Sendak Exhibit

Ventured into Manhattan today to see the Sendak Exhibit at the Jewish Museum. It was quite a trek to get there. We bussed in and then took the subway (including a very stupid wrong turn on my part) until we finally arrived. On the way home, with no wrong turns and just one quick errand, it took us nearly 2 hours to get home.

In any case, it felt really cool to be in the city. Really cool. And for those of you who know me, this is quite a revelation. I've always been terribly afraid of living in New York. But I'm not living there. I'm living in NJ, and can get into NY, one of the most famous places in the world, and I can do it ON FOOT and with SUBWAYS. No planes. No vacation time spent on this. I spent a Sunday afternoon at the Jewish Museum in NY.

That rocks.

The exhibit itself was pretty good, although somewhat short. I've read quite a bit about Maurice Sendak and knew much of the information presented. I read pretty much everything in the exhibit and still it only took an hour to get through. It was exciting to see his original work, and especially to learn a little more about some of his more recent works, like Brundibar and We're All In The Dumps With Jack and Guy. His work has always been so dark, but more and more so lately. It's really interesting to walk through the gallery past costumes of "Where The Wild Things Are" in which dark imagery can be made magical and kept in control, until the final gallery where you walk in front of an actual stage containing costumes for Brundibar. If you read the link above you see that Sendak's book and the current opera are taken directly from an actually opera written in Terezin and then performed there by children shortly before both the children and the author were murdered by Nazis.

Sendak is not a happy guy.

There were a few places in the exhibit in which tiny copies of photos of deceased relatives or of famous places were placed alongside the drawings that Sendak drew. There could have been more and I wish there had been. But it was good.

We went through the rest of the museum too. At first I was kind of bored because a lot of the exhibits were there to basically explain what Judaism is. And I already know that. I already know what a Talmud is. I already know the holidays. But eventually we reached the art and slowed our pace considerably. It's not a bad museum at all. I was really moved by a number of pieces. I'll be curious to go back some time.

I can. It's just 2 hours away.