The New Museum has put together a time capsule: a collection of dozens of works produced in New York in the year 1993. If you were a teenager in 1993, the exhibit “1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star” will probably act on you like a heady, pop blast of nostalgia. After all, some of the show’s curators were themselves teenagers in 1993. The show is full of pop music and the kind of lurid imagery that goes straight to your memory banks. The result is a very warm, if perhaps incomplete, dive into the past.

The exhibit opens with a row of TV’s playing snippets of news and entertainment from the time: Rudy Giuliani in an early campaign ad; Whitney Houston belting out a ballad. This sets the tone. In the same room, to make it clear that the show’s focus is on the young, the curators have installed a video by Alex Brag (untitled). The piece is blurry, charming, and predictable: Barbie dolls and young women in little black dresses flail their arms to a background of Nirvana, Ace of Base, and other period music. We know where we are here.

Teenage dreamland is realized most beautifully in one large room on the museum’s fourth floor. The floor is covered in a deliciously soft orange rug (Carpet, by Rudolph Stingel). Dusk-blue billboards, each with the silhouette of one bird, take up two walls, and a string of lightbulbs hangs from a rafter in the middle of the room, (both those pieces, untitled, by Felix Gonzalez-Torres). A clip of Kristin Oppenheim singing the Beach Boys’ “Sail on Sailor” plays in an endless loop and completes the wistful mood.

But it’s not all solitary idylls. “1993″ goes heavy on death and the grotesque. The AIDS epidemic was at its peak, and the emphasis on loss is inevitable. “1993″ includes a well-known, heartbreaking series of Nan Goldin photographs showing a man slowly succumbing to AIDS as his partner stands by, helpless (Gilles and Gotscho). Gregg Bordowitz’s short video (Fast Trip, Long Drop) provides a vivid look at the state of the AIDS activism movement. The grotesque is harder to understand here: Why were so many artists in 1993 turning out coyly sexual life-sized dolls? Charles Ray’s “Family Romance” and Paul McCarthy’s “Cultural Gothic” both point to incest without, really, saying anything about it. Do we need both pieces in this show, especially after Zoe Leonard’s series of anatomical models?

Maybe it’s inevitable that a show of this scope will feel both incomplete and too big. After a while I, at least, found myself wandering through the rooms looking for what I already knew. The show began to repeat. Surely 1993 was about more than dysfunction in Manhattan? A few pieces in the show stand outside of time: Kiki Smith’s nude, powerful Virgin Mary; Lorna Simpson’s simple and somehow shattering Seven Mouths.

A few other pieces at least leave Manhattan. Pepon Osorio’s The Scene of the Crime is a life-size diorama of a South Bronx apartment complete with family pictures and a woman’s body under a bloody cloth. Spanish radio plays ads for detergent and the chairs are draped in Puerto Rican flags. (This Bronx murder is notably the sole mention of a borough of 1.4 million people.) And then there are, of course, Annie Liebowitz’s tragic shots of Sarajevo, including one of Susan Sontag posing amidst the ruins. But why isn’t there more? Did I miss something? Probably. Was the art scene too insular in 1993? Of course. Is there great work out there that still can’t make it on the New Museum’s Bowery? Almost definitely.

“1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star” through May 26 at New Museum, 321 Bowery

Susan Henshaw Jones has revitalized the South Street Seaport Museum

By Ashley Welch

Susan Henshaw Jones had her work cut out for her when she became the president of the South Street Seaport Museum in the fall of 2011.

Earlier that year, financial struggles forced the maritime museum to lay off most of its staff and shut down. Jones, the Ronay Menschel director of the Museum of the City of New York, which took over the South Street Seaport Museum on an interim basis, was charged with the task of revitalizing the deteriorating museum.

Since then, the museum has reopened with a mix of historical and contemporary exhibitions, from installations featuring the former fisherman life of the area to photographs of Occupy Wall Street. The museum also offers an education program for preschoolers and grade-school children, in which 15,000 students have participated.

For Jones, the preservation of the 11 vessels that make up the Seaport fleet was one of the most difficult aspects of taking on the job. Before she assumed leadership of the museum, all 11 boats were closed to the public. Since then, two have reopened, with one, the Pioneer, running as a sailing vessel over the summer.

Yet, nothing could prepare Jones for the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

“Sandy was the biggest and most unexpected of challenges we have faced,” she said.

The storm left 5 to 7 feet of water in each of the museum buildings. In addition, all of the mechanical and electrical systems on Schermerhorn Row, a block of six historic counting houses built in the 1800s, were made inoperable and will need to be replaced, something that has hindered the museum’s ability to fully reopen. Currently, the museum is only accessible by stairs.

“We will be without elevators, escalators, and permanent heat and air conditioning for some time to come,” Jones said.

The ships, however, made it through Sandy just fine.

“They rode out the storm beautifully,” she said.

Sandy was just one of the many obstacles Jones has seen the Seaport Museum face over time. She started her career in the John Lindsay administration in the 1970s, when she worked on the affairs of the museum during her time at the Mayor’s office of Lower Manhattan Development. It was then when she developed a strong connection to the neighborhood and museum.

“Those days made me believe in the unique mission of the Seaport Museum,” she said.
When asked about the future of the Seaport Museum, Jones was hesitant to give details, saying that the agreement with the New York City Economic Development Corporation and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs will conclude in April 2013 and “we will have to see about the future then.” But she remained hopeful that it will remain an important cultural institution in the city.

“The Seaport and City Museum missions are very much compatible,” she said, “and with strong city and community support, the Seaport Museum has the potential to be a strong anchor and key institution in the Seaport district and for the City. After all, our greatness as a city is very much based on its past as a seaport.”

The Rubin Museum is now showing the first American retrospective of Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first female photojournalist, in “Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai.” Vyarawalla started out as an outsider, taking furtive shots of Bombay street life. She ended her career photographing heads of state and dignitaries. Along the way, she may have traded art for access. But the resulting photographs are a gorgeous record of India’s first years of independence (separating from British rule on Aug. 15, 1947).

The pre-independence photos show us an India caught between two worlds. Victoria Terminus is one of the best. The railroad station, a British creation, is all carved stone and gothic archways. Men in white suits stride toward it. But in the foreground, there’s a turbaned man in sandals, working a pushcart. The whole shot is framed by the shadows of another cart. The Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in Bombay, similarly, show a thick crowd of men holding statues of Ganesh as they march by colonial buildings. A soldier stands on a wood-and-gilt desk to direct traffic. All the faces are a blur.

The faces start coming into focus with national independence. Vyarawalla photographed Gandhi, at prayer meetings and then at his funeral; Lord Mountbatten, the last British viceroy; and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the first leader of Pakistan. The pictures are just a little bit awkward; Vyarawalla often had to sneak around to get her shot, and it shows. She’s also torn between the crowd and the leadership so that some of these pictures, especially of Gandhi’s funeral, lack a center. But this may be a good thing, since we end up with a broad swath of life in each shot; our eye moves from Gandhi’s son lighting the funeral pyre to a confused child in the crowd, and then back to a European news crew fussing with their own camera.

Once Nehru comes into office (he was prime minister of India from 1947 to 1964), he dominates Vyarawalla’s lens. Some of her photos are pure iconography: Nehru releasing a dove into the sky, for example, looks like a propaganda poster. Luckily, Nehru made a good subject, almost mugging for the camera next to grave visiting heads of state (it’s a special pleasure to see him beside Yugoslavian dictator Tito). Vyarawalla also got shots of the Dalai Lama, Queen Elizabeth and Eleanor Roosevelt, to name a few.

In her later years, the crowds are completely gone from Vyarawalla’s photographs; only the leadership exists. But then, she manages to find the human being inside each dignitary. And she left them for us to see.

Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla runs through Jan. 14 at the Rubin Museum, 150 West 17th St.

Kusama moves beyond pop

What kind of pop artist “does battle at the border of life and death”? Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), who so described her art-making in 1961, suggests a Japanese Andy Warhol in terms of sheer energy, protean endeavors and fixation with publicity. But Warhol would never have professed such high purpose.

Indeed, the Kusama revealed by the current Whitney retrospective defies any single label. Despite her friendships forged in the ’60s with Warhol, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg and Joseph Cornell, her work leapfrogs categories like pop, minimalism and conceptual, revealing an honest vulnerability seldom seen in her male colleagues.

The museum’s front windows, crammed with the giant, bobbing spheres of her “Dots Obsession” (2009/2012), offer an instant dose of her signature polka-dotted installations. It’s only a foretaste, though, of the six decades of painting, sculpture, collage, film, performances, installations, fashion design and writing displayed or documented on the fourth floor.

Kusama’s “Infinity Net” paintings, her early nod to abstract expressionism, fill one gallery with countless swirls of white, subtly tightening and expanding across wide surfaces. She shifted gears with the “Accumulation” sculptures that appeared in some of the first exhibitions of pop art. These monochromatic works encrust various items—chairs, shoes, rowboat, ladder, hat, suitcase—with multitudes of stuffed fabric phalluses. The fidgety, potato-like protuberances have an awkward intimacy very foreign to pop and minimalism. A variation of these “Sex Obsession” sculptures, dubbed by Kusama the “Food Obsession” works, covers objects with macaroni.

Also on view is Kusama’s Self-Obliteration, her 1967 film showing her fiercely applying polka dots to animals and naked, carousing humans. But it took her “Anatomic Explosions” to put the self-styled “Priestess of Nudity” on the front pages. For these public performances, the artist hastily painted spots on nude dancers until the police showed up. The press releases and flyers combine ’60s breeziness with equal dollops of hucksterism and galactic purpose: “Become one with eternity. Obliterate your personality…take along one of our live bikini models.”

On a more poetic level, colorful mixed-media works on paper from the 1970s combine images of faces, insects and flowers with surprising delicacy. By this point, though, museum visitors may be wondering: How long can a soul publicly obsess about its own obsessions? Only so long, it seems; having returned to Japan, Kusama voluntarily entered a mental hospital in 1977, where she resides to this day.

Thankfully, it has been a nourishing environment. The vaguely biological forms of her large canvases and soft sculptures from the ’80s and ’90s glow with asexual sensuousness. Though frankly decorative, the seething, micro-dotted tentacles of “Yellow Trees” (1994) mesmerize. On the first floor, standing in for the enclosed installations produced since the ’90s is “Fireflies on the Water” (2002), from the Whitney’s own collection. Its coolness factor—with lights seeming to shimmer infinitely in all directions—-is not to be missed.

Pacing the exhibition are numerous photographs of the artist posed next to her work in matching attire. Apparently, notions of art and celebrity were as inseparable for Kusama as they were for Warhol. But Kusama’s motifs seem purer, and her emotional life—with joys and mortifications strangely fused—more accessible. One senses that when she appropriated, it was not for ironic effect but simply to cope. Hence her exploitation of the gestalt of the ’60s, and later, perhaps, of stylistic aspects of Cornell, Nevelson and Eva Hesse.

Today, Kusama is as much life force as artist—if we still distinguish the two—and uncannily predictive of the ascendancy of younger artists like Takashi Murakami. But her triumph illuminates a certain diminution, too, of our expectations of art.

Yayoi Kusama
Through Sept. 30, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave., 212-570- 3600, whitney.org.

Illustration by Brian Taylor

It’s still the early part of the season, the good part, when summer hours kick into effect (for the luckiest among us), before the tourist invasion starts and the city starts to heat up and emit that special odor that’s uniquely New York in August.

There’s no better time to be in the city for those who love culture or the outdoors. Every street corner seems to sing with its own event or festivity, and even the most jaded New Yorker can find something to pique their interest.

Those fortunate enough to live here are in the epicenter of a marathon celebration that runs all the way through the dog days of August.
Inside, we’ve created a handy-dandy guide to the best live concerts, film festivals, theater openings, museum shows, outdoor events, summer reading series and more that will help you plot out the next few months of your life.

So heat up the grill and pour yourself a cold one. We hope you’ll find something that will brighten your summer within these pages.

-Allen Houston, Executive Editor of Manhattan Media

Music
Top 10 Concerts
Reading Summer Film
Film
Best June Events for Kids
Cultural Events & Festivals
Hamptons Events
Celebrity Summer Guide
Out of Town
Summer Reading Series
Theater
Eats & Drinks
Top Food of Summer
Museums
Outdoor
Bike Share
Top Bike Trails
TV Guide

Summer Guide was compiled by Allen Houston, Marissa Maier, Megan Bungeroth, Adam Rathe, Robby Ritaco, Laura Shin, Armond White, Regan Hofmann, Rachel Khona, Angela Barbuti, Sean Creamer, Anam Baig, Andrew Rice, Magdalena Burnham, Doug Strassler, Max Sarinsky, Whitney Casser, Robin Elisabeth Kilmer and Andrew Bartel, Ed Johnson

UPPER EAST SIDE
Crossroads of the World
You don’t have to head south to the Carribean to the beach this summer, just take the subway up to the El Museo del Barrio. It, along with The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Queens Museum of Art, is presenting the culmination of the decade-long collaboration of research and scholarship Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, which includes more than 500 works of art spanning four centuries from the Caribbean islands and coasts. The exhibit covers topics such as politics, pop culture, language, the various cultures and history, among many others.
June 12 – Jan. 6, 2013, El Museo Del Barrio, 1230 5th Ave., elmuseo.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940
An artist searching for his muse is a theme that reverberates back to Greek mythology. French artist Edouard Vuillard found inspiration in his career stretching from the 1890s to the 1940s in a variety of sources, from experimental theater to urbane domesticity. This exhibit at The Jewish Museum looks at six periods of the artist’s career and the impact his friends and patrons had on his work, from his artistic beginnings to his later portraits.
Through Sept. 23, The Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave., thejewishmuseum.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Women Work
With conservative politicians intent on rehashing decades-old debates that everyone thought were long settled, it’s fitting that the National Academy Museum & School has chosen now to kick off its new exhibit, Women Work, featuring the artwork of women from the 19th century to present day. The series brings together works by Mary Cassatt, Colleen Browning and May Stevens, as well as female sculptors.
Through Aug. 26, The National Academy Museum & School, 1083 5th Ave., nationalacademy.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Activist New York
New York City has always been a city that thrived in the midst of social change and progress. Activist New York, the new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, brings that history into focus, exploring the history of social activism in the city from the 17th century right up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. From picket lines to civil rights, the exhibition uses artifacts, photographs, audio and video to tell the history of agitation in the city.
Through the summer, The Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave., mcny.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective
The Guggenheim hosts this mid-career retrospective of Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra. The artist, best known for her striking portraits of humanity in transition—adolescents and new mothers have been prime subjects for her lens—has been working for more than two decades at her craft. Like all great portraitists, Dijkstra’s work captures fleeting moments and fills them with meaning. “I make normal things appear special,” she said in an interview for the book Image Makers, Image Takers. That this is not a brag but a statement of successfully fulfilled artistic intent says it all.
June 29 – Oct. 3, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave., www.guggenheim.org.

UPPER WEST SIDE
Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History
New York has a rich (albeit unheralded) history of brewing that stretches back to colonial times. The New-York Historical Society hopes to rectify this with its new exhibit. With artifacts and documents that showcase the city’s long-lived love of suds, Beer Here covers what the soldiers were drinking in the Revolutionary War, famous hometown brewers and the Prohibition era. When you are finished, step on over to the beer hall for a taste of New York City and state’s best local brews.
May 25 – Sept. 2, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park W., nyhistory.org.

MIDTOWN
Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper
What better way to spend your summer than hanging out in a library, especially if you’re going to see the Morgan Library & Museum’s Josef Albers exhibit. Albers, the iconic 20th-century artist who died in 1976, is best known for his painting series Homage to the Square, in which he explored color relationships in concentric squares. This exhibit displays the less well-known studies and sketches for these paintings. The materials in this exhibit were never shown during Albers’ life and are rarely displayed since his death; The Morgan is the only U.S. stop for this exhibition before it heads back to Europe.
July 20 – Oct. 14, The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Ave., themorgan.org.

MIDTOWN
Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets
Filmmaking identical twins the Quay Brothers—or The Brothers Quay, in their preferred nomenclature—end the summer with a major retrospective of their work at the Museum of Modern Art. Born in Philly but developed as European surrealists in the grime of London, the Quays have been conjuring up their creepy-crawly, stop-motion animated work since the late ’70s. Featuring repurposed doll heads and other unsettling motifs of mold and decay, the Brothers’ oeuvre became a major aesthetic touchstone for the burgeoning industrial goth movement of the late ’80s and ’90s. This collection promises a rare view inside their work, with never-before-seen images, moving works, installations and artistic output, as well as screening of their best shorts and filmic output.
Aug. 12 – Jan. 8, 2013, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., www.moma.org.

DOWNTOWN
The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg
Bird is the word at the New Museum’s Studio 231 space as Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg, known for her nightmarish animations, and videographer Hans Berg show off five trippy animations and an unnerving menagerie of more than 80 free-standing bird sculptures. These hybrid, sometimes monstrous forms speak to the artist’s interest in physical and psychological transformation, as well as pageantry and perversion.
Through Aug. 26, The New Museum, 235 Bowery, newmuseum.org.

And like Central Park, which has been a vast backdrop for the visual arts (perhaps most memorably with Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in 2005), The High Line offers its own canvas of sorts: a 25-by-75-foot billboard positioned at 18th Street and 10th Avenue. High Line Billboard is the latest initiative from High Line Art, which commissions public art projects and installations from local and international artists for the park.

On display from Feb. 1–29 is “Developing Tray #2” by New York artist Anne Collier, a massive-scale photograph depicting a print of an open eye inside a developing tray. The image is at once a finished work of art and a depiction of art in progress.

The effect of an open eye (the artist’s own) staring at the viewer is particularly arresting given its immense proportions. “It is confrontational, sensual and voyeuristic at the same time,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen Jr. curator and director of High Line Art.

For the artist, displaying her work on a New York City billboard is a milestone in itself. “The street in New York is full of distractions—it’s chaotic,” Collier said. “I hope that [my work] might interrupt someone’s expectation of what might typically be seen on a billboard.”

If the High Line is the convergence of architecture and nature in Manhattan, the High Line Billboard is the convergence of street art and gallery space. For painters, photographers and mixed media artists, the opportunity to display their work on such a grand canvas amidst the steel of the rail lines and the city streets offers wider visibility than an exhibition at The Whitney—and perhaps comparable recognition.

High Line Art, jointly presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, was founded in 2009 with the goal of enabling artists “to think of creative ways to engage with the uniqueness of the architecture and design of the High Line.” High Line founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond had aspirations early on for the historic rail line to become an arena for artists, and the breadth of High Line Art today (which now also oversees a projection screen for silent films) has become a draw to the landmark site.

High Line Art has presented sound installations, sculptures, experimental films, paintings—even dance performances. The previous commission for the High Line Billboard was a gigantic representation of a $100,000 bill, created by John Baldessari, entitled, “The First $100,000 I Ever Made.”

Art in the public sphere lends itself to a different kind of reception and a different viewer relationship than art in galleries or museums; the environment of buildings, bridges, cars and crowds contributes to the viewer’s experience. “I’m interested to see how the image operates against the visual backdrop of the city,” said Collier.

—Lonnie Firestone

| By Lonnie Firestone

A great city is often marked by its confluence of architecture and nature. A century and a half ago in Manhattan, that combination created Central Park; today’s incarnation is The High Line, running from Gansevoort to West 34th Street near the West Side Highway. The ratio of beams to botany may be skewed toward to the urban end, but The High Line nonetheless offers city dwellers a bit of nature, earth and plant life, even high above ground.

And like Central Park, which has been a vast backdrop for the visual arts (perhaps most memorably with Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in 2005), The High Line offers its own canvas of sorts: a 25-by-75-foot billboard positioned at 18th Street and 10th Avenue. High Line Billboard is the latest initiative from High Line Art, which commissions public art projects and installations from local and international artists for the park.

On display from Feb. 1–29 is “Developing Tray #2” by New York artist Anne Collier, a massive-scale photograph depicting a print of an open eye inside a developing tray. The image is at once a finished work of art and a depiction of art in progress.

The effect of an open eye (the artist’s own) staring at the viewer is particularly arresting given its immense proportions. “It is confrontational, sensual and voyeuristic at the same time,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen Jr. curator and director of High Line Art.

For the artist, displaying her work on a New York City billboard is a milestone in itself. “The street in New York is full of distractions—it’s chaotic,” Collier said. “I hope that [my work] might interrupt someone’s expectation of what might typically be seen on a billboard.”

If the High Line is the convergence of architecture and nature in Manhattan, the High Line Billboard is the convergence of street art and gallery space. For painters, photographers and mixed media artists, the opportunity to display their work on such a grand canvas amidst the steel of the rail lines and the city streets offers wider visibility than an exhibition at The Whitney—and perhaps comparable recognition.

High Line Art, jointly presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, was founded in 2009 with the goal of enabling artists “to think of creative ways to engage with the uniqueness of the architecture and design of the High Line.” High Line founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond had aspirations early on for the historic rail line to become an arena for artists, and the breadth of High Line Art today (which now also oversees a projection screen for silent films) has become a draw to the landmark site.

High Line Art has presented sound installations, sculptures, experimental films, paintings—even dance performances. The previous commission for the High Line Billboard was a gigantic representation of a $100,000 bill, created by John Baldessari, entitled, “The First $100,000 I Ever Made.”

Art in the public sphere lends itself to a different kind of reception and a different viewer relationship than art in galleries or museums; the environment of buildings, bridges, cars and crowds contributes to the viewer’s experience. “I’m interested to see how the image operates against the visual backdrop of the city,” said Collier.

| By Linnea Covington

When you first walk into the Bye Bye CBGB exhibit at Soho’s Clic Gallery, the faces of disheveled punk rockers greet you. Pierced lips, funky hair and leather dominate the style, and though it appears they were shot in 1973, the images are from 2006, when the notorious venue finally shuttered its doors. Showing up at iconic CBGB OMFUG (Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers) for its final 48 hours, Parisian visual artist Bruno Hadjadj shot the faces of those new and old punk rockers who had gathered to say adieu.

On Saturday, Oct. 14, 2006, Blondie’s Debbie Harry belted out “Heart of Glass.” The next night, Patti Smith played some tunes with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ended her set with a rendition of “Gloria” that interlaced lines and melodies from various Ramones songs. I was there and, despite the cliché, it was a night to remember.

What most people don’t talk about is what happened outside the doors. While only a fraction managed to get tickets, on that warm October night hundreds of fans remained outside. People from all over the world had come to see the club for the last time, touch its graffiti-covered walls, smoke cigarettes and sneak sips of cheap whiskey from a flask under its dirty 315 Bowery awning in hopes of catching a glimpse of one of the famous faces from CBGB’s rich past.

Though many left disappointed, Hadjadj captured them there as they paid homage to an era that, despite the decades, hadn’t changed much since the early 1970s.

“The energy was so intense with all these people trying to get in, some in line for 24 hours,” said Hadjadj from his home in Paris. “My purpose was to shoot the people, not the stars.”

Though he made a book from the images, the exhibit at Clic Gallery displays only 14 pictures of a few people that struck a chord in him; like Flow, a girl in a short skirt, boots and cowboy hat that he showed as a gel print then blew up and decorated with blinking lights. Another portrait presents a rockabilly-styled man with a prominent belt buckle and piercings, which Hadjadj also shows two ways (including the blinking lights).

On one wall, he deviates from the portraits and instead displays sketches of winged cans of beer, gin bottles and a calendar, a seemingly poignant remark on the death of the club.

Hadjadj’s admiration for CBGB was almost happenstance. For years, he lived off and on in New York, and in the 1980s he resided near the venue on Bowery and Houston.

“During all those years, it was the place I was always passing by. I saw so many concerts there,” he said. “Even if you didn’t know who was performing, it was a place to go and spend some time.”

Hadjadj likened the club to such historical places as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, and said that many tourists would make seeing a show at CBGB part of their journey. Even if you didn’t subscribe to the punk rock fashion, the place remained a catalyst for culture long after this style of music gave way to hardcore, rock and the experimental bands that took over the stage in the early 1990s. Either way, a few things could always be counted on: a night of many bands, cheap, disgusting bathrooms and the feeling that you were mingling with history.

While Hadjadj’s exhibit at the gallery doesn’t capture the feeling of actually being in CBGB, it does seize on the emotions of the people who really knew about the club, would miss the venue and longed to keep a piece of it near. For this reason, he chose to add those LCD lights to some images to give them an iconic sparkle—to him, the real stars were the people that came out that night, not for fame or glory, but for love.

Bye Bye CBGB, through Feb. 28, Clic Gallery, 255 Centre St. (at Broome St.), 212-966-2766.

By Paulette Safdieh

It takes a lot to impress a New Yorker. Out-of-towners and tourists, newly transplanted co-workers from the West Coast (and, at times, even our Uptown counterparts) get excited about seeing the latest Broadway show or MoMA exhibit, but we shrug our shoulders like we’ve seen it all before. We have our own idea of what’s cool.

Downtown thrives on the charm of unconventional culture—which is why a haunted house museum finds its home on Bowery and not on Museum Mile. Unbeknownst to a lot of us, our exclusive hub south of 14th Street has its own fair share of museums—depending on what your definition of museum is. Some travel from location to location setting up pickle exhibits, some cater to house ghosts and some showcase comic books like the Metropolitan Museum of Art does Rembrandt works. So what if you intentionally missed the Alexander McQueen exhibit this year? There’s a different kind of viable culture thriving in our own quarters that you don’t need to wait two hours in a line to experience.

Skyscraper Museum

Across the street from the Jewish History Museum and down the block from the Museum of the American Indian, this tribute to our city’s favorite form of architecture is yet another reason to hop off the train at Bowling Green. A small, one-floor space, The Skyscraper Museum showcases an array of historical documents (including newspaper clippings and World Trade Center floor plans) and an impressive wall exhibit of the world’s tallest buildings.

Black-and-white photographs of New York City construction sites line the ramp leading from the gift shop entrance to the one-floor dedication to our city’s—and the world’s — most famous high-rise buildings. Tall glass windows and overhead mirrors give the illusion of walking through an indoor skyscraper park, allowing visitors to navigate between the pillared cases that hold model buildings, including Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest at 2,717 feet, and the Kingkey Finance Tower in Shenzhen, China.
Interactive touchscreens and wall-mounted television screens teach about skyscraper form and history—did you know there are jumbo skyscrapers (surface area up to 2 million square feet) and super jumbos (up to 4 million square feet)? The museum’s collection also includes a replica New York Times front-page story from 1947 announcing the proposal for the World Trade Center site and the letters exchanged between famed architect Minoru Yamasaki and the paper’s architecture critic.

The Skyscraper Museum, 39 Battery Pl. (at Little W. St.), 212-968-1961, www.skyscraper.org; Wed.–Sun., 12-6 p.m., $5.

NY Food Museum

Because everyone loves food (although not everyone loves museums), the NY Food Museum opened in 1998 with mass appeal, giving New Yorkers a new way to celebrate tasty grub and learn a thing or two while they’re at it. Since originating the city’s annual International Pickle Day nine years ago, the NY Food Museum has continued to give us reason to believe that New York’s tastebuds enjoy food beyond the realm of red velvet cupcakes and Halal food from a cart.

The NY Food Museum is not a sight to be seen one afternoon and never revisited, mainly because of its traveling status. Sans a permanent home, the museum hosts discussion panels, film showings, traditional exhibits (including their first How New Yorkers Ate 100 Years Ago) and the upcoming Lower East Side Pickle Day this spring. Beware of the crowds; pickle day draws tens of thousands of visitors every year.

NY Food Museum, 59 Orchard St. (betw. Grand & Hester Sts.), 212-266-9010, www.nyfoodmuseum.org; call for exhibition dates, times and prices.

Italian American Museum

Appropriately nestled on the corner of Mulberry and Grand streets among the Italian bakeries and aroma of freshly cooked pasta, the Italian American Museum pays homage to the first Italian immigrants to come to New York City.

The museum’s director, Dr. Joseph Scelsa, an extremely knowledgeable—you guessed it—Italian-American sociologist, bought the building in 2008 from the Italian-American Stabile family, with the hope of archiving community artifacts from the last century and a half. The Stabile family emigrated to New York in the 1860s and first opened the space as a bank.

The museum’s interior is built around the actual glass booths where the tellers sat, and includes an array of artifacts from the 19th century through today. The collection ranges from Italian-American currency printed in New Jersey during World War II (when the U.S. occupied Italy) to the first vendor plates from the annual San Gennaro festival. Old passports and luggage tags are showcased beside community photographs, marriage certificates and even a restored wedding dress. The very back of the museum holds an organ that dates back to 1898, a 6-foot-tall bank vault and hand-cranked calculators used in the space years ago.

Welcoming about 100,000 yearly visitors, the museum preserves a culture unique to our city’s Little Italy—“the most famous Little Italy in the world,” according to Scelsa.

Italian American Museum, 155 Mulberry St. (at Grand St.), 212-965-9000, www.italianamericanmuseum.org; weekends, 12–6 p.m., $5.

Merchant’s House Museum

Celebrating its 75th year in business, the Merchant’s House Museum welcomes between 50,000 and 100,000 curious every each year to explore the supposedly haunted, 139-year-old row house on East Fourth Street. The museum first opened in 1936, three years after the death of Gertrude Tredwell, the last person to live at 29 E. 4th St. The Tredwell family lived in the house for over 100 years, and a visit to the museum suggests they—or their ghosts—still do.

Once you walk up the wsix steps from the sidewalk and step through the white marble door, be prepared to hear strange sounds of nonexistent footsteps and catch yourself looking over your shoulder in fear. Through the display of 3,000 untouched possessions from the Tredwell family and their four Irish servants, including old clothes and a wooden piano, the museum evokes a creepy sense of abandonment. Throughout the two floors, stationed amongst the roped-off furniture, fully dressed mannequins of the Tredwells appear more authentic than any sculpture at Madame Tussaud’s.

If you can get past the spookiness, the Merchant’s House Museum also serves as an educational opportunity to learn about New York City architecture and lifestyle history. A double parlor room on the ground floor showcases mahogany chairs, hanging gasoliers and paintings, all dating back to the early 1900s. The intricate mouldings lining the ceilings and brick exterior helped earn the building landmark recognition as the only historic house museum south of 14th Street.

Merchant’s House Museum, 29 E. 4th St. (betw. Bowery & Lafayette St.), 212-777-1089, www.merchantshouse.org; Mon.–Thurs., noon–5 p.m., $10.

Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art

Some of us have a greater appreciation for the brilliance behind Charles Schulz comics than famous Renaissance paintings. The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art lets you know you’re not alone, presenting a collection of the best graphic arts, classic comics and cartoons from around the world. Located amid the tourist frenzy of Broadway in Soho, the museum has its own discreet, quiet space on the fourth floor of an office building.

Though small, the museum offers a collection of newspaper funnies, Japanese anime, comic strips and gag cartoons to bring back feelings of childhood nostalgia and leave you asking why you ever stopped reading Archie comics. It examines how issues of the First Amendment and censorship have tangled with graphics over time and how the images on display reflect the period in which they were created. Should a visit awaken your creative flair, offered classes include the Craft of Comics Writing and Writing for Animation. A gallery-style museum, rotating exhibits are set up every few weeks, so always call ahead to confirm whether the museum is open.

Leave time after your visit to head over to Animazing Gallery on Greene Street, a 26-year-old gallery featuring artwork from greats like Tim Burton and Maurice Sendak, to keep in the spirit of the day.

Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, 594 Broadway Ste. 401 (betw. Houston & Prince Sts.), 212-254-3511, www.moccany.org; Tues.–Sun., 12-5, $6. 

Museum of the American Gangster

Scarface fans, rejoice! This museum, hidden behind a 10-foot black gate on St. Mark’s Place, is home to some great gangster paraphernalia. Established just over a year ago in a onetime speakeasy, the museum showcases the scandalous and violent years of the Prohibition era with artifacts ranging from 100-year-old stills (the vesssels used to make moonshine) to the infamous bank robber John Dillinger’s death masks.

A visit to the museum, which more closely resembles a small schoolroom than the MoMA, starts with a showing of a 15-minute video about American history in the early 20th century. Simply furnished with a bench and four wooden chairs, the museum teaches about the history of the building itself and the gangsters who operated out of it, Walter Scheib and Frank Hoffman.

After purchasing the building in 1964, the current owner discovered a copper safe filled with $100 gold notes (equivalent to millions of dollars today), cigarettes and beer bottles left by Scheib and Hoffman. Over the years, the owner’s decision to gather these and other relics and expand the collection into a full-fledged museum came to fruition last spring.

The safe, now covered in rust, sits at the museum’s entrance filled with replica bills and the bottles found inside years ago. Wanted posters, newspaper clippings and Pat Hamou paintings line the walls of the museum, which has a special Valentine’s Day Massacre section and hand-drawn diagrams of American history. Although visited by local school groups and gangster enthusiasts, the museum has some days when nobody walks through the door. Make sure to visit the theater and bar on the ground level to cap off your visit and celebrate the legality of alcohol.

The Museum of the American Gangster, 80 St. Mark’s Pl. (betw. Ave. A & 1st Ave.), 212-228-5736, www.museumoftheamericangangster.org; 1-6 p.m., $15.

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