Perhaps the apocalyptic weather which has been following me (also, see Spectacle post, July 31 2009) had taken all the positive energy and optimism out of me, but was finding it difficult to plan my visit for this week’s post.  In my state of weather-induced lassitude, little that I was considering really interested me.  I wanted something small-scale.  I did not want to go somewhere I had already been.  And I did not want to deal with any crowds.  The gallery listings looking slim, the only museum exhibit that caught my eye in New York magazine was “Reconfiguring the Body in American Art,” at the National Academy Museum.  A museum on Fifth Avenue I had never been to and which I can’t remember even ever hearing about?  Sold and sold.

I am sure I did know the museum existed, but it seems to get little press love so perhaps I had not been reminded of it lately.  And given the fact that I could count the number of visitors in the galleries with me on one hand, I am going to guess that most people have not heard of the National Academy Museum either.  [To be fair - I got there about 2 minutes after it opened - it is entirely possible that it was swamped later.]  It seems like it is unfortunately overshadowed by its other Museum Mile neighbors, quite literally – the Guggenheim is across the street.

imagine yourself a Rockefeller

A quick house history as provided by the ever-handy museum pamphlet & their website: the house was built at the turn of the century and used to be the home of philanthropist Archer M. Huntington (of railroad fortune) and his wife Anna Hyatt, a sculptor.  The house was decorated by Ogden Codman Jr., a famous interior designer who also collaborated with Edith Wharton.  It was donated in 1939 by the Huntingtons to the National Academy to be used as the institution’s home (his wife Anna was a member of the Academy).

“Reconfiguring the Body in American Art” is divided into 5 or 6 sub-sections of the theme of body in American art, and includes mainly paintings but also a good amount of sculpture and just a smattering of mixed-media and video.  The roughly chronological organization helps as guideposts, however the theme is sometimes so broad that works in one section could easily be in another.  Among all the works, highlights for me included the three sketchbooks in a display case at the beginning of the show, especially James Carroll Beckwith’s [an artist I was not familiar with].  Also the Andrew Wyeth self-portrait from 1949, and later another grouping of 4 portraits each from different artists, all made between 1985-2001.  In this group I particularly loved Wayne Thiebaud’s self-portrait as Tennis Player.  I wish the exhibit had more of these kinds of groupings which push a little more thought from the viewer.  Unfortunately photographs are not allowed in the gallery so you’ll have to Google images of the above-mentioned!

Hands down, the house is fantastic and the works are very well presented.  However I spent an hour in the exhibit and after leaving couldn’t decide (and still can’t) if I was over- or underwhelmed.  There are some spectacular works that I was happily surprised to see, either for the first time or again, like William Merritt Chase’s “The Young Orphan” (1884), Chuck Close’s self-portrait from 1988, and Kehinde Wiley’s “Design for a Stained Glass Window with Wildman II, 2007″.  And the fact that all those artists are in the same sentence here attests to the show’s great and all-encompassing variety.

National Academy street view

But then there are just so many works in this exhibit – over 150 says the pamphlet – that there were a lot that I glossed over.  Which in the end makes sense because if I really read every label thoroughly on those 150 works I would have spent the better part of my day inside.  Perhaps it is just that theme is just so broad that the show can come across like a textbook presentation of the topic.  Which sounds like a bad thing but isn’t necessarily; the lengthy captions that accompany each work are an Art History student’s dream come true.  In the end, I think I enjoyed being able to pick and choose which works I wanted to focus on.  And I was thrilled to have discovered this house [not going to lie, going down the main staircase, I imagined myself a cocktail-partying Astor or Rockefeller ... but only just for a second].

Also, relevant sidenote: I highly recommend the NYT article from earlier this week about visitors to the Louvre, how much time people really spend looking at art, and reasons for going to museums in the first place. See here.

happy travels fellow grand-tourers!