With so much to see and do in New York City, here are three suggestions to get you off the couch this weekend.
“Admissions”
In the new Off-Broadway play, “Admissions,” Sherri Rosen-Mason (Jessica Hecht) is the admissions officer at Hillcrest, a boarding school in New Hampshire. For years, her mission has been to increase the number of students of color at the predominantly white school. Hillcrest is also where her husband Bill (Andrew Garman) is Headmaster and their son Charlie, (Ben Edelman) is a senior.
Charlie is nearing graduation and dreams of attending Yale, but when he discovers that he’s been deferred while his best friend Perry — who is mixed race — is accepted, he comes undone. In a lengthy, vitriolic monologue, Charlie airs his grievances about how he believes he’s being treated because he is a white man.
“Is Penelope Cruz a person of color, cause she's from Spain but she speaks Spanish, and so if she is of color then are we saying all people from Spain are of color?”
As written by Joshua Harmon and directed by Daniel Aukin, Edleman, through a mix of humor and outrage, commands the audience’s attention during this speech, perhaps even channeling the thoughts of some people, as it was a predominantly white crowd in attendance that night.
“If all people from Spain are of color, then why not French people, or Italian people? They're all right there on the Mediterranean, what is so special about Spain? Like, if Penelope Cruz is a person of color then I think we should discuss why Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard are not.”
Yet as Charlie follows the logic of his thinking, he arrives at a disturbing conclusion.
“Keep pushing me keep ... pushing me [to] go sit at whatever ... table you want while you tell me how white I am and how disgusting I am, I'll just stand in the corner taking it all in until I can't ... take it anymore and I all of a sudden break out into a ... SIEG HEIL!”
Charlie’s monologue is intense and raw and coming as early as it does in the play, it becomes the fulcrum on which the rest of the action (and reactions) in the play revolves. His father responds by telling him ”What a spoiled brat….Open your little snot-faced eyes and look around. Life is not fair. It's miserably unfair, but it's not little white boys in private schools in New England who have it so bad.”
Charlie does calm down, but then makes a 180 degree turnaround in his thinking as he tries “to be the change I wanted to see in the world.”
His mother, as committed as she is to diversity, is stunned by his decision, and is determined not to let her professed beliefs get in the way of ensuring that Charlie gets into a good college.
Credit playwright Harmon for tackling head-on such a fraught topic. Yet at the same time, he wants to have it both ways: He wants to criticize white, liberal sensibilities of his characters (and the audience), but he also wants to provide a space where they can vent their frustrations.
It’s a challenging show, one that questions admissions policies at elite schools that we know are important in setting the stage for future success. It’s also a show that forces admissions from the characters about what they truly believe, even if, publicly, they proclaim their commitment to addressing past injustices.
For myself, I’ll admit I found it puzzling that a play about race featured five white actors. That’s a choice Harmon made and it suggests he believes that when white people get together, they might somehow be more openly honest, expressing what they really think.
“Admissions” at the Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center through April 29, 2018
Danh Vo at the Guggenheim Museum
Also tackling this theme of what is said and left unsaid is the exhibit “Take My Breath Away” by the conceptual artist Danh Vo now at the Guggenheim Museum.
Vo’s personal history is one of colonialism, war, immigration and the search for an individual’s place among world events. While his work speaks to these larger themes, it is also deeply personal.
Born in Vietnam in 1975, Vo and his family left the country four years later, first for Singapore and then Denmark, where he grew up. Later, he studied art in Copenhagen and eventual moved to Berlin where he currently lives (as well as Mexico City).
The retrospective at the Guggenheim features about 100 objects, many created especially for this exhibit. It’s a sparse show, often with a single object occupying one of the bays along the museum’s winding ramp. As you ascend and look across to the other side, the vast space can seem nearly empty and yet, there is a beauty to be found in the minimalism.
Vo’s work is about the found object and some visitors might wonder where the artistic input is to be found if they are expecting to see paintings or sculptures. What he offers instead are a series of readymades, one after the other — a typewriter, a chair, a chandelier — but each infused with meaning: The Smith Corona typewriter belonged to Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber; those disassembled chairs displayed throughout the museum belonged to Robert McNamara, former Defense Secretary and architect of the war in Vietnam; and that chandelier once hung in the ballroom where the Paris Peace Accords, that brought to an end the American war in Vietnam were signed in 1973.
In these works and others, Vo plays with absence and how even when someone is no longer there, they have still left their mark on the object, thus transforming it. These aren’t just ordinary objects, they are imbued with history and in particular, his. If there is a theme that runs through the work on view, it’s a sense of melancholy in all the quietness and absence.
This is also an exhibit where it pays to carefully read the wall labels as what’s on view often doesn’t easily explain itself. Also, doing a little research about Vo beforehand can only benefit the experience of seeing work (I recommend the most recent profile in The New Yorker). Some might see that as a drawback, but it’s worth taking a moment to understand the depths Vo is exploring.
“Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away” at the Guggenheim Museum through May 9, 2018.
The “Unseen Ocean”
Across the park from the Guggenheim, the American Museum of Natural History is also getting in on the act of making what’s hidden visible.
Its newest show, “Unseen Oceans,” illuminates what we don’t or can’t see when we look at the deep blue sea. The exhibit starts with the microscopic plankton at the bottom of the ocean’s food chain that are responsible for the nearly two-thirds of the Earth’s oxygen. Next, there are the red, green and orange fluorescent fish, turtles, sharks and eels that we can only see with the benefit of specialized filters and cameras.
Also on display are the critter cameras scientists have developed to attach to whales and jellyfish in order to better understand their behavior. There are explorations of the dark underwater canyons, like the deepest one, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, and the Hudson Canyon about 100 miles east of New York City. To explore those depths, are the submersibles that can withstand the pressure, one of which is on display along with video from their explorations.
The show also considers other topics hard to see: climate change, pollution and overfishing.
And woven throughout, are the stories of the marine scientists themselves, the unseen men and women who are exploring this frontier hiding right before our eyes, each one a role model for the kids exploring the exhibit.
“Unseen Oceans” at the American Museum of Natural History through January 6, 2019.