New York, New York

I made a quick trip to New York last week to celebrate my 20th wedding anniversary and 50th birthday.  The plan was to take things at a leisurely pace:  enjoying the city, its museums, parks and food.  I am happy to report success on every front.

From our hotel on 25th and Broadway, we had easy access on foot and by public transportation to every part of the city we planned to visit.  A highlight of this location is its proximity to one of Manhattan’s most charming parks—Madison Square Park.  Every evening, after a scrumptious dinner in the Gramercy or Little India sections, we paused in Madison Square Park for 30 or 40 minutes to watch the sunset and, more importantly, to people watch. 

My favorite vacation trips always involve extensive time spent in museums, in particular art museums.  This trip was no different.  One entire day was spent at the Metropolitan Museum of art, truly one of the world’s great art museums. 

The focus was on the Chinese collection and what a collection it is.  There was a special exhibition, “Anatomy of a Masterpiece:  How to Read Chinese Paintings”, that showcased the museum’s extensive collection.  I spent the better part of three hours viewing, at close range, exquisite brush paintings by some of China’s greatest painters and calligraphers. 

After such close study, and now feeling like a bit of a poet-painter-scholar myself, I retired to the scholar’s garden that has been recreated in the Astor Court for refreshment.  This little jewel was designed and constructed by Chinese architects and artisans based on some of Suzhou’s famous gardens.  Artifacts, such as gnarly stones, were rescued from abandoned garden’s in that city and are showcased in the Met’s garden.  A garden pavilion, with appropriate furnishings and decoration, opened off the courtyard itself and added to the overall enjoyment.

Time ran short before I had a chance to do more than sample some of the museum’s extensive collection of Tang Dynasty art works.  Fortunately, these were featured in a major exhibition of Tang Dynasty art that the Met put together a few years ago, and I am the happy owner of the exhibition catalog and can study these small-scale objects at my leisure at home.

The other museum we visited while in New York was new to me, John D. Rockefeller III’s Asia Society's New York Headquarters.  The building houses Rockefeller’s personal collection of Asian art, special exhibits by contemporary Asian artists and a home base for scholars.  It is instructive to see just what money could buy on the art market decades ago.  Asia Society has one of the best quality Chinese porcelain collections I have ever seen.  Whereas most Western museums possess abundant collections of less than stellar pieces, the pieces on display at Asia Society were mostly imperial workshop pieces of the highest grade.  Some were the finest porcelain I have seen on display at any museum and were quite breathtaking.  There were also abundant examples of sculpture and painting, and this was only a small example of the museum’s holdings.  We also saw exhibits by contemporary Iranian and Vietnamese-Japanese artists.

Outside the museum’s auditorium on the lower level were displayed a few ink paintings by the Chinese master Wu Yin, marvelous landscapes inscribed with poems that the painter had written in response to the scene he had painted. 

As I was studying the ink paintings a young Chinese woman came up identifying herself as a television journalist who was filming a documentary about Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 visit to the United States and his policy of cultural exchange with the West.  I had to admit that I didn’t remember the visit per se; I was a college student living in the dorm at that time and didn’t own a television set, but I had seen China’s first art exhibit sent to the West in 1980 in Chicago.  The next thing I knew, a cameraman appeared with a video camera and I was being interviewed by the journalist.  I have no idea if anything I said will be used in the documentary--and, even if it is, I am sure my voice will be replaced by a voice-over in Mandarin--but I was quite tickled to be interviewed, nonetheless.

Besides art and parks, the other main focus of the trip was food.  We managed to have a good to memorable dinner every night of our stay, from Indian in Little India and Chinese in Chinatown, to Italian and Greek in Gramercy.  But the culinary highlight was an Afghani restaurant by the name of Bamiyan at the corner of Third and 26th.  I had eaten Persian food before, but never Afghani.  They are similar, but I have to say Afghani food is even more delicate and aromatic than the Persian cuisine I have had.  The grilled game hen I sampled was finished to perfection, and the accompanying rice, flavored with just the right amount of saffron and orange peel, was perfectly complimented by the leavened bread.  Afghanis drink a form of chai, but, unlike its Indian cousin, the Afghani variety is made with green tea, lighter milk and more aromatic ingredients:  they add ground cardamom and rose petals which gives the drink a delicacy and lightness I have never tasted in chai before.  For dessert, we sampled Afghani vanilla ice cream which is less icy than its Indian cousin, flavored with honey.  That is one restaurant I cannot wait to eat at again!

After returning home (this always happens after we have been in New York), I discovered that there is a major Noguchi museum in Queens.  I love Noguchi’s work and had the great good fortune to see the exhibit of his ceramic sculptures at the Sackler Museum in Washington, DC a few years back.  So, next trip we will make the pilgrimage out to Queens to that museum.  I also want to visit the Whitney and the Neue Gallery, and go back to the Brooklyn Museum and the Met.  I still haven’t seen a tenth of the Met’s permanent collection, and they also do such great temporary exhibitions.  So much art, so much food, so little time and, perhaps worse, too little money.  New York is a hunger that, at least in my case, can never be completely satisfied.