New York - Day 5

Now I can finally catch up! The internet on this computer is very iffy - some days it works fine, other days it takes 5 minutes just to load a page!
So, we're up to Thursday now.
Thursday I went up to Midtown Manhattan and to MOMA - Museum of Modern Art. There is a Tim Burton show there (which is the reason Lisa wanted to do this trip in the first place). I recently found that that I went to BHS (Burbank High School) with Tim Burton. Lisa showed me his picture in our yearbook. He was in her class, a year behind me. Who knew!

The exhibit was great. He is a prolific illustrator/doodler! I had no idea that 1) he worked at Disney and 2) he was involved in a lot of films I've seen but didn't know he was involved in them - Big Fish (LOVED that movie), Batman, Beetlejuice and a bunch of others.  They had some of the stop-motion figures from Nightmare Before Christmas (Oggie Boogie, Santa, Jack Skellington - will all 20 or so of his heads, Zero and the toys he left for the kids on Christmas eve). They had a lifesize figure of Edward Scissorhands (which I believe I saw when I got to tour Stan Winston's studio a few years ago). It was a really great exhibit and I'm glad I got to see it. Wasn't allowed to take any photos though.

STRANGE ART STUFF

This is Marina Abramovic (the figure in red). Among other things she is a performance artist and this is a art performance in progress. People came in and sat down in the chair across the table from her and they just started at each other. And it was being filmed. Talk about watching paint dry! Apparently she's a very famous artist or they wouldn't let her be doing this in the museum.

There was also an exhibit of the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson that was just breathtaking! Most of his photographs were published in the 50's and 60's and he was in all the magazines back then - Life, The New Yorker, etc. His prints are so technically beautiful - wonderful tones and contrasts! It was very exciting to see his actual work as I remember studying him when I was working on my Art Degree at CSUN. Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time to get treats like that.

After I gorged myself on museum exhibits I went over to Rockefeller Center. As I passed NBC studios, what should I see parked right outside the door but President Obama's limo. Apparently he had addressed Wall Street that morning (I hope he told them to get their shit together or no more bailout money!). I didn't stick around to see if he was going to come out any time soon. That's the 2nd time I've gone some place and the POTUS shows up. I went to a conference at the convention center in LA a couple of years ago and Pres. Bush (GW) showed up and gave a speech. That was interesting. I had wondered why they made us go through metal detectors just to attend a conference.

Went back to the museum and looked around a bit more. Then it started raining so I headed for home. The two time's it's rained while I've been out & about here it's been in the 70s and hasn't rained hard so as long as I could protect my camera in my bag I wasn't bothered by it.

Fortunately I wasn't all that far from the subway.