An Overview

I've been home a few days now, and the jetlag is slowly subsiding, so I think it's a good opportunity to look back at my trip and try to make sense of it all.

I can't say I loved New York. There were times I'd have liked nothing more than to pack up and come home, yet towards the end of the trip I felt I needed to stay longer, there was more to do. But then it's as Seb Chan said in his talk to us. In New York it's not about deciding what to do, but rather what not to do, there's just so much.

The contrast between wealth and poverty in New York is astounding. The wealth sustains the arts and culture of the city. Walk into a museum and every gallery is named for a benefactor. Yet the number of homeless beggars on the street and subway was shocking. There's enough wealth in the city to look after everyone, but there is the mindset that you have to do it all for yourself; the rich will give to the community, in ways they choose.

The speed of the gentrification in New York was notable. We see gentrification in Brisbane, families moving to the outer suburbs simply because it's affordable, and slowly, they become acceptable areas to live. New York doesn't wait for families. The starving artists move in because it's affordable, and soon it becomes a den of galleries rather than a den of junkies and prostitutes, attracting more affluent people until the artists can no longer afford to live there. A local I met told me she remembers when Chelsea was a bad area you didn't venture into, yet now it's a beautiful area of Manhattan, yet signs of its past still remain.

Frank Sinatra sang, if I can make it there I can make it anywhere. And it really is the city people come to to make it. Is New York the centre of art and culture because it's all there, or is it because everyone is going there? It's been a magnet for people looking to make it in all areas of life, not just the arts, for a very long time. Now that I've been, I can see why. As an art history student, seeing the artworks in person was an experience that can't be replaced by lessons in a class room on the other side of the world. Art has to be experienced, and in New York you can experience so much of the influential art that a student will learn about in class. What better place for an actor? In Brisbane there would be few opportunities to see something on stage, let alone perform, while New York has dozens, if not hundreds between Broadway and off Broadway.

I think it's that magnetism that makes New York. Elliott Whitton's talk made me realise that with everyone coming to New York, it's where you meet the people you need to meet, simply because of the vast concentration of people all there for the same reason. That may seem an outrageous idea in a city of over 8 million people, but for all its size, New York isn't that big. It's broken down into different boroughs and other areas, quite often with people with the same interests concentrating in one area. New York's Flower District is still full of florists, The arts were in SoHo, now Chelsea, and they're moving into Brooklyn, more specifically Williamsburg and Bushwick. It's easier to find people when they're concentrated. This was reinforced during my visit to the Whitney Museum, and striking up a conversation with a couple; one of whom turned out to be an artist who gave me her card. New York isn't just what you see, it's who you meet.

I wrote before I went to New York that I don't like big cities, and this holds true. Time spent in open spaces with trees, grass and sky was very welcome, yet part of me feels I could live in New York, even if because visiting is not enough. Three weeks was overwhelming, mostly due to cramming so much into a short time. I feel if I lived in New York I could experience the places I went to at a more leisurely pace. The Met alone requires days to go through, yet I had half a day and saw only a fraction. Even that was overwhelming. There are still areas of New York I didn't get to explore; I feel that I have unfinished business there. As I read about massive cuts to arts funding in Queensland I can fully understand the attraction to a place that appreciates and thrives on arts and culture, yet do we do any good by abandoning what little we do have here? I could live in New York for a few years, but it could never be a permanent home, and I would hope that the experiences there could be brought back to Australia to help enrich our own culture.