For the long holiday weekend, I thought I’d do a couple of things not concert related. On Friday, I caught one of the last days of an exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum, located in the Lincoln Center area. This free museum (donations always gladly accepted) is small and easy to amble through. Many of the interesting works (sorry, the exhibit is now closed) were created by artists who had been in mental or rehabilitation institutions. Quite a few of the works were incredibly detailed, and most, if not all of the artists, as far as I can remember, were self-taught. This is a great place to check out if you have a little bit of time on your hands. I’ve pretty much enjoyed every exhibit I’ve seen there.
On Saturday, I was most definitely not going to brave the long, long hours and huge, huge crowds in order to ooh and ahh for twenty to twenty-five minutes. And I was not going to fire up a grill for a burger or two, so I decided on a walking tour of outdoor art on Randall’s Island. I can easily get there via a bridge that crosses the Harlem River at 103rd Street. FLOW 2015 presented installations by five artists: Rica Takashima(El Barrio Comes in All Colors, Shapes and Sizes), Sharon Ma (hello), Nicholas Fraser (All Consuming), David Wilson (Etherwave Architecture #1), and Rob Swainston (Who Owns the Sky?). I’ve wandered FLOW in the past and found myself somewhat underwhelmed; the 2015 version broke out of that mold. All five pieces were interesting enough to hold my attention.
On Sunday, I went over to the Hudson River at 26th Street for a Waterfront Walking Tour. I missed the very beginning of the tour due to a slow cross-town bus (my brother and sister will be aghast—aghast, I tell you—to know that I was late!), but I easily caught up with the group. This was the first of many iterations of this tour, and you can check on them at the Hudson River Park website. Because it was the first tour of the season, it was slightly disorganized and scattered. As a result, I might give the tour one more try later during the summer—both to catch the entire thing and to see what kinds of improvements will have been made.
All three of my excursions were relatively short in duration, though you can always spend more time if you’d like at the Folk Museum or at FLOW. And both FLOW and the Waterfront Walking Tour can be combined with other outdoor activities since they both take place in parks. Somehow, they turned out to be just the right things for me to do as part of my long weekend.
ConcertMeister
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