On Thursday 22nd October we flew, with Mr Edes and Miss Arlington, to New York City. We were a group of 13 students, a mixture of lower and upper sixth.
This was, for at least half of the group, their first visit to New York. After a breakfast at Applejacks diner on Broadway, we visited the wonderful art gallery MoMa, which is short for Museum of Modern Art. Here we saw original Warhol screen-prints, an outstanding visiting exhibition of Picasso sculptures and some film posters from the 1950’s, collected by the film director Martin Scorsese.
We travelled to visit the famous Dakota building, one of the oldest apartment blocks overlooking Central Park. The Dakota has been home to many famous people, from Hollywood stars, presidents and, probably most well known, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived. In 1980, this was the scene where John Lennon was murdered, as he returned from a recording session with Yoko. Strawberry fields and the ‘imagine’ mosaic (a park dedicated to John Lennon) is just a five minute walk from the hotel, situated in central park.
After a hot dog lunch, we visited the stunning Guggenheim building, which was showing a retrospective exhibition on the work of Alberto Burri. This was the first time his work had ever been collected as a major show in America. His work is highly abstracted and, like Marmite, you either love his large canvases or it leaves you cold!
We finished off the day with a quick visit to the amazing Frick Collection, very different from the Guggenheim. A beautiful building with some of the finest oil paintings by English painters such as Joshua Reynolds, Turner and Gainsborough.
The next morning, we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where My Edes gave little talks on iconic American paintings by Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein. Next we jumped onto a bus taking us all the way downtown to Washington Square Park and Greenwich Village, home to the start of the careers of Bob Dylan, Beat poets and writers, to name but a few. After a delightful lunch in an Italian restaurant in Noho, we visited the 9/11 memorial and museum. This was a harrowing and emotional part of the day, to visit the scene of such destruction and death that happened in our life time was an important experience.
We changed moods with a brisk walk along The Brooklyn Bridge followed by a trip up the Empire State Building, to see New York City at night. Very romantic!
Although the trip was tiring, lots of walking, subways and buses it was worth every step, every aching muscle. There is no-where on earth like New York City. It is inspiring, dramatic, iconic, bustling and slightly crazy. We had the chance to see famous paintings, sculptures, photography, buildings and parks. We sketched and photographed the sights of the city. We ate in excellent diners, created movie scenes in central park and some of us vowed to go back and live there!
