Museum Mile Festival

On Tuesday I went to the Museum Mile Festival with my friend I hadn't seen in 2 years (we took dance classes together for years throughout school and have collectively worn approximately 22,000 sequins). From 6-9pm various museums had free entry and sponsored activities both inside the museums and outside of Central Park. Unfortunately the weather on Tuesday was pretty stormy but this didn't stop swarms of people from lining up to get into the participating museums. The line to get into the Guggenheim Museum was about 2 city blocks long which wouldn't have been so bad but some dude kept repeatedly hitting me in the head with his umbrella. Clearly I love festivals that involve waiting in line for long amounts of time with unpleasant people (i.e. The Great Googa Mooga Festival where I waited ~1 hour for a drink, 45 min for a chicken sandwich, and an indefinite amount of time to regain my sanity).

“Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949-1960” 

The highlight of my Museum Mile Festival experience was visiting the Guggenheim Museum. I do have to admit that I'm more than a little biased, having interned there not once but two times (because in addition to my clear passion for waiting in long lines, I also just love being a perpetual intern). I'm definitely really into the contrast of awesome architecture + well curated art exhibitions. Also I totally got yelled at for taking some of the pictures above. What I lack in delinquency and lawlessness IRL, I apparently make up for as soon as I enter a museum. My brazen art student snobbishness immediately sets in and to the dismay of the museum guards I can be found justifying my behavior by loudly declaring "What Would Alexander Brener Do?!"

Kehinde Wiley, Kalkidan Mashasha (The World Stage: Israel), 2011, oil and gold enamel on canvas. Private Collection. © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California.

Hands down, my favorite works of art that I saw at the Museum Mile Festival were Kehinde Wiley's paintings at the Jewish Museum. I'm just a Kehinde Wiley superfan. Ever since seeing his work at the Brooklyn Museum I can't stop loving him. Everything is just so elaborate and decorative and AWESOME. His paintings are large and in charge and it's great to be able to get up close to appreciate the crazy detail of his backgrounds and the realism of his models. I want to kiss his paintings. If I was an objectum sexualist, we'd be Facebook official.

Other notable parts of the Museum Mile Festival: Lots of adorable old people, "Women's Work" at the National Academy Museum, getting shut out of the Neue Galerie at 7:55pm (What else should I expect from baby haters? JK but not really...), live music at the National Academy and outside the Guggenheim, big crowds making me feel claustrophobic, coming down with museum fatigue, and of course, getting to see art at world-renowned museums for free.