Ellis Island preservation group desperate for donations
Save Ellis Island, the non-profit that’s been methodically stabilizing 30 abandoned buildings at the country’s most famous immigration center, is in dire need of $500,000 in donations by April 2 in order to keep its own doors open, Judith McAlpin, President of SAE, today told NewYorkology.
The small group has already cut staff, delayed projects and put employees on furloughs. But if it’s unable to pay rent and salaries, unspent grants must be returned and no more buildings will open to the public.
Before Save Ellis Island started work a decade ago, two-thirds of the island was in serious disrepair, with crumbling staircases, broken windows and trees sprouting indoors. The deterioration has been on the public radar since 2005, when free hard-hart tours of the old hospital were first offered as part of the annual Open House New York event.
So far, 29 of the 30 abandoned buildings have been stabilized but only one has reopened as part of the museum. In 2007, SAE and the National Park Service opened the “new” ferry building, an art deco, WPA-era buidling used by immigrants who cleared customs and were waiting for the boat to Manhatttan. The renovation includes a functioning fan and bench both original to the room, as well as exhibits.
The one still-exposed building — the giant baggage and dormitory building that faces north to the Hudson River — last year received U.S. stimulus funds. The National Park Service, which runs Ellis and Liberty islands, is overseeing that project and the initial phase of stabilization has begun, NPS spokesman Darren Boch said .
While funds are available to prevent more damage to the baggage building, without Save Ellis Island, there would be no plans to reopen any more buildings.”It’s not going to happen in their absence,” Boch said in an interview this morning. “We have to work with a partner.”
Yankees single-game tickets on sale Friday at noon
Individual home-game tickets for the world champion New York Yankees will go on sale to the general public starting Friday at noon, according to the MLB.com story posted on the team’s official website.
Tickets are currently available only in multi-game or season-ticket packages.
Initially, the tickets will be available only through Yankees.com, YankeesBeisbol.com and Ticketmaster’s phone line: (877) 469-9849.
In April, the blockbuster King Tut exhibition will open at the Discovery Times Square Exposition. But starting Tuesday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will open a more low-key Tut exhibition that focuses on the less flashy elements of the burial process of the boy king.
“Tutankhamun’s Funeral” at the Met is made up of mummy bandages, linen sheets, mud seals and bags of natron and sawdust from the embalming process. Discovered in 1907 by Edward S. Ayrton, some of the funeral items bear the name of King Tutankhamun, and helped lead Howard Carter to his nearby discovery of the actual tomb in 1922.
Ayrton was working for New York lawyer and amateur archaeologist Theodore M. Davis, who later donated the funeral items to the Met Museum. (All the items in the new exhibition are normally on display, but have been given a special room and new book to coincide with the major Tut exhibition at Times Square.)
“We thought it might be a good idea to give people another aspect of the story,” Dorothea Arnold, curator and chairman of the Department of Egyptian Art at the Met, said in an interview at the museum Monday. “You can start here and get the context.”
Indeed the Met offers deep context, with one of the best Egyptian art and textile collections in the world. When the original King Tut exhibition came to New York in 1979, it was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . In 2004, officials from the Met said they opted out of this tour because they did not want to add a higher entry fee. (Times Square tickets will cost $27.50 for the single exhibition, while the Met is always a $20 suggested admission for the entire museum.)
Subway archaeology to go on display at Transit Annex
After a renovation, the New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex at Grand Central Terminal will reopen March 18 with a free exhibition of New Amsterdam artifacts discovered while building a subway extension in Lower Manhattan.
“Archeology at the South Ferry Terminal” will include more than 100 of the 65,000 artifacts — ceramic sherds, shells, coins, tobacco pipes, and architectural materials — found at the site before it reopened in February 2009 as the South Ferry subway station.
“Among the most important finds of the excavation were pieces of two 18th century landmarks — the Battery Wall and Whitehall Slip,” museum officials said in announcing the exhibition. “Stones from the Wall are on view, as are photographs of a section of the Wall that was reinstalled in the new South Ferry station. Whitehall Slip was built in stages from the 1730s to 1790s using landfilling and dredging. It allowed boats to dock and spurred the commercial and military use of lower Manhattan. Excavation of the Slip uncovered stone, construction material, 19th century English ceramics, household goods, refuse, and animal bones, furthering our knowledge of the city’s commerce and its residents’ lifestyles.”
Lego repairs come to NY Public Libray, Central Park
It looks like artist Jan Vormann has had a busy trip to New York City.
A few weekends ago, NewYorkology spotted his Lego fill-in work at the wall of Chelsea’s General Theological Seminary, but apparently he was also hard at work in the West Village, Central Park, Times Square, Dumbo and other locations around Manhattan and Brooklyn. Even the New York Public Library needed a little work done.
Vormann’s website has a new section, DispatchWork -New York, filled with pictures of the work.
“In cooperation with the Gallery Jarmuschek+Partner and the kind support of Henk Holzheimer (LEGO Graffity Styles Convention), I went to New York City, as part of the VOLTA artshow, to support Mayor Bloomberg in his everyday-struggle to make this city even more amazing,” Vormann says on the website.
Previously his DispatchWork Lego installations have popped up in Berlin, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Quito, Belgrade and other cities.
Update on March 9: “I am now back in Berlin, but I loved it in New York,” Vormann said in an e-mail to NewYorkology late Monday. Also, a story in today’s New York Post notes that almost all of the Lego installations have already been removed.
Picture credit: Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
(Editor’s note: Credit goes to 14-year-old Christopher Langfield who first spotted the Chelsea Legos on Feb. 21 and said it looked like the work of a European artist he’d read about.)
Mets tickets on sale today at 10 a.m. for 2010 season
Single-game tickets go on sale today at 10 a.m. for the New York Mets 2010 season.
Tickets, which start at $11, can be purchased only online or by phone today: Mets.com, LosMets.com, or (718) 507-TIXX. In-person sales start later this week.
The regular season calendar starts in New York on April 5 with an opening day game against Florida.
The promotion and giveaway schedule includes events such as Mr. Mets Dash for kids 12 and under; July 5 fireworks; and Jason Bay Bobblehead giveaway night.
Yankees tickets are currently only on sale only for full-season or partial- season ticket plans.
'Miracle Worker' review roundup: Breslin and Pill shine
Stars Abigail Breslin and Alison Pill elicit mostly strong reviews for their performances in “The Miracle Worker,” which opened on Broadway last night, but critics have a lot of neggatives things to say about the theater-in-the-round staging of the Helen Keller story.
Set in Alabama in the 1880s, “The Miracle Worker” tells the true story of a child who lost her sight and hearing, and turned completely unruly until a teacher from Boston taught her how to communicate. Based on Keller’s autobiography and the letters of her teacher, Annie Sullivan, William Gibson’s “The Miracle Worker” first played Broadway in 1959.
While the stars in this production get mostly kind reviews, the supporting cast is dinged, though more than one critic chalks that up to the writing. Kate Whoriskey’s direction does not fare well as multiple reviewers complain about poor sightlines, distracting furniture hovering above the stage and a slow-moving story. (The New York Times calles it “sadly pedestrian.”)
Breslin and Pill share the stage with Matthew Modine, Jennifer Morrison, Tobias Segal and Elizabeth Franz.
“The Miracle Worker” has an open-ended run at the Circle in the Square Theater, located at 235 W. 50th St., map. Regular tickets are priced at $117. Premium seats are $202. There is a daily lottery for $26 seats.
Post-show talkbacks with the cast are scheduled for March 9, 16, 23 and 30.
Age-appropriate advice: Children under 4 are not allowed in the theater. The play “contains no objectionable content; the content might best be understood/enjoyed by children who have started elementary school,” producers advise. The review from Variety notes the large number of well-behaved children in the audience during previews, which “indicates that the half-century-old play and Keller’s struggle still exert a hold on young imaginations.”
The “The Miracle Worker” Broadway reviews:
Variety - “Kate Whoriskey directs William Gibson’s midcentury chestnut with sensitivity, if not with any startling new insight. But the volatile battle of wills between the young Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, remains dramatically and emotionally effective, played with conviction by Abigail Breslin and Alison Pill.”
New York Times - “You are likely to feel, though, that the tears haven’t been truly earned by a production that delivers full emotional frissons only in its final, fail-safe scene. “
NY1 - “‘The Miracle Worker’ is likely emblazoned in your mind with the images of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke slugging it out. And while it’s doubtful that Alison Pill and Abigail Breslin will erase the memory of those two Oscar-winning performances, they certainly put their own one-two punch on the roles in what I have to say is a touchingly faithful revival of the great William Gibson drama.”
Daily News - “But Broadway’s first revival of William Gibson’s 1959 biodrama seldom summons high stakes or deep feelings. It’s a respectable production, but it’s often wan. Occasionally it’s d-u-l-l.”
New mural, video, sound installation for Times Square
Times Square today is adding new outdoor public art — in paint, sound and video — to coincide with the Armory Show and other art fairs descending on the city this week.
The eight-story Nasdaq video screen will display “Black Sun,” the work of Alexandre Arrechea, every night at 11:50 p.m. until midnight. The video, which shows a wrecking ball repeatedly bouncing against the building, will screen through March 8.
Up in Duffy Square at 46th and Broadway, a sound sculpture by David Ellis and Roberto Lange will play percussive, rhythmic beats and tones generated by buckets, bottles, trash cans, paper shreds and cardboard boxes. The intention is to play on the public’s perception of trash.
Outside the Times Square Theater, Pratt graduate Sofia Maldonado has painted a 92-foot mural of NYC women from her Puerto Rican-Cuban heritage, (pictured, top.)
The art is all part of Public Art Program of the Times Square Alliance and made possible by the Cuban Artists Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, NASDAQ, Times Square Squared, The New 42nd Street, Magnan Metz Gallery, Scope Art Fair and Anonymous Gallery.
Tribeca Film Fest to open with 'Shrek Forever After'
The ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival will open April 21 with “Shrek Forever After,” a 3-D finale to the DreamWorks animated ogre series, festival organizers announced today.
This year’s festival will run from April 21 thorugh May 2. The full slate of feature films will be announced on March 10 and 15. Individual screenings will costs $16 on evenings and weekends but only $8 on daytime weekdays and late nights. Tickets have not gone on sale, but they are accepting volunteer sign-ups to work the festival in exchange for some freebies.
Single tickets will go on sale April 13 for American Express card holders; April 18 for downtown residents (the festival started post-9/11 to bring business back downtown,) and to the general public on April 19.
The Shrek movie features the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas and is directed by Mike Mitchell.
African Burial Ground visitors center opens downtown
The National Park Service this weekened opened a proper visitors center for the African Burial Ground National Monument, illuminating one of the darker recesses of New York City history that many people would prefer remain forgotten
Located near the intersection of Broadway and Chambers streets, the 6.6-acre site contains the remains of an estimated 15,000 people, 40 percent of them children.
“It’s absolutely critical the history is not glossed over,” Tara Morrison, the National Park Service superintendent for the site, told NewYorkology during an interview before the site opened to the public on Saturday.
