( AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey )
Alison Stewart, host of WNYC's All of It and the author of First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School (Lawrence Hill Books, 2015), shares some of the NYC museum offerings to catch this fall, including shows at the Met Museum, the Whitney, MOMA and the Frick.
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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. By the way, one thing I forgot to say when Cassidy Hutchinson was on in the last segment, she's got an event coming up for those of you who want to see her in person here in the city. It's next Monday, October 30th at the 92nd Street Y at 7:30, and they have tickets at their website. She'll be in conversation with Alyssa Farah Griffin, who she actually mentioned during the interview.
Alyssa Farah Griffin with Cassidy Hutchinson next Monday at 7:30 at 92 Y, so there you go. All this week during our membership drive, we're ending the show each day with a guide to some can't-miss cultural happenings, and today we're talking about visual art, some of the museum shows to be sure and catch. I'm joined for this by my fellow WNYC live radio host who's starting her broadcast day 10 minutes early, Alison Stewart, who has generally hopped across the hall to join us right before her own show. All Of It gets started. Hey, Alison.
Alison Stewart: Hey, Brian.
Brian: I had a brain glitch there. We were first talking about you doing a book's preview because of the reader that you are, but we decided to land on art with you because of the art observer that you are. Maybe the biggest thing going on right now is Manet/Degas at the Met.
Alison: That is huge. Fortunately, we've been able to talk to the curators of this exhibition. It is an examination of these two friends who inspired each other and challenged each other. They're just two years apart, born under the same upper-middle-class Parisian families. They both served in the National Guard, the National Reserve in the Franco-Prussian War, as one curator told us that frames, very much the way they commit themselves politically to their art and to their lives as Parisians as well.
They were in the common parlance, frenemies. [laughs] You can see that a little bit in their work. There's one really dramatic painting where Manet saw a Degas painting that he criticizes work. That's how they first met, one criticizing the other. [chuckles]
Brian: Wow. Does it add a new layer to their works to see them in conversation with each other on the walls?
Alison: Oh, absolutely. Sometimes they use the same models, sometimes in the exact same place. The clearest example is a pair of paintings from Cafe [unintelligible 00:02:41]. Degas is from 1876, titled In The Café, The Absent Drinker. She's looking sad melancholy. The following year, Manet paints the same model, same place, close up. She looks happier, more self-possessed, and that one is called Plum Brandy, and it's interesting to see the way they both approach the same model in the same place.
Brian: Let's go from the Met to the Whitney, the show Henry Taylor: B Side, what is it? An old 45 single or a piece of art?
Alison: Same idea, B side, the flip side, the lesser known works as opposed to the A side on those of us who remember 45s, [laughs] the A side was the hit. It is the entire fifth floor of the Whitney. There were 70 canvases made from 1991 to 2022. There were sculptures, there were 19 portrait drawings of patients at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital where Henry Taylor worked when he was in college.
There's an enormous installation of 40 mannequins dressed in uniforms like the Black Panther, and there's a lectern in front, but then there are sorf of the more ordinary moments in life. There's this picture of this little girl, beautiful painting, and it's called This Dress Ain't Me, and she's not that happy about the dress. The woman in the painting has made her wear. It's very warm and it's very of a moment.
Brian: He's a contemporary artist, meaning he's still working, and this is the biggest gathering of his works so far, I see. A little more maybe about Henry Taylor for people who never heard the name until we just said Henry Taylor: B Side.
Alison: Henry Taylor is in his mid-60s now. Family originally from Texas immigrated to-- moved to migrate actually to California. He's known for his-- I love this about his work, these big bold brush strokes. Sometimes you can actually see them in the art. Sometimes you can see there's pieces of painter's tape.
He often mixes pop culture references with historical references. There's this one painter of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie but the words Coffee and Tupac as in Tupac Shakur are in the background in conversation with the portrait of Haile Selassie, there's portraits of Jay-Z. There's one that's painted on a suitcase, this portrait of Tyler, the Creator who is an internet -- well, sort of the internet, but he's a well-known rap artist.
Brian: Is it a political show very much? You mentioned Haile Selassie. I see there are portraits of Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Barack Obama, and Michelle.
Alison: As well as Martin Luther King Jr. It's an interesting mix. It's the daily lives of African Americans. People in his orbit, people who we know on the news. There's a really moving, moving portrait of Philando Castile in the moments before he was shot by police. I think people remember that was live-streamed on Facebook by his girlfriend, his partner. There is some really powerful work, and then also some just really joyous work about people just living their lives.
Brian: We go from the Whitney and the Met to the Frick, which has Barkley L. Hendricks portraits at the Frick, the first show at that museum ever devoted to a Black artist from what I've read. Is that possibly true?
Alison: Yes. The first solo show ever dedicated to a Black artist in the collection's history. This is a very small show, but a very potent show. He was born in Philadelphia. Sorry, he was born and raised in Philadelphia, became a longtime professor of studio art at Connecticut College. He passed away in 2017. What's unique about this show is that these portraits are inspired by his love of the Renaissance era and his study of the Renaissance era.
His subjects are predominantly Black people he encountered throughout his life, family members, someone on the street, but they are given this royal treatment in the style of the Renaissance era. He took his camera everywhere. He called it his mechanical sketchbook, and he would take pictures and then he would come back and create these just lush deeply detailed portraits of these beautiful, beautiful people.
Brian: One more. MoMA two shows on your list. Ed Rouche now then, and Picasso and [unintelligible 00:07:00], and you have to tell us about Rouchet's Chocolate Room. Chocolate Room?
Alison: Chocolate Room. There's 200 works produced from 1958 to present, and his only single-room installation floor-to-ceiling tiles made of chocolate. It has to be refabricated each and every time. He was always investigating different things he could use to paint with, whether it was tobacco or ashes. The chocolate room do not touch, but you can smell. It smells really good. [laughs] It's not like going to the Hershey's factory in Pennsylvania.
Alison: No, no, the guards are very aware. They're very present in the chocolate room.
Brian: By the way, I know you have some thoughts about the other Picasso exhibition recently at the Brooklyn Museum curated by the performer Hannah Gatsby, who many of our listeners may know from her one woman playing Nanette which include a scathing take on Picasso.
Alison: Well, it's interesting, it's the 50th anniversary of Picasso's death. We're having a lot of Picasso shows. This one at MoMA, which we're going to discuss in the show today, is specifically about a summer he spent at Fontainebleau. There's a lot of conversations, art versus the artist. Someone said, you can understand that he had wanton disregard for some of the women in his life than when he painted and that he can be a great painter. The Gatsby exhibition leaned into one side of that. This exhibition leans into the other side of that argument.
Brian: We're going to be talking later in the week about something amazing that you're sponsoring as coming out of the amazing thing that you did, which is donate a kidney to your sister. You're now sponsoring upon your return, a blood drive. We're going to talk about that on the show later in the week, but do you want to tell our listeners what else is coming up on All Of It? We have 20 seconds before the pre-All Of It newscast.
Alison: All right. Alexander Payne has an amazing new movie out called The Holdovers, we're going to talk about that. We'll talk about the Picasso show as well, and Get Lit With All Of It. Tomorrow night at the New York Public Library, you can watch the live stream.
Brian: Or go live.
Alison: Sold out, Brian. [chuckles]
Brian: Alison Stewart coming up right after the news. Alison, thanks for moonlighting with us.
Alison: Thanks, Brian.
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