MoMA Impressions

It was a pure coincidence that my blogger friend and I visited New York at the same time. Now I read her posts with great pleasure, enjoying her descriptive style and her sense of humour. I especially love to read her experiences that parallel mine in uncanny ways. Check out Zazie's blog, and be sure to read her impressions of New York.

The thing I enjoyed about the MoMA is how lively it is. I’ve been to so many museums with a dead atmosphere, so I can always sense the difference. A “dead” museum is not necessarily empty. It may indeed be full of visitors – people brought by tour guides, and then other people who consider that this museum simply must be visited. In these museums, you will not find a foyer full of people exhausted from an afternoon of communing with art, with tired yet satisfied faces, struggling to find the energy simply to leave this art-filled place. These people have spent hours in a lively museum, and haven’t even seen half of the galleries. They’re so overwhelmed that they can’t figure out whether they want to eat, drink, breathe, or simply die blissfully of emotional overload.

I entered the MoMA excited, fresh, and full of energy, only to encounter a pile of young people, lying around the seats in the foyer as if they had just barely survived a battle. “This is a little much,” I thought. I took a few photos of them from a higher floor, and they waved at me feebly. Three hours later, when I was looking for a place to sit down, I really didn’t care where and how that would happen. It’s only because of my extensive practice that I didn’t drop right on the floor.

A lively museum is full of children, who don’t really understand everything, and get sick of it pretty soon. Some of them ask questions – “How many paintings are we going to look at before we go to eat?” or “Mom, this painting isn’t finished – can I finish it?”

There are some children who plainly say (or scream) “No more art!”

I have decided to break down my visit to the MoMA into several parts. The first chapter is called “Impressions”.