Last night Shelby and I attended New York City’s Museum Mile Festival. As I mentioned here, museum mile stretches from 82nd Street to 106th Street along Fifth Avenue just east of Central Park. Every June, in celebration of Museum Mile, New York’s biggest block party is thrown. Fifth Avenue is shut down to traffic and thousands of locals and tourists alike descend upon this mile long stretch of culture to the various museums who open their doors free of charge for a few hours on this magical evening.
After sitting on the steps of the Met, one of our favorite people watching spots, we headed to our first destination- the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, which is housed in the former 64 room mansion of Andrew Carnegie. The highlight of this museum to me was the Immersion Room. This room offers visitors the unique experience of selecting digital images of wallpapers and then projecting the images onto the walls at full scale. You even have the ability to sketch out your own unique design and then project it to see its impact.
It clearly lended itself to some pretty cool photo opps 🙂
While on our way to our next stop, the Guggenheim Museum, we admired many of the chalk sketches that kids (and many adults) were drawing up and down Fifth Avenue. I must admit, it’s pretty cool walking in the middle of a usually yellow cab ridden avenue admiring chalk art in the shadows of some of the world’s best museums.
In my opinion, the building’s architecture and design of the Guggenheim Museum vastly outweighs the art hanging within it’s walls. The museum is one long continuous ramp that you start immediately upon entering the building, wraps around and around up 6 stories, and forces you to retrace your steps (or cheat and use the elevator) on your way out.
You should definitely add a trip to these museums on your New York to do list, and if you’re in New York next summer be sure to check the date for next years Museum Mile Festival.
Ashley xx