Everyone else had early flights, so I wound up with a half-day to myself.

After eating breakfast with Jason and biding him farewell, I headed to the Museum of Art and Design.

They had an exhibit about garments as art. These were my favorite pieces in the collection:

They also had a new exhibit on called Flower Craft. Each week a different vibrant artist gets to take over the space. This week, the first, was an LA-based artist who “believes colors are a gift.”

The grass “breathed” every once in a while and the sunflowers each twitched randomly, which gave the whole display a more heightened sense of surrealism.

Next up, the Met!

One of my favorite things about coming to NY in May is seeing the latest Costume Institute exhibit, previewed with the red carpet looks at their annual Gala.

They actually held two galas in the last year as a result of the pandemic, both America-themed.

I tried to find the first display, the Lexicon one from the fall gala, but couldn’t find the Costume Institute for the life of me. All stairs going down were roped off, and when I asked a guard for directions he pointed me to the newer spring exhibit.

So that’s the one I visited. They housed it in the American wing and had movie directors decide on the setup of the mannequins and multimedia for each “mise-en-scene”

Some were fun, like the ones above by Autumn de Wilde. She said that he wanted to move away from the “quiet, calm figures gazing across landscapes” that we usually picture in the past and show the more human side.

The room below by Julie Dash was one of my favorite effects. Each dress had a figure in black kneeling, sewing, adjusting. The servant figures all had long black tulle draped from hats and a fan blew across the room. The effect was that the historic pieces, the figures in white, (the wealthy people’s clothes) were still and poised – while the dressers were the living beings, the ones moving and busy.

My favorite room, though, was this one:

The walls were two huge panoramic paintings of Versailles while the middle had black mannequins in dresses from the 20th century locked in an epic fencing battle. It was fun and fascinating and absolutely a splendid effect:

So, Much, Fun!

By now I was getting hungry and was feeling the effects of staying up to 1:30 AM two nights in a row, so I hailed a cab to go back to the hotel. I only got halfway there, though, when we were blocked by a pan-Asian parade. I gave up on the cab and got out to walk the rest of the way to the sounds of “Gangnam Style” and the sights of long, dancing Chinese dragons.

I grabbed a gyro from a street vendor, which I ate while enjoying the air conditioning in the hotel room), then gathered my stuff and headed to LaGuardia.

It was a good day and a good way to end a short, delightful trip!