Telluride Inside… and Out: a day in the Big Apple

21 Apr Telluride Inside… and Out: a day in the Big Apple

For escapist entertainment at its finest, follow in Telluride Inside… and Out’s footsteps and make a beeline for New York’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the former home of industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie. (And then later to Ma Peche. See below.)

The featured show at the Cooper-Hewitt is “Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels.” The most comprehensive exhibition ever organized of the masterworks of the vaunted company, the exhibit is generating lots of buzz – and very long lines. For good reason: “Set In Style” is a magnum of Champagne. The cat’s meow. Kitsch-fabulous razzle-dazzlement at its best –  and brightest. (Shades recommended.) 

Among the 350 pieces on display is bling worn by Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco (my fingers are genuflecting as I write out the title), Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Marlene Dietrich, Eva Peron and Greta Garbo to name a few of the high profile ladies who lunched.

“Set in Style” occupies the downstairs at the Cooper-Hewitt. Upstairs is a show of the work – texture designs, fashions, sketches, painting – of Sonia Delaunay, who, along with husband Robert, founded Orphic Cubism. (The school within a school emphasized the sensations generated by the simultaneous contrasts of certain colors. ) For Clint, the high point of the exhibit was discovering what had to be the first pair of five-finger shoes ever. They were on the feet of a model in a photograph depicting bathing beauties. (In Telluride, Vibram Five Fingers shoes can be found at Jagged Edge.)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was packed on that rainy Tuesday afternoon. Dedicated art lovers or crowds seeking shelter from the rain? Probably a mix of both. Of the three shows we visited, including Richard Serra Drawings, Katrin Sigurdardottir’s two installations and Guitar Heroes: Legendary Craftsmen from Italy to New York, only Guitar Heroes struck a chord. The other two, well, a bit of the emperor’s new clothes. (We are visiting the Met again on Friday, expressly to see Cezanne’s Card Players. More soon.)

Dinner was the main event of the evening, a reunion of a group of Telluride locals at the newest of David Chang’s Momfuku restaurant empire, Ma Peche, located at 15 West 56th Street in the  Chambers Hotel.

The culinary objective of the gathering was for our crowd of 10 to make its way through Chang’s “Boeuf Sept Facon,” “Beef Seven Ways’ –  despite the fact that some of us (namely me) never (seldom) eat red meat. I just closed my eyes and savored the effects of big flavors duct-taped together with fabulous herbs and acids. There were also sides of lettuce leaves and pickled vegetables to assuage my guilt.

It was not a meal any sane person would eat more than once in a lifetime. But hey, we’re from Telluride and “sane” is a relative term anyway. In the end, we all earned the T-shirt – and here I am only guessing – made it through the night without nightmares.

(Stay tuned to Telluride Inside… and Out for a more detailed review of the food and David Chang from our food writer Lisa Barlow, also at the feast.)

(Ed. note: Susan left out one major piece: we overnighted with our friends Tom and Stephanie, who among other things, are responsible for our getting together in the first place.)