Fuzzypictures's Weblog

or how i learned to love the ‘A’ train at rush hour.

yesterday mary and i took the kids to MOMA to see this show as did most of the tourists visiting new york that day. to say the lines were long is an understatement because as i past them they reached to ave of americas  from the entrance. i knew i was in trouble right away.

moma is not my favorite museum but i remember it more fondly before they spent $858 million on its renovation  and expansion which has seemed like an actual reduction in viewing experience. they say there is more room  for exhibits but the whole museum experience for me is too crowded, not just popular shows as is the burton exhibit, but the hallways, stairs, bathrooms  and moving to the elevators, everything is square and small.

i tried looking down on the sculpture garden from one of the floors only to be blocked by some horizontal bars that obstructed my view. what was yoshio taniguchi thinking while designing this space?

even with the open space in the middle of the museum,which to me in reality feels restricted space where one can never touch. maybe it’s a japanese thing. when i first revisited moma they had Monet’s water lillies hanging there, what a waste to try to see them so far away,50 or 100 feet away, since then they’ve moved them to their own room next to the second floor cafe  which now reminds me of the port authority bus terminal waiting room. what happened to the nice quiet room they hung in at old moma?  but the room does make a nice place to drink your cafe latte or whatever comes from the cafe. slurp quietly.

i now feel crushed by the weight to the condo tower, or what ever it is,  above the exhibit space i guess by the money represented above. but i am being distracted by my hate for the new building. but before i move on you know the nice first floor restaurant in the old building, the one with lots of light coming in the floor to ceiling windows, well it’s now a much smaller members only dinning room. the masses are shuttled to the other cafe’s, now just feeding rooms on long impersonal tables popularized by barbican courts to feed the masses with no views.

but the tim burton shuffle show, and that’s what the experience is, shuffling along, reminding me of an old character on the life of riley radio show, digger odell ‘i’ve got to be shoveling along’, which in a way suits tim burton’s work very well. but because of the crowd one is moved along or bumped into by the mass. most of the show consists of small working drawings and it’s  really exhibited in a very small space.

what i’ve aways thought the strong part of burtons work were his movies. at the entrance to the exhibits there are a number of televisions sets showing different segments of a video piece. they don’t seem to be coordinated as the first one ends the next station should  begin so one can see the video as a whole. as it is now the next video is already running so you move to that staqtion in the middle. how hard would it be to sync things up? hello museum. ‘well move on there, we’ve got your money’, there is big crush  behind you and lots of kids,, little ones to the front please, ‘hey you big oaff could you move, you’re blocking the screen for everyone else, yes you.’

the crowd moves on one more hansel & gretel video with a small space to sit. the crowd moves on into bigger smaller room with models of characters from movies them over to the egress, hey what happened ? ‘oh bauhaus, looks interesting lets go there.’

did i say how much i despise moma, yet i go there, now i won’t pay $20.00 to visit a place with a lot more money than i’ll ever see, but target still subsides friday’s at moma which i support by going and making purchases at target stores. so supporting the arts is always nice.

if only i could get some people interested in buying my art work oh well see www.jeneyoutt.com or my OMP portfolio  for samples.