Reimagining Upper East Side
Over the years, New York City has been a home for many different profiles of people and a center of attention for millions of tourists who are dreaming of becoming a part of this spectacular city. From Queens to Manhattan, this diverse land is filled with various neighborhoods. Every neighborhood has its own unique atmosphere and provides you with breathtaking NYC perspectives, where everybody has a place to fit in. Every year thousands of people migrate to this concrete jungle to accomplish their goals and follow their aspirations. That’s because New York City is basically a headquarters for most industries like art, fashion, or real estate. But if you are specifically into the art and design fields, Manhattan, the Upper East Side, is just the place for you.
The Upper East Side is an extraordinary neighborhood which is mostly known for its lavish and opulent standards. This place is an exquisite landmark that represents this upscale lifestyle on famous tv shows and movies. These can be represented as “Gossip Girl” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” all these masterpieces convey a highly desirable way of living in NYC. According to the historical newspaper The Sun, The Upper East Side also holds great powers in the art and design industries. Every year young artists come here with big hopes of succeeding and becoming these famous designers they look up to. With exquisite museums and galleries, this place is a trendsetter for the whole art world. Millionaires Row is the heart of this neighborhood where universally famous museums like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art are located. These museums carry millions of dollars’ worth of masterpieces, and also, they have the duty of choosing the newest trends. This area is always full of creativity and auras of people who make their dreams come true.
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art” is one of the most significant places where pandemic effects became evident. But in order to capture the changes, we must first of all, imagine how this place was several months ago. Met Museum is a monument of the Upper East Side that is almost crowded by art enthusiasts all the time. Every week it launches new exhibitions which have the power to choose what’s in or out this week. This astonishing museum is also considered as a massive archive for ancient masterpieces from every culture and place of the world. Besides being a showcase of one of the most famous artworks, this museum’s staircases are a trendy place to hang out because of its placement near restaurants and top-ranked schools. Just as they portrayed in Gossip Girl, it is ubiquitous to see students eating their takeout salads with their friends on top of these stairs. Even if the museum is closed that day, the stairs are pretty much always available, apart from the first Mondays of May every year. This time of the year, this stairway is reserved for high society and one of the most talented stars to showcase their designer garments. Met Gala is an extraordinary event that takes place at the “Metropolitan Museum of Art” every year by Vogue. This red-carpet event is a witty publicity stunt for promoting the new exhibition of The Costume Institute. All high-profile guests of Anna Wintour partner up with famous fashion houses to portray their fabulous collections
However, even the most popular events and museums got profoundly affected by this pandemic. By the appearance of the COVID-19, the city’s vibrant atmosphere left its spot to a ghost city, which ironically made “the city that never sleeps” fall asleep and transferred imaginative minds to ones that are loaded with panic. With a population of over 8 million residences, it is safe to say that NYC conducted this virus pretty harshly. With rapidly escalating cases, the city locked itself down. This feeling of uncertainty put the town in panic mode. The people once spent hours in Met corridors, now running to their local supermarkets to stockpile food and most importantly “toilet paper.” In the Upper East Side, the posh lifestyle had a reverse evaluation into a survival challenge. With stay in orders, the art and culture left its spot to a downhearted and depressing theme. Many museums, art galleries, and studios had to be closed for an unlimited time, making some artists and museums go bankrupt. On 13th March, the Met museum announced its temporary closing. This news flagged the New Yorkers that something significant was coming. In this period, to keep the art alive, the world’s most famous art museums shared virtual collections to its fans. However, the Metropolitan Museum of Art faced a massive backlash from the media due to sharing only 26 virtual exhibitions. USA Today’s harsh comment both put “the richest” neighborhood Upper East Side and “the richest” art museum, The Met, in an awful spot for not protecting their art and antiquity. Also, The Met Museum had to celebrate their 150th anniversary in quarantine. According to EFE News Service, due to coronavirus’s spread, the Met has announced that the celebrations will be postponed to 2 and 3 October. Until that time, the institution got founded by entrepreneurs, bankers, and artists. This action’s main reason was to spread awareness of celebrating art, culture, and history, even in the most unfavorable times. As predicted, The Met Gala got canceled for the first time in history. According to The Hindustan Times newspaper, Billy Porter decided to bring back the joy of this tradition by creating the “Met Gala Challenge”. This event challenged all fans to recreate past years’ looks by only using household materials. From Kylie Jenner’s Versace gown to Lady Gaga’s pink coat, almost every outfit got recreated. Even some of them got reposted by the institution to elate these young and talented designers.
After five mounts The Met Museum reopened. Now we all have the same question in our minds, “How can we adapt to this new reality?” From now on, all creative minds like my fabulous group and me partnered up and began our research. While my other group members tested their creativity limits with their witty solutions on their topics, I specifically focused on The Met Museum. Even in this particular topic, there are still several points to cover.
The Met Museum should improve its website by equipping it with the newest technology. If we are passionate about making this journey more accessible to others, we should not ignore the power of fastly developing technology. The first step would be to download all the pieces that The Met carries on its website. In this way, people worldwide will have this remarkable opportunity to explore these exquisite masterpieces in their homes’ comfort and safety. My motto is that, in order to fully understand the art, we should, first of all, meet with the artist behind it. So, each piece will be provided with detailed information about it and, most importantly, the artist’s history. This upgrade will undoubtedly cancel all the accusations of not protecting the art history that Met was exposed to all five months. In addition to all of these, I have designed this entirely new perspective for art fans to see their favorite piece on sight. With this new attachment, “Plan Your Visit” the side will provide you with maps and schedules customized just for you. The setup process is straightforward and nothing to worry about. First of all, visitors should open up The Met’s official website and then specifically pick which pieces they desire to see. After choosing them, the attachment will automatically provide visitors with a plan to make their visit as quickly as possible. It is very well known that the most crucial thing in this adaptation period is to keep our social distance. The best way of practicing social distancing is to control people’s concentration in a particular room or building. With the help of this new evaluation, visitors can easily see their favorite art pieces in fewer steps and, most importantly, with fewer human interactions as possible. There are no more lines and human traffic in the museum, so it’s massively easier to keep the visitor counts low and stable. This update will be massively beneficial to art students like my classmates and me. When we are assigned to see specific artwork, we can schedule as needed to see only that piece and get out of there without risking our lives. For this idea, I am majorly inspired by Ikea’s “Plan Your Visit” service. This one is not as intelligent as I dreamed of, but it still gives you the chance to list the items you want to buy once you get there.
I am making renovations in a place like nothing else, The Met is an art museum where everything is symbolic and metaphorical. This kind of place radiates with art and creativity, so its solution should be as equally artistic as possible. I tried to keep this fact in my mind while reimagining it. As a result of long hours of brainstorming, I came to the decision that I should create a new exhibition that will hopefully attract attention to corona. This exhibition is called “The Art of Corona” which is associated with the effects and changes that occurred due to pandemic. This collection will be located at the museum entrance, where it is impossible not to see any kind of visible from the building’s exterior. This exhibition will include a pile of sculptures that mimic coughing and suffocating people from every age group and culture. This combination will represent how this virus spread worldwide and every person affected by it regarding race or age. Also, their clustered placement will convey the message that we should always practice social distancing. The background for the exhibition will be a giant screen, almost like the ones in Times Square. This screen will have the live count of COVID cases and deaths it occurred. This aspect of the collection will once again highlight the reality and danger of this virus. This exhibition is not only visible it also includes audio. When you are wandering around it from every corner of the room, there are sound systems that blast out the sound of pre-recorded coughs. These audios will tie the exhibition together. Well, I am aware that this exhibition can be a little heavy on the human soul but undoubtedly, this is what we all have been through, and making it look milder would only be foolish. As an artist, I strongly believe in the power of visuals over texts so this exhibition will also act as a warning before fully entering the museum. Like all the pieces, this one will also be included on the website with all possible information needed. This whole idea is a product of my mind and I have never seen anything like this before, but I am looking forward to an upgrade like this one.
It is not a secret that we are going through a very rough year. Apart from COVID-19, we have experienced several additional issues like police brutality, racism, and other political issues. Even though overcoming all of these before 2021 seems a little bit unrealistic, I believe in the power of my generation. I think that the world can use the fresh perspective which this generation provides. Together we will not only redesign The Upper East Side, but we also will modify every place of the world for my artistic and embracing community.
