perhaps one night i will write about a friday night at a rad party downtown, where i rubbed asses and elbows with some cool cats, and was ever so elegant, all the while sipping unlimited top-shelf liquor...perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.but this friday night was more like:
a leisurely walk home from work, with a detour through the grand central marketplace, for veggies and some cajun catfish and stuffed brook trout from my favorite fishmongers (wild edibles).
then my dad stopped by for a quick chat...and then...i ran around the block to the morgan library, which is free on friday nights, from 7pm-9pm (love free admission!). i was pleased to catch “close encounters: irving penn portraits of artists and writers” (it closes tomorrow).
(i can cross 2 items off my new year's "to-do" list, as i have finally made it to the morgan musem and scandinavia house.)
i'd never visited the morgan library, so i have no sense of what it looked like prior to the renzo piano expansion. but i love the feeling of standing in the glass-enclosed central atrium--there was classical music resounding, courtesy of a cellist and violinist from the mannes college of music, and there was that wonderful, curious museum "buzz" (but without the awful crowding that's typical of most museums here, especially during "free admission" hours). there is a cafe in the central atrium, too, which is strangely not cordoned off. nevertheless, i imagine it's lovely to sip tea or a glass of wine there in afternoon.
because the main entrance was so terrifically roomy, i was surprised by the hearty numbers in the smaller east and west galleries. but it was still relatively easy to make a little space for oneself and linger over the work.
my favorite photos from the exhibition cannot be found online (i've been searching for the past 3 hours, so far, no luck):
edward albee, photographed in new york, 1962 (my absolute favorite from the show. albee here, as mark feeney notes, is "all cigarette and eyelashes");
vladimir nabokov (chasing butterflies), northern italy, 1948;
and
joan miro and his daughter, dolores, photographed in tarragona, spain, 1948 (penn's homage to the balthus painting, joan miro and his daughter dolores).
(you can see some of the photos from the exhibition, courtesy of the nytimes; a related slideshow is hosted by men's vogue ... )
and then i dropped a load on a few "sale" books about toulouse-lautrec, bonnard and vuillard at the store (so much for my "free" night at the museum), reminders of my recent trip to paris.
i made it back home in time to watch the last four innings of game 1 of the yanks/red sox series at fenway. chien-ming wang threw a complete game, two-hitter. final score: 4-1.
rather sedate, but not too shabby a friday night, all the way around!
more on the renzo piano expansion, which was completed in 2006, here.
and lastly, tonight's poem (another from babette deutsch): "string quartet."
