I went to the Museum of Modern Art. I hesitated before buying my ticket online because it is holiday season in New York City and that means crowds. There are always crowds at New York City’s most iconic attractions: MoMA , the Metropolitan and the Museum of Natural History are among them. But, this time of year is a whole other thing.
My strategy for any place with crowds, including Disney World, is to take the path of least resistance. I don’t have my heart set on seeing any one particular thing – I will see what I can see. Most of these places have so many choices, so much great stuff, that you can’t really go wrong. With that in mind, I decided to venture forth to MoMA.
Indeed, it was crowded, but I’ve been to exhibits where it felt like you were packed like sardines, moving slowly along a conveyor belt to see the art, which definitely detracts from the experience. This was not that – at all. In fact, I found galleries where I could sit down and look at the pieces leisurely.
I’ve commented before on this blog about the fact that works of art, or my response to them, change over time. I find I like things that I didn’t appreciate years ago. I see other works that I loved as a young person that don’t move me as much. I love that about art. These days I gravitate to things that are whimsical – especially in sculpture. For example, this work by Thomas Schutte (an artist I had never heard of before):
The museum devoted a whole floor to an exhibit of Schutte’s work. It was incredibly varied – paintings of all sorts, sculptures of all sorts. On one card next to a display of drawings, it described a project he had undertaken that I found interesting. “Over the span of one year, Schutte drew his reflection from a round shaving mirror, recording his moods and temperaments in diaristic sketches. ‘It’s the attempt to fathom oneself,’ Schutte remarked, ‘and it failed miserably.’” I was amused and heartened by his willingness to share this. We usually only see an artist’s best work and we aren’t necessarily even aware of their failures. I can’t say I loved all that I saw of the Schutte exhibit, but it got me thinking and I appreciate that.
I also find now that I have more appreciation of canvases that are saturated with color, like these:
They made me think about my mother. I remember Mom telling me that she had never appreciated Rothko until someone told her to sit down, take a few minutes, and let the color envelop her – and then she got it. She got what he was communicating. As the card next to the painting explained:
“For Rothko, art was a profound form of communication, one capable of conveying the ‘scale of human feelings, the human drama,’ as he described. Through works like these, he hoped to create the conditions for silence and contemplation.” I’m not sure I “got it,” the way my mother did, but I saw and felt more than I have in previous viewings.
It was funny to me, as I walked through the galleries, different pieces reminded me of different people. Besides my mom, who is always accompanying me when I go to an art museum, in my mind at least, I worked with a woman, Courtney, who had an appreciation for color. She told me about Pantone – the folks who catalogue colors and tell us the color of the year (for 2025, they just announced, it is mocha mousse, by the way). When I looked at the Matisse exhibit, which highlighted his paper cutouts, you could not help but be struck by his color choices. The display of Matisse’s array of colors, made me smile and think of Courtney.
No visit to a museum is complete without stopping in the gift shop. MoMA and the Metropolitan have stellar gift shops. I have to restrain myself. I picked up a few Hanukkah presents, but didn’t overdo it.
Here some other shots from my visit. I ended my day by walking, amidst a million of my closest friends, to Rockefeller Center to see the tree. I may not celebrate Christmas, but I can appreciate the twinkling lights that brighten our winter.
Views from inside the museum:
Some classics:
Does anyone convey loneliness or isolation more effectively than Edward Hopper?:
Two more interesting sculptures (at least to me), one on the right by Schutte (which had to do with the influx of immigrants in Germany in the 1990s):
To top things off – the tree!
Stories I Tell Myself 