Tribeca Citizen | Field Trip: Fisher Landau Center for Art

Field Trip: Fisher Landau Center for Art

June 3, 2016 • Arts & Culture

The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City was on our to-do list for a long time, but Andrea and I wanted to wait till the garden renovation was completed, so we ventured elsewhere first—including Crown Heights, the High Bridge, and then the Fisher Landau Center for Art, which is also in Long Island City but nowhere near the Noguchi Museum.

The Fisher Landau exists solely to show the art owned by Emily Fisher Landau (that’s her at the top of the post, as silkscreened by Andy Warhol), who collected works from 1960 on. The neatest thing about the place is that there’s never anyone there—so you get three floors of contemporary art to yourself.

The exhibits are changed now and again; during our visit in March, I didn’t find all that much to respond to. Seriously, a cat photo?

Below are three works I did love: by Adam Fuss, Cy Twombly, and Rudolf Stingel, respectively. The latter paired well with the elevator door in the distance.

And this library was the height of Instagramability. Yes, I did lie on the chaise longue.

Then Andrea and I wandered around on our way back to the subway. This is not the most picturesque part of Queens. We did admire the building below, but it faced one of the ugliest buildings we’ve ever come across. Is it better to be inside the ugly building, looking at the nice one? Or vice versa?

We had a decent lunch at Dutch Kills, the only option in the area, and made our way toward a bridge that overlooked a rail yard.

The day was turning blustery and cold, and we lost the will to go on—or at least the conviction that anything else of interest was within walking distance. So it was back to the raffish 39th Avenue subway stop, complete with a troll of an MTA worker. If I was a tourist, I might have found him amusing in an Archie Bunker sort of way.