Splishing and Splashing Thru Manhattan

 

The day started of pouring raining I was praying that class would be cancelled and I could stay home in my cozy bed, sadly I was wrong approaching my group in Penn Station and seeing the look of joy on Mike’s face that all his students came out in the rain. I knew just knew my day just started and my warm bed would have to wait for me tonight. Our first stop of the day was 42^nd street Time Square. Before 1904 Times Square was known as Longacre Square and it was dominated by horse exchanges, carriage factories, stables, and blacksmiths' shops (BG, 217). In the late 70’s to 90’s Time Square was a place for drugs and prostitution, nothing like the Time Square we know today. Today Times Square is cleaner, safer, more profitable, and more visitor-friendly than it was a decade ago, with as many as 20 million tourists visiting annually (BG, 218) It is the highlight on every tourist vacation to New York you can go anywhere around the world and if you say NYC time square comes to mind.

Next on the agenda was Rockefeller Center as a child I always visited Rockefeller Center during the winter season to ice skate or watch the lights and the Christmas tree. Entering the GE I was amazed looking at the old 50^‘s feeling in the building was great. I loved the feeling of it being fancy, and high fashioned it made me feel as if I was underdressed. The painting on the ceiling was breathtaking. The painting was originally created by Diego Rivera. His artwork contained a portrait of Lenin after refusing to take Lenin out Rivera was fired and artist Josep Maria Sert was hired to finish the mural.  Sert's mural was originally called Triumph of Man's Accomplishments through Physical and Mental Labor, now it is called American Progress (BG, 249).

Museum of Modern Art, this was my first time at this museum and I was excited I heard so many good stories about MoMA and we previously visited MoMA PS1 in Long Island City. At MoMA a painting by Picasso, The Ladies of Avignon was so beautiful it was originally titled The Brothel of Avignon; it depicts 5 nude women whom were prostitutes on a street in Barcelona. My other favorite picture was Bruce Nauman Punch and Judy II Birth & Life & Sex & Death. 1985. It really caught my eye. At first I didn’t know what I was really looking at but then when I stepped back I saw all the emotion and hurt in the painting.

After leaving Manhattan we headed to Williamsburg Brooklyn. We walked towards The City Reliquary Museum and Civic Organization.  When we first turned the corner I wanted to know why we were going into a corner store. I was an interesting museum I like its location and other different types of memorabilia it offered my favorite would have to be the Yankee Stadium turnstile and the Manhattan Schist from the building of the train station line.

 Last but not least was our stop to the Brooklyn Art Library and home of the Sketchbook Project. OMG this was probably by far the coolest place I have seen. I loved the sketchbook from all over the world and ended it up in this one location every type of idea you can think of there is a scrapbook for it. Everyone is eligible to participate in the library for on 30 bucks. I think that it is just super cool. Overall the day was very nice and I enjoyed it thoroughly.