Get Out of Those Museums, Well, Just For a Day.

Adam McCauley, end paper for the gift book, The Monsterologist

Perhaps all this sashaying around museums is getting to you. The large, echoing halls and all the quiet whispering can get a little monotonous sometimes. Maybe you need some new color in your life. Or 16,777,216 new colors, to be exact. So head over to the Society of Illustrators located on 63rd between Park and Lexington and taste some new art fresh from the computer. Perfect for a student's budget (it's free!), the Society of Illustrators offers quickly cycled exhibitions (most don't last more than a few months) so you can keep picking at all the delicious goodies they have to offer.

Currently at the Society of Illustrators is their 51st Annual Exhibition. After holding a contest that was judged by a panel of peer illustrators and art directors, hundreds of entries were chosen to be shown in a three part series. The first part displayed sequential illustrations. Currently up until February 28th is the Book and Editorial exhibit, and following will be CD covers, posters, and greeting cards until the end of March.

If you have the chance, go see both shows! The Book and Editorial show covers everything from children's books to the New York Times. Work references classic novels, current world politics, and the occasional whimsical landscape. It features Sam Weber, Edel Rodriguez, and Jillian Tamaki, to name a few. The exhibition space is highly casual and allows you to spend as much time as you want looking at the pieces. My favorite part was looking at the listed media. Pieces that I swear were silk screened were all done digitally. Other illustrations that looked obviously digital were watercolor and ink. Some were on wood, others printed on nice paper. Some were even delicately drawn in pencil.

So take your time away from the epic frescoes and ancient statues, and stroll over to the Society of Illustrators and see how artists use their computers and knowledge of design to make this world a more beautiful place.

Bon appetit!

Money is Everything

"To the dollar - as we knew it!" by Joseph Mirachi

Money money money! Let’s face it, we are obsessed. Every time I open the New York Times website I am confronted with news stories about Obama’s financial plans. The Economist makes me even more uneasy in my seat with all its talk about the worsening global recession. Everywhere I turn, the media is telling me I should hold on to all my loose change that I scrounge for my daily double espresso. But don’t let me get you down. There are plenty of people who can see the dollar for what it really is: an over-glorified piece of paper. These people that I speak of are George Booth, Lee Lorenz, and Charles Barsotti (to name a few) who’s original New Yorker cartoons about money are being displayed at the Morgan Library and Museum in the exhibition On the Money: Cartoons for the New Yorker from the Melvin R. Seiden Collection.

The exhibition, designed by curator Jennifer Tonkovich and on view until May 24^th, displays about eighty original works by some of the New Yorker’s best cartoonists poking fun at the dollar-obsessed personalities. From the gold-digging woman to the IRS, the show will make you laugh as you realize over and over again that issues of the dollar bill from the early twentieth century still prevail today. The Morgan’s delectable pickings will make you anxious for the next issue of the New Yorker, because I’m sure there are more on the way.

Here’s to the Morgan and America’s 7.6% unemployment rate!