Cocktails at the Met Roof Garden

One of my favorite things about summer is all the great rooftops and outdoor venues for having a drink and enjoying the great weather. One of my perennial favorites is the roof garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It has a fantastic view over the park, and every year, a different sculpture installation to check out.  If you haven’t been up there yet this year, it’s time to go!  The rooftop has been open for over a month, and this year’s installation, Maelstrom by the Brooklyn-based artist Roxy Paine, is possibly my favorite out of all of the roof installations since I came to New York.

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Pope Innocent X. No, really. Head VI, 1949.

In need of a culture fix for the month?  Hit up the Metropolitan Museum of Art for their special exhibition “Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective.”   This year is the 100th anniversary of Bacon’s birth, and the Met has mounted a major exhibition of his work, which is disturbing, but also enormously compelling.  The show is well worth a look both if you’re a fan of Bacon’s work and if he’s completely new to you.

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Diana the Huntress, on loan from the Musee du Louvre

I recently had the opportunity to check out the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cast In Bronze exhibition, which runs through May 24.  I’m admittedly not the world’s greatest expert on bronzes, but this exhibit was FUN.  Why?  I took an artist with me.

If you’ve been following along, you may recall one of our special contributors is a friend of mine with a seemingly never-ending list of unusual hidden talents.  (Men!)  One of his less-hidden talents is that he’s an extremely gifted artist, and in particular, a sculptor. I highly recommend taking a sculptor to the museum as your personal tour guide.  Particularly if you can find a cute one.  (This last feature is unlikely to add utility to the exhibit itself given the presence of security guards, but I still recommend it from an aesthetic standpoint if you can manage it.) Since I’m guessing that might present a challenge for most people, however, I’ll do my best to share what I learned in my tour of the exhibit.

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Alexander Calder bracelet, circa 1948.

New Yorkers looking for a little culture this weekend might want to consider grabbing this last chance to check out the Calder Jewelry exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which closes March 1.   Although Calder is generally known for his mobiles and larger stabiles (including, for New Yorkers, his sculpture “Saurien,” which occupies the corner of 57th Street and Madison Avenue), he was apparently well known during his lifetime for his output of wearable art, a total of approximately 1800 pieces of jewelry in brass, silver, and gold.  Jewelry-obsessed as I am, I checked it out a few weeks ago, and it’s well worth a look.

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