An Afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum

Yesterday, on a warm, clear New York afternoon, we hopped over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a whirlwind tour.



The Temple of Dendur in the Egyptian wing always seems to be closed when I visit this museum, and Thursday was no exception as the glass-enclosed atrium was being set up for a huge, fancy dinner event that evening. "Look, another party we're not invited to," I told my friend Jay.



A crew chief walking by said, "You're welcome to work it if you want," since there seemed to be a few no-shows, and I was half tempted to take him up on the offer. Instead, we wandered into a small set of galleries dedicated to American paintings from the first half of the 20th century, including the Edward Hopper canvas above.



The spirit of my friend Patrick Vaz seemed to be hovering over the afternoon, as there was a Georgia O'Keefe sun-bleached bone painting...



...hung next to large panels above by Florine Stettheimer, the eccentric New York artist who designed the original cellophane sets for the Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein opera, Four Saints in Three Acts.



Picasso's early portrait of Gertrude herself was on the second floor, surrounded by an amazing assortment of iconic European paintings such as the Van Gogh below that are part of the museum's permanent collection.



Next to a silly, claustrophobic exhibition devoted to Punk Fashion, there was an extraordinary special exhibit of French Impressionist paintings from museums all over the world, focusing on depictions of what people wore. There was added attraction of displays in the middle of each gallery of actual clothing from the period, in a few cases echoing the exact dresses and suits that were being depicted on the walls. This sounds like it could have been one of socialite Dede Wilsey's Expensive Paintings and Fancy Frocks exhibits that keep popping up at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, but instead the effect was scholarly, fascinating, and transported one into late 19th Century France in a surprisingly powerful way. Plus, there were about a dozen huge Manet paintings among all the Degas and Renoir and Tissot works that I had never seen before, and the exhibit was surprisingly uncrowded so you could easily stand right in front of everything.



Unlike San Francisco museums, the security guards were helpful and unobtrusive, and also allowed artists to sketch and paint within the galleries themselves. The place almost made me want to move to New York.

This Weekend in Civic Center

This Saturday will see another installment of the Asian Heritage Street Festival on Larkin Street near Civic Center. The event is one of the smaller, more charming free street fairs in San Francisco, featuring everything from tasty food booths to ethnic dance to rock bands and even a runway show this year. Admission to the nearby Asian Art Museum is also free on Saturday.



Sunday morning the Bay to Breakers footrace makes its way through the neighborhood on Hayes Street. It is amusing, voyeuristic viewing, with plenty of costumes and nudity to ogle.



I will be in New York City for a week so will be missing the shenanigans. Tiger Woods, my cat, is insisting on coming along but he does not travel well so he's being left behind.

Baba-yoo! SFMOMA

SFMOMA will be shutting its doors next month for three years during construction of a huge new addition to the museum, which can be seen in a series of cutout models in the lobby.



The reason for the reconstruction of the fairly new building is because the Fisher Collection was donated to the museum by GAP founder Donald Fisher while on his deathbed, with the proviso that the institution display his trove of huge paintings and sculptures on a near permanent basis. The collection is a great gift to San Francisco, and it has gone to the right place, rather than to a proposed new, ungainly modern museum in the middle of the Presidio, which was Donald's original plan.



The Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta won the commission for the new space, and after reading a fascinating profile of the architects in a January New Yorker article by David Owen, I am eagerly looking forward to its completion.



I hope they retain the rotunda over the 3rd Street lobby, if only to continue displaying united nations--babel of the millenium which was was created for the space in 1999 by Shanghai-born, New York-based artist Wenda Gu.



I will also miss seeing the Filipino security guards fiercely standing watch in front of Andy Warhol silkscreens. "You should consider that hairstyle," I told the gentleman above, but like a member of the Queen's Guard in front of Buckingham Palace, he did not crack a smile.

Hayes Valley Happenings

Patricia's Green in the Hayes Valley seems to get cuter and more gentrified with each passing day.



A lovely trio of buskers set up on Hayes Street early this afternoon...



...and were briefly upstaged by a New Orleans style jazz group that was playing music while being driven around in an old van...



...complete with a drum set and an open side door.



Meanwhile, a do-it-yourself wholesale demolition job was taking place across the street at the former Marlena's drag bar, with wild gusts of dust blowing out the front door and into the apartments above.