I recently finished Lynne Tillman’s collection of essays The Complete Madame Realism and Other Stories. The book takes as its name Tillman’s “Madame Realism” persona, which she developed while working as a critic for Art in America. While I found I most thoroughly enjoyed her Paige Turner stories and stand-alone pieces tucked at the back of the book, I am interested in Madame Realism as a critical framing device. How does anyone write about art in a way that purports to be ‘unbiased’? Is bias even something that matters? We’re all adults here; we understand that objectivity doesn’t exist. But for Tillman to divorce herself from her own reviews, to use Madame Realism as her proxy, is a fascinating conceit. If this paragraph reads as written by someone who is very obviously unemployed, you would be correct.
I recently stopped working at the Museum of Modern Art. I have mentioned this job at other points in my Substack, but I had to be cryptic, though anyone can glean “MoMA” from the nickname “museum in Midtown.” I worked there on-and-off since January 2020; I would have eventually moved to New York no matter what, but I moved at that inopportune time before graduating college because I was hired there. For years, my identity felt rooted in the idea that I was a “museum girl” or a “gallerina” — I was young and underpaid and I worked in the arts. It was glamorous from a distance, but I would never recommending hero-worshipping a billion-dollar institution. It is probably obvious that I have a complex relationship with my time at MoMA; in some ways, I owe everything to the fact that someone took a chance on me at 21. Working in an archive has shaped not only my writing, but my pattern of thinking; it is an invaluable skill, and I learned about so many lives in this voyeuristic way. It seems silly to say, but when I left, it felt a lot like heartbreak. I grew up there! It was harder to walk away from MoMA with grace than it was to walk away from an ex.
But a side effect of working at MoMA (besides owning too many discounted items from the Design Store) is that I became blasé about the fact that I was spending five days of the week surrounded by art. I settled into the routine of chatting at my cubicle and spent less time exploring the galleries. I left with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth for all modern art institutions, and The Complete Madame Realism gave me an idea to rectify that. What if I used my down time (and free admission) to visit as many museums and permanent installations in New York City as I could? What kind of relationship would I have to art and the concept of museums now that I no longer work at one? What follows is an abridged list of the notable visits I made during the months of December and January. If it counts for anything, I once again feel very strongly that I could waste years of my life traipsing through various art museums and galleries. I guess that means the experiment was a success.
AN: Certain of these installations forbid photos. Luckily, two of them have free entry, and I’d encourage you to stop by.
When I became unemployed I made a list of things I wanted to do now that I had seemingly endless time to fill. ‘Go to The Cloisters’ was at the top of that list. I trekked to Inwood shortly before Christmas, hiking up the grounds to the museum in impractical boots and a coat that was too thin for the season. I talk about religious art and Catholicism often on my Substack; I was raised in the faith, so I think it influenced me more than I could ever quantify. It’s heavy imagery, so potent. In many of the other major religions, depiction of the face of God is forbidden, but in Christianity, images of Christ surround you even if you aren’t Christian. The system of religious arts patronage produced some of the most recognizable artists of all time; what was once meant to glorify God is now mass produced as wall prints, laptop cases, ashtrays. There’s a sense of dilution, that we can never go back or understand what it felt like to look at La Pieta as a true believer in the 15th century.
And then there’s The Cloisters. The person who I visited it with rightfully pointed out that the whole museum is kind of a disingenuous postmodern project to decontextualize art which is intrinsically linked to said context. I don’t know if I felt holy while I wandered the labyrinthine halls of tapestries and intricate rosary carvings, but I felt distinctly something. We were trying to be persuaded, to be convinced. It is an ersatz religious building built in the 20th century masquerading as an authentic abbey. It was literally planted there. But as Shakespeare says in Sonnet 138, “When my love swears that she is made of truth / I do believe her, though I know she lies.” Maybe The Cloisters insists self-consciously on its own purity, though it knows it lies. I chose not to interrogate what I was seeing and instead allowed myself to pretend for a couple of hours. Because if I ignore all of the inherently anti-devotional aspects of The Cloisters, I could kneel before any of the artwork in there. I am deeply affected by the precise woodwork, the tinted glass, and the glistening manuscripts, all made (ostensibly) to proclaim faith. As Lana del Rey said, “When I’m on my knees, you’re how I pray.” Or as David Foster Wallace said, “The only choice we get is what to worship.” Or as Camille Paglia said, “The altar is anywhere you kneel.”
The Earth Room has been on my metaphorical list for so long that when I stopped working, I immediately jotted it onto a physical list of things I’d like to do before getting a new job. De Maria requests no pictures, which I think is fair, because this installation is really something you must see for yourself, if you’re able. This earth work is De Maria’s third iteration of this concept, but the first one available to see in the United States. It is, essentially, a second-floor room packed with dirt about 22 inches deep. As soon as I ascended the stairwell, I began sniffing the air for that distinct soil smell — like Demeter’s eponymous “Dirt” fragrance, which I spray over my bed during the springtime. My nose was stuffy that day, of course, so I struggled to pick up on any particular aroma. When I entered the space I nodded at the desk attendant. It is rumored that he’s been working at Earth Room since its inception. I was aware of his presence the entire time; I wanted to be respectful.
The room is extraordinary and crushing. I imagine that this is what all buildings will look like at some point in the not-so-distant future, buried by the elements. The clear light that filters in through the few windows has a lonely quality that I have only otherwise felt in graveyards and mausoleums, or schools after all the students have left. A British tourist careens up the stairs and into the room, cheerily greeting the attendant and then stooping to place her nose inches from the dirt, inhaling the aroma. She sniffles and mutters to herself in a jolly manner, and I couldn’t hate her. I began to think about what it means to “disturb the experience” for someone else — it’s rooted in narcissism, a belief that your enjoyment is the correct mode of doing so, but I still think that way sometimes.
The British woman leaves and is replaced by an extremely loud tour group. I find that I am mentally positioning myself as a “serious observer” which is simply not true. Place-based art demands to be seen, and I am not special. I catch some of what the tour guide says in Italian, mostly measurements and dollar amounts. There is a smaller room within the installation, separated by an adjoining wall. I want to crawl inside this center compartment and go to sleep for a thousand years. I wonder if there is still dirt behind the wall, in the space that the viewers can’t see, or if De Maria allows our mind to fill in the blank. Maybe the dirt just out of sight slopes to the floor; I knock my head into the wall while craning to see. When I pull my head away, clutching my temple, I spot an ant. As I’m about to leave, an unbearably precious little girl comes in with her mom, who carries the girl’s purple scooter. I wonder if I would have liked this place as a child, but I leave to give them their moment.
Broken Kilometer - Walter De Maria
Just a five minute walk from Earth Room is De Maria’s other indoor earthwork, Broken Kilometer. The sculpture consists of five rows of 500 brass rods that, when laid end to end, would make up one kilometer. It was cloudy when I visited, but the installation was radiant, like noon on a clear summer day. I thought at first that this was due to some sort of reflection off of the brass, but the pamphlet informed me that De Maria had intentionally installed discreet lighting that mimicked sunlight. For that reason alone I recommend going on a dreary day; it has a greater effect than a Seasonal Affective Disorder mood lamp. The space smelled exactly like the house of an ex boyfriend I dated in my late teens, or maybe all old, wood-floored buildings smell the same. It was like a restorative nap on the couch, one where you wake up at 6 p.m. amazed to find the sun is still up.
I am a little bit surprised to say that I had an emotional reaction to Broken Kilometer. It’s just a building you walk into off the street; it’s not cordoned off or made special in any way. I even heard someone, maybe children, sprinting up and down the floor above, though it felt more like an addition and less like a disruption. I know that when I was a child, I would have loved to gleefully throw myself across a vast, empty space. Before I had visited De Maria’s site-specific artworks, I presumed Earth Room would be more impactful. But it’s Broken Kilometer that really pierced me. There is something so stark, so inarguable, about a kilometer’s worth of brass rods laid out on a floor. I get choked up in the same way by Yves Klein’s Blue Monochrome. They’re both pure assertions of existence. This is blue. This is brass. This something to hold onto.
Dream House - La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela
Sometimes I encounter conceptual artwork that makes me feel like a rube. Dream House is one such artwork. Conceived as a joint project between composer La Monte Young and light artist Marian Zazeela, Dream House exists as an imaginary place that has been physically housed in multiple locations since the 1960s, the most recent version being a loft in TriBeCa. If my piece on liminal spaces is any indication, I love the mental exercise of conceptualizing a location that isn’t necessarily beholden to any one address. This is why I thought I’d adore Dream House. And let me preface my critique by saying I acknowledge that Young and Zazeela have pulled off an impressive feat that is widely lauded even by some of my very close friends — it just wasn’t for me. I am sensitive and finicky about multimedia installations. Maybe my mind isn’t conditioned enough to understand them, or maybe it’s because I thought it was pay-what-you-wish until the young attendant asked me for $10. I am stingy that way.
Dream House made me feel hostile and insane. When you enter, you are in the connecting hallway between two rooms, both emitting different audio frequencies. The space is bathed in red, pink, and blue light. In one room, a TV set to a news channel flickers beside a mirror that lies on the floor. The incense burning in the center of the mirror makes my eyelids grow heavy, and so I migrate to the next larger room. The attendant had asked me to remove my shoes before entering, but that’s okay, because I like walking around on carpet in my tights. It’s illicit somehow. The second room comprises of floor pillows arranged in a circular formation beneath a wall of speakers, a shrine in the corner of the room, and several mobile-like, curlicue sculptures. I close my eyes and try to stay inside this aural hellscape for as long as possible. Each time I move my head the sound changes slightly; it is almost spa-like and serene once I stop thinking about that $10. When I check my phone and see that half an hour has passed, I am impressed by my own endurance. Before leaving I stand in the connecting hallway, stare up at the neon sign on the ceiling, and feel like I am waiting in line for the bathroom at the worst party in the world.
The New Museum - Judy Chicago: Herstory
I really have to stop going into things with a frown on my face, but when a large-scale art exhibition has the word “herstory” in the title in 2024, I can’t help but be on guard. Judy Chicago is obviously a pioneering feminist artist who is well-versed in basically all mediums. I saw The Dinner Party at Brooklyn Museum in 2020, and like everyone I was affected and impressed. I don’t fault Chicago’s oeuvre for what I consider to be a failed exhibition; I fault the New Museum for its overambitious curation. The show moves chronologically from the bottom floor to the top, featuring exclusively Chicago’s work until the last floors, which are more carte blanche. I found the early pyrotechnic work to be the most compelling; I loved the footage of Chicago standing firmly in the middle of a desert landscape, wielding smoke guns. I also loved the color gradients she made at the beginning of her painting career, how she could make green blend into orange like sherbet. I nearly pressed my nose against the canvas trying to discern where one color ended and the other began, but I couldn’t find any hard lines, just fluffy clouds of pastels.
Her command of so many different techniques is impressive, but I’m not a real art critic. I have nothing new or important to say about Judy Chicago. It would be presumptuous to even pretend that anyone cared for my uninformed opinion. Rather, my criticism comes from an amateur’s standpoint; the exhibition was too overwhelming, too much, too comprehensive. Birth Project alone could require hours to parse through; the rooms sailed from one heartbreaking topic to the next so abruptly that I got whiplash. I preferred the more eclectic hodgepodge of the fourth floor, titled “The City of Ladies,” which acts as a ‘group show’ for Chicago’s influences and places her artwork in context. I spotted Maya Deren, Martha Graham, Dorothea Tanning, and Hilma af Klint in proximity to Pop Chalee’s “Enchanted Forest,” Kati Horna’s “Untitled,” and Leonor Fini’s “Chtonian Deity Watching over the Sleep of a Young Man.” I should have stayed there, but I took the elevator to the Sky Deck, which displayed an audience-submission piece that poses the question, “What if women ruled the world?” The whole thing felt a bit tone-deaf and aligned with Hillary Clinton’s particular brand of Girlboss Feminism, which perhaps shouldn’t surprise me coming from the New Museum, and yet it did. After so many floors arguing in favor of women’s complexity, it felt totally infantilizing to see people genuinely convinced that women are universal nurturers/healers/fixers, and that we could never be capable of harm or violence.
The Noguchi Museum has the most beautiful couch in the world. It’s on the second floor of the building, and if you are lured into its trap, you will spend an hour of your visit on it. It’s curvy and low and dark purple, and the lighting in the room is so warm and soft. If you visit on one of the harshest, windiest days in January, you will want to nap or sneak the couch out through a side door and make a run for it. It’s $15000 on the website and one day maybe I’ll be rich enough to buy it. Besides the couch, the Noguchi Museum is a surreal mixture of concrete slabs and creaky wooden floors. It is hollow and sterile at times but also organic and visceral in that it literally evokes viscera. Some of the sculptures resemble intestines or penises or lungs in the shape of a heart. I am staggered that someone’s hands could make these things, that he could alternate between smooth marble ouroboros structures and textured, rusty metal that looks like a rotting log or a stuffed bear.
It reminds me slightly of Dia Beacon, which houses an impossible amount of conceptual art under one roof. It can be numbing to traverse the halls and encounter endless shapes and statements which have no bearing to any photographic object. But Noguchi’s collection is a bit more manageable. I took my time with it, not forcing myself to stand for several minutes in front of every sculpture but instead letting it all wash over me and spending more time with the pieces that I found the most compelling. My favorites were “The Victim,” “Magic Ring,” and “The Mountain.” The Noguchi Museum is a bit like a playground, it’s so tactile and inventive. It’s a place out of time.
i've had too little sleep to verbalize how this made me feel but the way you talk about art is so beautiful . :')