All My Stars (17)

By: Joanne McNeil
April 28, 2016

One in a weekly series in which Joanne McNeil recommends books, films, exhibitions, and more. You can also subscribe to the All My Stars newsletter here.

I started this newsletter to keep track of the best culture I encounter each week. But the best this week was Beyonce’s Lemonade and listening to as much of Minneapolis radio station The Current’s “Prince A-to-Z” as possible — and I haven’t got anything worthwhile to say about either! Especially that hasn’t been better covered elsewhere. I liked what Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote about Prince.

Now it is spring in New York and I am trying not to waste it. I went to the Cloisters last week and then stopped by the Met Breuer that afternoon. When the Whitney moved to the Meatpacking District, the Met took over its old Marcel Breuer-designed home. I love that building. It is heavy and jagged and looks so distinctly like part of an architectural trend from the past. I love that the stone stairways smell like stone. And part my love is the event of going to the Upper East Side, grabbing a cappuccino at Via Quadronno, wandering through Central Park, visiting some shops that have been around since at least the Eisenhower era, and then entering this stark Brutalist building in the middle of it all. The Met just made a few small changes. It’s as stony as ever. There’s a retrospective of Nasreen Mohamedi’s lissome drawings and didactic but interesting survey called Unfinished that is basically every artist you have heard of that never finished a piece or made a piece that looks unfinished.

All the young tourists swarmed around the Basquiat painting. It seems like appreciation of Basquiat has entered the alienated teen cannon. Kids find him about the time they think to download The Velvet Underground & Nico. I live not too far from where he is buried, so the next day I went to Greenwood Cemetery and picked up a map. Because it is spring.

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