The Jazz Age at the Cooper Hewitt

Monday morning Christian and I headed off to the Cooper Hewitt Museum to see the exhibit The Jazz Age.

Here's more about it:

The first major museum exhibition to focus on American taste during the creative explosion of the 1920s, The Jazz Age is a multi-media experience of more than 400 examples of interior design, industrial design, decorative art, jewelry, fashion, and architecture, as well as related music and film. Giving full expression to the decade’s diversity and dynamism, The Jazz Age defines the American spirit of the period.

During the 1920s, the influences that fueled design’s burst of innovation, exoticism, and modernity were manifold and flowed back and forth across the Atlantic. Jazz music, a uniquely American art form, also found a ready audience in Europe. An apt metaphor for the decade’s embrace of urbanity and experimentation, jazz captured the pulse and rich mixture of cultures and rhythms that brought a new beat to contemporary life.

Organized into the themes of Persistence of Traditional “Good Taste,” A New Look for Familiar Forms, Bending the Rules, A Smaller World, Abstraction and Reinvention, and Toward a Machine Age and presented on two floors of the museum, The Jazz Age highlights the dynamic changes in American taste and lifestyles that prompted an outpouring of design and heralded an exhilarating new era.

The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s is co-organized by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Where possible I've included information on the particular piece in the photo.

Armoire, ca. 1926

This is a Armoire. It was manufactured by Company of Mastercraftsmen and retailed by W. and J. Sloane.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
It is dated ca. 1926. Its medium is thuyawood, mahogany, satinwood, plastic, ebony.

In 1926 recent acquisitions of Ruhlmann furniture were displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Company of Master Craftsmen used these new pieces as inspiration to adapt high-style French designs to American tastes, in sizes appropriate for apartment living.

Covered Jar, Clochettes Mauves, 1931

This is a Covered jar, Clochettes mauves. It was designed by Henri Rapin and produced by Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory and decorated by Agnes Moreau-Jouin.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from The Cleveland Museum of Art as part of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
It is dated 1931. Its medium is porcelain with colored pâte-sur-pâte, glazes, and gilding.

While this jar's form is based on that of a traditional Chinese ginger jar, its decoration resembles the oversized flower and leaf textiles patterns of Raoul Dufy. This form was introduced at the Sèvres factory in 1925, and the Clochettes Mauves pattern is listed in the Sèvres archives as the twelfth project approved in 1929.

This is a mirror. It was designed by Paul Fehér and made by Rose Iron Works Collections, LLC.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It has been able to spend time at the museum on loan from Rose Iron Works Collections, LLC.
It is dated ca. 1930. Its medium is wrought iron, brass, silver, gold plating, glass.

This monumental wrought-iron console and mirror won top prize at the 1931 May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, though it remained unsold in the Rose Iron Works studio as the Depression took hold.

Console Table, ca. 1930

This is a console table. It was designed by Paul Fehér and made by Rose Iron Works Collections, LLC.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Rose Iron Works Collections, LLC as part of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
It is dated ca. 1930. Its medium is wrought iron, brass, glass.

This monumental wrought-iron console and mirror won top prize at the 1931 May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, though it remained unsold in the Rose Iron Works studio as the Depression took hold.

More of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s athe Cooper Hewitt

Painting, View of the Chrysler Building, 1933

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Museum of the City of New York as part of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
It is dated 1933. Its medium is oil on canvas.

The Chrysler Building appears as a beacon of light above humble buildings as a paean to the glories of the pre-Crash skyscraper.

Tea And Coffee Service, Rhythm, 1929

This is a Tea and Coffee Service. It was designed by Percy B. Ball and manufactured by R. Wallace & Sons Manufacturing Company.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Dallas Museum of Art as part of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
It is dated 1929. Its medium is silver, plastic.

Born near Birmingham, England, Percy Ball immigrated with his family to Providence, Rhode Island. From 1893 Ball worked at Gorham while studying painting. His career included work for major American silver manufacturers such as Wallace, for whom this Rhythm pattern was a modern departure in its attenuated lines and plastic accents.

This is a chandelier. It was designed by William Hunt Diederich.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from The Newark Museum as part of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
It is dated ca. 1925. Its medium is cut steel and wrought iron.

Diederich modernized the silhouette in domestic ironwork, adding American folk art elements to produce stylized representations, often of animals.

Cubic Coffee Service, 1927

This is a Cubic Coffee service. It was designed by Erik Magnussen and manufactured by Gorham Manufacturing Company.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It has been able to spend time at the museum on loan from Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design.
It is dated 1927. Its medium is silver with gilding and ivory.

Erik Magnussen’s Cubic coffee service for Gorham is radically different from the more traditional work he produced independently. Introduced in November 1927 as “The Lights and Shadows of Manhattan,” the set visually connects to skyscraper furniture and objects produced that year.

More from the Cooper Hewitt

One of my favorite pieces that I saw. More about it:

This is a Door with handle. It was designed by Seraphin Soudbinine and executor: Jean Dunand. It is dated 1925–26 and we acquired it in 1950. Its medium is carved, joined, and lacquered wood, eggshell, mother-of-pearl, gold leaf, cast bronze. It is a part of the Product Design and Decorative Arts department.

Having purchased a house on the North Shore of Long Island in 1924, Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Guggenheim sought decorating help from their young British friend Rowland Burdon-Miller. At his recommendation, they commissioned doors and screens from Jean Dunand, the great French master of lacquer, and Séraphin Soudbinine, a Russian émigré and French sculptor—possibly the patrons’ first modern art commission.

This is a Elephant Vase. It was designed by Emile Gallé and manufactured by Etablissement Gallé.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Museum of Fine Arts, Houston as part of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
It is dated 1918–31. Its medium is molded, carved and overlaid glass.

Artisans in the workshops of Émile Gallé and Daum Frères often chose naturalistic motifs depicting wild animals such as the elephants and gazelles carved on these examples from the 1920s.

Actaeon, 1925

Actaeon, one of a pair with Diana (conceived a few years earlier), reflects Paul Manship’s admiration for classical antiquity as a source for modern interpretation. The fluidity and movement in Manship’s work belie the density of the bronze. This work captures a climactic moment of transformation, as Actaeon has just been hit by Diana’s arrow, which is turning him into a stag.

Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the Magic Pen

Such an amazing museum.

Such a great idea the interactive pen.

Here's more about the pen:

The new interactive Pen further enhances the your experience by letting you “collect” and “save” objects from around the galleries. Carry it in your hand tethered with a convenient wrist strap—it is always ready when you need it.

You receive your Pen with your admission ticket which contains a dedicated web address corresponding to your visit. To collect objects, simply press the flat end of the Pen to any museum label. Transfer your collections to the interactive tables to explore them in more detail or add more objects. At home or on your mobile device visit cooperhewitt.org/you and enter the code printed on your ticket—everything you collected and created will be waiting for you! Come back to the museum and keep building your collection, or share it with your friends.

And how it was developed:

Asked by Cooper Hewitt to come up with a visitor technology that emphasized play and spoke to the specificities of a design museum, the concept for the Pen originated from Local Projects working with Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Pen was pitched as a way to invite visitors to learn about design by designing themselves. Beyond working as a tool for drawing, it would encourage visitors to engage with the works on view in the museum, rather than looking at them through the small screen of the more traditional approach of a ‘museum App’.

The Pen combines two main technologies. Its interface with the interactive tables employs the sort of conductive materials common to touchscreen styli. Its interface with the object labels employs near-field communication technology. A sensor in the end of the Pen reads the information on small NFC tags embedded in the object labels. This information is stored in the Pen’s onboard memory and can be read at the interactive tables.

Using the large, ultra-high-definition screens on tables designed by Ideum, visitors may explore and manipulate the objects they have collected, discover related objects in Cooper Hewitt’s collection, retrieve contextual information, learn more about designers, design processes and materials, watch and share videos and even sketch their own designs.

 I've gone back several times to look at what I really liked. Most of the pictures I post will include those items as well.

What a great edition to a visit.

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS — Broadway Bares Fundraiser

Each year Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS puts on Broadway Bares which is made up of the dancers and singers from many of the shows on Broadway. It is a review and has an overall theme. This year it was Strip U. More about the show:

A spirited audience of thousands went back to campus with stripped-down collegians who offered a sexy lacrosse scrimmage, a Pavlovian psychology experiment, a pumped-up pep rally and a fierce feminist studies class at Broadway Bares: Strip U, this year’s edition of the annual highly choreographed, highly produced striptease spectacular.

Produced by and benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Broadway Bares: Strip U raised $1,568,114 in two performances on June 18, 2017, at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom.

Stripathon, the online fundraiser led by the show’s cast and crew, raised a jaw-dropping and record-breaking $686,135 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, marking the second year in a row and only second time in Broadway Bares history Stripathon was the single largest contributor to the grand total.

This year’s Broadway Bares stripped away the fears of freshmen and saluted seniors as a journey across the Strip U campus took us to a seductive observatory, exploding chemistry lab, flirty fine arts class, frat party-turned-Greek god fantasy, a lesson in stiletto strutting and Havana, Cuba, for a sizzling semester studying abroad.

Two-time Tony Award nominee and seven-time Emmy winner Allison Janney started the show with a video invitation as Strip U‘s president, offering sexy salutations, a campus history and words of wisdom: “Our motto reminds us of our core values every day: Honorem, Integritas, Nuditas, Erectus.”

Here's more about Broadway Cares:

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS helps men, women and children across the country and across the street receive lifesaving medications, health care, nutritious meals, counseling and emergency financial assistance.

We are one of the nation’s leading industry-based, nonprofit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. By drawing upon the talents, resources and generosity of the American theatre community, since 1988 Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS has raised more than $285 million for essential services for people with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington DC.

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is the major supporter of essential social service programs at The Actors Fund, including the HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative and the Al Hirschfeld Free Health Clinic. We also award annual grants to more than 450 AIDS and family service organizations nationwide.

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS began as two separate organizations.

Equity Fights AIDS was founded in October 1987 by the Council of Actors’ Equity Association. Money raised through the efforts of Equity theatre companies across the country was specifically earmarked for The Actors Fund’s HIV/AIDS Initiative.

Broadway Cares was founded in February 1988 by members of The Producers’ Group. Money raised was awarded to AIDS service organizations nationwide, including Equity Fights AIDS.

In May 1992, Equity Fights AIDS and Broadway Cares merged to become Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The Board of Trustees of this newly established not-for-profit fundraising organization assumed the missions of the previously separate organizations.

Unlike most other nonprofit, grant-making organizations, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS must raise every dollar of our philanthropic budget each year in order to fulfill our mission. In turn, BC/EFA works hard to ensure that the money we raise is spent carefully and wisely on programs where these hard-earned funds can have the maximum possible impact.

It is incredibly high energy. It includes several aerial acts. We were right by the stage and it was fantastic.

At the end of the show all the participants come on stage. After speeches by the organizers they have rotation. Rotation is where the audience gets to tip the performers. After a certain amount of time the performers rotate which means they move to another part of the stage.

Here's rotation is full swing.

Saturday and Sunday Shows in New York City — Kinky Boots and War Paint

When you have lots to post it sometimes takes a while to get things up. And my cold set me back a few days. Also I was going to post yesterday but didn't get around to it.

So here are the shows from Saturday and Sunday.

After Groundhog Day I went back to TKTS and got a ticket to see Kinky Boots. I'd talk to several people about while standing in line earlier in the day. I've seen Kinky Boots before but it is a really good show. It's very fun and the music is great and it's very uplifting. I decided I would see that.

It was as delightful as I remembered it. I went out of the theater humming the songs. I wondered around some then headed off to bed.

I'll have more on Sunday morning but on to War Paint. I did get in line at the TKTS booth and got tickets for War Paint. Christian's bus arrived a little late but we had time for a quick bite and then headed to the theater.
 

Here's a little more about War Paint:

The pairing of Tony Award winners Christine Ebersole and Patti LuPone as rival cosmetics pioneers Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein in War Paint is more than a chance for Broadway audiences to witness onstage diva dramatics. For the show’s writers and its stars, it’s an opportunity to examine the American Dream from a female perspective.

“They were immigrants that came to America to live the American Dream,” explains LuPone, who stars as the Polish-born Rubinstein. Both Arden and Rubinstein arrived in the U.S. and began their businesses before women were granted the right to vote.

It was Arden—who herself marched with suffragettes in New York City—who helped bring lipstick into common usage by giving free samples to suffragettes.

“The only women who were wearing makeup at the time were actresses and prostitutes, and so they actually brought it into common usage,” says the show’s book writer, Doug Wright. “These two women legitimized makeup.”

“These women defied statistics, they defied culture even before feminism and before women’s lib,” says Ebersole, who stars as Canadian-born Arden.

“They forged a culture,” LuPone interjects.

In an era where business was purely a man’s world, Arden and Rubinstein revolutionized the female marketplace and ran global brands—brands that survived the Depression and two World Wars. “They both had to make tremendous sacrifices being female CEOs of companies that bore their name in a time when it really was a man’s club,” says War Paint composer Scott Frankel. “Glass ceilings aside, with the recent election, there’s still a lot of frisson on that topic.”

In the current U.S. political climate, War Paint—title alone—takes on a deeper resonance. Frankel asks, “How much have women achieved? Is there true parity with men, and how much is the fight still very relevant today?”

“It has been cathartic to write strong, unapologetic, forward-thinking women,” says Wright. “And to hear them from the stage has been deeply galvanizing, and I think we need to hear them more than ever in this cultural moment. It’s been a wonderful way of celebrating two female pioneers at a moment when we are learning we have a great distance to travel as far as women’s issues go.”

Here's part of a review from Entertainment Weekly:

The claws are out in War Paint — and boy, are they perfectly lacquered. This new Michael Greif-directed musical stars Tony dynamos Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole as self-made beauty moguls Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, respectively. The two were ruthless rivals throughout their 50-plus-year career — Arden the blonde, silky, cotton candy–pink counterpoint to Rubenstein’s exotic, art-deco-clad Pole. Playing this pair, Ebersole and LuPone are nothing short of flawless.

One of the best scenes is the finale: an invention of the authors, in which Rubinstein and Arden finally meet for the first time ever while in a green room before a speaking engagement. Years have passed — both women walk a bit slower; Arden carries a cane — and after huffs and puffs, in their own way, the moguls come to an understanding. They compare lipstick application tips, admit to — gasp! — admiring each other’s products, and finally sing in unison, questioning whether they helped to free or enslave women.

War Paint isn’t perfect, but it’s a thing of beauty for sure. A-

I really enjoyed the show. Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole were just amazing. Each bringing depth to their characters. It was also amazing to think what these women did in the times that they lived. Both were way before their time. A woman running a company. It's practically unheard of today let alone in the 1920s. In all a very enjoyable show.

Groundhog Day

What a fun fun show.

I'd seen the movie many years ago and wondered how they would pull this off. They did a really good job. It was interesting to see how they would get Phil back into bed to start the day off. There was only one time that I really saw them do it. All the other times I was just as surprised as everyone else.

This was what was projected on the curtain before the start of the show. They were great.

Here's part of a review of the show from Entertainment Weekly:

Spectacle is fine, but none of it much matters if the basics of the show don’t work. Thankfully, they do. Beautifully. Once you’ve made peace with the Murraylessness of the evening, Groundhog Day manages to hold onto everything that made Harold Ramis’ movie such a classic and adds songs bound to become nearly as memorable. Karl’s first real number, “Small Town, USA”, a swipe at provincial burgs (including, no doubt, many that the tourist-heavy audience hail from) is a bitter little cookie. The country-western tune “Nobody Cares,” performed by Karl along with the town’s resident pair of dim-bulb drunks, Andrew Call’s Gus and Raymond J. Lee’s Ralph, is a honkytonk hoot. And the second act’s “Playing Nancy” sung by Phil’s one-night-stand floozy (Rebecca Faulkenberry) and “Night Will Come,” sung by John Sanders’ Ned Ryerson, the annoyingly pushy insurance salesman who hounds Phil (Bing!), adds some three-hankie sentimentality to a story that previously never had much use for it. And in “One Day,” Barrett Doss’ Rita becomes a more three-dimensional character than Andie MacDowell had to work with in the film.

Theater, of course, is all about repetition. During a show’s run, every performance can take on a same-iness with only minor nightly variations. You could even say that the long run of a show may end up feeling a bit like Groundhog Day to its actors. But thanks to Karl’s undeniable star power, charisma, and quicksilver stage presence (how does he keep managing to make his way back into that bed without the audience seeing?), Groundhog Day: The Musical soars. It’s a show about déjà vu that I suspect will feel totally fresh and new every night.

 Andy Karl is just great as Phil. He really pulls off the transformation from a jerk to a really great person very well. It is a believable change as he starts look at the lives of the people around him and how he can help those lives be better.

Here are a couple of pictures of the cast coming out to sign autographs.

Andy Karl on the left and his co-star Barrett Doss on the right.

A Parade Down 6th Avenue?

I'm not entirely sure what this was. 6th Avenue was blocked off for a far as you could see. On 44th and 45th Street were staging areas for what looked like a parade. One was for Vietnam and the other was for Albania. Yes Albania. But, as far as I could tell, these were the only two groups taking part. I didn't stick around to see the parade. I needed to get something to eat before I headed out to my show.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Across the street from the Center is St. Patrick's Cathedral and that's where I went next.

It was still early in the morning, a little after 7, so there were not many people there. For some reason it made the cathedral even more impressive.

More about it:

The story of New York’s great cathedral mirrors the story of the city itself. Created to affirm the ascendance of religious freedom and tolerance, St. Patrick’s Cathedral was built in the democratic spirit, paid for not only by the contributions of thousands of poor immigrants but also by the largesse of 103 prominent citizens who pledged $1,000 each. St. Patrick’s Cathedral proves the maxim that no generation builds a cathedral. It is rather, a kind of ongoing conversation linking generations past, present and future.

The cornerstone of St. Patrick’s Cathedral was laid in 1858 and her doors swept open in 1879. It was over 150 years ago when Archbishop John Hughes announced his inspired ambition to build the “new” St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

In a ceremony at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Archbishop Hughes proposed “for the glory of Almighty God, for the honor of the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin, for the exaltation of Holy Mother Church, for the dignity of our ancient and glorious Catholic name, to erect a Cathedral in the City of New York that may be worthy of our increasing numbers, intelligence, and wealth as a religious community, and at all events, worthy as a public architectural monument, of the present and prospective crowns of this metropolis of the American continent.”

Ridiculed as “Hughes’ Folly,” as the proposed, near-wilderness site was considered too far outside the city, Archbishop Hughes, nonetheless, persisted in his daring vision of building the most beautiful Gothic Cathedral in the New World in what he believed would one day be “the heart of the city.” Neither the bloodshed of the Civil War nor the resultant lack of manpower or funds would derail the ultimate fulfillment of Hughes’ dream and architect, James Renwick’s bold plan.