Don’t Be Shocked When Your Hist’ry Books Mention Me (#46 Museum Mile Revisited)

Museum Mile was kind of a fail, but a brilliant fail.  This itinerary day was Monday aka Memorial Day, and  I knew places might be busy, but I didn’t really think everyone would be there.

We started the day at MoMA – this was my first visit, and fail: the garden was closed. At the time, I thought it was for construction, but a few days later I saw on Instagram that they had a huge event “Party in the Garden” on May 31^st and all the scaffolding was to support that.

Probably the most famous thing at MoMa is Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” which as expected was super crowded, but this giant asshole planted himself in front of everyone and just stood there.  There’s always one, right?

Other highlights: Monet, Mondrian, Pollack, Seurat, Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, etc.

Seurat: The Channel at Gravelines


Pollack:




Magritte:  The Menaced Assassin



Mondrian:




Picasso:




Matisse:



Unfortunately “The Persistence of Memory” aka melting clocks was out on loan so I didn’t get to see that.

After MoMa, we Ubered to actual Museum Mile to visit the Guggenheim. First, that driver – was awesome.  He was also a little scary what with the speed and lane changes, but that it the fastest I’ve gotten anywhere in NYC.  Back to the Guggenheim - I’d see it before, but never been inside, and while planning the trip the website said advanced tickets wouldn’t be available because of an exhibit change, but that the museum would be open.

This was technically true, but the exhibit change was for the entire spiral (fail) so we just went in and took pictures of the famous spiral.  Maybe next time I’ll actually get to “go” to this museum.

Trunks, an exhibit changeover in red








We had the Met on the list as a maybe – if time permitted, and with the Guggenheim closure, time definitely permitted.  So, we walked down the street to the Met.  It. Was. Packed.  The line alone was waaaaaay down the block.  Fail.

We decided to just sit on the iconic steps for a bit and see if the line got any shorter, we people watched and chatted a little, and after a while determined that we were not going to go inside that museum on that day.  



So instead we chose a food vendor, found a table, and ate lunch. That table was so gross. But luckily for us there was a mom (I mean, she had her family with her, but MOM) at the table next to us and she gave us baby wipes to clean off the table and then sprayed it down with hand sanitizer for us.  Moms Rock!

After lunch, and a whole bunch of people watching we thought about leaving, but only made it to the tables on the other sides of the entrance stairs before we found less crowded tables, and people watched some more.  So while our whole plan was kind of a fail, I still had an amazing day.  The weather was great, I love to people watch, and it was just kind of a no-pressure day.