The USS New York arrived in New York City this morning, passing the Statue of Liberty before heading toward the World Trade Center site to offer a 21-gun salute in honor to those who died September 11, 2001.
The USS New York warship is a San Antonio-class LPD (Landing Platform Dock.) Its bow stem includes seven and a half tons of steel recovered from the World Trade Center towers.
The video:
Later today, the USS New York will dock at Pier 88 on the Hudson River to be formally inducted into the United States Navy at a shipboard ceremony Nov. 7.
The USS New York will be open to the public, free of charge from Nov. 4 though 11. The opening times:
Filled with pop images of the Rolling Stones, Elvis, U2, Blondie, Bob Dylan, Grace Jones, Run DMC and Madonna the Brooklyn Museum on Friday will open “Who Shot Rock & Roll,” a show it’s billing as the first major museum exhibition devoted solely to rock photographers.
“This is Brooklyn Museum’s version of a limited-edition Double LP with gatefolds signed by the artists,” said Matthew Yokobosky, the chief designer at Brooklyn Museum, who edited and designed the exhibition.
“Over 50 percent are original prints,” he told NewYorkology on Thursday during a media preview. That means the images tend to be smaller than a typical museum photographic exhibition since the originals were printed for magazines, newspapers and album covers, Yokobosky said. “It was important to get the vintage prints.”
But if you like your rock big and loud, this may not be your show. It’s possibly more pleasing to the connoisseur, who relishes the vintage, the need to lean in close to the original, sometimes in an is-that-David-Bowie-naked kind of way.
NY's ghost tours, cemetery treks, and a free 'Phantom'
There are a few upcoming haunted tours, cemetery treks and other Halloween-themed events on the calendar:
The Merchant’s House Museum which claims bragging rights to the title “Manhattan’s Most Haunted House” leads Candlelight Ghost tours through the end of the month. This Sunday, it will lead the annual procession to New York City Marble Cemetery, re-creating a funeral from 1865.
Trinity Wall Street will toast resident Alexander Hamilton (“Non-alcoholic beverages will also available.”) in the graveyard on Oct. 30, followed by a screening of Phantom of the Opera” in the Gothic cathedral with live organ accompaniment by Robert Ridgell. Both events are free.
Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx will lead three flashflights-required tours of sites associated with its most tragic guests.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum today marks its 50th anniversary on Fifth Avenue by opening its doors for free all day.
The museum, which was first known as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, is currently mounting a major exhibition of Vasily Kandinsky, whose art is fundamental to the Guggenheim collection.
Today, the museum also opens Anish Kapoor’s “Memory.”
The celebrations today will include family activities, a 4:30 p.m. architecture tour via Twitter, as well as a screening of the documentary “Art, Architecture, and Innovation: Celebrating the Guggenheim Museum.”
The Guggenheim today will be open for free from 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. It’s worth noting that the museum offers pay-what-you-wish admission every Saturday from 5:45 to 7:45 p.m. Regular adult admission is normally $18.
(A few blocks up the street, the Cooper-Hewett is free every day through this Saturday for Design Week.
The Empire State Building will also mark the anniversary by tonight lighting up “in the museum’s signature red,” according to a news release issued by the skyscraper’s publicity team.
The N-YHS will not roll out the exhibit until March, but this week will hold a benefit cocktail party with Phil Lesh and Bob Weir to support the show.
The tie-dye color scheme:
North Side:
purple/orange/yellow from bottom to top
West Side:
green/purple/red from bottom to top
South Side:
yellow/red/blue from bottom to top
East Side:
orange/blue/green from bottom to top
“The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society,” feturing materials from the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz, will be on display from March 5 through July 4.
The Empire State Building has split the colors several times in the past, including for the 2008 Olympics, for elections and Christmas/Chanukah.
Image source: Grateful Dead at 710 Ashbury St., San Francisco, 1966 Photograph by Herb Greene. Provided to NewYorkology by the New-York Historical Society.
El Museo to reopen with more space, free Saturdays
After a $28 million renovation, El Museo del Barrio will reopen Saturday with a free open house to debut its 10,000 square feet of new space filled with Latino art with a very strong connection to the New York City experience.
“It’s a long tme coming, but we finally look like a museum,” Tony Bechara, the chairman of the board of trustees of El Museo, said Wednesday during a media preview.
The museum, now 40 years old, started in a classroom, migrated to a storefront and in 1977 moved into its current multi-use Fifth Avenue building, which was originally an orphanage. Twelve years ago it drew fewer than 20,000 visitors anually; before it closed for renovations last year, more than 125,000 people came through the museum’s doors, El Museo director Julian Zugazagoitia said.
The renovation not only provides extra gallery space, but has opened up the Central Park side of the building with more glass and a redesigned courtyard with an entrance to El Cafe, (which has a Pan-Latino menu culled from 17 cultures.) The goal is for the courtyard to serve as a gathering spot for East Harlem and the Upper East Side at the top of the Museum Mile, said architect Jordan Gruzen. (Although Zugazagoitia noted they’ll cede the “top” title to the Museum for African Art when it opens at 110th Street.)
The art itself is as much about New York City as it is Puerto Rico, Latin American or the Caribbean. The inaugural exhibition, “Nexus: New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis,” focuses on the avant-garde art produced from 1900 to 1942 in NYC as well as Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Peru and elsewhere.
Displayed in airy galleries featuring bold colors and text in Spanish and English, the walls are filled with works by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and the caricatures of Miguel Covarrubias, (who Al Hirschfeld credited as an influence.)
'Wild Things Week' pushes Spike Jonze movie launch
New York City shills hard this week for Spike Jonze’s newest movie, declaring “Wild Things Week” with celebrity readings, photo booths and multiple museum tie-ins.
“New York City is an urban jungle in which its residents and visitors can let their imaginations run wild, so it is fitting that we celebrate the big-screen release of Maurice Sendak’s treasured childhood story here in his hometown where he found the inspiration to write the book,” said George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company, the official marketing and tourism organization for NYC.
The film, which will premiere Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, gets plugs from the Museum of Modern Art (which hosts the “Spike Jonze: The First 80 Years” film series;) Morgan Library & Museum (which displays “Where the Wild Things Are: Original Drawings by Maurice Sendak;”) and the children’s museums in Staten Island, Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The New York Public Library on Tuesday at 4 p.m. hosts the “Where the Wild Things Are Celebrity Reading” event with Max Records, Catherine Keener, and Forest Whitaker.
The deal with Warner Bros. Pictures for “Where the Wild Things Are” isn’t the first for the city. In 2007, Spider-Man Week in NYC coincided with the premiere of “Spider-Man 3.”
Now in its fifth year, Open House New York this weekend will open hundreds of sites for free tours, allowing the public to wander through cheese caves, a subway power station, the abandoned hospital buildings of Ellis Island, and into well-appointed private apartments, hotels and offices.
And while all the events are free, not all the sites are accesed with equal ease.
While there is a free printed OHNY guide (also available online in PDF) there have been many changes since its publication, including cancelations, new sites, and altered hours. Official updates can be found on the OHNYwebsite and its blog. (Yes, you need to go to three different locations to get a full list of changes.)
The American Museum of Natural History tonight will kick off a new monthly cocktail party series called SciCafe, which promises music, drinks, and thought-provoking conversation.
Tonight’s theme is Exoplanets and the Search for Life in the Universe, featuring special guest astrophysicist Ben Oppenheimer.
The party starts at 7 p.m. in the museum’s Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth. It’s a cash bar, but admission is free. 21 and over only.
SciCafe will return the first Wednesday of every month.
