Field Trip: Fisher Landau Center for Art

Emily Fisher Landau by Andy Warhol at Fisher LandauThe 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.

Fisher Landau exteriorThe 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.

gallery at Fisher LandauThe 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?

cat photo at Fisher LandauBelow 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.

library at Fisher LandauThen 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?

Queens buildingHome 2 hotelWe 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.

Dutch Kills restaurantrail yard in QueensThe 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.

Previous Field Trip posts:
The High Bridge
The Broad
Crown Heights
Spuyten Duyvil
New York Botanical Garden
Bed-Stuy
The New Whitney Museum
Bushwick-ish
The Rockaways
Greenpoint
S-Cruise by Smartboat
Wave Hill
Governors Island
F.D.R. Four Freedoms Park
Litchfield County, Conn.
One Wall Street
Behind the Scenes at Grand Central Terminal
The Howard/Crosby Microneighborhood
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
East River Ferry
Museum of American Finance

 

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