Ben Marcus's 'Flame Alphabet'

What better setting for a reading of a postapocalyptic sci-fi novel in which children are cleaved from their parents than the New Museum? The place looks like the monolith from the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey with a hint of the Death Star, and we’ve certainly never seen a child there. We’re so excited for the reading of Ben Marcus’s new novel, The Flame Alphabet, here, though we’re not used to digesting anything requiring serious thought in a museum (aren’t they just for people-watching and fine dining?). Mr. Marcus’s novel has been met with raves—it’s this season’s big novel by a well-regarded white male, carrying the torch Jonathan Franzen puts down to chase birds. We’ll see you there—and you’d better not bring your squalling brat!

Sky Room at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, 7 p.m.

Due to an error on our part, this event was written for the wrong date--it took place on Feb. 16. We regret the error.

We were standing in front of the titan of pop music at a party last night to celebrate artist George Condo's first retrospective, Mental States, which opens today at The New Museum. Condo is known for painting his subjects as wild-eyed gaping clown faces, cheeks and foreheads flushed with spiky brushstrokes that intimate explosion, and always featuring distinctive askew-splayed bucked teeth. The most famous of these subjects is Kanye West, whom Condo depicted in flagrante delicto on the cover of his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (another Condo was used as the official album art, however, after Kanye tweeted that the more racy choice had been "banned" by someone). 

Naturally his world-conquering muse did not miss out -- Kanye West was standing in a long back coat, gray shirt, and a gold chain to match the flash of gold grill jutting up out of his lower lip. There were crinkles under his eyes. He looked very tired.

When he was done exchanging quick conversation with a someone ("Is Jay in town, man?" "Yeah," Kanye said. "OK, I'll hit him up.") The Observer walked up to Kanye West and asked what he thought about the exhibit.

West's face, wide with a smile before, hardened as he clenched his hands on our shoulders.

"I don't talk to the fuckin' press!" Kanye West told The Observer.

With that we walked off, thinking incorrectly that we would not speak to Kanye West again that night.

Others at the party were more chatty than the hip-hop star. We ran into a be-stubbled James Frey coming down the extra-slim white hallway that took the art patrons to the main exhibition room. Marc Jacobs sauntered around pecking everyone on the cheek, allowing the stray whiskers of his fuchsia and aquamarine fur scarf to nuzzle against their noses.

"I love George Condo's art!" Jacobs told The Observer as we passed from a room of abstract impressionist Condo to a room of Condo portraiture. "I love George Condo, I love Anna Condo, I love the Condo girls, I love his paintings -- I love everything Condo."

And trailing Jacobs was on-again off-again boyfriend Lorenzo Martone, in a tan fur trench coat and matching tan fur boots. He was toting around a George Condo skateboard.

The artist himself was in a loud purple tie and carrying a laptop bag. Actress LeeLee Sobieski, whose designer husband Adam Kimmel has worked with Condo, had on svelte red sweater. She's also a big fan.

"Love it!" she said. "Love supporting George."

Are you tight with Kayne? You guys looked chummy earlier.

"We just met him tonight, uh, Adam did a collection with George and then Kanye did a collaboration with George as well so I think there's, like, a mutual fan thing going on."

Like Sobieski, The Observer met Kanye for the first time that night, when he informed us he does not talk to the fucking press. After that we stepped aside.

Then, seconds later, Kanye West wrapped his arm around our shoulder, pulling us into a warm embracing hug.

"Are you all right, man? Kanye West asked us.

We nodded, and then another member of the press walked up and pointed at The Observer.

"Don't trust this guy," the reporter laughed.

"Hey," Kanye West said. "I don't trust myself."

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Click for Scandal Report: Champagne Mania Makes for A Boozy Golden Globes

The museum will begin preparations for the new sculpture on Saturday. But there is some consolation for Hell Yes! lovers: the artwork isn't gone for good. The museum promised that it would reinstall the sculpture in another location soon.

It's a tall order to find an artwork that packs as much of a punch as a rainbow "Hell Yes!" sign, but the New Museum may have pulled it off by picking an artwork that is, well, really tall. Rose II, the German artist's first public sculpture in New York, has a height of 28 feet. According to the museum, it will sprout from the second-floor ledge by the end of November.

The piece was previously purchased in 2008 by a private collector at Art Basel for €750,000, according to Artnet.

Hyperallergic reported rumors of the sculpture swap on October 25, though the museum did not make the official announcement until this morning.

Bending down to make sure, I lifted one pink corner of one page of the newspaper I edit. "Do not touch!" The hipster guard swooped down on me. "This is an extremely valuable piece of art. It is like touching a MONET!"

So this is what print journalism has come to--a museum curio that just might crumble without extraordinary care. While a lot has been written about the end of newspapers,  and the digital tablets that will replace them, this exhibit is, as far as I can tell, the first from a major museum looking at modern newspapers in retrospective.

Except that it's not. As provocative as the title is--and as defensive as it made me and my journalist wife feel as we stepped inside--"The Last Newspaper" isn't about that. In fact, the problem with the exhibit is in determining precisely what it is trying to say. While we both left relieved that the curators hadn't found enough material to nail down their premise, the exhibit suffers from a randomness that reminded me of a bad small-town daily, a mixing of spaghetti dinners and Eagle Scout announcements I do my best to avoid. (By the way, I'm sorry I touched the artwork. "First time at a museum?" one of my colleagues later asked.)

Which is not to say there aren't some intriguing ideas at play here. One recurring theme is the packaging of news and how that affects our experience of it. At the entrance to the exhibit, visitors are encouraged to cut and paste the day's newspapers together, leading  to some compelling mash-ups (a headline from the Afghan war, for instance, slapped over a story about the weekend box office results).

Francois Bucher, in a piece called Forever Live, lays out the front pages of four British newspapers to show how differently each of them handled a U.K. espionage story. The placement and size of the photographs, the kind of pictures used and the location of the story on the page produces dramatically different narratives. While those of us in the news game know this instinctively, seeing the results splayed out gives me new empathy for subjects who complain that photos and headlines conspired to make them look bad.

In a similar approach, a piece by Pierre Bismuth remakes the front pages of U.K. newspapers (which are disproportionately represented here) to simply repeat the main photo on the page, so that it runs twice. The work effectively shows how a single change in packaging the news can entirely alter how we view an event.

Other works are more forceful in their commentary. On the top floor of the exhibit, Thomas Hirschhorn fits mannequins in dresses made of news photographs on a single theme. The work is riveting; the juxtaposition of the fashion world and, say, the Gitmo detainees or murder victims captured my own queasiness in reading the Sunday Times some weeks. The contrast between the real world and Madison Avenue's version of it can often feel uncomfortably jarring.

Dash Snow, as was his wont, produces the most provocative piece of the exhibit--a series of New York Post front pages about Saddam Hussein, including his capture and beheading. Mr. Snow does us the favor of splattering semen on the images, then dusting that with glitter.

Much else about the exhibit seemed off-point. There was, for instance, an installation of video screens showing weather reports and forecasts from other cities, which succeeded in telling me nothing. Similarly, Hans Haacke installed a printer that unspooled news from the world's wire services; spent paper piled up behind the machine. While the piece had nostalgia value for me--my first job at The Wall Street Journal was to stand next to those printers, read the wire reports and pass the newsiest ones around to my colleagues--I'm clearly a niche audience. (Unfortunately, I visited on a Sunday, and missed Eating the Wall Street Journal by performance artist William Pope.L, no relation. Apparently the work features actors in Barack Obama masks lingering among the patrons and eating copies of the financial daily.)

While some of the works here certainly have something to say, it remained unclear to me why they were in this particular exhibit and how they fit in with the rest of the pieces. Political commentary mixed with nostalgia mixed with the digital future.

To add some interactivity to the exhibit, the museum commissioned a series of free newspapers, produced in the exhibit space and distributed as amped-up guides. Seeing the young staffers at their quaint little desks churning out their little stories-as-art had the same effect on me as the pile of newspapers I dared to finger at the beginning. Is my industry really that far gone?

Downstairs in the lobby, I flipped through the free paper, which had the wry title "The Last Post." The stories included an interview with the curators of the exhibit and a filmmaker's take on the woes of the Los Angeles Times. I set the paper down and looked at my fingers, blackened by the ink. I had to smile.

kpope@observer.com

Museum eateries are, by and large, airy, pretty, tasty-and exceptionally well air-conditioned. New York boasts many, a handful of which are much less well known for their culinary accomplishments than they deserve to be. Here's a few, along with a look at what's on view before or after the meal.

The Neue Galerie

1048 Fifth Avenue

The Neue Galerie has two impressive cafes, both run by Austrian chef Kurt Gutenbrunner, of Michelin-starred Wallsé fame. Fledermaus, the bigger of the two, is on the lower level and is inspired by an eponymous prewar Viennese Cabaret. Checkered floors and marble walls give an Old World authenticity to the lunch, tea and viennoiserie served. (Try the spaetzle, or the apple strudel, above.) Fledermaus is something of an insider secret, as it lacks the lines of its upstairs, fancier counterpart, Café Sabarsky, but the menu is the same. Hours are noon to 6 p.m Friday, Saturday and Sunday. An Otto Dix exhibit is scheduled to end Aug. 30, but the eateries are open without a museum admittance fee. www.neuegalerie.org

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue

Midtown chic. The Morgan's cafe is a airy, Minimalist-inspired dining area that looks over the museum's central court. The food is American-style, and the cafe is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., though on Friday it's open until 8 p.m. On view through Aug. 29 is an exhibition of works by figures whose work intersects with 19th- and 20th-century Romanticism, including J.M.W. Turner.

www.themorgan.org

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 Fifth Avenue

The Met's American Wing Café (one of several eateries at the institution) sits within a light-filled atrium, flanked by the grand pavilion's sculpture and its Tiffany stained-glass panels. Central Park is also within view. Just down the hall from the cafe are two American Wing treasures: Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware; and a spectacular view of the Catskill Mountains, Asher B. Durand's Kindred Spirts, owned by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton and on loan to the museum. Cafe hours are 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Sunday through Thursday, with a later 8:30 p.m. closing time on Friday and Saturday.  www.metmuseum.org

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

1071 Fifth Avenue

In the New York neighbourhood dubbed Carnegie Hill, Sunday brunch is an institution, and Wright, at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim, is a popular place to have it. At the swanky, brightly colored eatery, the curvilinear walls and counters seem to arc in tandem with the host museum's own. A tony brunch menu (brunch is served every Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.) features gazpacho sorbet, Maine lobster salad and eggs that it promises are "gently cooked." The restaurant (adjacent to the museum) is also open for lunch and dinner most days. On view at the museum through Sept. 7 is a gorgeous show that pairs two Russian Abstract Expressionists: Vasily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. www.guggenheim.org

The Asia Society

725 Park Avenue

Sunny and serene, this Park Avenue museum's light-infused courtyard, dotted with trees, is a popular luncheon spot, both for its looks and its unique fare. The menu offers a selection of unusually flavored homemade ice teas, plus curries, fish and vegetarian options. The Michelin-starred Garden Court Café is open in the summer from noon to 2 p.m. every day but Monday. (Museum admittance is not required.) The show on at the museum now, through Aug. 15, is "Rivers of Ice," photographs of the glaciers of Himalaya.

www.asiasociety.org

Scandinavia House

58 Park Avenue

A little-known gem. Closer than Ikea and far more tasty, Scandinavia House's Smörgås Chef serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, with separate tea and dessert menus for the hours in between. The first-floor cafe, open to all Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., serves Scandinavian delicacies from caviar to gravlax and the much-fêted Swedish meatballs. Scandinavia House's current exhibit on Swedish fashion will run through Aug. 21, and it has an active film program with a dinner-and-a-movie option. www.scandinaviahouse.org

The Museum of Art

& Design

2 Columbus Circle

The swanky eatery, on the top floor of the museum, has floor-to-ceiling windows and a great name: Robert. Lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., can be had at tables overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park, or on nearby sofas. Evenings, Wednesday through Saturday, a live pianist entertains the diners. (Museum admittance is not required.) At the museum, an exhibition on bespoke bicycles runs through Aug. 15.

www.madmuseum.org

The New Museum

235 Bowery

The New Museum's lobby cafe is called New Food, and is accessible without paying the museum's entry charge. Specializing in sandwiches, salads and artisanal chocolate, it is open Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m., and Thursday and Friday, noon to 10 p.m. A retrospective of the works of contemporary Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander will be on display at the museum through Sept. 19.

www.newmuseum.org