Arts In The City
museum spokesperson Margot
A model of the proposed building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern
Architects, not including the upper, residential floors.
LAND FIGHT
Last week, protestors, police
helicopters and bulldozers faced off
in Harlem, all over a neighborhood
garden. A community hub since
1988, The Nuevo Esperanza
Community Garden just happens
to sit on what has become one
of the most valuable pieces of
land in the city’s portfolio, the
corner of 110th Street and Fifth
Avenue, at the northernmost tip
of Central Park. Now, the garden
is a gated lot with trampled dirt
and a security trailer, complete
with a guard on the lookout for
SPOTLIGHT
Before opening last month, the Van
Gogh and Expressionism exhibition
at the Neue Galerie was one of the
season’s most anticipated shows.
Thankfully, museum-goers have until
July 2 to check out the 80 drawings
and paintings in this exhibition, which
features highlights from the famed
Post-Impressionist’s career as well
as the German and Austrian art it
inspired. Visitors to the museum will
also have the chance to see “Adele
Bloch-Bauer I,” the Gustav Klimt
masterpiece the museum bought
last year for a record-shattering $135
million.—H.C.
10 • Resident The Week Of April 9, 2007
WEEKLY PICKS
Streeter. The museum, which
is currently based in Queens, Two shows at the
Guggenheim celebrate the
has bounced around the city
museum’s Frank Lloyd
throughout much of its 22-year
Wright-designed home,
history, and will now have a home which will celebrate
at the end of Museum Mile. The its 50th anniversary
museum is the first to be added to in 2009. “Frank Lloyd
the famed cultural corridor since Wright’s Guggenheim
the Guggenheim was built in 1959. Museum: Restoring
But what really has neighbors upset a Masterpiece” runs
AP Photo/Tina Fineberg
is the 19-story residential building through July 8, and the
going up above the museum, accompanying “The
luxury condos developed, they Shapes of Space” will
be on display through
feel, without the community in
Sept. 5. The second
mind. “What we’re losing is a sense
exhibition explores
of community,” said Anthony how artists – including
Bowman, the garden’s president. Pipolotti Rist, Rirkrit
trespassers. Trespassers like the “A community garden is a place Tiravanija and Piotr
activists from More Gardens! who where everyone in the community Uklanski – have dealt
art & architecture
had been encamped in the garden can learn from each other. It’s a with the representation,
since January, in an attempt to halt place where urban children can creation and division of
construction. Harlem, which has learn that tomatoes don’t come space over the last 100
lagged behind the rest of the city’s from a grocery store.” Bowman, years. guggenheim.org
development boom, is catching up has worked with the garden since
and the plot – the last undeveloped 1992, and has seen the impact
piece of park-front property on it has had on the neighborhood. The Eifman Ballet
Fifth Avenue – is slated to become “In 1988, that corner was a crack of St. Petersberg
begins its three-week
the new, permanent home of the corner. It was a dumping ground;
season in New York to
Museum for African Art. “I think it had been an old gas station and
celebrate the corps’ 30th
the notion of the museum between some of the neighbors went and anniversary. At the New
the East Harlem community and started cleaning it up. We took back York City Center April
the rest of the East Side is one that the corner, took the drug dealers 13 – 29. nycitycenter.org
dance
we feel really strongly about,” said out,” said Bowman. “And so the
people that built the community
got pushed out. We can see it Singer Art Garfunkel
community to community, but we brings his solo take on
can really see it here in Harlem.” 20th-century standards
—H.C. for Jazz at Lincoln
Center, April 13 and 14.
DINNER THEATER lincolncenter.org
music
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Theater buffs and foodies alike will
have something to smile about on
Acclaimed actor Kevin
April 16, when some of the city’s
Spacey returns to the
top chefs and theater stars team New York stage with
up to support The Play Company the Eugene O’Neill
at the fourth annual Cabaret play “A Moon for the
Gourmet gala at the Lower East Misbegotten,” imported
Side’s Angel Orensanz Foundation. – cast and all – from
Expect performance by Tony- London. At the Brooks
nominated actor Malcolm Gets Atkinson Theatre
Vincent van Gogh, through June 10.
“Self-Portrait,” 1889. and food by Gramercy Tavern’s
theater
Nancy Olson, plus many more
food-inspired acts.—H.C.