May 1, 10:40 a.m., Acquavella Gallery, 18 E. 79th St.
Riva and I meet our friend (the almost-a-relative kind) Herb, an artist still active in his 90s who lives in NJ and takes public transportation to and from Manhattan to tour galleries. We have two of his large paper cuts hanging in our home.
Herb’s been inviting us to join on his jaunts lately, and is unintentionally (we think) inspiring us to look at art differently — to examine technique much more closely, along with content and context. Here we all agree that Miquel Barceló’s sea-inspired ceramics are more interesting than his paintings.
Next stop, a Franz Kline show at Mnuchin Gallery (45 E. 78th St.), trying to guess the timeline for the different works, all of which are stark and provoke completely different interpretations from each of us.
The core of this tour is the Paloma Picasso collection of her father’s works at Gagosian (980 Madison Ave.). If you can get there on a weekday morning, the gallery is very lightly trafficked and it is a chance to be intimate with these amazing career-spanning works, unlike what happens at MoMA (a museum we also love). GO!
We finish this tour with a survey of works by Alice Neel, Marcia Marcus and Sylvia Sleigh at Levy Gorvy Dayan (19 E. 64th St.). The artists and these particular works might have been better served before the Kline and Picasso, but that was a matter of mapping the most logical route.
7 p.m., Alice Tully Hall
Riva and I return to Manhattan for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s season finale honoring the 55-year-old organization’s founding Executive Director Charles Wadsworth. A wonderful concert with a bonus of superior people-watching of those dressed for the gala dinner held in the lobby after. “The exit is this way,” announced one “host” after another, clear that we were not among the guests this night.
9 p.m., Lincoln Center Plaza
Instead of asking, as Riva suggested, if there were any no-shows whose seats we might be able to take, we walk across the street to the fountain in Lincoln Center Plaza. We seat ourselves on the perimeter and eat the sandwiches we’d brought from home. We watch a lot of people exit the Metropolitan Opera — but not everyone. Riva looks up what’s on. Aida. We look at each other. Two women are at the fountain next to us taking photos.
“Are you leaving the opera?”
“Yes, it’s too long for us.”
“Can we have your ticket stubs?”
They’re a little flustered but reach into their bags and pull out their tickets and the extra ticket you need to re-enter from outside at intermission. “You’ll need these, too.”
We thank them, finish our sandwiches and look at the tickets. Orchestra Right, Row S, not far off center. In we waltz, grinning, soon to be astounded by Elina Garanča, in particular, as Amneris. So we missed the “triumphal” scene in Act II — no live elephants anymore, anyway — and see and hear the last two acts.
10:40 p.m., exactly 12 hours after the start of our day, the cast, along with conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, take their bows.
We exit and walk to W. 57th Street to catch the Q train home.
And that, my friends, is a New York minute.
nightmayer 
You two absolutely floor me! Even without my current handicap, I simply could NOT have held up for such a long day…I would have been finished BEFORE dinner!
This is a wonderful post Ira! My wife Mary Ellen Bernard and I call these “an only in New York kind of day!” The wild synchronicity of personalities, coincidence and events that can only occur in NYC making for a most fulfilling life.