I prefer spending my birthdays quietly, so I spent a good chunk of my 34th birthday Saturday at the Museum of Modern Art reopening in Manhattan with P- and close to 40,000 other art lovers. I had stayed over my parents’ house the night before because the weather was bad, I was beat, and I was trying to beat a low-grade cold. The next day was overcast and dreary; also the F train was not really running, substituted by the slower than slow G train. The other problem was remembering where the entrance was, it had been that long. In any case that knowledge didn’t matter — you had to join the queue at 54th Street. After about 40 minutes, I finally made it inside, where P– had already made it.
The new facility was really much better — plenty of wall space to show off works, even one room on the 5th floor that could probably accomodate a F-15 fighter if it could get its hands on one. Right now, they have a vertical crosssection of a house and something called “Mural for a Big Wall”. It was so big that most of the guards didn’t even know where the stairs were. The other curious thing was one work that was essentially a rectangle made of white string that was guarded full-time by one docent that spent most of his time justifying why he was there. I think that was just performance art.
The classics were as good as they always have been — I’ve always been partial to Piet Mondrain and Matisse.
The 5th floor cafe was mainly desserts; the 2nd floor cafe was more of a cafeteria, where we proceeded to blow $50 on 2 soups, a panini, a lasagna, and a salumi platter. At least the quality was good — it was high quality, and the kitchen equipment were definately well designed. We didn’t bother trying the full-service resturant, which was even more extravagant, with $12 ovals of arctic chard.
As SSW mentioned, we encountered her and her sister at about 4 after we had tried to sneak in to the $10 theater. I also encounted my friend Maria, who was working the VIP desk.
After about 6 hours of museum hopping and general crowd surviving, we went home and called it a day. Well, not really — I got some really nice goodies from P-, including some Jack Spade bags.
Sunday was mostly a quiet day, staying in, cooking and reading. Great articles on the City’s immigrants, Trinidad , and Chinese-American rapper Jin were in this Sunday’s Times.