect in the neighborhood, and it is also a 15-20 minute walk from there to our Andrew and Michaela's apartment near Chinatown, so it was a good location for us.

I was hoping we would have a view of One World Trade Center from our hotel window since we were so close, but we were facing the wrong way. Still it was an interesting view of some other skyscrapers, and I loved the tile work on the apartment building next to us.

Judging by the fancy outdoor spaces, it costs a lot to live in the apartment building with the fancy tile work.

We were lucky to be there on a weekend with perfect weather and no pollution. The soaring obelisk of One World Trade Center almost seemed to blend into the sky. 

I recently heard someone from my area of the country say that they don't like New York City because the buildings are so tall that you can't even see the sky and its depressing. Honestly, I don't know what they are talking about. Yes, there are big buildings, but there are also a ton of open spaces. I love that about NYC!

NEW YORK : STORM KING ART CENTER

 July 24, 2021

On our third day in New York, we picked up a car at JFK, thinking that would make it easy to turn it in when it was time to go back to California (oh, we were so wrong, but more on that later), and we got on the road to go "upstate." ("Upstate" refers to almost all of the geographical region of New York--everything but the metropolitan area of New York City.) It was a Saturday morning and traffic was fairly light, especially by NYC standards.

 We were amazed by how quickly we left the city behind. Within an hour, we were traveling on forest-lined highways with big breaks between cities.

Our first destination was Storm King Art Center (marked by the red ballooon), about 70 miles upstate from JFK Airport (marked by a red star).

Wow, if you haven't heard of this place (as I had not), pay attention and get yourself there on your next trip to New York. It is amazing! This outdoor art museum, containing perhaps the largest collection of contemporary outdoor sculptures in the United States, was founded in 1960 and covers 500 acres. We're not talking minor artists no one has heard of. The most prominent sculptors of the 20th and 21st centuries are represented.

The Arch (1975) was created by Alexander Calder just one year before his death. There is an open arch you can walk through on the other side, but apparently I liked this view better! It is one of the first things we saw after driving into the grounds.

NEW YORK CITY: GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY (BROOKLYN)

 July 22, 2021

Our son knows I like cemeteries, and I know he likes mushroom hunting, and we figured those two interests could converge. Old cemeteries are known not just for their history and architecture, but also for their old trees, which often harbor companion fungi. We planned an afternoon walk through Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery to satisfy both of our interests.

Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 when the city cemeteries began to become overcrowded. It predated both Central Park and Prospect Park. Today it comprises 478 acres and contains about 600,000 "permanent residents" and 7,000 trees.  It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Among the famous people buried here are musician Leonard Bernstain; artists Louis Comfort Tiffany, George Catlin, and Jean-Michel Basquiat; politician Boss Tweed; newspaperman Horace Greeley; the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher; NY Governor DeWitt Clinton, Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives ("Currier and Ives"); Elias Howe (sewing machine inventor); Walter Hunt (safety pin inventor); Frank Morgan (the wizard in the movie The Wizard of  Oz); Morse code inventor Samuel Morse; cabinet maker Duncan Phyfe, Teddy Roosevelt's first wife Alice, his mother Martha, his father Theodore, and his uncle Robert; toy store founder F. A. O. Schwarz; and Henry Steinway and his son William of Steinway piano fame. Fifty victims of the September 11 attacks are also buried here.

The main entrance to the cemetery is a gothic arch perfect for a cemetery. It was built in 1861-65.

Just as the Bronx Zoo's "Zoo Center" reminded me of Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle, so too did this magnificent gate--except the scary movie version. I'd love to visit this spot on Halloween.

Sculpted scenes above the entrances depict Biblical scenes of death and resurrection.

NEW YORK CITY: SEWARD PARK, THE EAST RIVER, AND MOMA PS 1

 July 22, 2021

We started our second day in NYC by picking up soft egg and avocado sandwiches for breakfast at Factory Tamal and taking them to nearby Seward Park, where we sat on a bench and watched the antics of energetic children, noted the numbers of what appeared to be families enjoying the park (or nannies with children?), and wolfed down the sandwiches.

One of the things NYC does exceptionally well is provide open space that can be enjoyed by all. Over 30,000 acres of land, an impressive 4% of the city, are dedicated parks. According to www.nycgovparks.org, there are more than 5,000 individual properties in the park system, which include about 1,000 playgrounds, 1,800 basketball courts, 550 tennis courts, 65 public pools, 51 recreational facilities, 15 nature centers, 14 golf courses, and 14 miles of beaches. When my acquaintances tell me they could never live in NYC because they would miss nature, I know they haven't experienced the neighborhood parks.

This is NYC.

Of course, NYC also has its problems, but they seem to address them in their own unique way.

           

NEW YORK CITY: (MOSTLY) VEGETARIAN DINING

 July 21-22, 2021

Our son recently moved to the edge of Chinatown in New York City. For months we drooled over his descriptions of the new restaurants and dishes he and his girlfriend were discovering in the new-to-them section of the city, so it was fun to visit a few of the restaurants and taste some of that food. They are vegetarians, and we are trying to have a healthier diet, so we were happy to have someone guide us to the best NYC vegetarian eats.

We tried to cram in as many local eating experiences as we could during the two days we spent in the city. We even ate at two different restaurants on our first evening, beginning at Xi'an Famous Foods. (We had been to Xi'an in China and had some great food there, so we were excited to try this one!)

Knowing that our main meal was ahead of us, we tried not to over-indulge. The three of us shared an order of Spicy Hot Oil-Seared Hand-Ripped Noodles . . . 

. . . and an order of Chang'an Spicy Tofu.