rainy day art tour

On a rainy day, sometimes there's nothing I'd rather do than stroll through a museum or an art gallery. I like going by myself, or with a friend who loves art as much as me, and I like picking out my favorite piece - the one I'd like to own, or the one which inspires me the most - and afterwards discuss it over a warm drink.

I do so dearly miss some of my old art haunts in New York City, so if I were there today, here's what I'd go see:

Untitled (Picasso Woman) 1980-1990

Tim Burton at NY MoMA, will be up through April 26, 2010. More than 500 of Burton's photographs, paintings, doodles, storyboards, sculptures, stories, and sketches have been collected and displayed for an "out-of-body experience."

The Green Man (1996-1998)

Many of the works on display have nothing to do with Burton's films and some aren't even done on canvas, but rather, on notebook paper or cocktail napkins. His films are also being shown at the exhibit.

Since I missed the show this summer in San Francisco at SFMOMA, the next stop on my rainy day art tour would take me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see Robert Frank's The Americans. Frank traveled around America for two years starting in 1955, and shot 28,000 pictures of which 83 were chosen for his book, The Americans, first published in 1958. Frank met writer Jack Kerouac at a party, where he agreed to contribute to the introduction of the second edition of the book, published in 1959. Frank was also a lifelong friend of poet Allen Ginsberg and documented the beat subculture through his lens. The exhibit at the Met celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the book, and is up through January 3, 2010.

Sounds like a good day, right? Now take a load off and have a warm drink.