American Gothic

I hoped an exhibit of a Puerto Rican artist's work at the Museum of the City of New York would keep me from brooding too much about the election results, unaware the institution was also chronicling the unlikely 1972 presidential candidacy of Shirley Chisholm. Everything old is new again I guess, except this time the guy on the right won.

 

As I've often said, history for most people begins with their birth so the candidates listed on the state's presidential primary voting machines (Chisholm, Hubert Humphrey, Edward Kennedy, John Lindsay, George McGovern, Edmund Muskie and George Wallace) probably won't resonate unless you're a baby boomer.  But kids, at least there was a Democratic presidential primary, even if Richard Nixon did go on to defeat Senator McGovern, the peacenik from South Dakota, by more than 18 million votes, the biggest U.S. Commander-in-Chief loss in history.  Those election results were upsetting, not ominous.

 

Imagine this crew's reaction to the election of our 47th president.  It was an actual Femininomenon; only Gloria survives.

Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan (1971)

Joseph Delaney painted U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell and Chisholm in their roles as grand marshals of Harlem's first African American Day Parade in 1971.

But enough about politics.  Who better to celebrate the museum's centennial than Bronx-born Manny Vega?  He infuses his mosaics and drawings with the color and sounds that reflect the Puerto Rican diaspora who found home in his borough.

Manny Vega by John Ahearn (2021)

Tito Puente

Listen closely and you almost can hear the salsa in this elaborate pen and ink drawing that depicts Arsenio Rodriguez.

"Arsenio en El Barrio" (2019)

Vega displayed a strong commitment to what he called the "feminine divine" and his work often included images of his wife, sister and mother.

"Musa del monte"

Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who also hails from the Bronx, loaned a painting by Vega that hangs in her chambers for the show.  The scales of justice aren't quite as balanced as they once were.

Chango (2016)

I don't think I ever wore a mask when biking which, I suppose, is Vega's point with the title of the work.

2020 WTF" (2024)

I luckily got a preview of "Gingerbread NYC" which was about to open in another gallery.  It could just as easily be called "Eat Your Way Across the Big Apple," with landmarks from every borough, including Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

The pizza rat makes an appearance, too.

Leonard Lauder, one of the billionaire heirs to the cosmetics fortune, began collecting Art Deco postcards at the age of six, long before he acquired enough fin de siè·cle Austrian & German art to open the Neue Galerie.

The museum supplements "Art Deco City: New York Postcards from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection" with items of its own including a scale model of Rockefeller Center, footage of the Rockettes

. . .  and a copy of the inaugural program from Radio City Music Hall.

Would you believe the US Postal Service once sent a blimp to pick up mail from the top of the Empire State Building?

The display of Horn & Hardart materials really struck a chord.  I remember two of my favorite people talking about "dining at the Automat:" my mother and Andy Warhol.  For some reason I never made it inside before New York's last one closed in 1991.

Horn & Hardart (1936)

I saved the best exhibit for last.  "You Are Here," an immersive video experience, organizes clips from movies shot in New York City by various themes from "bank heists" to "hot dogs" over 16 screens. Absolutely wonderful!  And it's free on Wednesdays.  I plan to return.