Places: The Museum at Eldridge Street, NY

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Elsewhere in NYC: The Museum at Eldridge Street

Contributed by Rita Shpilsky

Elsewhere in NYC: the Museum at Eldridge Street
Inside the Museum at Eldridge Street; image source eldridgestreet.org

Have you ever been to a place that magically transports you to a fairytale not just by its architectural beauty and history but by the magic of light and spirituality? Surely every normal person used to dream about that type of place as a kid, but it’s almost impossible to find it when you are getting older. The Museum at Eldridge Street became such a place for me the minute I made my first step inside. The first thing that strikes you at Museum at Eldridge Street is the  flow of blue light coming from a huge stained glass above and around you which fills the space with purity and hope.

The museum is one of the oldest Ashkenazi synagogues in New York City situated in the historic Lower East Side. The neighborhood was almost destroyed by natural disasters and age, but luckily was restored to become a sanctuary place for many New Yorkers. There are many programs and concerts held in this hidden gem of the city. Check its March program here.

Venue: Museum at Eldridge Street 

April – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: Alexei Jawlensky at Neue Galerie

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April – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: Alexei Jawlensky at Neue Galerie

April - May 2017 Art Event in NYC: Alexei Jawlensky at Neue Galerie
From the exhibition

This is the first full museum retrospective for Alexei Jawlensky (1864-1941), an Expressionist artist who worked closely with Kandinsky and his Der Blaue Reiter group. Jawlensky, who studied with Russian realist Ilya Repin in St. Petersburg 1890s, became interested in new artistic movements of the time particularly Expressionism. His vivid colors and powerful brushstrokes made him known in Europe as “Russian Matisse”.

You will enjoy his distinct works progressing from figurative to expressionists to pure color. The New Yorker call the exhibition “the beautiful and the unexpected”. Find more about the exhibition here.

 

Venue: Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue at 86st Street 

Dates: February 16 – March 29, 2017 

February – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers

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February – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers at the Met Museum

February - May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers
Hercules Segers, Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields, c. 1615-1630, etching, ink

The mystery of a faraway land, the beauty of new space, the expectation of secrets, the passing of time…. All of it is on full view at the Met exhibition of Hercules Segers, 17th century Dutch Golden Age master known for his prints, etchings and oil paintings. This is the first exhibition for Segers in the USA. Not many details of the artist’s life is known to us now but from what we do know he was well regarded by his contemporaries. He brought in pioneering techniques to printmaking by mixing colors, mediums and textures. At his time in the first half of 17th century his methods were fresh and groundbreaking like the impressionism at its time. Add to it an assumption that the artists had never traveled farther than between Haarlem, where he was born, and Amsterdam in the Low Countries but filled his work with mountainous views, and the mystery surrounding the master persists. The New York Times calls the exhibition mesmerizing and the New York Review of Books notes that “an air of unreality hangs over” Segers’s paintings. 

Venue: The Met Museum on Fifth Avenue        Time: till May 21, 2017

April-May Art Event: Picturing Math at the Met Museum

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April-May Art Event at the Met: Picturing Math – Selected Artworks from the Department of Drawings and Prints 

April-May Art Event: Picturing Math at the Met Museum
From the exhibition

It is absolutely remarkable that the Met has organized this small exhibition serenading the beauty of mathematical notations, formulas and geometric forms. True to its subject, the drawings and prints are precise, simple and super-logical. And that is exactly the point! Looking at the equations signed by modern day mathematicians P. Lax or S. Smale alongside the geometrical drawings by Sol LeWit (1982) or P.Flotner (1528), you can see how mathematics was and still is “the queen of sciences” in Carl Gauss’s words.  The only thing to add is that once proved, no matter how trivial or on the other hand significant the point is, it becomes eternal and beautiful at the same time.

 

Venue: The Met Museum on Fifth Avenue        Time: till May 8, 2017

 

April 2017 Opera in NYC: Rigoletto at Met Opera

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April 2017 Opera in NYC: Rigoletto at Met Opera

April 2017 Opera in NYC: Rigoletto at the Met Opera
Scene from the opera / image source metopera.org

Rigoletto in Las-Vegas?  This vibrant and colorful production of Giuseppe Verdi’s beloved opera is sure to entertain and engage everyone. For the original opening of the opera in 1851, Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave shifted the setting in Victor Hugo play which the opera is based on  from early-16th century french court to Renaissance time Mantua, Italy.

It seems the story is destined for such transformations in time and place as the current production is set in Las Vegas in the 60s with all the bells and whistles of that turbulent era. Even if you are not a big fun of modern adaptation for traditional art forms, you will enjoy the time-tested tunes and passionate performance. Think about finding repeating patterns of history and savor the music in all its glory. The New York Times review for 2013 opening of this production called it “the Rat Pack “Rigoletto'”.

You can buy tickets here.

 

Venue: Met Opera, Lincoln Center, NY                                  Dates: April 19, April 22, April 27