Wednesday Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art and a few others

This morning I went to the Rubin Museum in Chelsea after first stopping at one of the Café Grumpy chain of 4 cafes. I  have been  to one of these on the Lower East Side. The chain was started by an Australian and they understand ‘flat whites’.

The museum was very interesting.  It was opened fairly recently and  is built round a large spiral staircase that was part of its previous life as part of Barney’s  store .

The first floor had a sort of introduction to both Buddhist and Hindu art of the region - who the different people are ( e.g. Buddhas, Bodhisattivas, tantric deities, wrathful deities etc) , how they  are represented and what do  the different representations mean  etc.  The second floor had things from the museums permanent collection – paintings, textiles, objects. 

The next floor had a temporary exhibition about the Naga people (made up of quite a few tribes)  from the far NE of India  on the border with the  NW  corner of Burma. They were head hunters  - but only to fight waring  neighbouring tribes.  A  lot of emphasis was placed on status and your achievements.  The one garment you wore was a piece of cloth that had details of who you were woven into the design – if you were the chef’s wife,  how many banquets for the poor you had hosted , etc .  Dare say you got a new one if you were the chief’s wife and he got his head chopped off by a marauding tribe.  There were some of these beautifully pieces of cloth on display. The next floor had an exhibition called  ‘the flip side’. Tibetan art usually had a lot of detail on the back.

Another gallery had an interesting exhibition of photos taken by an American of what were described as living shrines of the Uyghur people of far NW China. The Uyghurs  are Buddhist and build structures in the desert  with upright  poles resting against each other with coloured flags . These ‘living shrines’ were called  ‘mazars’ in the text describing the photos.  I had some nice soup in their café.

Then I  walked north to W27 where the Fashion Institute of Technology is. They have a museum.   The first part with the historic costumes was interesting. There was an outfit for a woman to ride a bike in in 1888 which had a very nice jacket and a pair of trousers, though you would not have known – more like floor length culottes.  Apparently the zip was first used in 1913 and thenit was sometimes used on the outside. Not dissimilar to some tops I have seen over the last few years. There was lots of modern stuff with all sorts of computer-generated designed stuff. There was one black and white outfit – sleeveless dress and matching tights made from fabric with a pattern based on QR codes.

Then I caught a subway to W 60 and walked a bit to the American Folk Art Museum . I thought this might be beautiful quilts, but no, it was mostly somebodies paintings ( he was so unnoteworthy ( to me – or maybe I was getting tired) that I did not make a note of his name and of course have not remembered his name.)  of children and other people.

There was nothing interesting in the shop either.

I walked home, stopping to tell the mayor that Australia was roughly 2500 miles wide and 2000 mile from top to bottom, excluding Tasmania. I had had to look that up.