The Rubin Museum and West 17th Street between 6th and 7th Avenue

I get the sense that the Rubin Museum in the Chelsea neighborhood is not very well known, even among local New Yorkers. I had never even heard of it until a few years ago. Now, however, it is one of my favorite museums and I consider it a great little secret of the city. 

The Rubin features mostly Eastern religious art, especially from the Himalayan region. Some of its exhibits change from time to time but the permanent areas include religious statues, scrolls, carvings, and more. For example here is a sculpture from the 7th century (!):

The museum has required admission fees, which isn't as good as the suggested fees of places like the Met and Natural History Museum. But there are various discounts available at certain times, and also you can get in for free if you have a city university id, which is not mentioned on their website.  

There are 6 floors but each one is small and basically just a short circular walk around the building's center spiral staircase. Here is the center area at the top floor:

And a view up from the ground floor!

And from a middle floor!

I think I've made my point that there's a center spiral staircase. 

A recent visit to the Rubin began at the 6th floor, because hey why not take the elevator to the top and then work our way down?

This strategy led to a shaky start to the visit, at least for me personally, because the exhibit up there was very avant-garde and not typical of the rest of the museum's sensibility. I'm open to many different kinds of art but this wasn't doing it for me, perhaps especially because I was in the mindset of seeing more of what the Rubin typically has to offer in terms of older Eastern religious works. 

Here is one piece from this exhibit, which had the top head continuously spinning and the knife-tongues almost touching at one point:

This was actually one of the tamer works in the exhibit. No offense to the artist but I'll move on to other areas now. 

There was an interesting exhibit that explored the rainy season in Nepal and how important it is to annual cycles of life there.

Most of the rest of the floors, however, featured the religious art that I associate with this museum. Here are some looks:

There were some interesting figures with rather intimidating expressions:

One of the floors had a shrine room with many elaborate figures and objects. Here is a portion of it:

Here are a few more looks around the floors:

You can see in the photos that the museum is not generally very crowded, to say the least. That makes it even nicer to visit, along with it being small and well air-conditioned (I'm assuming it's properly heated in the winter as well).

At the ground level there is a gift shop and a very pleasant cafe area, along with stairs leading to a lower level with a few more works of art. Here is an out of focus photo from the stairs, with the cafe to the right and the gift shop to the left:

The gift shop has lots of cool little items. For some reason I only took a photo of a small corner of it:

But don't worry, the shop also has incense and religious and spiritual books and much more. 

I didn't have anything at the cafe but it had a nice menu and seemed high-quality:

The lower area was small but very nice and had an exhibit on Cuban art. I guess that breaks with the Eastern/Himalayan theme but it still looked interesting.

I was excited to see this info on the wall that the lower level does not require admission, and it turns out that the same goes for the cafe and gift shop areas as well. 

That makes the ground floor and lower level a really nice and quiet place to stop in for a while, whether for a bite or beverage in the cafe or to relax in the lower level where there generally seem to be very few people. It's kind of like a hidden public library that has good air-conditioning and more space to spread out. Nice. I'm hesitant to even share this information but I'm not worried because my blog shares the characteristic of not being very well known. 

Let's take a brief look at some more of the block besides the Rubin Museum. Nearby is a Housing Works Thrift Shop:

Housing Works is a non-profit organization that particularly focuses on fighting HIV/AIDS and homelessness. 

Closer to 6th Avenue is also the Angel Street Thrift Shop, with the blue awning:

Just to the right of that is a church, and then a private school called Winston Preparatory School:

And to the left of the thrift shop is a florist and a psychic:

This block has a lot of range. 

At the 6th Avenue corner is a parking lot and a T-Mobile store.

Admittedly these are not very exciting, but in the parking lot is a big and interesting work of art:

I think he's writing 'I heart NY parking lots.' So do I.

Also near 6th Avenue is a row of three restaurants: an Italian place called Da Umberto, Haven's Kitchen which is also a cooking school, and Serenata which serves Mexican food.

I think that covers most of the block. It's a very pleasant street to walk down, and the Rubin Museum is worth visiting for its interesting art and chance to escape the harsher weather of the city in a quiet place that isn't crowded. It's hard to beat that, even if you want to avoid the admission and just hang out at the cafe and lower level. 


Until next time, thanks for reading.

LinkNYC and Chelsea street art: 8th Avenue between 20th and 21st Street

This block in the Chelsea neighborhood is bookended on either side by street art. At 20th Street is a piece by Dasic Fernandez, whose work I previously came across at St. Mark's between 1st Avenue and Avenue A in the East Village. Here is his art on this Chelsea block:

You can see how talented he is. On his Instagram account he posted a photo of this work about 17 weeks ago, so I'm assuming he did it around that time. 

On the 21st Street side of our block is this work by Case Maclaim, an artist from Frankfurt, Germany:

His real name is Andreas von Chrzanowski. On his Instagram account he posted a photo of this work 28 weeks ago and wrote:

case_maclaimthey make you walk | they make you stumble | they make you fall

My first Manhattan wall is brought to you by the Bushwickcollective. Thank you so much @thebushwickcollective and @montanacans @montanacans_usa for all the love and support #thisfamilyofmineisgettingbiggerandbigger #bushwickcollective #montanacans #chelsea #manhattan #streetart #nyc #case_maclaim #powerofmovement

That was a lot of hashtags. He thanks the Bushwick Collective, which was also mentioned in the previous Dasic Fernandez work that I saw in the East Village. 

It's nice to be able to just walk around and see great art on the streets that is thoughtful and interesting to look at. 

This block also features a Link, which is part of a city kiosk program that has been replacing payphones in the city starting in January 2016:

Each LinkNYC kiosk includes Wi-Fi internet, USB phone charging, internet browsing, and phone service to anywhere in the country, all for free. At the top of the kiosk it says 'beta,' indicating that the program is at an early phase where people can use them and provide feedback. 

The city's website for LinkNYC says that they plan to install over 7,500 of them throughout the 5 boroughs during "the next several years." That would be very cool and I hope the program works, it seems like it would make the city more hi-tech and improve quality of life. They are completely paid for through advertising. 

Here's the area on the side of the kiosk that offers the services I mentioned and others:

Here's me successfully charging my phone:

I also tried browsing the internet and it worked very well.

Near this kiosk, on a little area between the bike path and street, is a patch of land with a nice tree and flowers:

Every little bit of nature in the city helps.  

There are two 'adult entertainment' stores on the block, which seem left over from previous, seedier decades in the city. 

And for balance there is also a Salvation Army thrift store on the block. One entrance is only for donations, and the other is for store browsing and whatnot.

Of course this wouldn't be a New York City block without several food options. What are you in the mood for? Italian? Thai? Mexican?

You can see that the Mexican restaurant, Temerario, shares a wall with the Dasic Fernandez artwork.

If you haven't found the right type of cuisine yet, the other side of the street has Chinese food, pizza, and a grocery store.

Oh, and a diner type of place called The Dish.

There are also some nice buildings on the block that have the look of classic New York apartments:

I think that wraps it up from this Chelsea block. I enjoyed the street art and learning about the LinkNYC program, which I hope will be a big success.

P.S. - Here are a couple of examples of the political mood that has come over much of New York in the lead-up to the primary votes. The focus in much of lower Manhattan will naturally tend towards the Democratic side, first in this Hillary Clinton-inspired car I saw parked on 7th Avenue at West 11th Street:

The Hill Car was decorated by the Bisbee, Arizona artist Gretchen Baer, originally for the 2008 election season. 

You may be able to see the phrase Border Bedazzlers in the above photo, which is another project that Baer is involved in, where people go to the Mexico side of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and paint and decorate it to bring people together and beautify the otherwise drab-looking wall. 

Here's a look at the front of the car:

This past Saturday afternoon I was near Astor Place and came across a pro-Bernie Sanders rally marching up Lafayette Street and eventually making its way to Union Square at 14th Street. 

Here were some marchers near Astor Place:

Then in between Astor Place and Union Square on 4th Avenue:

And then after they turned left at 14th Street and were walking to Union Square:

I suppose all the political fervor will die down a bit after the primary voting, at least until the general election heats up in the fall, that is.