Stepping Out

Here's to you New York

Nassau Museum offers up a glimpse of the Big Apple

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As Labor Day beckons and we move past those last lazy days of summer, it’s time to look ahead to a new season of cultural exploration. The region’s museums are energized for fall, with a wide range of offerings that will hold wide appeal for all.
Among the highlights of the current art scene, Nassau County Museum of Art is welcoming visitors to its latest exhibition, “New York, New York” which opened in July and continues through Nov. 5. For most of fall, the museum will be a treasure trove of artistic insights into the life and heartbeat of that “wonderful town” of the famed song lyrics.
From the extraordinary to the everyday, “New York, New York” reveals the daily life of the city’s populace at work, in their homes, on the streets, and at leisure. The works on view — more than 140 of them — explore Manhattan and its boroughs in all of its grit and glamour.
“I’ve been wanting to do something about New York for some time,” says Constance Schwartz, the museum’s director emerita and guest curator for this exhibit. “New York City is such an important area for those of us in Nassau County. There’s a significant link between the city and the many residents who travel back and forth. This is a great opportunity to take some important works and present them in relationship to the city’s history.”
“New York, New York,” which occupies almost all of the museum’s gallery space, is organized by themes: commerce, leisure, entertainment, architecture. It reflects the city’s spirit and style, spanning the 20th century, starting around the early 1900s.

“I’ve used the turn of the century as a starting point. It was an exciting time that really made the city what it is today,” says Schwartz. “New York rapidly started to change then. The Lower East Side was such a major melting pot — for Jews, Italians, Irish. It was such an interesting time for society as a whole.”
“From then everything changed so quickly,” Schwartz added.
“What I’ve done is taken symbols and important images and have brought them here [to the museum}. I wanted to do something different, that’s not cliché. I want visitors to take a look at things you know and re-evaluate them. So I’ve mixed up painting, sculpture, prints and photos.’
The iconic Brooklyn Bridge, for example, a favorite subject for artists since its opening in 1883, is seen in several works and media — a photograph by Harold Roth, an oil by Milton Avery, a work on paper by Georgia O’Keeffe, and a welded steel construction by Red Grooms. 
Another frequent subject, Washington Square, is depictured in 1910 and 1912 oils by William Glackens and in a 1950 photograph by Rebecca Lepkoff. The many pleasures of Coney Island, that much-loved playground for so many decades, are seen in paintings by Reginald Marsh and Milton Avery and in photographs by Arthur Leipzig and Harold Roth.
Everett Shinn’s watercolor shows patrons of McSorley’s as the famed bar and its customers appeared in 1908, while Francis Luis Mora’s 1914 oil, “Evening News,” glimpses people reading the paper as they ride home from work on a train, an innovation of the time that revolutionized travel throughout the city.
New York’s café society of old is represented in Reginald Marsh’s watercolor, “Memories of the Stork Club”; Marsh contrasts this image of the city’s elites in his oil, “The Bowery,” depicting a male-only group of drinkers.
Mora’s work is seen again in the large-scale series, “Manhattan Cocktail 1626-1938,” created in 1938 to be showcased in the 1939 World’s Fair. Harold Roth’s “Water Street,” showing kids dashing through the waters of an open hydrant, and Rebecca Lipkoff’s “Street Play Monroe Street,” portraying youngsters in street games, both photographs, depict city streets during the 1940s. Romare Bearden’s 1972 collage “110th Street Harlem Blues” dramatically portrays the city’s most famed African-American community. Red Grooms is represented several pieces including his massive 1984-85 installation, “The Alley,” a look at the city’s darker side, according to Schwartz.
“It’s a wonderful installation,” Schwartz says. “All of Grooms’ characters appear as if they are coming right at you.”
Other highly diverse art of the 1980s includes Tom Blackwell’s “Herald Square,’ Richard Estes’ “Old Police Headquarters,” Henry Groskinsky’s “Fireworks in NYC from the Empire State Building” and Christo and Jean Claude’s “The Wrapped Building: Times Square Allied Chemical Tower.” The exhibit moves into the 1990s with Andy Warhol’s “Abstract Sculpture” (“Headline” series) and Yvette Jacquette’s “Herald Square Composite 11.” The most recent artwork is Red Grooms’ “Lunchtime on Broadway, his nearly 8-foot 2009 charcoal on paper.
“This is my love letter to New York,” Schwartz says. “It’s my ode to New York as seen through the eyes of all sorts of artists, especially some of those who are aren’t as well known as some of the ‘greats’.”

Nassau County Museum of Art
When: One Museum Dr., (off Northern Blvd.), Roslyn Harbor.
Admission/Hours: $12, $8 seniors, $4 students and children. Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. (516) 484-9337 or www.nassaumuseum.org.