Good news! I recently received an invitation to a party for the re-opening of South Street Seaport Museum in lower Manhattan. The goings-on down there have been pretty mysterious for the last few months, but it looks like they will be opening back up after all, though there are still lots of questions. If you haven’t been following this at all, the basic story is this: South Street Seaport was New York City’s maritime museum and tall ship livery, located just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. It closed due to poor management last year, and then was taken over by the Museum of the City of New York. No one knew what that was going to mean for either museum or for the thousand-odd-feet of historic vessels. In November, MCNY announced that it would re-open South Street with 20,000 square feet of new exhibits in January 2012. They hired some new staff, or rather MCNY did for South Street, and presumably they didn’t have much of a Christmas break. Haven’t heard much from them, and I don’t know anyone in the maritime heritage community that is working with MCNY. So I am very curious what this invitation-only, 800-person event will consist of. There is now some coverage of what will be on display, such as an exhibit of photographs of the Occupy Wall Street protests. I also know they have reached out to the on-water arts community in NYC. So, it sounds like they are re-branding a bit as a museum of Lower Manhattan and also intend to show where traditional watercraft land in other cultural movements, all of which is encouraging. As for the ships, who knows. There are rumors that some may be sold, like the 377’ barque Peking, but on that I have no info. A good way to keep tabs on the ship collection is the Save Our Seaport blog.
South Street Seaport is open to the public on Thursday morning the 26th of January, and you should go. Let me know what you find out.
Buster Keaton in “The Boat” from 1921. In which Keaton builds a motor cruiser in his basement, launches it, and sets off voyaging with his family, with many tribulations. At the time, motor cruisers were becoming popular among young families like the one portrayed in the film, and magazines such as Rudder and Power Boating were full of plans from which you could build your own.
Keaton’s boat is named “Damfino”, which I imagine is from “Damn Fine”. Compound words were a common way to name a boat at the time. I was reminded of this film the other day when I ran across a reference to a cruiser called Damfino in a set of race results from the late 20s; presumably that boat was named after Keaton’s fanciful deathtrap. It had not finished the race, which is as to be expected.
It is an enduring part of our long relationship with the sea that big ships inspire complacency, and the sea asserts itself through tragedy. Peace to those lost at Giglio last night.
Decades after John Gardner, two guys from New York have identified the northeast coast fishing dory as a craft to reconnect people to the water. Mare Liberum has come up with a set of plans and an art-based platform for construction and use of this traditional small craft. Check them out, download the PDFs, build yourself a boat over the weekend.
As a result of the Wawona project and my collaboration with John Grade last winter/spring, I was asked to sit in on a talk about the sculpture as part of the Authorship Project at PR in Seattle. It should be interesting, I will be providing background on Wawona and drawing connections between John’s work and the wooden boat scene: craft, time, adventure, etc. I may also use the forum to explore the concept of contemporary art in history museum settings; after all this piece is going up at the Museum of History and Industry. Should be fun. 6pm.
