#029 - To Look Slowly
A bleary-eyed assessment of my favorite artist at my least favorite museum
Dear readers,
It is July. The turning point of the year. Next week, it will be August. Instead of a long-winded essay on what “July means to me,” I have a short essay about an exhibition on view at MoMA.
To preface this essay, I want you to know that I love art museums, especially regional ones. Extra points if they are obscure and associated with a state university. I love seeing what random, often local and regional art they have and what small works they acquired from big-name artists. I love seeing how they fit their collections together. And how they compare to other small museums. I love that they are usually free and often nearly empty.
I love art museums but I don’t love MoMA. Michael and I trekked to midtown to see a Georgia O’Keeffe show there. No museum makes me as tired as MoMA does. By the time we exited, I was bleary-eyed and near collapse. I had to buy an overpriced lemonade from a street vendor just to make it back to the subway. Michael fell asleep on the way home.
I must provide the disclaimer that I worked at MoMA in 2018 and hated it. I got the job because I went on about my love for regional art museums during the interview. I lost the job because I kept reading the New Yorker on the iPads at the ticket desk to disassociate from being stuck at the museum for 40 hours a week. Just last night, a friend asked me how long I was employed there and I said less than two months.1 He was shocked! He thought it must have been longer considering how much I complained.
MoMA is always wall-to-wall packed. At the other prominent New York museums, there are quiet spots. At the MET, if you go deep enough into the European paintings, the crowd thins. And at the Whitney, everyone flocks to the trendy exhibits, leaving their permanent collections empty. I can spend ten minutes in front of a modernist painting, enjoying the air conditioning and quiet without being bothered.
But at MoMA, everyone moves so fast. No one does the museum walk – that near standstill, heal-dragging shuffle that leaves your knees achy but is an appropriate pace for the space. Instead, everyone marches around, trying to see as much as possible. There are no hushed tones. No pretending to read the wall labels. No courtesy with photo-taking. I must have strode through a dozen photo-ops by the Matisse’s.
The place lacks any curatorial excitement. It feels sterile and crushingly monotonous. Not even the best paintings in the world can make the environment feel engaging. It’s an art super-mall. We were there less than twenty minutes before I turned to Michael and said, “It’s as if Glenn Lowery2 is force-feeding us his idea of “the cannon.”
I went to MoMA because I had to see this Georgia O’Keeffe show. And as a testament to her, I enjoyed it even though I couldn’t spend more than a minute in front of a painting before being pushed aside. An ironic situation considering the show is titled, “To see takes time.”
Georgia O’Keeffe was the first female artist I learned about. So I would do anything to see her work. My pottery teacher in high school took it upon himself to teach us art history on top of how to throw pots. Once a week he presented slide shows of artists we should know. And O’Keeffe was featured heavily in an early one.
It was mostly her mountains that got me. I was taken with them. They were so beautiful and abstract but not at all. They captured the outdoors. My sister was in college in Arizona at the time, so I had also just learned that the deserts even had mountains.3 Coming from Wisconsin, this information blew my 16-year-old mind. I was used to a green world, full of rolling hills. The mountains of Arizona, like the mountains O’Keeffe painted in New Mexico, looked imaginary to me.
I promptly spent the rest of the quarter trying to paint a master copy of one of O’Keeffe’s landscapes onto a very large pot. And whenever I was asked about my favorite artist, she was my go-to answer and remained so up until a year ago.4
I have seen many Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. We have two reproductions hanging in our apartment. And the quiet floor at the Whitney usually has two or three on view at any given time. But they are usually her later works. Her masterpieces.
At MoMA, they had her work on paper. Her sketches. Early works and old. I could see how she worked in iteration, repeating the same image before getting it right. And how she mapped out ideas in charcoal and watercolor before making them into oil paintings. It is always reassuring to see that even the most successful artists try and fail a few times.
Instead of monologuing at you more about the work, enjoy the following photos.5 And if you find yourself in midtown before August 11th, brave the horrors of MoMA and go see it.
What’s for dinner
Cheese quesadillas with beans and guac. We are tired.
I said three months and Michael corrected me. I was there from January 2 until the last Saturday of February.
the infamous millionaire director of the institution
it was a big year for me
ousted by Lisa Yuskavage
Sorry, so many photos are crooked, I had to speed take them due to the crowd.
You make me laugh too and think!
Those sketches🔥