A mournful walk on a celebratory day.
Yesterday was intern field trip day and a nice one at that - back in Midtown, at 1285 6th Avenue, actually. At the end of the day, following an afternoon meeting with a curator at the American Folk Museum (a trip I surprisingly enjoyed) - I walked down W 53rd Street - across the abandonned and quiet facade of MoMA. Everyone is buzzing about this being a time of celebration - with an artistic rainbow of fireworks building a 20 second luminescent bridge between Manhattan and Queens - this is time of brilliant cheer and stunning visual displays. Walking along 53rd street - without the usual snaking line of tourists, without the plump and smiling South American receptionist sitting outside the staff elevator, or without books in the store windows, it was sad, and quiet, a downtrodden moment of repose on a hot Wednesday afternoon. Then I took the rest of one of my favorite walks - down Park Avenue, by the Seagram Building, under the Hemsley Walk into Grand Central. I stopped for coffee at the french patisserie John and I are so fond of.
I couldn't help but be reminded of someone else's observation last year - of walking past MoMA at night and seeing a homeless man asleep in the capsule of the revolving door. After seeing that, you can't look at the door the same way, or think about the place in quite the same terms.
Last year I remember hearing that despite the change of place to Queens, the museum would continue to use 11 W 53rd for all of its official correspondence. At the time, I thought it seemed silly, but yesterday, walking across that quiet and empty place, it seemed only appropriate. Institutions and places and memories for that matter, don't have a migratory gene, or even an instinct, I don't think. It'll continue to be strange to conceive of MoMA in Queens - geographically distinct from my memories of that place - as early as Mrs. McKenna's French class field trip to see Chuck Close, an afternoon trip with Renee during our NYC days, and then this fantastic summer that introduced me to this city and such a fantastic cast - it was preserved and whole, and although the new facility will likely hold new memories, the nostalgia is thick and resilent to reason.
So as we celebrate tonight - MoMA QNS PRM (the SQL to last year's PRM), let's not forget where all of this came from.
posted by lmjasinski at 11:59 AM
