NYC

Modern

NYC would go through its final transformation after World War II when it welcomed the freeway (not really) plus the office towers got more boring but reached new heights; nonetheless the art inside of these modern buildings was nothing but boring, instead it was quite expressive — and thanks to some museums plus famous buildings you can travel in time when NYC became the center of the art world.

Time period: 1950s-2000

Movie/book: Breakfast In Tiffany’s (1961)/The Philosophy of Andy Warhol by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Soundtrack: Frank Sinatra/Miles Davis’ music

Fashion:

Budget:

This tour would take you through midtown manhattan: where different public and private museums opened up making New York City the epicenter of the art world; and where thanks to a change in the law experienced a boom in the construction of modern office buildings and condominiums. The area is characterized by: the international style of architecture, private-public squares and advertising/media companies.

The modern movement (which was born in Germany/France in the 1920s) came up as a criticism of the pompous Beaux Arts style and as a reaction of the brutality of WWI but thanks to WWII it didn’t flourish, instead it migrated to the Americas along the Parisian avant gardes

The Parisian avant-gardes migrated to America thanks a handful of European immigrants like the German Max Ernst, the Russian Chagall, the Chilean Roberto Mata and the Dutch Piet Mondrian who were escaping the Nazzi invasion of Paris in 1940. They joined Willem De Kooning who moved from Rotterdam in 1926 and by the 40s was a well known abstract artist. They set up the foundation of the New York Abstract Expressionism characterized by: large formats, non-representational shapes and gestural brushstrokes (in other words art that a 3 year old can make). After WWII the petro-dollar system got put into place, and the world needed to “get on wheels” to create a demand for gasoline; therefore cities got a car centric design and NYC was not the exception. A key player in this transformation was the controversial Robert Moses who was a member of the City Planning Commission from 1942 till 1960, and during this time he designed: the highways of the city (by destroying old industrial neighborhoods where minorities lived), the UN Building (1951), the Lincoln Center (1960s) and many playgrounds. Another hero of the time was Phillip Johnson who expanded the MoMA in the 1950s-60s and designed the New York State Theater (1962) plus the AT&T building (1984). But he was not the only one who contributed to the modern movement, Mies van Der Rohe did the Seagram Building (1958), and Frank Lloyd Wright the Guggenheim Museum (1959), or Phillip Johnson who expanded the MoMA in the 1950s-60s and designed the New York State Theater (1962) and the AT&T building (1984). The city experienced a construction boom after a changed in the zoning law in 1961 which allowed the construction of tall towers by buying air rights or creating POPS (privately-funded public space) right next to the building. The skyline of the city changed (for the worst) welcoming the international style characterized by: rectilinear forms, glass/concrete facades, and functional interiors.

.The tour suggests visiting 3 iconic cultural buildings in the morning: the Guggenheim, the Breuer (know Sothebys) plus the opera house of the city; lunch, the MoMA plus a mid-modern walking tour in the afternoon; and to end the day a dinner and maybe a show at Times Square.

Stops:

1 Guggenheim Museum plus coffee break

2 The Breuer Building (Sothebys)

3 Lincoln Center plus picnic

4 Lunch at Shake Shack

5 MoMA

6 Mid-Modern Walking Tour

7 Times Square

8 Dinner and a drink around the theater district

Unknown Photographer: Lower Manhattan Skyline; NYC, 1980

Piet Mondrian: Broadway Boogie Woogie; NYC, 1942