The Guggenheim was my first dose of NY culture, and despite the jackhammer chorus in the background, it was great. However apparently the wonderful Frank Lloyd Wright design has proven to have a few structural flaws as time has passed - hence the jackhammers working away to fix it up - the whole exterior is covered in scaffolding as they try to repair the cracks, and some of the internal steelwork which has a few problems. But inside, the works of art were amazing - Guggenheim collected over 100 Kandinsky paintings on one trip to Europe to build his collection, so as you can imagine, there is quite a rich display.
Tuesday was a "wander the Village" day as I headed over into the West Village, then meandered my way through Greenwich Village, and in and out of many shops.
Wednesday was Anna's birthday, so we "played ladies" and headed for a posh lunch at the Morgan Library and museum, the former home of Pierpont and JP Morgan. This is an amazing house, built with the proceeds of their fortune built in the cowboy days of Wall St. JP Morgan's drawing room was regarded as the most beautiful room in America in the late 1800s, though to our eyes now it is very rich and sombre and ornate. The library and foyer are equally beautiful, and include marble columns shipped in from a French chateau built in 1 month, as a bet with Marie Antoinette that such a thing was possible!! There is also a beautiful art collection financed by the Sunny Crawford von Bulow foundation - she is the one around whom there was a huge scandal as to whether her husband Claus von Bulow had tried to murder her with an insulin injection, putting her into a 20-year coma, in which she was only kept alive because her huge fortune could pay for the absolute best 24-hour care. Meanwhile her acquitted husband divided NY society on his guilt/innocence, as he used his control of her fortune to acquire high social status with million dollar gifts to the Met Opera etc. So quite a place of many stories......
At night we went to dinner at a hyper-cool NY restaurant Buddakan in the Meatpacking District - you have to book weeks in advance, and everyone there looked impossibly hip - my disguise must have worked, as I was not ejected by the style police. So quite a busy day ......
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