Museum of the City of New York Archives

*The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a centerpiece for the annual Museum Mile Festival © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

One of my favorite events of Summer in the City is the annual Museum Mile Festival, when eight of New York City’s finest cultural institutions throw open their doors, and the Avenue becomes one big block party.

It’s so popular, that it is best to plan ahead. I did have a plan, which I wound up throwing out the door, and letting serendipity take hold.

Insider tip: Come early and start at the Met Museum (NYS residents pay what they wish). It wasn’t my original plan, but I found that I was at the Museum at around 4:30 pm, knowing it would close at 5 pm and reopen at 6 when the festival began. Instead of spending the half hour walking up to 103^rd, and being there an hour before that museum opened for the festival,

“The Scourged Back” (1863), attributed to William D. McPherson, “arguably the most devastating of all known Civil War-era portraits of enslaved individuals… was widely distributed by abolitionists as a visceral argument against the horrors of enslavement.”

“Laundress with Washtub,” 1860s, “In this exceptionally rare occupational portrait, we see something nearly invisible in the photographic record prior to the 20^th century: a woman at work at home.”

“Nineteenth-century photographers produced thousands of portraits of Native Americans during the time when the U.S. government enacted policies that forcibly displaced Indigenous communities and impeded their ways of living.” These photos “allow viewers today to witness how individuals under near-constant duress attempted to contend with those holding power.”

I decided to see the Met’s “The New Art: American Photography, 1839–1910” (on through July 20). This exhibit offers a fascinating examination into the beginnings of photography and its relation to society and culture, through its various technology incarnations (daguerreotypes, tintypes, etc), made even more interesting by the notes about the subjects or photographer or why the photograph was so notable.

*The Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

But then, when they closed the museum, I was told we could stay in the sections that would be open for the festival. It was incredible to wander through halls – the Egyptian rooms and Temple of Dendur, with just a few people – the quiet was extraordinary. Unfortunately, I was not able to see the Sargent and Paris exhibit (was not open for the festival), which explores the early career of American painter John Singer Sargent “from his arrival in Paris in 1874 as a precocious 18-year-old art student through the mid-1880s, when his infamous portrait Madame X was a scandalous success at the Paris Salon.” (Through Aug. 3). See https://www.metmuseum.org/.

*The tranquility of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

Time to focus on the detail from a Tiffany fountain © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

I get time alone with a few of my favorites at the Met, the Tiffany fountain and windows in the American Wing.

By the time I left the Met with a plan to walk the Museum Mile up to 103^rd and start at the Museum of the City of New York (always one of my favorites), the band had already started playing on the Met’s grand staircase and the festival was just beginning to get underway.

*An art “happening” outside the Guggenheim Museum © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

I pass the Guggenheim Museum at 89^th St., where the “street art” activity is a group of body painters – literally, they are painting each other’s nude bodies. What is amazing is that while drawing a crowd of onlookers, it isn’t really gawking, but artistic appreciation – kind of evocative of Gaugin.

*Festival goers queue up to enter Cooper Hewitt, a Smithsonian Museum of Design © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

People are already lined up at the Neue Galerie New York at 86th and at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum at 91^st.

Further on, I spot a banner announcing the exhibit at the Jewish Museum, “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt,” and was beyond intrigued. It is just 6 pm with the doors just opening when I get in. The exhibit is breathtaking – showing how the story of Queen Esther resonated with the Dutch in this time, who heralded her as a hero of their own independence from Spain (after an 80-year war), and how the story of how she saved the Jews from annihilation pervaded Dutch culture.

*Rembrandt’s depiction of Queen Esther, on view at the Jewish Museum’s exhibit, “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt.”*

“Rembrandt and his Wife Saskia” c 1638 attributed to Ferdinand Bol, one of his most talented pupils.“If the couple is indeed Rembrandt and his wife Saskia, the composition demonstrates how artists modeled Esther from contemporary life, combining elements from the ancient past and their present to highlight the continued relevance of this biblical story.”

There are stunning paintings by Rembrandt and his contemporaries depicting Esther – even more fascinating because during this period, the Netherlands had begun their Golden Age of Sail and were trading with the Mideast, so the paintings depict genuine objects, though mixed into a Dutch context. I was reminded that Netherlands, after winning independence from Catholic Spain instituted religious freedom and many Jews escaping the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal settled there. The notes are excellent, but you can also download a digital guide transcript.

*“The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt”is on view at the Jewish Museum through August 10 © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

“Widely read in the 17^th century, the Book of Esther offered a dramatic biblical subject for Dutch artists. The Dutch interpreted the story of Esther’s bravery as a symbol of the Netherlands’ newly won independence from Spain. Rembrandt was part of a larger cultural trend that reimagined this story for the new century, new secular art market, and new national purpose. Rembrandt’s naturalistic approach to biblical paintings and his talent for capturing human emotion made Esther highly accessible to his audience,” write Abigail Rapoport, curator of Judaica Jewish Museum, and Michele Frederick, curator of European Art, North Carolina museum of Art, Raleigh.

“Haman Begging the Mercy of Esther,” 1618 or 1619 by Pieter Lastman, Rembrandt’s teacher, use table settings over a Middle Eastern carpet that would have graced a wealthy Dutch table, as the same time, foreign motifs such as turbaned figures push the scene into the fantastical setting that Dutch artists often used when imaging the Book of Esther.

“Against this backdrop, Rembrandt and his contemporaries expressed Esther’s story in paintings, prints, drawings, objects for the home, Jewish ceremonial art, and theater. Presenting works that range form portraits of queen Esther to prim plays, this exhibition illuminates the Book of Esther’s meaning in Rembrandt’s time and for generations to follow,” Abigail Rapoport, curator of Judaica Jewish Museum, and Michele Frederick, curator of European Art, North Carolina museum of Art, Raleigh.” (On view through Aug. 10)

*Ben Shahn’s “Everyman” is part of the Jewish Museum’s Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity exhibit, on view through October 12*

*“For Full Employment after the War, Register, Vote [Welders] 1944”*. Ben Shahn’s social and political activism such as this call to register to vote resonate today. An exhibit of 175 of his works, Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity, is on view at the Jewish Museum through October 12.

The icing on the cake at the Jewish Museum is another spectacular exhibit: Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity, who used his art for social justice in ways that are unnervingly relevant today. The 175 artworks and objects form the 1930s to the 1960s show how this prolific and progressive artist chronicled and confronted crucial issues from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, to Civil Rights and Workers Rights. “The exhibition draws its title from Ben Shahn’s credo of “nonconformity,” which the artist asserted as an indispensable precondition for both significant artistic production and all great societal change.” (On view through Oct. 12).

*A Klesmer band performs on the street outside the Jewish Museum © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The Jewish Museum also traditionally offers a fantastic klezmer band outside, entertaining the people waiting on line.

(Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave &, E 92nd St, thejewishmuseum.org, (212) 423-3200; free admission on Saturday)

*Children’s art activities during the Museum Mile Festival © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

*“The Art of the Brain,” sponsored by the Friedman Brain Institute © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The Art of the Brain: “Sleepy Aorta” – Immunofluorescence staining that captures the immense cardiovascular inflammation following months of poor sleep. This image of a mousse’s aorta evidences the intimate connection between sleep, brain health and cardiovascular disease.” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Continuing on, it is fascinating to see how even non-art, non-museum institutions join the festival: there was an ingenious art display “The Art of the Brain,” sponsored by the Friedman Brain Institute, of imaging that is, well, painterly. “Art transports us, engages us, provokes though, summons deep emotions, mirrors experience, and most often, is simply beautiful.”

*Activities put on by the New York Academy of Medicine for the Museum Mile Festival © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

The New York Academy of Medicine the Church of the Heavenly Rest, Asia Society, and AKC Museum of the Dog also joined the celebration, offering fun activities for kids and chalk to make art on the avenue.

But the most fun street happenings happen just outside the Museum of the City of New York – double Dutch rope jumping, dance, music.

*Fun activities outside the Museum of the City of New York, a happening place © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

But I dare not tarry because the whole festival only lasts three hours.

This year, the highlight exhibit is “New York at Its Core”: Port City (1609-1898” which tells the story of New York’s transformation from a Lenape community of 2,000 people in 1609, to a Dutch trading post of 3,300 in 1660, to the King’s Seaport in 1770 with 39,313 people, to a Merchant City in 1835 after the opening of the Erie Canal, with 334,967 population, already a diverse melting pot, to a Money Metropolis in 1890 with 2,507,414. There is a map presentation that is fascinating, which documents the city during these eras by population density, diversity, and money.

*“New York at its Core”: Port City, 1609-1898 at the Museum of the City of New York © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

A companion exhibit, World City, 1898-2020 showcases the dizzying evolution of New York as it grew into the modern global metropolis – the constant battle resisting inevitable change, the constant struggle to deal with urban challenges. It makes you think, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

I didn’t have time to see one of my favorite exhibits, “Timescapes,” where you watch New York City’s 400-year history unfold in 30 minutes, and “Changing the Face of Democracy, about the life and legacy of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to US Congress (closes July 20); “Songs of New York” and “Activist New York.” (See mcny.org, 1220 Fifth Ave. at 103 St, 212-534-1672).

*Entertainment outside the Museum of the City of New York is testament to the city’s diversity from its beginnings © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

*Metropolitan Museum of Art during the Museum Mile Festival © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com*

And I never get as far as the El Museo del Barrio (104^th St.); and The Africa Center (109^th St).

There’s always next year.

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47th Annual Museum Mile Festival is a Celebration of NYC’s Cultural and Art Riches for All