{"id":24,"date":"2009-10-04T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-04T19:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/?p=24"},"modified":"2010-02-18T14:15:28","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T21:15:28","slug":"storm-king-art-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/storm-king-art-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Storm King Art Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mountainville, NY<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wanted to take my 12 year old nephew for a hike somewhere in the Westchester-Putnam-Rockland area, and thought that mixing it up with a bit of art might go down ok, so I proposed we go to Storm King.\u00a0 I had last been there about ten years ago and remembered enjoying it very much.\u00a0 But I’d heard that Andy Goldsworthy had built a wall there in the meantime and wanted to see that, and also to check out other new things.\u00a0 As it turned out, there was tons of new stuff and the place seemed quite a bit larger than I had remembered.\u00a0 I think I had seen on the website, but had forgotten, that Maya Lin had some works on display, but was able, just before collapsing from miles of walking, to take her stuff in.\u00a0 It turned out to be just the right combination of things for my nephew.\u00a0 Twelve is a great age – not too young to lose patience and not yet into teenage rebelliousness.<\/p>\n

After eating some subs on the lawn near the parking area, we began our five and half houir walking tour by passing the Mark di Suvero mega-sculptures.\u00a0 I’d not been all that taken with di Suvero in the past, thinking of his stuff as construction-site cop-out art of some stripe, but this time I found some real pleasure in gazing at, and walking beneath, some of the pieces.\u00a0 There is certainly a grandeur to them, and though some of them are simply, rather than evocatively, poetic, they do evoke something.\u00a0 They certainly give a good sense of why Storm King is such an interesting and special place – it would be hard to imagine appreciating an array of huge di Suvero sculptures almost anywhere else.<\/p>\n

We were pleased, along the way, to encounter Roy Lichtenstein’s cartoon covered boat stuck in one of the lakes.\u00a0 It seemed appropriately monumental – big enough to catch one’s eye and make one take notice – with its majestically humorous mermaid – but not so monumental that it seemed a waste of time and money.<\/p>\n

Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall <\/em>(1997-1998) is really wonderful.\u00a0 There’s something simple and straightforward about it, but it’s very direct and appealing and appropriate somehow.\u00a0 It speaks of walls of that sort, found in farmlands like the land Storm King is on, but in bends and wiggles in one of its halves, and descends into the pond, and creates enough diversion and humor to strike up one’s attention.\u00a0 It was quietly monumental in its own way.\u00a0 A 15 year old jumped up on it and tried to run its length and, despite the museum’s injunction against such things, it seemed appropriate.\u00a0 His mother seemed ok with it and there were no guards around to yell at him, and it seemed like he didn’t disturb any of the stones.<\/p>\n

There were lots of injunctions against walking on Maya Lin’s Wavefield<\/em>, an enormous earth sculpture, the point of which I did not quite get.\u00a0 There was a nice exhibit of her stuff in the museum building, most of it devoted to showing waves in one form or another, but, on the large scale, it did just seem like a waste of effort.\u00a0 I have been very much taken by other of Lin’s works – notably the Vietnam Veterans Memorial <\/em>and the small sculpture at Yale University devoted to the history of women there.\u00a0 Somehow this large scale wave stuff just did not speak to me.\u00a0 I like the idea of other earth works – Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty<\/em> seemed like a fun and cool idea at the time – but this one, for me, did not take off.\u00a0 Who knows – maybe in 10 years I’ll look at it differently.<\/p>\n

Other long term holdings of the museum were great\u00a0 to see again.\u00a0 The long metallic suspended\u00a0 tubes in Free Ride Home<\/em> (1974) by Kenneth Snelson had an amazing tension to them, and there was something compelling about Alexander Liberman’s three large ziti-esque works: Adam <\/em>(1970),\u00a0 Adonai <\/em>(1970-1971) and Iliad<\/em> (1975-1976).\u00a0 And, of course,\u00a0 Menashe Kadishman’s hanging hinge – Suspended <\/em>(1977) – drew not only our attention, but the photographic whims of many of our fellow attendees.\u00a0 We resisted taking the obvious staged photo of appearing to hold up the suspended piece, but finally gave in.\u00a0 After all, I was with a 12 year old, even though I was the one who wanted ultimately to take the shot.<\/p>\n

We sat for a bit in the Gazebo for Two Anarchists: Gabriella Antolini and Alberto Antolini<\/em> (1992) by <\/span>Siah Armajani <\/span>and mused, with some of our fellow museum goers about how it exhibited its anarchism.\u00a0 One of the few “interactive” works at the museum, it did allow visitors to sit in its anarchists’ seats, which, after five miles of sculpture and strolling, was most welcome.<\/p>\n

In the end, it was a wonderful day, and whetted my appetite for the next art hike.\u00a0 There is still so much open space at Storm King, it’s easy to envision it becoming an even more richly varied site as the years continue.<\/p>\n

– BADMan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mountainville, NY I wanted to take my 12 year old nephew for a hike somewhere in the Westchester-Putnam-Rockland area, and thought that mixing it up with a bit of art might go down ok, so I proposed we go to Storm King.\u00a0 I had last been there about ten years ago and remembered enjoying it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-museums","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}