The Guggenheim in New York City

The Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York is appealing for its collection of art and for the building in which the art is displayed. In fact, the building is reason enough to visit.

It is a building created by the amazing Frank Lloyd Wright and it is the only museum he ever designed. Solomon Guggenheim, part of a wealthy family that made much of their fortune in the gold fields of Alaska and Yukon, wanted to create a radically new space for modern art in New York. He chose Frank Lloyd Wright as architect and after sixteen years of planning, debate and compromise, the building finally opened in 1959.

Originally the architect wanted people to take an elevator to the top of the structure and then leisurely walk down the gentle and continuous ramp, interacting with both art and other humans along the way.




Taking an elevator certainly isn't the practise and we, and hundreds of others, meandered up the ramp and then slightly more quickly down again. It was interesting to view The Guggenheim after seeing Wright's desert campus in Arizona four months ago. This is an impressive building and it houses an amazing collection of art. The wealth and power that created such an undertaking is amazing too.

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2014.

Le Pain Quotidien in NYC

Starbucks might be concerned, but probably isn't. The Europeans are coming. Perhaps slowly. Here in NYC and around the world.


Le Pain Quotidien is a fairly common coffee house and bakery throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. Organic of course, decent coffees, simple but almost satisfying lunches, and communal tables where we "sit together around an idea of pleasure." Or something like that. It sounds good, as does the background music which is usually classical.




Well, it's a good idea and it seems to work in wealthier neighbourhoods in Manhattan and Palermo (Buenos Aires). And, it is fairly good food. I would recommend Oslo for a much better coffee, but they have only three locations.




LPQ was founded by Alain Coumont in Brussels in 1990. It is a privately held company with over 200 locations around the world including Argentina and Australia. Not Canada. Yet. The company's headquarters is in NYC. Of course it is.



Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2014.

The Frick in Manhattan

This mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City was once someone's home, and while many now come for the art collection, the house and its family are just as interesting. It is The Frick Collection and the family is that of Henry Clay Frick (1849 - 1919) from Pittsburgh.












The Frick Collection is known for its Old Master paintings and sculpture and was assembled by the industrialist, Henry Frick, and housed in  his former residence just across from Central Park. It is one of New York's few remaining Gilded Age mansions and it provides a place for Bellini, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya and Whistler, among others.














Frick was an American industrialist, financier and patron of the arts. He founded a coke company in Pittsburgh and played a major role in the formation of US Steel Company. He also financed both the Pennsylvania and the Reading railroad companies (of Monopoly fame). Frick was aligned with another industrialist baron, the Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie (of PBS fame it would seem).


The story is complicated of course and at the risk of over simplifying, it is that of the lockout that led to Frick employing hundreds of Pinkerton agents (hired thugs) to displace a band of union members from their Homestead Steel strike in 1892. That strike resulted after the company recorded a profit increase of about sixty percent and refused to increase the pay of their workers. The Pinkertons attacked the union members and at least ten workers were killed with another seventy, or more, injured.








In the end thousands of state police were called in to set things right, with Frick continuing to refuse to meet with union leaders and threatening to have union families evicted from their homes. Ultimately scabs were brought in and in time the union was defeated. At the time Frick was depicted as "the most hated man in America" and he certainly was reviled among the working class.







Still, the mansion and the collection are impressive indeed.




















Photos by Jeem.  Copyright 2014 by Jim Murray.