These past 10 days I have been acting as a Cicerone for my sister and her partner. We really enjoyed having them in our Chelsea apartment. It was also a great opportunity to see NY from the eyes of a tourist again, which I sometimes fail to do since I have been living here for 3 years now.
There are a ton of anecdotes and discoveries behind these pictures, but you have to come to New York to experience them 😉
Wednesday was a long day.
First I was invited to a VIP breakfast executive briefing and presentation by IBM at 7:45am. The event, in which IBM showcased their Watson technology and three partner companies talked about how they are leveraging NLP capabilities, lasted until 12:30pm, but I stayed for an extra hour for a meeting with an IBM executive.
Then I headed back to the office for 3 conference calls. By 7:00pm I was ready to go to the Social Radar startup launch party Stephanie and I had been invited to.
A friend got me a VIP pass for the 2014 Scope Basel Art Show (thank you, Jorge!). I had it all planned out: since I had a meeting in Stuttgart the day before, I could drive to nearby Basel, attend the VIP opening, and then fly back to New York. But the Stuttgart meeting was cancelled, so I changed my plane ticket, and returned to New York in time to go to the Amos Lee concert in Brooklyn`s Prospect Park with my wife.
The Spanish Consul General in New York, Juan Ramón Martínez Salazar, and the Commander of the Training Ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano invited my wife and I to a gala reception aboard the beautiful sail ship (the third largest four-masted tall ship in the world, built in 1927), which is currently docked in New York`s pier 88.
It turned out to be a spectacular evening. The vessel was filled with celebrities: military, politicians with their secret service bodyguards, diplomats, sports, business and entertainment people.
On Sunday I was invited along with my wife by New York art gallery Lyons Wier Gallery to the Downtown modern+contemporary art fair held at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York.
14,000 international collectors and art enthusiasts, over the course of four-days, gathering to discover paintings, sculptures, photographs and mixed-media works by over 600 artists from around the globe, exhibited by more than 50 international dealers. Seasoned as well as new collectors, curators, museum professionals, cultural foundations, dealers, art advisors and consultants enjoying works by mid-career and emerging artists as well as blue chip works by Picasso, De Kooning, Ruscha, Wesselmann, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Calder and other artists.
On May 6th, having just returned from quick trips to Cleveland and Atlanta, I attended with my wife the round table debate “Curiosity, Understanding, and Utility: Science and the Creative Economy” held at the City University of New York Graduate Center`s Proshansky Auditorium.
William Bialek, director of the Graduate Center`s Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences, moderated a discussion with Jennifer Tour Chayes, distinguished scientist and managing director of Microsoft Research New England and Microsoft Research New York City; Fernando Pereira, research at Google; and Chris Wiggins, chief data scientist at the New York Times and faculty member in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics at Columbia University.
For my wifes birthday I acquired a piece of art from <a title="https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/pawel-althamer" href="https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/pawel-althamer" target="_blank">Paweł Althamers “The Neighbors”, which run through April 13 at the New Museum in New York city.
Since the early 1990s, Althamer (b. 1967 Warsaw, Poland) has established a unique artistic practice featuring an expanded approach to sculptural representation and consistently experimental models of social collaboration.
It was great to discuss with a museum curator which piece to select (we agreed without a doubt), and it`s a pleasure to have this piece in the living room of our Chelsea apartment.
