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Lucky Guy, a new Broadway play, is Tom Hank’s Broadway debut and therefore marks a beginning for him.  Sadly, the play also represents an ending as it is the last work of Nora Ephron; journalist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer, director and much loved New Yorker.

Photo - Sara Krulwich

Lucky Guy tells the story of tabloid columnist Mike McAlary in the graffiti covered and scandel ridden New York of the 1980’s.  The play takes the form of an oral history and tells the story of McAlary’s ambitious rise, fall and rise again.  McAlary’s growing prominence as a journalist came as a result of dogged determination and plain hard work.  His fall was the Jane Doe rape case during which he was sued for libel.  He betrayed long and loyal friends and made some very difficult choices.  It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that he uncovered a terrible case of police brutality against Haitian immigrant Abner Louima that he was able to redeem himself.  For this work he received the Pulitzer prize, not long before his untimely death at 41 from cancer.

The best oral histories are vivid and evocative and this play is both.  It is also loud and very fast moving, remarkably churning through 16 scenes in 2 hours.

Lucky Guy has been criticized for failing to be a fully developed play and simply a collection of anecdotes.  I found that these anecdotes created a narrative that effectively, and often affectionately, portrayed Mr. McAlary and the New York in which he lived.  Affectionately that is, despite the ‘bare knuckle boxing’ style of journalism that characterized the tabloid business of the time.

Eprhron started her journalism career at The New York Post and her nostalgia for the experience comes through, especially in her portrayal of the lone female reporter.  Her affection for New York is apparent despite the grit and corruption of the time, and her first hand experience lends authenticity to the story.

Photo by Joan Marcus

The play, now a very hot ticket, is having a limited run and ends July 2.

In addition to being a wonderful walking park, The High Line is a terrific venue for enormous public art.

Broken Bridge II, by Nigerian artist El Anatsui, covers the entire east wall of a neighbouring building.  The piece consists of pressed tin and mirrors that cover the wall like folded drapery.

The mirrors reflect the surrounding landscape in such a fascinating way.

The day we were there was so grey, that you couldn’t tell where the wall ended and the sky began.

On a sunny day, it must be an entirely different experience.

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s current retrospective of the work of Jay DeFeo (1929 - 1989) is considered definitive and is ambitious to say the least.

The works on display represent her entire career and include paintings, collages, drawings, photography, small sculptures and jewellery.

The showpiece though, is her signature work The Rose (1958 - 1966).

Photo by Phillip Greenberg

The work is massive at almost 11 feet high and 7 1/2 feet across.  It weighs 1500 pounds and the paint is 11 inches thick in places.  The Rose is stunning and quite hard to believe - I kept going back for another look.

The painting is really more like sculpture and The Whitney has created a unique gallery which dramatically gives it pride of place.  The work is isolated in a black painted room and is lit theatrically from the sides.  

Like many monumental art works, there is a story:  Ms. DeFeo worked exclusively on The Rose for eight years.  Painting, scraping, molding, repainting, obsessing, revising and never quite completing it for eight long years.

Here is a wonderful photo of her at work.

Photo by Burt Glimm

The short film The White Rose (1967) by Bruce Conner, which documents the removal of The Rose from Ms. DeFeo’s studio, is also showing at The Whitney.  It was a fraught endeavour that involved enlarging the window opening and it forced Ms. DeFeo to stop working on it, probably preserving her sanity.

The Rose was shown twice in her lifetime before taking up long term residence at the San Francisco Art Institute.  Then, it disappeared for twenty years behind a wall.  In 1995 The Whitney rescued, acquired and restored it and only now has built an exhibition around it.

During the 1991 survey and excavation to construct a Federal office building in lower Manhattan, a surprising discovery was made as workers unearthed the human remains of several intact burials.  Work was halted and the building site became an archaeological dig.

This unexpected and exciting project shed a great deal of light on the forgotten history of the African slaves of colonial and federal New York.

It is estimated that this was the site of 15,000 to 20,000 burials in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.  A look back at the history showed that the cemetery on this land was closed in 1794 and the area was approved for development.  In order to preserve the burials, the site was covered with up to 25 feet of landfill and development moved forward for almost 200 years.

It wasn’t until the 1991 construction project that these graves were discovered.

Archeological excavation revealed the remains of 419 Africans both free and enslaved; 40% of which were children.  The remains are still here and this monument was built.

These seven mounds cover the re-interred remains.  There are often flowers and other small tributes placed on the mounds.

A beautiful monument has been created.  Here is part of the circular floor showing a map centred on the crossroads of African culture and details from some of those buried here.

Surrounding the central floor are curving walls made of polished black granite and carved there, are religious and funerary symbols from many of the places in the African diaspora.

This part of the monument is a structure that evokes a slave ship.

One can choose to enter the monument either through the “ship” or by walking down the gentle ramp of the spiral.  Both paths are a moving way to pause and think about the lives of so many that came to New York unwillingly.