From our hotel window, watching workers setting up the New Year's Ball that drops at Times Square, I am reminded of how quickly time passes and that another year is almost gone. And I reflect how fortunate I am to be able to travel with Will as we pass our milestone birthdays and reflect on almost 40 years together.
But enough of Somber Reflection and back to the bright sunshine of a gorgeous--and very busy-- Saturday (yesterday) in New York City. we opt for cinnamon buns and coffee n our room for breakfast and a speedy taxi ride to the Meatpacking District in Lowe Manhattan, location of two of the most-visited recent "sights" in the city: the High Line and the new Whitney Museum of American Art. We have walked the major portion of the High Line on a previous warm-weather visit, so today we are here for the museum and to meet friends from VT who have come down to the city by train for the day.
The newly-built structure for the Whitney faces the Hudson River to the west and all of Tribeca and lower Manhattan to the East. The building has eight floor of exhibitions and can display a larger percentage of the permanent collection than was possible in the older building, a Modernist brutal structure on Madison Avenue in Midtown. The highlight of the exhibits today is a full-floor retrospective of the career of Frank Stella from his early almost-monocolor flat paintings to the wildly colorful recent works that are more like sculputre than painting. His mission has been to extend the media of painting into three-demensional space without using the techniques of sculpture, and is most interesting to compare to the sculptural works of Picasso that we viewed at MOMA the other day.
The museum building is itself a work of art with expansive glass windows and metal balonies that face in all directions. The balconies provide panormanic views of all of the area as well as ways of connecting to various floors. Today's brilliant sunshine makes for perfect viewing.
After a quick stand-up lunch of (expensive) lobster rolls at the Gansevoort Market near the museum, we taxi uptown to the Barrymore Theatre for a matinee performance of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. The play, based on a novel Will and I had both read some years ago, has won numerous prizes in London and New York. The production uses innovative electronic techniques to take the audience into the thinking process of the 15-year old central character, who exhibits serious behaviors on the Autism spectrum. The text carefully and realistically explores his view of the world as well as providing a realistic perspective of his chances (not guaranteed and left ambiguous at the end of the play), for a achieving a fully-engaged intellectual adulthood.
When we emerge from the theatre, all of Broadway and Times Square are lit up with the incredible glow of LED billboards that have replaced the old neon signs. The lights are extremely bright and the colors sharp and continually changing. We take a short walk over to the 9th Avenue Restaurant District, formerly called Hell's Kitchen, but now more politely known as Clinton, for dinner at Amarone. When we arrive shortly after 5pm there is no problem getting a good table without a prior reservation. But by 5:30, not only is the restaurant full, but there is a long line of patrons waiting to get in.
We start off with martinis and Will enjoys a pear and arugula salad with lemon dressing, and freshly-made lasagna. I have a very large Caesar salad and Pasta with eggplant and tomato. For dessert we share a large slice of tiramisu. All of this food is enough to keep us warm as we walk the relatively short eight blocks back to the hotel.
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