“Adele Bloch-Bauer I”, 1907, by Gustav Klimt (Neue Gallery)
It’s the perfect end-of-summer treat for yourself: an art-filled weekend escape to Manhattan that gives you plenty of time to take in guided visits of three distinctive and stunning smaller museums—and a night on the town to enjoy as you like.
Art historian Ursula Rehn Wolfman leads the tour, which offers the rare opportunity to visit the famed Neue Gallery before it opens to the public for the day. Housed in a beautiful 1914 mansion on Museum Mile, the gallery’s collection focuses on German and Austrian art and design from the early 20th century. A special exhibition marks the centenary of the deaths of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, two key artistic figures represented among the Neue Gallery’s holdings.
The Morgan Library and Museum’s architectural history is as rich as its collections of illuminated manuscripts, rare books, literary and historical manuscripts, music manuscripts, and drawings. The opulent Renaissance-inspired private library designed for banker and collector Pierpont Morgan in 1904 by a partner in McKim, Mead, and White has been enhanced by a 2006 expansion and renovation by architect Renzo Piano.
The former residence of another Gilded Age figure, Henry Clay Frick, is now the Frick Collection, a museum and research center whose holdings grew from the Old Master paintings and European sculpture and decorative arts acquired by its namesake. The museum includes several gardens designed by Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., as well as an interior garden court by John Russell Pope, who echoed some of its elements in his later designs in a court for the original National Gallery of Art building.
The tour’s hotel can also be considered a work of art: the historic Roosevelt Hotel, opened in 1924, known as the “Grande Dame of Madison Avenue.” A restoration has brought back its Jazz-Age glamour, and the Roosevelt’s midtown location makes it an ideal base for your Manhattan weekend. Saturday evening is yours to fill, and an early three-course supper at the Brass Rail is included before you set off on Sunday.
World Art History Certificate elective: Earn 1/2 credit
GENERAL DETAILS
- Cost includes Saturday boxed lunch en route and Sunday breakfast and supper.
- Overnight accommodations are at the historic Roosevelt Hotel.
- Tour departs by bus from the Mayflower Hotel, Connecticut Ave. and DeSales St., NW, with a pickup at the DoubleTree Hilton, 15101 Sweitzer Lane, Laurel, Maryland, at about 9:10 a.m
- Single-room supplement $105 (factored into the Single Room Member and Single Room Non-Member pricing).
- Singles registering at the double-room rate are paired (on a nonsmoking basis) if possible, but must pay the single-room supplement otherwise.
- Detailed information is mailed to registrants about four weeks prior to departure.
- Registrants may want to consider purchasing trip insurance.
