Week 01: ATSNYC 2025

Written By mary oleary

First week of museum visiting complete!

Times Square: Max Neuhaus

Visit date: 01.01.2025

“I use sound to change the way we perceive space” -Max Neuhaus

Maybe visiting Max Neuhas's Time Square on New Year's Day is not the best time, but the thinking here was "New Year - Newhaus." The best time to visit the work is probably between 4am and 8am, although I don't necessarily recommend that (do your own risk assessment). It takes just a few hours after the ball drops for Times Square to return to business as usual, but some things remain, and leftover confetti fills the air. I do think it's worth seeing, and more so hearing if you can, given how loud Times Square can be.

Max Neuhaus's 1977' sound instillation is located on Times Square (as titled) between 45th and 46th Street where Broadway and 7th Avenue meet. The installation consists of a droning tone generated by a subway steam escape hatch. According to the Dia pamphlet, which you can get at the other Dia locations, including the Earth Room, Broken Kilometer, Dia Chelsea, and Dia Beacon, it was turned off in 1992 and reactivated in 2002 and has been under Dia's stewardship.

Neuhaus began his career as a percussionist and drifted to the more openness of the 1960s art world, although he eventually rejected the term "sound art" (his essay on sound art is linked below). Of all the Dia sites I've been to (all of them except Lighting Field and Bridgehampton, I honestly don't know how I made it to Germany before Long Island…), Times Square is the one I am least familiar with. Sound art is a pet genre of the art world that I am starting to immerse myself in, and Neuhaus seems like an excellent entryway.

The last thing I will say is that it is important to remember that this piece was installed in 1977, and Times Square was a different flavor of hellscape than it is today. Less capitalist-tourist-selfie and more seedy underbelly…

Noteworthy visitor info:

  • Hours: 24/7

  • Admission: Free

  • Restroom: No

  • Cafe: No

  • Bookstore: No

Recommended reading/listening:

L’Alliance New York (French Cultural Institute)

Visit Date: 01.03.02024

I try not to catch the last day of a show for this visiting project, but c'est le vie. L'Alliance New York is "the home for francophone cultures and the French language." L'Alliance, aka the French Cultural Center, hosts French language classes, workshops, arts and culture programming (where their gallery comes in), a library, and a French immersion preschool. (With my C+ in French from my early undergrad days, I'll stick to the gallery and English language texts…)

The gallery, located on the ground floor, was behind a curtain. This was to keep out any natural or artificial light because the exhibition of Nina Childress's Glowing Heads was actually glowing (by way of black light painting). The gallery is fairly small, all things considered, and the exhibition had about ten paintings, four sculptures, and an installation of a digital print in the rotunda stairs leading to the lower level.

The blacklight paintings did seem a bit of a novelty. Created in 2021, the painting's subjects were portraits from 1960s or 70s photographs, given the very mod articulation. In several places, Childress is noted as having a "punk feminist reading of female representation in Western art history" - and all things considered, I don't see it. Granted, in a past life, Childress fronted an art punk, no-wave band, Lucrate Milk, in the early 1980s, which is interesting biographically, but it doesn't show up in her painting style in terms of overall aesthetic and articulation. Aside from using phosphorescent paint, which is a bit of camp material at best, nothing interrogates portraiture with standard framing and pretty women.

In terms of exhibition design, the space was well used, the ultraviolet lights worked well with the sculptures, and the room transformation had a "vibe." The works in the gallery are changing, and they don't have a permanent collection, so I'm looking forward to what they will show next.

Noteworthy visitor info:

  • Closed: On Sundays

  • Admission: Free

  • Restroom: Yes

  • Cafe: No

  • Bookstore: No, but some catalogs for sale depending on the exhibition

Recommended reading/listening:

Grolier Club

Visit Date: 01.03.02024

I was initially going to skip this exhibition at the Grolier Club and wait for their forthcoming Wish You Were Here: Guidebooks, Viewbooks, Photobooks, and Maps of New York City, 1807-1940, but L'Alliance New York is directly across the street, and I was going there anyway, and I am so glad I did not skip it. Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books was amazingggg It is really an innovative collection of books. The collection belongs to club member Reid Byers.

I am literally obsessed with the concept- as the exhibition text states, "In this post-structuralist art project, presented with a dry wit, all of the 'books' are simulacra meticulously created by Byers with a team of printers, bookbinders, and calligraphers." An absolute feat in fictive design. The exhibition had 3 major categories: Lost Books: "books that we know once existed but of which no examples now survive"; so that's books like Poems of Sappho. The next is Unfinished Books: "which were begun in some fashion, but were never completed or brought to publication"; so that's books like Sylvia Plath's Double Exposure (that vanished in 1970). The third category of Fictive Books so that's "exists only in story and never had any physical existence whatsoever," so that's books like The Songs of the Jabberwock in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. A secondary category within the Fictive Books is Magical Books, which includes The Necronomicon, created by (the problematic) H.P. Lovecraft.

I am still in awe of how this exhibition came together and the realization of the books. The wall display cases left something to be desired, but the shelf cases worked extremely well (save for The Necromonicon being in center of the case, meaning the glass case doors left a seam in the middle of the object.

Over all an mussssst see if you are book nerd, or are into conceptual exhibitions.

Noteworthy visitor info:

  • Closed: On Sundays

  • Admission: Free

  • Restroom: Yes

  • Cafe: No

  • Bookstore: No, but some catalogs for sale depending on the exhibition

Recommended reading/listening:

Instituto Cervantes New York

Visit Date: 01.03.02024

Located on East 49th Street, Instituto Cervantes is a cultural tie from Spain to The United States. It was established in the early 1990s to promote learning the Spanish language and share Spanish and Hispanic-American culture. The Instituto has more than 75 locations worldwide and is headquartered in Madrid and Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), the birthplace of writer Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes is known for Don Quixote, a “founding work of Western literature.” The Instituto in New York is also home to the Jorge Louis Borges Library, a primer collection of Spanish language books open to the public. The gallery is non-collect and hosts rotating exhibitions. The Instituto surrounds Amster Yard, a New York City Landmark, because of its “unique character, architectural beauty and aesthetic interest.”

The exhibition I visited was Triad Dialog, connecting Mexico, Canaris, and Perú, featuring three contemporary artists: Erika Harrsch, Ana de Orbegoso, and Yapci Ramos. Each of these artists fused a contemporary decolonial feminist perspective on the regional ancient cultures: the Guanches of Canary Island (Ramos), the Incas of Peru (De Orbesgoso), and the Aztecs of Mexico (Harrsch).

The gallery held the three artists together very well, and the total number of pieces was a good mix of traditional and new media. The sound bleeds were at times frustrating but, given the size of the gallery, preferable to putting on headphones. There was no seating, but none of the videos really commanded it. The walls were white save for the walls with wall text, which were black with white text, with a triangular exhibition graphic, which worked really well and let the colors of the work add the needed dynamism.

Noteworthy visitor info:

  • Closed: Sundays, however the gallery is only open during exhibits, and has a separate schedule. Check their website for full details.

  • Admission: Free

  • Restroom: Yes

  • Cafe: No

  • Bookstore: No

Recommended reading/listening:

The Hispanic Society

Visit Date: 01.05.02024

coming soon!

The Academy of Arts and Letters

Visit Date: 01.05.02024

coming soon!

mary oleary
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