#2: The Frick Collection
After visiting the Met, I was a little museumed-out and needed a bit of a break. We spent Sunday and Monday visiting a few of Manhattan’s better-known areas: Times Square, Union Square, Columbus Circle, Wall Street and the Financial District, Battery Park, and Ground Zero. On Tuesday, we headed off to see The Frick—only to stand outside for something like an hour in the rain waiting for tickets. The Frick is currently housing a special exhibition of the portraiture of Hans Memling, a 15th-century Netherlandish painter, and New Yorkers seem to be far more excited about the show than we would have anticipated. Unfortunately, cameras are not allowed in The Frick, but here is a link to the Memling exhibit, and a photo of another Memling portrait from the Met.
I can see why Jeremy likes The Frick so well. It is a good-sized collection, but not overwhelmingly huge, and all very thoughtfully arranged. And they have some wonderful paintings:
Harmony in Pink and Grey, by Whistler
Sir Thomas More, by Hans Holbein the Younger
St. Francis in the Desert, by Bellini
Nicolaes Ruts, by Rembrandt
Mistress and Maid, and Officer and Laughing Girl, by Vermeer
The Wool Winder, by Greuze
and one of my all-time favorite paintings,
The Comtesse d’Haussonville, by Ingres
and many many others. Very cool!
#3: The American Museum of Natural History
On Wednesday, Jeremy had class all day, so I was on my own. He ran me through getting from I.House to the natural history museum to NYAA, and I took it from there. I got the big ticket, so my day was divided between planetarium and IMAX shows and visits to the special exhibitions, the butterfly conservatory and the dinosaur show, interspersed with rambles through whatever rooms happened to be near those. Jeremy took quite a few excellent photos of his trip to AMNH, but he missed the Hall of Ocean Life, so here’s a whale of a photo for you (sorry…):
According to the museum website, this blue whale model is 94-foot-long, and “one of the Museum’s most celebrated icons.” I also enjoyed the diorama of the sperm whale fighting a giant squid, which was too dark for me to photograph myself. At any rate, I barely scratched the surface of this museum, despite spending some 7 hours here. I don’t think I saw anything on the third floor at all, and I somehow missed the marine fossils, not to mention the meteorite hall and the gems and minerals hall, where I would like to have seen the Star of India sapphire.
Time for another break, then on to the conclusion of the museum series. Stick with me!
