The Whitney Weekend

To celebrate the final weekend of Jeff Koons: A Retrospective and the Whitney’s Museum's uptown location the Museum will stay open for 36 continuous hours from Saturday, October 18, 11 am–Sunday to October 19, 11 pm. The famed museum will be closing it's doors after this show and opening a new museum downtown but if you have never visited the building Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith designed in the early 1960's at 945 Madison Avenue at East 75th Street in Manhattan in New York City, this is your chance.

I've seen quite a few amazing shows at the Whitney over the years- notably the Biennials, Robert Rauschenberg's last works, the Kusama exhibition, the Hopper's and Calder's, but my most memorable experience was my first time there.  My first exposure to the Whitney came as I was finding my way through college in UMass Boston when a teacher exposed me to the work of photographer Robert Frank, who went on to become a pronounced influence on my work.  

There was a retrospective of his work in Washington so I grabbed friends and took a road trip to the national museum to see the work (remember this is pre- "everything's on the Internet" days so you couldn't just Google him) it really effected me so when it traveled to NY's Whitney I was there again on the first night hoping to meet the man himself and see some of the films he had made.  He wasn't there but many of his beat generation friends were and I had a chance to meet poet and photographer Allen Ginsberg which was amazing!