MoMA - Take Two!

The biggest difference you find between the New York MoMA and the one in San Francisco is the people. Or lack thereof. Which in a way was rather nice, because I was getting sick of being shoved out of the way so someone can get closer to the Manet. It gets rather tiresome I must say...

But yes, with a smaller museum, perhaps comes more intimacy, where we could actually look properly at work and not worry that we would not have enough time to see it all.

There was a show on Participation, with most of the usuals (Ono, Abramovic etc). Was very standard and covered most ground. It was also rather hands on (or else it wouldn't be called participation would it?)which meant that we could run around the museum touching art (real art!), making one minute sculptures and seeing how many Gonzalez-Torres posters we could run off with without the attendant getting mad (I was a kind citizen and only took one).

The special exhibition happened to be Martin Purveyor, an artist that I can't say I was particularly familiar with. While we were perusing the Purveyor exhibit, there just so happened to be a tour group passing by. Being the sneaky eavesdropper I am, I hung round hoping to perhaps learn something interesting about the exhibit. This really only reinforced my thoughts of tour groups being horribly patronising (hence why I do not bother with them most of the time). The show, however, was also a good overview of the works from Purveyor, with my personal favourite being a large piece of wood that he gessoed and sanded down. That man has mega skills of the building kind.

Claudia was particularly excited to see a tutor of hers (Jon Rubin) from Carnegie showing at the museum as well. And we had some fun participating in the 1000 Journals project and flexing plastic power/racking up some nice student debt at the gift store (despite the plummet in the NZ dollar...blaaaaast).

SFMoMA was a different pace. Less grand and more play-it-safe. They didn't really put a foot wrong. But they didn't really get me going nuts either. It was an art middleground.

- Agnes