Reflections on MoMA

Saturday marks the unveiling of the newly redesigned Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan after a two and a half year renovation process. In the interim the extensive collection, including works by Picasso, Matisse, Pollack, Warhol and everyone in between of note, was housed, if memory serves, in some old lady's basement in Queens. The new structure, about which the Times article linked to above can tell you much more and with much better adjectives than I can muster, is truly an accomplishment, a revitalization of one of New York's greatest treasures.

Many an afternoon of my summer youth was spent wandering the halls of the MoMA, desperately trying to escape the watchful eye of my grandparents by slipping into the sculpture garden on the south side of the museum lot. As I matured, I grew to appreciate the insight that my grandmother, an art teacher by trade, would provide on the myriad works that the museum held. It was there that saw in person my first Picasso, "Boy Leading a Horse"; where I first was enthralled by Matisse's chilling self-portrait and lithely dancing nudes; where Diego Rivera introduced me to the toiling Indo-Mexican peasant and some freaky chick named Frida; where Warhol’s Marilyns and Pollacks splotches and Man Ray’s Rayographs and Lichtenstein’s Bendays introduced me to the undiscovered country (at least for a kid from the New Hampshire suburbs) of post-modernity.

Of course, it wasn’t until much later that I began to appreciate the education that I received within those bedecked walls, how easily artistic movements like Dada and Cubism fit into the historical context of the world. Sometimes life gives you opportunities to learn and no matter how hard you try to avoid it, it gets in your brain and sits and percolates and you wake up ten years later and realize: seeing that image, remember the color and form and style, seeing for the first time and then seeing it AGAIN for the first time, changed me, continues to change me. And that kind of mind expansion, real unbiased emotion for a static piece of visual history, can never be topped.

So welcome back, MoMA. Hope to be back to see you soon (mebbe after the weather changes, eh?). Say hi to Andy for me and save me a spot under a willow tree.