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Shakespeare in the Park, welcomes
a production of Julius Caesar this
summer. (If waiting all day in the
park for free tickets isn’t on your
agenda, try the newer Bryant Park
Shakespeare, directly behind the
New York Public Library, as a
fresh alternative.) Meanwhile, the
Gothic-revival Met houses a vast
store of global treasures, too large
to conquer in a day, though after
admiring Egyptian artifacts and
Old Masters gems, head to the
rooftop for a restorative cocktail
and beautiful city views. Just
a few blocks southeast lies the
institution’s latest ambition: the
Met Breuer, the museum’s new,
contemporary-art outpost housed
in the former Madison Avenue
home of the Whitney Museum of
American Art. The Met Breuer’s
summer calendar includes a
major retrospective of the prolific
Brazilian artist Lygia Pape.
Speaking of the Whitney
( whitney.org), it has decamped
for airier digs downtown. Its new
home in the formerly industrial
Meatpacking District is awash in
edgy dining and shopping, and the
new building, designed by architect Renzo Piano, fits right in. In
this second museum/park pairing,
the Whitney hugs the southern tip
of the High Line ( thehighline.org),
the disused elevated railway now
reinvented as an urban park, outdoor gallery—and one of NYC’s
most unmissable attractions.
Another key downtown neighborhood,
SoHo might seem commercial and crowded
now, but vestiges of its artsy heyday remain,
notably two permanent, site-specific installations by conceptualist artist Walter de Maria
that date back to the 1970s. The Earth Room
( earthroom.org) is literally named; it’s a huge
white box filled with moist earth almost two
feet deep, watered and raked weekly to stay
fresh—the warm, springlike smell is strangely
comforting. His nearby Broken Kilometer
n a city as multifaceted as New York,
pinpointing the must-sees of its most
famous borough, Manhattan, is
about as simple as finding the city’s
“best” pizza. Yet if you ask a New
Yorker, you’ll probably find that it’s
the diverse mix of established land-
marks, hidden pleasures and buzzed-about new
destinations that defines the city for locals. Try
a New York itinerary that’s as lively, iconic and
opinionated as the city itself.
Quintessential New York
The perfect Big Apple experience combines its world-famous
attractions with the city’s rising stars—call them modern classics.
BY MARK ELLWOOD
I
JOURNEYS
THINGS TO DO
Two of Manhattan’s must-sees are counterparts, pairing a museum with a nearby
urban green space; one duo is centuries old,
while the other embodies the city’s constant
urban renewal. The former, of course, is the
combination of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art ( metmuseum.org) with the adjacent
Central Park ( centralparknyc.org), the crown
jewel of the city’s natural splendor. One of
Central Park’s most eagerly awaited traditions,