25/3/13 – Rainy Day @MoMA

Since our membership allows for an early entry to MoMA, we decided to meet up with Bo and Kristie at 9.30am so as to get in an hour of art viewing without all those pesky ‘tourists’! Well what a great idea that was! You see it was the spring break long weekend, so all the school kids were on holidays, and not only was it raining heavily, it was also a Monday so most of the other museums in town were closed.

As a result, by the time we arrived, there was already a huge queue going down the street and around the corner. What a joy it was to be able to flash our membership badges and walk straight on in with our two guests.

When we popped downstairs to collect our headsets at 10.20am (10 mins before opening) it had begun to snow and the crowd outside had doubled. The crowd inside was now ten wide and extending all the way back to the revolving doors. There were people everywhere. but once again we just walked our way through the throng, flashed our membership passes to the attendants at the gate and went on in ahead of everyone waiting at the entrance – again! 

Once we got back inside we did a short ‘highlights’ tour of the museum’s permanent collection. We saw many well-known works by Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse. But the real highlight of our visit was Edvard Munch’s iconic work ‘The Scream’. This very popular work is only on loan to MoMA for 6 months and even with early entry the queue to see it was long. I hadn’t realised that it was done in 1895 or that it was a work that came from the fragile mind of an artist who struggled with mental illness his entire life.

How brave he must have been, how strong he must have felt to make his fragile mental health such an explicit feature of his art in an age when these ‘sorts of things’ were never spoken of and were instead kept hidden away. Yet Munch made no secret of his illness. When asked to explain how it was that he came to paint ‘The Scream’ he said:

“I was walking along the road with two of my friends. The sun set – the sky became a bloody red. And I felt a touch of melancholy – I stood still, dead tired – over the blue-black fjord and city hung blood and tongues of fire. My friends walked on – I stayed behind – trembling with fright- I felt the great scream in nature.”

Of course, like everyone else, I felt I already knew this famous painting very well. After all, reproductions of it are ever present in modern society. But when I actually saw the ‘real thing’ for the first time I was surprised by the power of the impression it made on me. As MoMA curator Ann Temkin correctly says in her written commentary on the piece: ‘The startling power of Munch’s original work endures almost despite the image’s present-day ubiquity.’

After we left MoMA Bo and Kristie decided that they were keen to visit the Natural History Museum. So we walked over there by heading back up 6^th Avenue and across Central Park, past the Dakota Building (where John Lennon was shot). On the way dropped in to ‘Angelina’s Diner’ on 6^th for a ‘little’ snack on the way. Ha! I love NYC – the size of the sandwiches had to be seen to be believed and don’t ask Kristie about the ‘big pickle’!! (TMI). As the queue at the NHM was massive and they had NYC passes,

I left them to it. By all accounts it was huge but only averagely interesting. But there was nothing average about our dinner that night at Café D’Alsace. Kristie was introduced to a ‘cosmo’ cocktail, the boys did their best to sample many of the 140 odd beers on offer and the food, as usual at one of our favourite New York restaurants was excellent. We slept very well after such a great meal and woke up the next day ready for more ‘adventures in the city’.