Ligon invites you to tour Jasper Johns exhibitions in NYC
By John Temple Ligon Temple@thecolumbiastar.com

Photo by Catherine Childs John Temple Ligon in Savannah's Madison Square under the statue of Revolutionary War hero Sergeant William Jasper, for whom W. Jasper Johns Jr. and his father are named.

There is a subsequent reason to attend my lecture on the history of the streets of New York City, Friday, February 8 at 6 pm. The lecture will be at my home, 1502 Main Street, #221 Kress Building.

On Saturday, March 1, 2008, 9:30 am in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I will be your docent for a tour of the Jasper Johns exhibition, the same seen last fall in the Art Institute of Chicago. Come inside to the Group Registration Desk, where you can bypass the admission lines and pay the group rate of $16 for an all- day pass, 9:30 am- 7:30 pm. Say you're with the Wren Institute for Urban Research.

We did this last year for a diferent Jasper Johns exhibition at the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. I was the docent in front of more than 25 South Carolinians for about an hour. We regrouped at the Hay- Adams Hotel for lunch, facing the White House.

We'll break up around 10:30 am and regroup for a 1:30 pm brunch at Pete's Tavern, 129 E. 18th St., near Gramercy Park. Opened in 1864, Pete's is the city's oldest continuously running restaurant. The affordable food is more than good, and the martinis are huge.

At 3 pm, we'll meet in Chelsea at Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 W. 22nd St., for a show of drawings (1997- 2007) by Jasper Johns.

By no later than 4:30, you can be back at the Metropolitan, or you can tour The Cloisters, the Metropolitan's branch devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. It sits dramatically in northern Manhattan on a hilltop overlooking the Hudson River.

Other than the 9:30- 10:30 engagement at the Metropolitan's Jasper Johns exhibition, you're free to do your own thing. After all, this is The Big Apple.

For my purposes, and you might consider this, I have a reservation the night before in the Pool Room at the Four Seasons Restaurant in Park Avenue's Seagram Building, designed by architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. And the next night, after I see The Cloisters, I'll be at the New York Junior League Winter Ball. I'm going to Sunday services at St. John the Divine, the world's largest Gothic- style cathedral, designed by Ralph Adams Cram, architect for the master plan at Rice University.

Ligon can be reached at The Columbia Star, 771- 0219.