21 - 26 October 2010
“I’m in heaven,” said one student as he viewed the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum. The quality of art in New York is hard to beat. At times it felt like we were only touching the surface. When you learn there are up to 350 galleries in the Chelsea area alone and we visited maybe 20 or 30 in the morning we spent there, you realise this is a place to visit again and again. This was the Abingdon Art department’s second visit but the first for this set of Sixth formers. It was truly memorable. The boys were brilliantly well behaved and worked very hard in all the galleries and at their sketchbooks throughout the visit, drawing from the art and the city around them. The impact on their work will surely come through in the weeks and months ahead.
Our itinerary saw us visit MoMA, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and smaller commercial galleries in Chelsea, The International Centre for photography, the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim. It was in a way all too much: the astounding art of Picasso and Matisse’s work of the early C20th century, the variety of Rothko’s abstract work seen at MoMA and the Met (which makes Tate Modern’s Rothko room look paltry), the astonishing inventiveness of some of the contemporary artists we saw, will be abiding memories for me. Although, because there was so much, each person’s itinerary and story will be different.
Just as memorable is the city of New York. The YMCA is not the most luxurious of places but it is very well-placed for what we wanted to see and especially so for Central Park, and as we walked through its leafy paths on the way to the Met on Sunday morning it was hard to believe we were in one of the world’s busiest cities. On the other hand moving through Times Square on our way to an evening meal at Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Restaurant, or through the crowds of good humoured ice hockey supporters at Madison Square Garden, or around stylish shoppers on Spring Street in Soho we began to see the variety and hectic pace that is Manhattan. Other highlights included a sunset over the Hudson River and the lights of Manhattan from the top of the Rockefeller Center, playing “football” in Central Park (L6th vs UVIth) before going to the Guggenheim, seeing the original Alberto Korda photograph of Che Guevara (“Guerrillero Heroica”) at the International Centre of Photography, the concourse of Grand Central Station at night, and queuing for a bathroom at the Y.
My thanks to AJG and SM for their help, and the boys for their conduct, enthusiasm, appetite and exemplary timekeeping!
JPN
