Summer Culture Preview: Must-See Art

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we have another guest in our pledge drive, summer fun series to point us to great things to see and do this summer. We're wrapping up the show each day during the drive with a little summer arts and culture. Preview today, none other than Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine, senior art critic, joining us to talk about some art, to see indoors and out and about. Hey, Jerry, welcome back to WNYC.

Jerry Saltz: Hey, Brian, great to be with you. I love WNYC and I made my inflation donation. It hurt, but I feel really good about it, so carry on the great work.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for the nice word. Maybe we should start with a piece of public art that's been in the news, The Portal, which is set up next to the Flatiron Building 23rd and Broadway. What is it and why have they had to make some adjustments to it already?

Jerry Saltz: Well, I went there yesterday to look at it and it was operating. Think of it this way, a giant public Zoom meeting. You're looking at a screen, you're seeing live feed of Dublin, Ireland, and then they're seeing you. What's really happening is people doing a lot of waving. I don't have to tell you that New York being pretty much out there, a woman started flashing her breasts the other day and the whole thing had to be shut down. Now there is a guard there, there's very careful inspections made, but you can go and have fun. I recommend maybe trying to write a play with somebody. Do something bizarre other than just wave, but it's a hoot.

Brian Lehrer: In Ireland, people wave with their hands, in New York, you never know what they're going to wave with? Is summer a particularly good time for fun art? Like that giant hot dog that's there in Times Square now?

Jerry Saltz: Well, don't forget that New York is free outside, so yes. Right now, if you go to Times Square, you're going to get this giant 65-foot-long massive hot dog. It's mounted, so it raises up and then it'll spit out a bunch of confetti stuff on everybody. Again, I would say it's less than good art or less than great art and much more participatory fun. That just shows that art is an all-volunteer army. That art is for anyone. It's just not for everyone. That art may be the most advanced operating system our species has ever developed to examine consciousness, the seen and the unseen world. In these cases you have a giant Zoom meeting and a giant hot dog and have fun with it.

Brian Lehrer: Art is an all-volunteer army. Love that. Any other outdoor installations that you would point to around town this summer real quick, or if they say, all the world's a stage, is all the city a canvas?

Jerry Saltz: I guess I would say, let's get into the liminal space between indoors and outdoors and look at this magnificent met rooftop sculpture by, Petrit Halilaj. It is a large-scale outdoor installation on the roof of the Met of Graffiti that the Kosovo-born artist saw while he was growing up. It was Albanian Graffiti and there's spiders, there's words, there's scrolls.

The point is that it is painful because anybody that remembers this struggle will remember that there was war going on when he was growing up, and it is large and it is beautiful, and you have some of the very best views of the city on earth. Take a selfie with the art, take a selfie with the city, have cocktails, have some fun. Downstairs at the Met, I want to really stress, there's a brand new installation of Socratic sculpture.

This is some of the most profoundly peaceful, poised, simple proto, proto modernist sculpture ever made about 7,000 years ago. These were burial objects, they're small, super, super simplified, paired-down stone sculptures. Go and be redeemed and stand in their grace. It's in the first gallery on the inside of the Greek and Roman wing. Do not miss it.

Brian Lehrer: Awesome to know about that. In our last minute or so, Jerry, is there a strategy generally for museums when it comes to summer programming? Do they see this as a time when tourists abound and put on big shows or when New Yorkers head to the beaches and they put more emphasis on fall and spring for the localists?

Jerry Saltz: I guess it used to be that way, Brian, but now the art world never sleeps. The way New York never sleeps the art world is going all the time. No matter when you come here, you're going to have a ball and be challenged. Right now there at MMA, there's a tremendous activist photography installation by LaToya Ruby Frazier who documents her own lupus and The drinking water crisis in Flint and car factories closing down on the one hand and on the other, you could go to the galleries and see a superstar like Maurizio Cattelan who riddled a gold-plated wall with 25,000 bullets where you stand and you look at yourself reflected. Of course, it's at Larry Gagosian and on 21st Street, so I don't have to tell you that the sculpture costs millions of dollars-

Brian Lehrer: That's going to have to be-

Jerry Saltz: The paradox never stops.

Brian Lehrer: With the paradox, we love paradoxes on this show. We leave it there for today with Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine, senior art critic and author of How to Be an Artist. Jerry, thank you so much.

Jerry Saltz: Thank you. Keep up the great work.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks so much for saying that. Listeners, the great work on all of it continues after the news. Health Reporter, Melissa Dahl on the decision to quit therapy. Author Claire Messud on her latest novel, This Strange Eventful History, Meredith Scardino, creator of the Netflix comedy show, Girls5eva, and more on all of it, right after the latest news.

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