Birthday

A few years ago when I spent a summer living in Williamstown, I made a birthday cake that became known as 'cake in a bowl.' I had baked a Magnolia Bakery yellow cake and tried to stack the layers before the cake was fully cooled.  Then I stacked them the wrong way -- flat over round.  As my friend Becky arrived, I was bent over the cake holding the top layer with both hands, as if putting a ring around it, to stop the plate tectonics slide of splintered sections off the slick of warm icing below.  

I had made a double-batch of icing.  And I owned a large ceramic salad bowl.  So we made the cake into a giant parfait, essentially submerged in icing in a bowl.  Needless to say, it was delicious, if not awfully pretty.  Becky is trained as a pastry chef, so this was a bit like asking a master builder to help you pitch a broken tent.

This year, the lovely Mo offered to help me bake a cake.  Mo is Southern and moves around the kitchen like the modern version of my Southern grandmother, always in motion, never appearing to work, making stuff happen, then constantly tidying to make the work vanish and food appear.  In the middle of this, Mo tasked me with greasing the pans.  We used Crisco instead of butter and I didn't use a lot.  Mo went to turn the pans over and out fell the middle of the cake.  Then the chocolate glaze was coffee flavored and got transformed into a buttercream.  (If you've ever tried to make a glaze into a buttercream, then you know that, four boxes of powdered sugar later, you have about a gallon of icing and the ire of dentists everywhere.)

We tried to fix the landslide erosion situation by applying a pancake-makeup quantity of icing and immediately putting the cake in the fridge to set before a section fell off.  Mo's boyfriend Sean was the first other person who saw it, by which time some of the icing had started to droop giving the cake the jowly face of Jabba the Hut.  Sean winced instinctively (and kindly couriered the cake to the party the next day).  I love that cake the way you love an ugly baby.  And it made me laugh.  Here is Mo with it before it set in the fridge:

I spent my birthday more generally on the patio of the Maritime and at dinner at Cacio e Pepe, a lovely Italian in the East Village.  (For example, when I told David that is where we were going, he said without joking that we had a 10% chance of running into his Roman friend Mario by chance, since it was one of Mario's favorites in the city.)  


Summer birthdays are wonderful but many people are also out of town.  I was so worried literally no one would come to afternoon drinks after the volume of regrets I received that I asked my sister to come hang out at the beginning, even though she had a conflict between then and dinner.  Sweet Stacey brought beautiful sunflowers and, of course, herself.

Drinks started at 4 and at 4.05 Greg of Greg and Julie appeared.  Julie appeared ten minutes later.  I don't seem to have their picture.  Also present were Carina and James.  Carina is someone I have been trying to track down for about five years.  She hired me into my first job as a MoMA intern.  Then she became Rob Storr's assistant.  Then I didn't know what happened.  I even once asked Rob Storr after a panel -- weirdly in line to speak to him between two collectors -- if he had her email address.  There must have been a limitation to my research because it turns out she is first.last@google.  She wrote me on facebook out of the blue and I was ecstatic.  

Carina had been very involved in negotiations last time MoMA curators went on strike.  Rumors she had become a lawyer or started making baby clothes--both in circulation--proved untrue.  She had been working in the arts outside of New York.  Here she is with her husband James, an artist:

David appeared toward the end and walked over with me to dinner in the east village.  Cacio e Pepe were lovely hosts and even shaved down the stems of the sunflowers so they would fit in carafes as vases:

Here are some pictures from dinner, courtesy of Stacey.  From the left, Bader, me, Mo, Sean:

Amee and Michael, who have since become new parents of Max:

Michael and me:

Amee and me. . . 

The sorellas, sunflowers in evidence:

Stacey's lovely husband Paul:

The whole group, including down the left side Mackinnon, Veronica, David, Paul, Adrian:

Cacio e Pepe is named for this dish, spaghetti served in the rind of the cheese with lots of nearly whole black peppercorns:

Amee being served:

And then it was time for dessert. . . and the cake.  I hesitate to put a series of pictures of myself on my own blog, but take this as a snapshot film of how much pleasure I got out of the cake:

And, brace yourself for it, the cake itself:

Finally, as transformed by the loving Cacio e Pepe staff:

It was, needless to say, absolutely delicious.  The co-chefs:

I later showed Mark of the Egg project the original photo of the cake as it first set into its Jabba face in the fridge.  His immediate response, "That looks like meat."

Museum Legs Events in June

The lovely Andie Sehl hosted a Museum Legs party in her home.  I completely forgot how knowledgeable New Yorkers are about museums.  Andie happens to live a stone's throw from the Museum of Natural History.  I spoke briefly and then the first question was only answerable if you had read a particular article in the New York Times two days prior -- which miraculously I had.  Overall, it was the most spirited and informed Q&A on the Museum Legs record.  Sometimes I participated and sometimes I watched.  Someone clearly knew line items of the New York Historical Society budget.  These institutions were their neighbors over decades.  Everyone had well seasoned opinions and insights.

It was also a collection of Andie's old friends, and so there was a lot of love in the room, and really good fun.  We were under the umbrella of Andie's demonstrable hospitality:

Here's Andie, left, with her longtime neighbor and friend, Sydney:

I was lucky to have a second Museum Legs event of the month, speaking to the assembled students of the Smith College Summer Institute in Museum Studies on their fieldtrip to New York.  The event took place at the Kress Institute on the Upper East Side.  Here are their fearless leaders, Katy Kline and Marion Goethals:

I had come straight from the office on a day I had also experimented with wearing a new Uniqlo dress which, it turns out, has a really short hemline.  Here I am, sweater over lap for the panel.  I also seem to be very busy eating a sandwich:

The purpose of the talk was to educate students on paths in graduate study and career placement in the arts and museums.  The other speakers, apart from one conservator, were actual representatives of institutions of higher learning.  It went from 'here are the many programs of Sotheby's,' to 'here are the many programs of Bard,' to 'here I am to tell you about the wholly unaccredited program of a little bit of everything in a non-linear path.'  I tend to be a very private person, but the Q&A included some personal and financial questions one feels compelled to give an honest answer to, since a lot of people suffer lack of information and conversation, particularly around taking out debt for school.

I had happened to know Marion Goethals slightly from her job as a deputy head of the Williams College Art Museum and my illustrious and brief early career as a relief receptionist for someone on maternity leave there.  But I was invited by Katy Kline, mother of my friend Ethan, and former director of Bowdoin and MIT museums.  Katy is also someone to whom I am forever indebted not just for her thoughtful responses and offers of conversation as a reader of Museum Legs, but for spotting what I hope are the last two typos in the book, literally the last day before it went fully to press.  


Ethan jokes that art historians overuse the word "juxtapose."  So we were given the assignment to document out meet-up using this word as a theme:

Ethan is also coiner of my all-time favorite line about art.  If you don't like something, you simply say, "I don't have any affinity with that work."

It's shocking how often that sentence comes in handy.  And how often you find no word buy "juxtapose" will do.

Christening, Orientation, Orientation Redux

Nephew Jack was christened in June in Fairfield.  Here's the nuclear family:

And the other nuclear family:

Jeff's best childhood friend Hugh (of the May wedding) was up as godfather:

I never tire of seeing men in seersucker, as coordinated here (Lisa in the background):

Paul's tie, though it looks modern, belonged to his grandfather Bus.  (Uncannily, we also had a grandfather Bus.)

After the service, we adjourned to Jeff and Alexi's for much food -- and a surprise birthday celebration for both me and cousin Anna.  Anna is one of those fearless kids who suddenly becomes shy when the spotlight turns on her.  Here, she's doing her best Cousin It impression:

Alexi and her mother, Bilha:

Jack has changed into casualwear and is clearly busy eating:

Family occasion two was meeting the family of old college friend David.  I've known him for 15 years and he and his brother organized a brunch so we could all meet his parents.  Somewhere between his father being a particle physicist and his mother recommending really interesting Buddhist books, I got a sense of where David's analytics and fatalism come from.

The office was still in full swing of start-up mode.  Here, colleague David assembles Ikea filing drawers in our new space, after spearheading a massive office furnishing push before intern arrival:

Rory welcomed two classes of interns, a start date corresponding to American and British term schedules.  Here he is leading off orientation one:

A classic moment, rarely caught on film, the double high-five:

The setting was the pretty spectacular new tower overlooking Bryant Park.  Being walked to the meeting by a receptionist, I asked her if she ever got used to the views.  She said she was actually afraid of heights.  

Orientation 2 happened a couple of weeks later.  Not only were we greeting students from British universities, Rory literally went straight off a long haul flight and into this presentation:

This is the summer team now completed.  The offices are furnished, and we are off and running for this chapter.

The Egg project continues, with our weekly meetings in Dumbo offices, the loud trains, delicious Almandine cookies, and occasional vistas:

Early Summer

Early summer was full of friend visits, art openings, a field trip, work deadlines, and everyday life.  This figurine is from the Dreamaway Lodge, of which more soon.

Ethan and Sally were in town from London Memorial Day weekend for a wedding, which was hugely exciting.  In New York fashion, many of their friends were free for exactly an hour here or there.  I am a writer so I blocked out a whole day.  We spent an unstructured Monday afternoon having lunch and wandering up through the West Village.  Ethan sports a t-shirt from an annual breakdancing festival in London that really is one of the more amazing things I've seen.

Mysteriously to me, I was invited to the closing party of the Judd Foundation house in Soho, the artist's once home and the last single use building in Soho.  The structure itself is remarkable -- the surface area is something like 55% windows.  And the party was great: a letterpress invitation announcing: vodka, beef, and Mississippi mud cake.  All of this was true.  I took Mark, partner in crime (and head honcho) on the Eggleston museum project.  Her he is with a friend, Fairfax, in from Marfa for the occasion.

Where we happened to be when the reception stopped to let the remarks begin, Mark and I were inadvertently flanking Rainer Judd, one of the artist's children, as she stood on a wooden bench in an elegant floor-length black jersey gown to read prepared remarks.  Mark and I stood by, feeling the oscillating fan, sipping dangerously deep thimble glasses of vodka.  Rainer said the kinds of things you can only say if you grew up in Soho, the child of an artist like Judd: We'd like to thank our friend Giorgio down the street who made all this amazing food.  That's Giorgio Deluca -- as in founder of Dean and Deluca. . . 

We toured upstairs -- no photography permitted.  To opine: no doors anywhere, including bedrooms and bathrooms, and the kind of beds you would have if you wanted to discourage house guests: literally wooden platforms with rugs.  In Judd's lifetime, the house was incredibly full of life, raucous dinner parties, much conversation, an industrial scale kitchen, all of Judd's minimalist furnishings the ultimate neutral backdrop for the human drama.  Now though the background is the foreground as it enters a museum context, something I have mixed feelings about despite the obvious best intentions of preserving the place.  It seems impossible to preserve a space that was also about it's being a container for people.  The one place in the house that is mesmerizing is the top floor bedroom -- a red Dan Flavin goes down one whole wall -- maybe thirty feet -- casting the most beautiful warm glow you can imagine on a John Chamberlain mash-up sculpture.  I've never seen a Chamblerlain look like it was cast in sepia tones that way. 

Downstairs, there are also early Dan Flavins where the artist's hand is still evident (as if a canvas dipped in colored encaustic, a corner whacked off with a colored round light bulb added).  It's fun to see his process.  

I can understand how some people will love the house as a museum, and I do, and they use it for other things like corporate away-days.  But, for example, in the kitchen there was a single block of really good parmesan cheese -- basically a half wheel.  That size food felt right in the space.  And the achingly well design chairs seemed best with gangly or lithe or round people sitting in them, to go with the huge number of dinner plates still stacked on shelves and the half empty bottles of liquor that seem now incongruously untouched.

That same night, I went to a 'Room to Read' benefit, invited by former sublet roommate Angie and our common friend Veronica.  We sat asocially on this couch the whole night and caught up.  If you do this, people will try to take your wine glass often.  

Veronica and Angie:

It was a week of art events as Mark of the Egg project invited me to a Bronx Museum benefit honoring Memphis art leader James Patterson.  Here is Mark with Jenny Dixon, the director of the Noguchi Museum:

The event took place at the Trump Soho.  What looks here like a conference room, or at least a party space, is in fact a bathroom in one of the hotel suites.

The artist Lawrence Weiner was honored at the event and gave beautiful remarks about his own early forays into being an artist and the central role the Bronx Museum played.  He said he told his mother he wanted to be an artist and she said, "Larry, you'll break your heart.  Being an artist is for rich people, and women."

A leisurely weekend followed that included meeting up with Veronica at the Anthropologie in the Chelsea Market.  Exhausted, we lounged on that sofa women's clothing stores have for men.  Much to the consternation of a few boyfriends, we stayed there a while trying on necklaces.  Then we discovered the Maritime Hotel patio, where we ran into Greg and Julie:

Work followed, including late nights, one of which I joined here.  This is part of a photo/video series we send to the programming team who've finished milestones:

An Eggleston fieldtrip took me to Williamstown, with Mark, to meet an esteemed architecture professor and Memphis native, and then to drive south through Berkshire County, stumbling on a monstrosity of stacked wood, worthy of pulling the car over, on the way to the Dreamaway Lodge. . . 

Greg and Julie had first put me onto Dreamaway Lodge in that lazy post-Anthropologie stupor on the Maritime Hotel patio.  I had mentioned a newfangled idea that all art museums need outdoor fireplaces (and bowling alleys. . .) and they'd said Dreamaway had a great one.  And was a magical place.  Sure enough, here is the bar of the Dreamaway:

Those colored squares are breaklights from a certain model of late 70s / early 80s car.

To really appreciate this bar, you have to understand that it is inside this house:

In this bucolic and unassuming landscape:

But full of accumulated knick knacks elevated by years of gradual layering and an almost de-facto-diorama sense of arrangement.  Everywhere you look, a composition:

The strength of the compositions takes nothing away from the individual items.  Here we have a book from the 'reading basket' Men Who Knit and the Dogs Who Love Them:

A basket of tambourines, for instance:

The porch somehow segues from the outside to the inside:

Mark with the founder Dan, who is an accomplished actor with an uncanny story about how he came across and knew he wanted to take over stewardship of Dreamaway:

Back in New York, I audited the Op-Ed Workshop again, and passed these Antony Gormley men coming and going.

Without going into specifics, I had a conversation at the happy hour afterwards that reminded me about cognitive frameworks, e.g., when something is a legal problem and when it is a creative one.  If I had one wish, it would be for presentmindedness and manners and some quality of attention toward strangers.  If I had two though, it would be for more mental elasticity on the part of people trying to solve real problems in the world, with great heart, but sometimes without nimbleness or flexibility or, in some cases, trust in the good heart of other people.

Thanks to the asynchronous wonders of forgetting to download pictures from my phone, here's a postscript of the Maine lighthouse, as seen from the parking lot of the lobster pound, circa the May workshop with Mo.