Whitney and Mona

My time in New York was nearly over, but I still had enough time to complete some final cultural visits.

I went over to the Whitney to have a look around.  I hadn't had a chance to visit the last time I was in New York, so I was excited to see what it had on offer.  Besides having an incredible building, it has some pretty weird and wonderful exhibits on display.

For a New York gallery, it has a huge space, but there didn't seem to be any particular theme which drove what they were trying to show.  It must be difficult for many of these galleries to get the right balance between the older (but more famous) pieces that everyone wants to see and some of the newer (but clearly less popular) pieces that no one has heard of.

There were a few pieces in the Whitney by Jasper Johns which I really liked.  His work with the American flags in particular caught my attention.  Besides the obvious fact that they were American flags, the texture and the style embodied true "Americana" for me.  It looked like something which had been created in the sweeping plains in the country's West.  Something which had been made from weathered scrap wood on someone's ranch.

After walking around the Whitney all morning, I walked across town to visit MoMA.  I remembered my visit to MoMA from my last visit and I had fond memories.

MoMA is in such a huge space, it means that it's able to maintain a truly enormous permanent collection of works, whilst still giving lots of attention to some different temporary exhibitions.  The Andy Warhols were all still on display, their bright colours grabbing at the attention of everyone who walked past.

The Piet Mondrian section was still there.  I still remembered when I was first properly introduced to his works back at the Tate Modern all those years ago.  I loved his work then, and I still love it now.

One of the loveliest pieces in the entire museum is a small work by Dan Flavin called "Roses".  It's quite a small work, but it literally glows.  Dan Flavin was another artist that I grew to admire when I first walked through the Tate Modern when I was younger.  "Roses" is such a different piece to his other works.  Flavin often created huge works, large scale pieces which used the light to create structures and images that took up an entire space.  It was often close to being installation art, such was its size and also because of its ability to dominate a room.  This lovely little work though, it was different.  It was a small little sculpture, shaped like flowers inside of a lightbulb, which let out only the faintest of light which brought out the colour of the flower.  It was a subtle, but beautiful work of art.

The space of MoMA is also exceptional.  From the outside, it seems fairly non-descript with its imposing and clean facade.  Inside it is a towering building, with huge rooms and vast open atriums.  There is even a small garden, hidden away from the busy streets where you can sit and contemplate the world.

New York's cultural side is really something to behold.  It is such an amazing concentration of different ideas and values.  I'm really not sure there's anything like it anywhere in the world.