American Folk Art Museum Coffee Shop

Part of the Museum Food Series

American Folk Art Museum Coffee Shop.  45 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10018.  212-265-1040.

What coffee shop?  When I visited the, beautifully designed, but skimpy, American Folk Art Museum Web site I found no mention of their food facility.  They do have one in their new building and it is adequate for its size.  Because I have discussed the architecture of a museum restaurants and cafes in other articles in this series I will maintain continuity here.  The critics love the architecture of the museum.  I don't share their enthusiasm.  The architecture of the building is beautiful, but not for a museum.  The architecture is visually sumptuous, but lacks functional design.  The coffee shop design is intimate, pretty, but poorly conceived.

There is a trend in contemporary museum design toward building museums unsuitable for exhibiting art.  It's almost as if the architects are flaunting the ignoring of  the functional requirements of museums as their own anti-museum artistic statement.  Museums exhibiting two dimensional art require walls on which to hang works.  Some modern architects build, instead, structures with lots of windows and few walls.  Duh!  The Todd Williams and Billie Tsein and Associates design for the American Folk Art Museum is typical of this type of flawed concept.  Other architects design buildings with huge interior spaces that have no functional purpose, but to exalt the architects.  The Guggenheim and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art are examples of wrong thinking in reverse.  These buildings have few windows, but huge amounts of wasted interior space.  These spaces are good as tributes to the architects or for storing large structures like oil derricks or grain silos.  They are pretty as buildings, but are clearly not functional as museums.

The American Folk Art Museum has some additional functional problems that the critics seem to have ignored.  When I visited the museum shortly after it opened, it was already showing signs of premature wear.  The concrete steps were already starting to crumble at the sharp edges of the steps.  The architects apparently forgot or didn't pay attention to the type of concrete required for durable steps.  Because of the way the steps are integrated into the architecture, these steps will likely represent a maintenance problem for the life of the museum.  The other means of getting from one floor to the next is the slow-as-molasses-in-winter elevator.  The architects may have gotten the low bid on the elevator or decided that since it wasn't traveling very far they wouldn't worry about speed.  The problem is that most people have to take the elevator to the top floor to start the tour of the museum.  In contrast to the hustle and bustle of New York City, the elevator is unbearably slow.  If you visit the museum during the winter, as I did, take the elevator to the top floor, turn left and go to the edge of the railing.  Watch carefully and you will see condensation fall from the glass ceiling of the atrium onto the people on the first floor.  Drrrrip.  Gotcha!  The architects must have guessed that the museum was going to exist in a thermally controlled environment instead of being exposed to New York winters.  They didn't appear to consider that a bunch of people milling about a museum respire and when that breath hits cold glass condensation occurs.  When condensation occurs water drips off the surface and falls to the floor below.  One or both of the architects must of skipped the air flow control class in graduate school.  What was sad was seeing how close the moisture was falling to valuable pieces of art.  But, it is a pretty building. 

This museum felt as though the architects didn't plan on people actually visiting it.  The exhibition spaces were cramped and crowded, except for the architecturally significant areas like the atrium.  In many places, I felt as though I was either too close or too far away from the art.  What could the architects have been thinking.  It's practically next door to the Museum of Modern Art and across the street from the American Craft Museum.  This museum is going get lots of museum visitor traffic, probably more than it can handle.

The museum coffee shop appears to have been designed as an architectural element like those little trees you often see in architect's drawings.  If the building looks too small, make the trees smaller to suggest a larger scale.  Like the architecture of the rest of the museum, the coffee shop feels like an unintended miniature.  It is a crowded little space overlooking the front of the museum from a balcony.  There are a few tables and bar seating around the edge of the balcony.  When I was there in December of 2001, the good natured person running the show was being run ragged by all of the museum visitors wanting drinks and snacks.  Every table and chair was filled most of the time.  One of the machines, the coffee maker, as I recall, was broken.  Did the architects have a hand in this too, I wondered.  Because there was so much competition for tables, I sat at the bar overlooking the street.  Because the space is crowded, it is nearly impossible to have a private conversation.  I came away from the coffee shop knowing many more personal details of people's lives than I would have preferred. 

The food did not suffer from the maladies imposed by the architects.  The pastries were good, but not exceptional.  The selection was modest, but also not exceptional.  It was clear that the coffee shop was not part of the vision of the museum.  It was more like someone said, oh, we forgot to put in a coffee shop, so let's stick it on the balcony.   When one considers the possibilities of combining folk art with folk food the coffee shop seems even more lacking.  Imagine recipes taken from turn of the century church or community cookbooks and used to create goodies to serve in the coffee shop.  Imagine the food served on 2nd hand store mismatched china on Formica or old wooden tables.  Imagine real hot chocolate made from cocoa.  Imagine hand cranked or even electrically cranked ice cream made fresh daily.  Imagine apple pies made from historic apple species, molasses cookies, real root beer, and so on.  Don't imagine too much, because you won't find it here.  Have a chocolate brownie, the mainstay of museum cafes, instead. 

This is not a good cafe for waiting for someone.  The crowds and competition for tables and chairs will make you uncomfortable even before you have finished your treat.  Don't forget your coat or shopping bags.  They are two floors down in the basement and there may be a line.