M&M's

When I worked at the Johnson School we would get M&M's from the Mars recruiters.  I would squirrel away a few packages and treat myself by opening a  package and rationing out 1 or 2 of these colorful candies at a time.  (OK-you know me-the rationing would work for about 15 minutes and then I'd gobble the rest of the package.)  I thought about this habit as I prepared to write about the visits that Greg and I savored slowly last Saturday.

The first two M's were the Magna Carta at the Morgan Library.  We wanted to take advantage of this limited showing of the 1217 document that had landed in the Morgan Library as a byproduct of the flight cancellations created by the volcanic ash in Iceland.  There's not much to say about the document, except it is always a thrill to look at something firsthand that changed the world and think about the significance of these words written on a piece of vellum.  We also wanted to look at Old Man Morgan's sumptious library before they renovate it over the summer. 

Next we walked down Madison Avenue to Madison Square Park and saw some wonderful architecture: the 1893 Metropolitan Life Building with its fantastic clock tower, the 1928 New York Life Insurance Building with its golden pyramid roof and David Burnham's 1902 Flatiron Building. As we walked through Madison Square I realized (duh) that this was the site of the original Madison Square Garden. You can see some of these buildings nestled beneath the Empire State Building in my nighttime skyline photo above. Greg wanted to make sure that you appreciated his fright when he saw a "jumper" atop one of the buildings on 5th Avenue around 20th. I knew that the jumper was just one of 31 naked Men put atop buildings and in Madison Square Park by the artist Antony Gormley for the Event Horizon.

Finally we turned on 21st Street to head to the Gagosian Gallery for the magnificent Monet exhibit.  This show pulled together four rooms of late Monet Water Lilies, which were spectacular transitions to modern art and abstract impressionism.  Many of these paintings were never exhibited in Monet's life and seeing how the aging artist, beset by cataracts, adapted to his world was an inspiration.  Getting old allows one to develop new techniques and a new vision.  The New York Times, once again, has a wonderful review which includes a slideshow of some of the paintings.  The New Yorker said "Do not miss it!" and we are really pleased that we didn't.