By Elizabeth Shannon, Bass Museum of Art

New York, New York! As they say, it’s a wonderful town (although obviously it doesn’t hold a candle to the Magic City). However, when a Knight Curatorial Fellow is tasked with seeing the best of international contemporary art (and Art Basel Miami Beach is a long way off), she must head to New York City for Frieze art fair week. Accompanied by my colleagues from the Bass Museum of Art (and, it turned out, half of the staff from Miami’s other art institutions, along with a good number of local artists), I donned some relatively sensible footwear in order to pound the mean streets in search of cutting-edge art.

My first stop would have been PS1, if I hadn’t got lost coming out of the subway.

I can’t find PS1, but at least there’s literally a bar with my name on it.

Although disappointed by the failure of my psychic-art-sense to indicate PS1’s direction, I eventually located it, and cheered up considerably upon viewing an astonishing series of paintings by Maria Lassnig, who, amongst other things, was the first female painting professor in a German-speaking country, appointed in 1980(!).

You, or Me? (2005), a self-portrait by Maria Lassnig, installed at the entrance to her show at MoMA PS1.

I then lost myself in a labyrinthine exhibition of work by Christoph Schlingensief, in which I could have easily have spent several days, but eventually the museum closed (they rather unreasonably refused to let me stay overnight).

Next day I diligently overdosed on Italian Futurism at the Guggenheim for The Miami Rail (you can read my review here). It was stunning to see so many landmark Futurist works in once place, but the relentless dynamism (not to mention the Fascism) was a little draining.

Francesco Cangiullo, Large Crowd in the Piazza del Popolo (Grande folla in Piazza del Popolo), 1914. Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper, 58 x 74 cm. Private collection.© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome

After a coffee and a sit down, I somehow wheedled my way into the VIP preview of Frieze, despite clearly not being able to afford anything on display. Because my colleague had a VIP ticket, we were able to view the work without being trampled to death by art enthusiasts, while simultaneously doing a little inadvertent celebrity-spotting: notable subjects included Leonardo DiCaprio (we were not thrown off by his flatcap); Spike Jonze and Mike D; Marc Jacobs; and Princess Eugenie (aka: Proper Royalty). We also saw a LOT of art.

Florian Meisenberg’s work on display in Simone Subal Gallery’s booth at Frieze.

Despite multiple trips to New York, to my shame, I had previously failed to visit the New Museum. I was also convinced that I wouldn’t like it anyway, so of course in the event I liked practically everything I saw there. Of particular note was Ragnar Kjartansson’s evocative work, and Roberto Cuoghi’s slightly terrifying Šuillakku –corral version, which involved standing in the dark while being roared at in Assyrian – it was just as unsettling as it sounds.

Ragnar Kjartansson’s Me, My Mother, My Father, and I, 2014. Exhibition view at the New Museum

MoMA also delivered with a knock-out retrospective of work by Sigmar Polke (although unfortunately I had to speed walk through it) and a thoughtful show based around photographic practices in the studio. A mad dash to the commercial galleries on the Lower East Side offered up a number of intriguing works, including Liu Chuang’s Love Story, which features handwritten notes made by Chinese migrant workers in popular romance novels, transcribed onto the gallery walls.

Detail of Liu Chuang’s Love Story at Salon 94

Liu Chuang, Love Story, installation view at Salon 94.

After viewing Rachel, Monique, Sophie Calle’s moving installation dedicated to her motherat the Church of the Heavenly Rest, I hobbled down to the Met to see the Charles James exhibition – a stunning display which highlighted the extraordinary architecture of the couturier’s gowns, organized by Harold Koda, who curated Vanitas: Art and Fashion at the Bass. Unfortunately, by this time my feet had started to bleed, so I decided to call it a day. Having been made painfully aware of the potential damage inflicted by seeing too much art, I am now on the search for a pair of New-York-stylish yet practical walking shoes, so that next time I can spend the money I’ll save on podiatry on buying more art books.