STREET ARTIST KEITH HARING, ART and DESIGN NYC(c) By Polly Guerin

To contact us Click HERE
One of the best known American artists of the twentieth century gets his due recognition in a major museum exhibition and at Sotheby’s; the Art and Design Fair takes to the tents on Lincoln Center and the Classic metamorphism converges on the Big Apple this week. Here’s the scoop!!!
KEITH HARING: 1978-1982 the first large-scale exhibition to trace the development of Haring’s extraordinary visual vocabulary in a life so short-lived but so productive, includes 155 works on paper, numerous experimental videos, and over 150 archival objects, among them rarely seen sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings and documentary photographs. It chronicles the period in Keith Haring’s career from the time he left his home in Pennsylvania to attend New York’s School of Visual Arts, through the years when he started his studio practice and began making public and political art on the city streets. Picture right: Untitled, 1978. Various pencils and inks on graph paper and unlined paper(c) Collection Keith Haring Foundation. At the Brooklyn Museum, Through July 8, 2012. www.brooklynmusum.org.
SOTHEBY'S KEITH HARING: SHINE ON selling exhibition, installed in its S/2 galleries until April 23 includes a wide range of mediums in which the artist worked, including canvases, tarps, sculpture, found objects and works on paper and will be on view and available for private sale, with music and guests meant to evoke Haring's time at Club 57 and the Pop Shops that he opened in New York and Tokyo. The show falls at a time of great interest in the artist, with the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition currently on view. Shine On is an incredibly rare show of some of the artist's works, like a series of 8 masks which have never been seen in a public exhibition. For viewing dates and information contact www.sotheby.com. Tel: 212.606.7176.
NYC20 ART and DESIGN FAIR Istdibs and Dolphin Promotions presents the inaugural New York 20th Century Art and Design Fair opens at the Tent at Lincoln Center in Damrosch Park, celebrating the iconic designs of the 20th century. NYC20 features stunning presentations by 40 carefully selected international exhibitors each showcasing curated decorative and fine arts from all movements of the 20th century including furniture, lighting, paintings, jewelry, silver, glass, ceramics vintage clothing and accessories. The early bird preview party benefiting the Bard Graduate Center will be held on Thursday evening April 12. The show opens to the public Friday April 13-Sunday April 15. For more info contact NYC20.net or Dolphin at 708.366.2710.
PUT ON YOUR KILTIE DEARIE In celebration of New York City's celebration of Scotland-Tartan Week the Museum of American Finance and the American Scottish Foundation jointly hold a panel discussion this evening on the life and legacy of Andrew Carnegie. Reception 5:30 pm, panel discussion, 6pm and reception 7 pm. The exhibition "Andrew Carnegie Forging Philanthropy," on display spotlights Carnegie's life and work and his love of Scotland, his business life and his philanthropic activities. A little know fact is that Peter Cooper's son-in-law, Abram Stevens Hewitt the one-time mayor of NYC in 1887-1888, himself a philanthropist, business man and iron master and administrator of Cooper Union brought young Carnegie over from Scotland. . The exhibit will be up through October 2012. General Adm. $45 (includes Museum membership) Reservations reequired 212.908.4110. At MOAF 48 Wall St. (corner of William and Wall) Or email info@moaf.org.
AL HIRSCHFELD, CHARACTERIST The life and work of America's most beloved "characterist," stands as one of the most innovative efforts in establishing the visual language of modern art through caricature in the 20th Century. Hirschfeld's signature work, defined by a linear calligraphic style appeared in virtually every major publication of the last nine decades as well as numerous book and record covers and 15 postage stamps. Among his many awards, he was given the ultimate Broadway accolade on what would have been his 100th birthday in June 2003. The Martin Beck Theater was renamed the Al Hirschfeld Theater. To attend the lecture and view the exhibition on Wednesday April 11th from 6:30 pm to 9 pm, purchase tickets $25 non -members, $15 members, $10 students at www.societyillustrators.org. The exhibit is ongoing.
Ta Ta darlings!!! Keith Haring's legend as a street artist captures the imagination of art aficionados today...I'll be there. Fan mail welcome: pollytalk@verizon.net or go to my website www.pollytalk.com and in the left hand column click on the Blog of interest, such as a direct link to amazingartdecodivas.

CULTURAL ESCAPES IN NYC and BEYOND(c) By Polly Guerin

To contact us Click HERE
Take a trip beyond the Big Apple to cast your line out for cultural delights that include plays, cabarets and film festivals. Stay in town for Einstein on the Beach, get dotty and spotty, and enjoy a sidewalk dinner al fresco. Here’s the scoop!!!

MOLIERE’s THE IMAGINARY INVALID (le malade imaginaire) The Richard B. Fisher for the Performing Arts at Bard College (pictured left) opens with SummerScape’s, new all-male production featuring Ethan Phillips, best-known for long–running roles on TV’s Star Trek: Voyager and Benson. In this phantom comedy Phillips plays Argan, a housebound hypochondriac who schemes to marry his daughter to a doctor. July 13 to July 22. THE KING in SPITE OF HIMSELF (Le roi malgre lui) In Emmanuel Chabrier’s witty comic opera, this hapless 16th century French noble has been chosen by the Poles to be their king. Poor Henri de Valois is repelled by the weather, the food, and the fashion, and pines for his milieu in Anjou. Farce ensues when he tries to eschew the crown. The production is the first to be staged in New York and the first staged revival of the 1887 version. July 27 to August 1. BARD: Tel: 845.758.7900, fishercenter.bard.edu.                                                                                                                               
MORGAN GETS TOTHE BEACH and You Can too!!! Robert Wilson/Philip Glass: The Morgan Library & Museum presents Philip Glass’s handwritten 62-page score for the ground-breaking 1976 opera “Einstein on the Beach,” united with Robert Wilson’s production storyboards. Also included in the exhibition is an archival film from the production's premieres in Brussels and Paris as well as an excerpt from a New York rehearsal are viewed in the museum’s auditorium. Don’t miss “The Changing Image of Opera,” a documentary about the 1984 restaging of the production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which is being screened throughout the run of the exhibition. 225 Madison Ave., at 36th Street, themorgan.org. Tel: 212.685.0008                                                                                                                        
GETTING DOTTY Yes, you’re seeing spots, but there is nothing ordinary about them. Dots of widely imaginary nature are covering the façade of the Louis Vuitton Fifth Avenue Sore, which in collaboration with the 83-year- old artist Yayoi Kusama created windows and merchandise being sold in the shop covered with her signature dots. My dear, what a gasp! Inside one window a lifelike model of the diminutive artist places herself within her dots. Only in New York, my Friends, only in New York. All this following the Whitney Museum of American Art’s retro-spective exhibition of the Japanese artist.
Polly’s Restaurant Pick of the Week: TONY’S, Di Napoli serves up the best Italian fare al fresco or inside the AC restaurant and bar. Quite simply put the eggplant parmigiano and broccoli rabe melt in your mouth. 1081 Third Ave. at 63/64 Sts. P: 212.888.6333.                                                                                                         
Ta Ta Darlings!!! I’m getting dotty with all those dots, but their fascinating rhythm is worth seeing . Fan mail welcome www.pollytalk.com. Visit Polly’s Blogs at www.pollytalk.com and in the left-hand column click on the Blog that interests you from fashion to poetry and visionary men.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, IS A CULTURE CURE TOWN(c) By Polly Guerin

To contact us Click HERE

Study for Homage to the Square, Josef Albers

Whether you’re day tripping in New York or staying put in town there’s more than meets the eye in entertainment venues, museums and galleries. I can’t blame you for wanting to improve your mind!!! Here’s the scoop!!!

JOSEF ALBERS IN AMERCIA: Painting on Paper You’ll be seeing squares of a different kind that will tempt your imagination and your usual take on color. At least if Josef Albers has his way. He repeatedly explored color relationships within a similar format of concentric squares. Much less familiar, however, are the painted studies on paper. Although expressively experimental, the works offer a revealing look at the artist’s lifelong investigation of color and form. The profound effect of Mexico’s colors and pre-Columbian architecture and sculpture upon Alber’s work is difficult to overestimate as these places would have a lasting influence upon his work. In 1936, he wrote, “Mexico is truly the promised land of abstract Art. At The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street. Trough October 14, 1012. General information: 212.685.0008.
SAINT-SAENS AND HIS WORK Hop on a bus or train for Annandale –the-Hudson, New York where the 23rd-annual Bard Music Festival focuses on Saint-Saens and his World, treating you to an in-depth auditory tour of Belle Époque France through 12 concerts of works by the composer and his contemporaries. The programs include masterpieces from all of the musician’s expansive oeuvre, from such well-known pieces as his “Carnival of Animals” and Organ Symphony” to his score for the 1908 film The Assassination of the Duke of Guise. There is also a concert performance of his rarely heard grand opera Henry VIII. August 10-29th at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. 845.758.7649.
TRIBUTE: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S Usonian House and Pavilion In 1953, six years befoe the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened to the public, two of his structures—a pavilion and model Usonian house were built on the future site of the museum to house a temporary exhibition displaying the architect’s lifelong work. From July 27 to February 13, 1913, the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Museum will present an exhibition comprised a rich selection of over thirty archival objects, including correspondence about planning, sketches, blueprints, and a plot models of the first Wright building erected in New York City. Newspaper and magazine clippings give a sense of the public reception of Wright’s buildings, and photographs range from documentation of construction---Frank L. Wright and David Henken reviewing architectural drawing or Taliesin apprentices on-site—to those taken at the opening. At the Guggenheim, 1071 Fifth Avenue.
CROSSING THE LINE Francophiles, this may interest you. Crossing the Line is a month-long festival devoted to the talents of avant-garde visual and performing artist based in France and New York City. The 2012 edition includes the participation of stage director Joris Lacoste, whose recent work has explored hypnosis as art, and performer, songwriter and radio artist Gerald Kurdian, whose varied projects range from “Je suis putain,” an audio-documentary about female prostitutes in Toulouse, to an “anti-pop solo band” called This is the hello monster! At various venues. Contact fiaf.org
Ta Ta Darlings!!! I went to Annandale to see Bard’s production of Moliere’s, Imaginary Invalid this weekend, which was rivetingly funny. The King in Spite of Himself, a classic comic opera is on the schedule from July 27 to August 5. Fan mail welcome: pollytalk@verizon.net. Polly’s blogs are best accessed at www.pollytalk.com...just click in the left hand column for a direct link to visionary men, amazing women, poetry or fashion.

CULTURAL MEDLEY, IT'S ALL ABOUT CHILD'S PLAY(c) By Polly Guerin

To contact us Click HERE
There’s more than meets the eye in cultural venues this week; a chance to remember when child’s play was fun then ‘play well,’ and spend the lunch hour at the library. It’s the Best of New York, my friends, the very best of children's venues to entertain and stimulate your senses. Here’s the scoop!!!
CENTURY OF THE CHILD: Growing by Design, 1900-2000 invites you to learn how designers had fun creating toys, furniture, playgrounds and school architecture. The Museum of Modern Art’s ambitious survey of 20th-century design for children is the first large-scale overview of the modernist occupation with children and a growing movement to advance the well-being of children by ending child labor, reforming education and encouraging emotional development through creative play. Hundreds of works on view, from designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh to elements from Pee-wee’s Playhouse include my favorite: American Modern Play Dishes replicating in miniature melamine play dishes by America’s Best Known designer Russel Wright, “It’s fun to serve your friends in real Russel Wright dishes…just like mother’s,” produced by the Ideal Toy Corp. Screenings include 400 Blows, Bicycle Thieves, The Virgin Suicides. Check schedule at MOMA 11 West 53rd St. Through Nov. 5, 2012. IMAGE: Minka Podhajska ( 1881-1930) (Czechoslovak, born Moravia (now Czech Republic).  Series of Personifications of Childhood Misdeeds, 1930. Painted wood, dimensions vary. Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague.
ORBIS PICTUS: Play Well,transforms the Czech Center gallery into a symbiotic playground of site-specific installations in which artists and children collaborate to create sound and motion and visual installation. Over the course of sixteen weeks adults and children alike will come together to stage happenings, both free form and through a series of events, workshops, and concerts that draw upon the instinctual play’s ability to spark imaginative growth and unite disparate individuals through non-verbal communication. Play Well, the gallery of the Czech Center New York will become an artistic workshop and sonic landscape, where through direct physical contact with the artworks participants will create a symphony of light and sound. At the Gallery of the Czech Center New York, Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd St. through October 17, 2012.
LUNCH HOUR at the New York Public Library “Everything is done differently in New York from anywhere else—but in eating the different is more striking than in any other branch of human economy,” said George Foster, New York in Slices, 1849. He was right on target, the clamor and chaos of lunch hour in New York has been a defining feature of the city for some 150 years. Of the three meals that mark the American day, lunch is the one that acquired its modern identity here on the street s of New York. Nowhere was he change more dramatic than right here in the city where employees were given a fixed time for their midday meal, often a half hour or less. Lunch Hour NYC looks back at more than a century of New York lunches, when the city’s early power brokers invents what was yet to be called ‘power lunch,’ local charities established a 3-cent school lunch, and visitors with guidebooks thronged Times Square to eat lunch at the Automat, a section is replicated in the exhibition. FREE Through February 17, 2013. For information call 917.ASK.NYPL (917.275.6975.
Ta Ta Darlings!!! Take time for child’s play to stimulate your creativity, these exhibits are worth seeing. Fan mail welcome www.pollytalk.com. Visit Polly’s Blogs at www.pollytalk.com and in the left-hand column click on the Blog that interests you from fashion to poetry and visionary men.

NYC MUSEUMS WITH BIG VENUES(c) By Polly Guerin

To contact us Click HERE
There’s no end to museum attractions to satisfy everyone’s taste for the extraordinary. From comics to lip-reading puppets and a stroll down memories lane it’s the Best of New York, my friends the very best. Here’s the scoop!!!
QUAY BROTHERS at MOMA: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets is the first major retrospective encompassing the full range of work by the identical twin, Quay Brothers who have labored together in their London studio, Atelier Koninck, for over 30 years, creating avant-garde stop-motion puppet animation, live-action films, and graphic design. As filmmakers, stage designers, and illustrators in a range of genres, the Quays have penetrated many fields of visual expression for a number of different audiences including signature works such as films, The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka (2012) and the music video Long Way Down (1992). Unusual, provocative and worth your inspection their signature style, a mix graphic effects combined with sensual emotional content and intellectually stimulating subjects. MOMA, opens August 12-January 7, 2013. 11 West 53 St.
COMIC MUSEUM MOVES UPTOWN Welcome news!!! MoCCA, a museum devoted to the art of comics and cartoons and its superheroes has moved from its Soho location and is now part of The Society of Illustrators at 128 East 63rd Street off Lexington Avenue. In its tony uptown site the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art will have its own permanent gallery in a climate-controlled setting and continue to conduct educational programs. This should be good news to aficionados of this art form. “New York is important to comics and cartoons because it has been the birthplace of many artists and publishers,” said Ellen Abramowitz, president of MoCCA,”A lot of superhero stories are set in an urban environment almost identical to that of New York City.” What’s more the prestigious Society of Illustrators is a world class holding and exhibits the art of America’s most celebrated illustrators. A membership organization is boosts a fine dining room. Society of Illustrators, 212.838.2560.
BEYOND HUMAN is yet another museum ‘find’ in the city. This exhibit seems right in pace with people walking around attached it their machines. FILM/RIGHT appears in the new museum’s prismatic exhibition “Ghosts in the Machine,” which explores the ties between humans, machines and art leading up to the digital era. The curators organized the show as a Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. The “curiosities” include recreations of exhibitions and lost works as well as fictional museums. Viewers can recline inside a re-creation to watch a hypnotic collage of overlapping films and slide projections as though their bodies are being swept away on a sea of images. Through September 30. New Museum, 235 Bowery.
JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL: MY WAY introduces one of France’s most prominent contemporary artist’s, features sixty-seven pieces that trace the artist’s career over the past twenty-five years. His organic and geometrical glass sculptures conjure historical and popular references while also evoking the fantasy universe of the fairytale. Works on view include Self-Portrait in Priest’s Robe; The Soul Molded in the Bottom, Black is Beautiful. A group of detailed watercolor sketches for large-scale projects and commissions realized later, include the Kiosk of Nightwalkers (2000), a Metro entrance that has become one of the beloved landmarks of Paris. At the Brooklyn Museum, 200 eastern Parkway.
Ta Ta Darlings!!! I’m taking off for vacation as of Monday August 13 for 10 days. PollyTalk will resume on August 27th. Fan mail welcome www.pollytalk.com. Visit Polly’s Blogs at www.pollytalk.com and in the left-hand column click on the Blog that interests you from fashion to poetry and visionary men.