Tim Potter's Homepage :: My Trip

In September 1999 I went to the US. I'd been there 20 years previously and been to LA & Wyoming and did radio, but this time I did NY & Washington (and lots of other places) and did art.

Taken from the Staten Is. ferry on a very misty evening

Into the deep end; start in New York. You folk in the northern hemisphere don't really understand jet lag, but we had a week-plus of broken sleep, aided and abetted by the city that never sleeps. Horns; the horns on American automobiles are louder than in Australia, and you don't tap them, you sit on them. Great at some ungodly hour in the a.m. Look out the window, and it's bumble-bee city: lots of yellow cabs and black limos. Not gridlocked all day and all night, but when you jam, you jam good.

But all is forgiven for the Art Museums: MoMA, The Guggenheim, the Frick, The Met (incl. The Cloisters). If aliens from Mars come to earth and want a quick course on Earth culture, send them to the Met (not original but it says it all). Alas, the Whitney wasn't open (between exhibitions, and you've got to take down and put up some time).

I saw The Apollo Theatre, I saw the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry, I went to the top of the Empire State Building (photo at left in the foyer of the ESB). Alas, a very misty day in the wake of Hurricane Dennis and you couldn't even see the Hudson. Remember the Chattanooga Choo Choo? I went to Track 29... at Grand Central Station (even though the song says Pennsylvania Station).

And Central Park, and 5th Avenue (it was Labor Day and Tiffany's was closed... that's my excuse anyway), and the Rockerfeller Centre. And... and... and....

On to Philadelphia: an Art Museum with five Mondrians and Van Gogh's Sunflowers. And a room of Marcel Duchamps - in case you're worried that he wasn't really an artist, there are some 'real' works of art he'd done before the stool-and-bicycle-wheel.

Then to Washington and the Smithsonian and the National Gallery. The Smithsonian is big, a lot of 'campuses' but I was entranced by the Hirschorn.

We also had a lot of fun meeting friends: Faye whom I had been emailing for 4 years or so but had never met (so it was a blind date I guess!) and we hit it off famously. And friends from Portland we had met in Paris 3 years ago and we fell on each other as though it had been 3 weeks.

And SFMoMA, the San Jose Art Museum (Do you know the way to San Jose goes the song... we do: down the 101) and Monterey (John Steinbeck might not have been too keen on the place but Monterey is cashing in on the name now),

And The Getty in Los Angeles. This is a remarkable Art Museum, really for the Museum rather than the art. But you've got to see it, as long as you've got sunglasses: a white building in the California sun is dazzling. Perhaps quietly overshadowed by The Huntington.

And more friends (I love you all) and more places that I fell in love with.

And the art: I went to the US looking for Monets, Manets and Cezannes, but came away entanced by Rothkos (and here.)

The electric scooter I took to New York.

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