Last weekend was the opening of the new New Museum on the Bowery. I was happy to take advantage of Target’s thirty hours of free admission and get a first look, so I could report to our readership my scholarly opinions of the new space.

THE GOOD:

The view from the roof. An unusual three-quarter view of downtown.

This view of the lobby. Those people are in the floor!

The inaugural show. Much of the art didn’t interest me, but I give them credit for doing something hard to love, so the whole enterprise didn’t smell of money from the outset.

I take it back, check out the bathroom! Ka-CHING!
(Photo courtesy of Frampton Tolbert)

THE BAD:

The not letting people take pictures. I know, I know, it’s a museum, and everyone wandering around with cameras is annoying, but EVERYONE was there to see the building, and the fact that the guards seemed to be more concerned with telling us to put our cameras away than looking after the art was silly. I took secret pictures anyway.

Why would you open a self-consciously “downtown” museum on Day Without Art? The two stabs at AIDS (art) awareness, one in the hallway on the way to the bathroom, and one crammed in a tiny stairwell made it even more hard to fathom.

Ceasear?

The overdoing it with the naming opportunities. Yikes.

THE TERRIBLE:

Who let Target do this? On the top floor, there were drawers of free red and white candy you could put in little paper bags. After looking at an apparently exhausting four rooms of art, people were so desperate for empty calories that they were acting like pigeons after breadcrumbs. Plus there were red searchlights outside. Truly truly tasteless.

OVERALL:

I give them credit for not packing the place on the first day. (The free admission required advance tickets.) I felt like I could really see the art and the space, and yet it still felt festive. I look forward to seeing how this show grows (they’re adding collage work to the walls in January, sound art in February, and interactive projects in March or something). The space is straight-forward enough that it feels like it’s been there forever. There are fair criticisms to be made of it, and from the inside it feels like little more than four Chelsea galleries on top of each other, but it also felt like it’ll be a good midsize addition to our city of museums. I look forward to returning.