twi-ny recommended events

HENRY WARD BEECHER MONUMENT

Longtime Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher is honored with statue in Columbus Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Columbus Park
Cadman Plaza near Johnson St.
www.nycgovparks.org
www.mas.org

“It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich,” American abolitionist, orator, minister, and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher said. The eminently quotable Connecticut native and longtime Brooklynite would most likely have a lot to say about the novel coronavirus, particularly this Easter weekend as many churches around the country remain open, declining suggestions and even local regulations regarding social distancing.

“To array a man’s will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.”

Beecher first served as a Presbyterian minister in Indiana before moving to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn in 1847. He advocated for evolution, science, and woman suffrage and against slavery while also generating a spectacular sexual scandal. Beecher was a celebrity preacher, and he got a lot of press; he was even popularized in limericks, such as this fine one from English writer and artist Oliver Herford: “Said a great congregational preacher / To a hen, ‘You’re a beautiful creature.’ / And the hen, just for that, / Laid an egg in his hat, / And thus did the Hen reward Beecher.”

“Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.”

Master sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward, who designed statues of George Washington at Federal Hall, Horace Greeley in City Hall Park, William Earl Dodge in Bryant Park, Roscoe Conkling in Madison Square Park, and William Shakespeare, the Indian Hunter, and the Pilgrim in Central Park, honored Beecher with a monument dedicated at Borough Hall in 1891 and relocated to Columbus Park in 1959; the face was modeled after a death mask Ward made of Beecher on March 8, 1887, when the minister died at the age of seventy-three.

“Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.”

In a closed-off grassy area, Ward’s figure of Beecher stands proudly on a Barre granite plinth designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt. Beecher is dressed in an Inverness cloak, arms at his side, staring off into the distance, his eyes on the future. To his right, a young black woman places a palm branch on the pedestal at his feet, while to his left a pair of white children offer a garland. The unpunctuated inscription on the back reads: “The grateful gift of the multitudes of all classes creeds and conditions at home and abroad to honor the great apostle of the brotherhood of man.” The sculpture was restored in 2017 and 2019 as part of the Municipal Art Society of New York’s Adopt-a-Monument/Mural program.

Henry Ward Beecher monument undergoes restoration in 2019 (photo courtesy Municipal Art Society of New York)

“There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.”

Beecher, the son of Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher and brother of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, is surrounded by several other prominent works, including Anneta Duveen’s 1972 bust of Robert F. Kennedy, S. Hemming’s 1973 bas relief of Brooklyn Bridge builder Washington A. Roebling, a 1965 marker paying tribute to former Brooklyn borough president John Cashmore, and Emma Stebbins’s large-scale 1867 statue of park namesake Christopher Columbus, rising atop a giant plinth by architect Aymar Embury II.

“When a nation’s young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.”

Beecher, who is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, wrote such books as Notes from Plymouth Pulpit, Summer in the Soul, Yale Lectures on Preaching, Evolution and Religion, and the novel Norwood, or Village Life in New England. One can only wonder what he would say today about what is happening in Brooklyn and all over the world as a pandemic rages among the populace and divides people along political and religious lines.

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”

JEAN-MARIE APPRIOU: THE HORSES

Jean Marie-Appriou’s Public Art Fund commission sits at the entrance to Central park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Scholars’ Gate, Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Central Park entrance, 60th St. & Fifth Ave.
Through August 30, free
www.publicartfund.org
online slideshow

Most of us rarely see horses without a human on top of them or pulling a carriage. A jockey on a racehorse. A cowboy galloping across the plains. An equestrian jumping at Madison Square Garden. A cop at a parade. At Grand Army Plaza near the Sixtieth St. entrance to Central Park on Fifth Ave., William Tecumseh Sherman sits proudly on his horse Ontario in Augustus Saint Gaudens’s shimmering, gilded 1903 bronze monument of the Civil War hero, rising high on Charles McKim’s granite base, led by the figure of a crowned Victory. Nearby, hansom cab drivers line up to take lovers and families on carriage rides through the park, a controversial profession that continued to operate well into the coronavirus epidemic. “As we face an unprecedented crisis of contagion, it is shocking that carriage drivers still cram tourists into small carriages and give them shared, reused blankets, with the driver seated just inches ahead of them,” Alec Baldwin wrote in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio when they were still in business. “This reckless disregard may well fuel the spread of the coronavirus to both New Yorkers and unwitting visitors from across the country.” NYC Horse Carriage Rides ultimately announced they were shutting down on March 25.

“Le Guerrier” (“The Warrior”) displays his unique headgear in equine installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Near the troublesome spectacle of the carriages and the majestic equestrian Sherman, French artist Jean Marie-Appriou has installed his first New York City public commission, The Horses at Scholars’ Gate on Doris C. Freedman Plaza, at the start of the path that leads to the zoo. The thirty-three-year-old Paris-based sculptor references multiple aspects of Equus ferus in the cast aluminum work, which consists of three parts that incorporate Symbolism, mythology, and a touch of alchemy.

Jean Marie-Appriou’s The Horses invites visitors to walk under, around, and through them (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The trio of silvery sculptures is centered by “Le Guerrier” (“The Warrior”), a sixteen-foot-high armored horse that has twisted its skinny body to form a gateway into and out of the park. On one side of it is “Les Amants au Bois” (“The Lovers in the Woods”), the bottom half of two horses, melded together, their flat tops like vacant plinths. On the other side is “Le Joueur” (“The Player”), relaxing on the ground like a caped Sphinx waiting to be worshiped. The detail on the horses is impressive, from their hooves to the shaffron and ribcage of horse heads of “Les Amants au Bois,” from the intricate leaves and bugs on “Le Joueur” to the bumps and thumbprints that reveal the hand of the artist and the casting process, which involved clay and foam models.

Detailed inspection of The Horses offers cool surprises (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“The playful horse, the war horse, they are not horses as they are often represented in art history, as very brave,” Appriou, who has also installed outdoor works in France, Switzerland, and Miami, explains in a Public Art Fund video. “They are crouching, they are a bit scared, they hang their heads as they are approaching the spectator. It’s more like horses stepping down from the base, that do not radiate power, nor are they objects that valorize a soldier or a general.”

Augustus Saint Gaudens’s golden statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman can be seen through “Le Guerrier” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Passersby are encouraged to interact with the horses, even invited to sit on “Le Joueur,” although you should probably avoid that during the coronavirus pandemic. But you can walk under, through, and around them and glory in the sheer beauty and grandeur of the animals. It’s tempting to think about hopping on one of them and riding off into the sunset, like at the end of a Clint Eastwood Western, venturing into another world, far away from the myriad challenges of this one, amid echoes of Richard III crying out, “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

JUDITH WELLER: THE GARMENT WORKER

The Garment Worker keeps toiling away at 555 Seventh Avenue Plaza (photo by twi-ny/ees)

555 Seventh Avenue Plaza
Permanent installation
www.publicartfund.org

“Could it be that living through the time of coronavirus will reconfigure the organisation of fashion, fundamentally changing how brands practice their role? I hope it can be so,” Sarah Mower writes in a March 25 article for British Vogue. During the pandemic, many fashionistas, from major corporations to DIY home sewers, have stepped up to make masks, gloves, and other items for health-care workers on the front lines of the battle to stave off the infectious disease known as Covid-19.

The garment industry has been a centerpiece of American ingenuity since the 1800s. An enormous influx of immigrants around the turn of the twentieth century toiled in the industry, often in sweatshops churning out clothing and other items. Israeli-born, New York-based artist Judith Weller honored the immigrant employees with her eight-foot-high statue The Garment Worker, a tribute to her father, a garment industry machine operator. Weller expanded the piece from its original twenty-four-inch height; the large-scale sculpture was commissioned by the Public Art Fund and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and donated to the city of New York by a wide range of garmentos, from Anne Klein, Bill Blass, Ellen Tracy, Liz Claiborne, and Ralph Lauren to the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union, the Association of Rain Apparel Contractors, the Jewish Community Fund, the Ladies Apparel Contractors Association, and United Tool, among others. “When I was a little girl, I recall seeing him at work,” Weller said of her father at the time of the installation, which was initially scheduled to run from October 31, 1984, to the following Halloween but is now permanent. “I utilized what I know of him as well as my memory in creating the sculpture.”

Judith Weller honors her Jewish immigrant father with statue (photo by twi-ny/ees

Popular Garment District sculpture reveals skill and determination of fashion industry workers (photo by twi-ny/ees)

The bronze man, wearing a yarmulke, sits determinedly at his sewing machine, carefully stitching fabric. He’s focused on his hands, which delicately push down on the material; the table he works on is open to reveal his legs and feet. The drudgery is apparent on his stern face, as is his dedication to his task. Perhaps today the man would be making masks and gloves to save the lives of New Yorkers and other Americans. “The human figure expresses my struggle, anxiety, frustration, yearning, and hope. It offers unlimited and inexhaustible possibilities,” Weller explains in her artist statement.

The Garment Worker continues to work every day in the shadow of the giant button and needle that lean on the Garment District Information Kiosk at the corner of Thirty-Ninth St. and Seventh Ave. (Fashion Ave.). He is no mere relic of the past but a reminder of who we all are and where we came from, and what we can do to maintain the country’s ever-more-fragile infrastructure.

Judith Weller honors her Jewish immigrant father with statue (photo by twi-ny/ees)

“The big question is whether this spontaneous surge of human spirit, practicality, and creativity will grow strongly enough, for long enough, to turn fashion’s priorities around,” Mower writes in British Vogue. “Will this nightmare time actually become a historic and positive turning point, converting both industry producers and wearers to, literally, a new way of seeing and valuing clothes? There’s a possibility that all these weeks of staying at home will result in discovering a streak of waste-not creativity we never knew we had.” That evaluation is right on the button, hitting the . nail on the head.

BALTO

Heroic sled dog Balto stands ready for action in Central Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Central Park
West of East Drive & 67th St.
www.centralparknyc.org
balto slideshow

If only we had a hero like Balto now, a brave sled dog racing to deliver a magic elixir that would save us from the deadly coronavirus. There’s no medicine yet to cure the world of COVID-19, but in 1925, Siberian husky Balto, leading the team of musher Gunnar Kassen, galloped into Nome, Alaska, with a diphtheria antitoxin to help defeat a horrible outbreak of the killer disease.

New York City could use a hero like Balto right about now (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Named after Norwegian Sámi explorer Samuel Johannesen Balto, who traversed Greenland with Fridtjof Nansen in 1888, Balto was born in Nome in 1919 and died in 1933 in Cleveland, where his remains are mounted in the city’s Museum of Natural History. On December 17, 1925, Brooklyn-born sculptor Frederick G. R. Roth’s statue of Balto was dedicated on a small outcropping of rock west of East Dr. and Sixty-Seventh St. in Central Park, near an underpass north of the children’s zoo. The regal dog stands proudly, tongue out, eyes eagerly anticipating his next job, his front paws higher than his back paws, giving him a noble position. His ears, back, and belly have lost some of their original dark color because kids and adults rub them for good luck. Balto himself attended the statue’s unveiling, with Kassen. On the rock below the classy canine is a plaque that reads:

“Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice across treacherous waters through arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the winter of 1925. Endurance Fidelity Intelligence.”

Roth also designed the Mother Goose statue, featuring Humpty Dumpty, Old King Cole, Little Jack Horner, Mother Hubbard, and Mary and her little lamb, that resides in front of Rumsey Playfield, as well as the bronze lion at Columbia University’s Baker Field. Balto, who was neutered and therefore could not be bred, has also been immortalized in Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge comic book (as “Barko”), in Alistair MacLean’s 1959 novel Night without End, and in Simon Wells’s 1995 animated live-action film, Balto, in which he’s voiced by Kevin Bacon.

Balto attended the dedication of his statue in Central Park in 1925 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Most of us are sheltered at home, but if you have to go out — as of now, parks are open, and sunshine and fresh air are healthy alternatives to being shut inside, as long as you maintain social distancing — stop by and say hello to Balto, although you’re probably better off not petting him. And just imagine him leading a pack bringing in much-needed gloves, masks, respirators, and ventilators, helping humanity once again in another dramatic health crisis.

COVID-19 & NEW YORK CITY ARTS AND CULTURE

Since May 2001, twi-ny has been recommending cool things to do throughout the five boroughs, popular and under-the-radar events that draw people out of their homes to experience film, theater, dance, art, literature, music, food, comedy, and more as part of a live audience in the most vibrant community on Earth.

With the spread of Covid-19 and the closing of all cultural institutions, sports venues, bars, and restaurants (for dining in), we feel it is our duty to prioritize the health and well-being of our loyal readers. So, for the next several weeks at least, we won’t be covering any public events in which men, women, and children must congregate in groups, a more unlikely scenario day by day anyway.

That said, as George Bernard Shaw once noted, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

Some parks are still open, great places to breathe in fresh air, feel the sunshine, and watch the changing of winter into spring. We will occasionally be pointing out various statues, sculptures, and installations, but check them out only if you are already going outside and will happen to be nearby.

You don’t have to shut yourself away completely for the next weeks and months — for now, you can still go grocery shopping and pick up takeout — but do think of others as you go about your daily life, which is going to be very different for a while. We want each and every one of you to take care of yourselves and your families, follow the guidelines for social distancing, and consider the health and well-being of those around you.

We look forward to seeing you indoors and at festivals and major outdoor events as soon as possible, once New York, America, and the rest of the planet are ready to get back to business. Until then, you can find us every so often under the sun, moon, clouds, and stars, finding respite in this amazing city now in crisis.

WE’RE GONNA DIE

Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die has been gloriously remounted by Raja Feather Kelly at Second Stage (photo by Joan Marcus)

2econd Stage Theater, Tony Kiser Theater
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 22, $69-$125
2st.com/shows

“There’s a very good chance you’re not going to die,” President Trump said when news about the coronavirus crisis was first spreading. While that might be true when it comes to Covid-19, it’s not true in general, as mightily declared by Young Jean Lee in Raja Feather Kelly’s glorious remounting of her one-act play with music, We’re Gonna Die, continuing at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater through March 22. The sixty-five-minute work consists of stories about loneliness and death that Lee collected from friends and relatives and transformed into a series of monologues delivered by one woman, as if all these awful events happened to her. Lee first presented the show at Joe’s Pub and then at Lincoln Center’s Clare Tow Theater, where she was the lead, backed by her rock band, Future Wife.

Janelle McDermoth now takes over, and she is dazzling as she relates poignant tales and blasts out songs both gentle and fierce across David Zinn’s calming, antiseptic set, a kind of hospital waiting room with a vending machine, lots of empty chairs and a central spiral staircase that goes through the ceiling and the floor, evoking a way station. As you enter the theater, a large-scale neon sign of the title moves slowly back and forth in front of the stage, a reminder of what is going to eventually happen to each and every one of us. Guitarists Freddy Hall and bandleader Kevin Ramessar, keyboardist and dance captain Ximone Rose, and bassist Debbie Christine Tjong enter and sit down, while drummer Marques Walls plays in a separate room off to stage left. As the show continues, balloons occasionally drop from above, accumulating in a far corner, telling us that even though this might be about the inevitability of death, it doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun.

The stories are told chronologically, as if belonging to one life, beginning with the presenter as a little girl trying to understand her weird uncle and why her two best friends shunned her, then considering dating and partnering relationships with men and caring for her ailing father. The songs, which pour forth from a wide range of genres — the arrangements are by Remy Kurs, with orchestrations by Cian McCarthy — relate directly to the tales, beginning with the opening number, “Lullaby for the Miserable,” in which the singer remembers something her mother told her when she was unable to get to sleep as a child: “When your brain’s had enough / And your body gives up / You will sleep / By and by / By and by / You will sleep / By and by / You are not the only one / You are not the only one / You are not the only one / You are not the only one.” That repetition serves as a leitmotif for the rest of the show, which emphasizes that no one is spared from life’s problems and, eventually, death itself.

Later, the singer recalls, “About a year ago, I went back home for a younger cousin’s wedding, and while I was at home, I found my first white hair. Now, I had never been a person who worried at all about getting older or losing my looks — I just never thought about that stuff. So it all just kind of hit me in this one moment. . . . I had reached the point in my life where everything from here on out was going to be a downward decline towards deterioration and sickness and death. And this had never occurred to me before, so I was really traumatized.” She follows that up with a funky, funny number about something her grandmother told her mother: “When you get old / You will lose your mind! / And everything will hurt all the time! Uh-huh / Uh-huh / . . . / When you get old / All your friends will die! / And you will be a burden to the world! / Uh-huh / Uh-huh.” Among the other songs, whose titles sum things up pretty clearly, are “I Still Have You,” “Comfort of the Lonely,” and “Horrible Things.” Even the Korean-born Lee’s full name, Young Jean Lee, seems relevant, suggesting a youthfulness even though the “Young” is an Americanization of her surname.

In 2016, the Brooklyn-based Lee — a multitalented writer and performer whose previous plays include Straight White Men, Lear, The Shipment, and Untitled Feminist Show — and Future Wife released a DVD of readings and songs from the show with such special guests as Colin Stetson, Kathleen Hanna, Adam Horovitz, Sara Neufeld, David Byrne, and Laurie Anderson, but there’s nothing like seeing it with one singer, and McDermoth (A Bronx Tale, Soul Doctor) is a revelation. Dressed in cool yellow and black leather (the costumes are by Naoko Nagata), she struts around with an infectious determination and a nod and a wink, winning over the audience immediately and never letting go; she is us, and we are her. Kelly, who has choreographed such plays as Fairview, A Strange Loop, The House That Will Not Stand, and Girls, explodes We’re Gonna Die to the next level, transforming it from an involving song cycle to a more fully fledged theatrical production. There’s a clock onstage that depicts the real time, minutes and seconds ticking away not just in our lives but, more important, on the show itself. I found myself filled with sadness as the sixty-minute mark approached, knowing it would soon be over. But I was also energized and invigorated by the fantastic finale, in which everyone participates and caution is thrown to the wind. Yeah, so we’re all gonna die. That shouldn’t mean that we can’t make the most of every moment we’re still here.

WOMEN ON FIRE: STORIES FROM THE FRONTLINES

Chris Henry’s Women on Fire: Stories from the Frontlines is based on true stories about women in today’s America (photo by Russ Rowland)

Royal Family Performing Arts Space
145 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves., third floor
Friday – Monday through March 16, $30-$250
www.royalfamilyproductions.org

Chris Henry’s Women on Fire: Stories from the Frontlines is meant to be an empowering call to action. Unfortunately, it too often resembles an intense Facebook thread in which the majority of the participants are firmly on the left, arguing with a couple of right-wing Trump supporters. But the eighty-minute work is terrifically acted by a diverse cast of fifteen actresses and features dynamic choreography performed by four powerful dancers who serve as a kind of Greek chorus of movement (and occasionally sound).

As you enter the Royal Family Performing Arts Space, yellow caution tape separates the audience from the set, a postapocalyptic scene with black plastic bags partially blocking exposed brick walls and lightbulbs precariously dangling from the ceiling. Women are sitting on chairs and benches in the dark. The caution tape is ripped apart as if declaring, “Here we come!” And one by one, the women walk front and center holding a piece of paper and delivering monologues about rape, misogyny, sexism, abortion, race, discrimination, sexual assault, and other hard-hitting issues. Each story is based on interviews Henry conducted. “I feel like I’m in The Handmaid’s Tale and I can’t get out,” Offred (Stephanie J. Block) says. “1, 2, buckle my shoe / 3, 4, close the door / 5, 6, pick up sticks / 7, 8, lay them straight / 9, 10, big fat hen. That’s how I got through sex,” Kara (Gina Naomi Baez) confesses. “Okay, here’s the deal. You don’t get to be a Roman Polanski fan anymore,” Lisa (Alysia Reiner) shouts. Julia rails against the philosophy behind Pretty Woman. Jo praises Hillary Clinton but lambasts Bill as a sexual predator. The most moving story comes from Maya (Gargi Mukherjee), who details a sexual assault at a threading parlor.

Maddie Corman is part of rotating cast of incendiary Women on Fire (photo by Russ Rowland)

On the other side, Courtney (Maddie Corman) explains, “I think people get so worked up about silly things; I mean, boys will be boys,” Taty accuses the Democrats of being dangerously wrong on Cuba, and Charle (Cynthia Mace) doesn’t understand why Black Lives Matter is more important than Blue Lives Matter. After speaking their peace, the women put their paper into a mini-cauldron. Each segment is preceded by a ferocious interpretive dance by Samantha Butts, Emily Anne Davis, Erica Misilo, Samantha Warner, and/or Mariah Reive, who occasionally interact with the other performers. The effective set design, lighting, and costumes are by Cheyenne Sykes, with original music by Lars Jacobsen; Henry codirects the play with choreographer Lorna Ventura. The impressive rotating cast also includes Kathy Brier, Andréa Burns, Rosa Curry, Paige Gilbert, Judy Gold, Julie Halston, Simone Harrison, Cady Huffman, Steffanie Leigh, Rebecca Nelson, Olivia Oguma, Portia, Connie Ray, Laila Robins, Debra Jo Rupp, Constance Shulman, Lianah Sta. Ana, Desi Waters, and Ashley Williams.

“This play is not meant to be perfect. . . . This is just a pebble in a giant ocean of stories,” Henry explains in a program note. She’s more right than she realizes. Too many of the tales, though true, are clichéd and obvious, preaching to the choir, starting with the first monologue, when Margaret reads a long list of Donald Trump’s shameful deeds while campaigning and then as president. We are familiar with every one of them, so there are no surprises; it feels like we’re watching MSNBC or reading a social media post from Mother Jones. The night I went, the ritual finale did not catch fire because of a faulty lighter. But that did not stop the play’s inner fury, best represented by Rachel, who delivers a profanity-laced tirade against the treatment of women in today’s America.