Teacher Trekker

Located in Midtown Manhattan on 53rd Street just west of 5th Avenue is New York’s MoMA, officially the Museum of Modern Art. Inside the building’s six floors is one of the world’s most renowned collections of modern and contemporary art. The permanent collection includes many artistic media including architecture, books, design, drawing, electronic media, engineering, ephemera, film, music, painting, periodicals, photography, prints, sculpture, sketching. If I missed something, I apologize. MoMA has some of the most visually stunning and thought provoking art I’ve seen. If you’re in New York City, think about making a visit.

My Experience

I have been to the MoMA many times. Many of my teachers took advantage of taking us to museums throughout Manhattan. I remember a few school trips during my grade school education. I’ve also returned many times with friends new to the city. In addition to an exceptional permanent collection, there is also a continual rotation of special exhibitions and events that are held throughout the year. Something will always grab your attention. There’s always something new, fun and at times quite obscure if not downright strange. I have enjoyed countless visitations and will continue to do so for years to come.

I have a number of suggestions that will only make your experience more enjoyable. The museum is large, and it’s easy to lose track of time wandering through the museum looking for different pieces of art. I’ll do my best to point out the must see artworks in the permanent collection, but a few more tips before I discuss the art.

Download the MoMA App

To put it simply I found the MoMA app to be one of the best apps I have come across in awhile. Make your life easy and download it now. Use it before you visit, so you can explore the collection and create a game plan. It has all essential information to help plan your visit or catch a film. If not, the MoMA offers free wifi allowing you to quickly download the app, but more importantly, use all the app’s features.

With the app and your headphones, don’t forget your headphones, you have the entire museum walking tour and explanation of every piece of art on display. Simply enter the number code on the informational placard into the app and boom! It’s simply a treasure trove of information with audio commentaries available for the museum’s highlights. It eliminates virtually any need of a guide whatsoever. To think I saw people paying for audio guides, and the app has a handful of them on there for free! It’s also interactive and allows create your own lists, explore a map, and many other features. You can take photos through the app. You would be crazy to not download and use the app!

Note: Many pieces of art are numbered and have enhanced features on the app. Next to many of the pieces of art, I have provided the Gallery and # when possible. Each has a letter next to it. They represent: C – Collection (Audio) V – Visual K – Kids

Entering the Museum – The First Floor

Once you enter the main floor of MoMA, you will encounter the ticket counters with audio guides for rental to the right and information centers, membership services and coat check to your left. There are bathrooms and all of the essential amenities that a museum provides. This is also where you will access the theaters. Just outside is the Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Finally, at a separate entrance on 53rd Street is The Modern. There is a main dining area serving contemporary dishes and a bar room that serves a French-American cuisine.

Depending on when you visit the museum, it can be extremely crowded. I recommend that you purchase your tickets online to avoid a long wait at the museum. I visited in the height of a tourist holiday season, and I was able to enter in less than five minutes. According to the ticketing booth, the wait time was approximately 45 minutes. At 1:00 p.m. that’s valuable viewing time you’re missing out on while standing around.

The coat check line is hard to avoid unless you are a museum member. It takes time dropping off and picking up your jackets and bags. I try to avoid the line at all costs, and don’t even bring a bag unless I have to. Small bags are often not a problem, but avoid any type of backpack. I’ve seen and had some issues, and I’m not talking about my Vietnam rucksack. Travel light and don’t bring a bulky jacket or large bag. Unless it’s the winter coat check is easily avoidable. However, if you do end up waiting on line, I have another suggestion for you: grab a map and take advantage of the time to plan if you haven’t already.

Navigating the MoMA Collection

The way I see it, you have two options. Both start by making your way to the elevator. From there, it is best to start from the sixth or fifth floor. If you are looking to see the permanent collection, then I recommend you start on the fifth floor and work your way down to the bottom floor. If you have extra time, you can always take the elevator back up to the sixth floor. If you have no time table or no plan, then make your way to the sixth floor and proceed in suit. Skip the first floor for now, you can do that at the end as well.

Sixth Floor

The top floor of MoMA is dedicated to special exhibitions and temporary collections. The reason I say you might want to avoid this area first is because every time I start on the top floor, somehow I ended up losing track of time completely, and then I am always in a rush to show my friends the rest of the permanent collection. On the other hand, the reason I lost track of that time was because I was always so impressed with whatever was on display. It really depends on the objectives of your visit. The museum map and app will be able to provide information about the exhibits and help you determine where you want to start.

Fifth Floor

Once you are on the fifth floor you will be able to move chronologically through the museum’s collection. It is easiest to follow the numerical order in sequence by making note of the directional numbers at the entrance to each room.

The fifth floor is filled with paintings and sculptures from the 1880’s to the 1940’s. Some of the highlights and my personal favorites include:

Paul Cezanne’s The Bather (c. 1885) (Gallery 1; # 501C/55V) is considered one of the artist’s “most evocative paintings of the figure” and looked to push the “understanding of vision and light developed by the Impressionists”. Also on display is the artist’s Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat in addition to a number of other works.

Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night (June 1889) (Gallery 1; #521C/15K) is easily one of the museum’s most iconic paintings. The crowd isn’t quite like the Mona Lisa, but it’s not easy to work your way into the mass of people and take a photo. It depicts a violent sky prior to sunrise over Saint-Rémy-de-Provence from the view of the east facing window where the painter’s last days were spent at an insane asylum at the Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole.

There are a number of other pieces of work on display including Portrait of Joseph Roulin (1889), The Olive Trees (1889) and The Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (1889).

Georges-Pierre Seurat’s Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to Harbor (1888) (Gallery 1) is a classic example of the Neo-Impressionist’s pointillism style where those in the movement sought out the “most scientific and precise way to record color and light”. I’m always intrigued by the level of detail that was required to paint in this manner. Also on display is the artist’s Evening, Honfluer (1886).

Henri Rousseau’s The Dream (1910) (Gallery 1; # 530C/1K) manages to capture the essence of exotic jungle locales despite the fact that Rosseau never ventured outside of France. His inspiration came from literature, museums, botanical gardens and the Paris Zoo. “The nude model in this painting reclines on a sofa, mixing the domestic and exotic.” Also on display is the artist’s The Sleeping Gypsy (1897) and much more.

Paul Gauguin’s The Seed of the Areoi (1892) (Gallery 1) depicts a Polynesian goddess. (No image available. My apologies.) “In the spring of 1891 Gaugin traveled to the South Pacific island of Tahiti, then a French colony.” He hoped to discover paradise, but instead he found an already colonized territory. Despite this, he portrayed and idealized primitive “pre-modern land of leisure” prior to European encroachment. His use of “bright, flat and unrealistic colors” influenced “the next generation of European artists, including the Fauves and German Expressionists”.

There is a vast collection of works by Pablo Picasso that always manages to capture my attention for extensive periods of time. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) (Gallery 2; # 502C&5021C/56V) which depicts five naked prostitutes in a brothel and “marks a radical break from traditional composition and perspective in painting”. The women are “composed of flat, splintered planes and faces inspired by Iberian sculpture and African masks”. It is believed the work ignited much controversy among his contemporaries particularly Matisse.

Despite how highly regarded this painting is there are many others in the gallery, which I prefer specifically Boy Leading a Horse (1905-06), Girl with the Mandolin (Fanny Tellier) (1910), Card Player (1913-1914) (not displayed in article), Three Musicians (1921) and Girl before a Mirror (1932). There are so many that it’s difficult to not find a few you enjoy as you see the evolution of his art over the course of his career.

Marc Chagall’s I and the Village (1911) (Gallery 3; # 522C/4K) was completed a year after the artist came to Paris and “evokes his memories of his native Hasidic community outside Vitebsk”, the Russian village he spent his youth. This Cubist representation uses line work to demonstrate the mutual dependence of the village’s peasants and animals. There are also other pieces of work by Chagall also on display.

Henri Matisse’s Dance (I) (1909) (Gallery 6; # 524C/5241C/72V) uses a simple color palette that helped emphasize the motion that can be seen in this work. This approach reflects his interest in the Fauvist movement. This was the first of two paintings and served as a compositional study for Dance (II) is on display at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Much like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon Matisse, this is considered one of Matisse’s crowning achievements and museum must see paintings, but it is not my favorite works by the artist in the museum. That honor would fall to The Moroccans (late 1915 & fall 1916). There are many pieces of work by Matisse on display including The Red Studio (1911) and View of Notre-Dame (1914).

Monet was my mother’s favorite artist and Water Lilies (1914-26) (Gallery 9; # 565C) were her favorite part of his catalogue. As a result, I find myself always seeking out his work. Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond (c. 1920) is spread across three large canvases which cover the entire room and depicts the interplay between the water, lilies, light and sky of Monet’s Japanese garden and pond in Giverny. There is another slightly smaller Water Lilies (1914-1926) on the opposite wall of the gallery, as well as additional works like The Japanese Footbridge (1920-1922) by Monet in the surrounding rooms.

The theme of Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory (Gallery 12; # 517C/63V/10K) is time. The “distant golden cliffs are those on the coast of Catalonia, Dali’s home”. They provide the backdrop for “melting watches to the decay implied by the swarming ants” and a “monstrous fleshy draped across the paintings center is an approximation of Dali’s own face in profile”. Like the Mona Lisa, I found the painting to be ridiculously small. Although this is easily considered Dali’s best recognized work of surrealism, there are a number of other pieces of work by the artist on display in the museum.

These are only some of the highlights that I recommend you visit while on the fifth floor. There are also pieces of work by Frida Kahlo, Stuart Davis, Vasily Kandinsky, Giorgio de Chirico, Gustav Klimt, André Derain [particularly Bathers (1907) (Gallery 1)] and many more.

Fourth Floor

The fourth floor is filled with paintings and sculptures from the 1940’s to 1980. Some of the highlights and my personal favorites include:

One, Number 31, 1950 (1950) (Gallery 16; # 402C/4020C/4021C/65V/12K ) is one of Jackson Pollack’s largest and most important masterpiece of the “drip” technique that he contributed to the Abstract Expressionist movement. The artist would lay his canvas flat on the floor and proceed to pour, drip, dribble and flick enamel paint onto his painting surfaces resulting in various a controlled chaos if intersecting lines, spots, blobs and splatter.

There is also the slightly smaller Number 1A, 1948 (1948) (Gallery 16). Worth noting is Pollack’s inclusion of several handprints in the top right corner of the painting as a type of signature. Despite the popularity of these two paintings neither are my favorite Pollack piece in the museum.

In a close second is Echo: Number 25, 1951 (1951) (#429C), but I’m in love with Full Fathom Five (1947) (Gallery 15). The majority of the underlay “was applied by brush and pallet knife” and then covered with his iconic “drip” method, but something makes this piece stand apart. While painting objects would often fall onto the ground and find their way into Pollack’s compositions. This painting includes cigarette butts, nails, tacks, buttons, coins, paint chips from the studio floor and a key. There’s just something about this that intrigues me. Personally, it’s feels more alive than the others. It feels to me as if he is still working on the composition, walking around it, ashing on the floor and dropping cigarette butts on wet paint in order to put them out and avoid covering his mouth and lips with the paint residue on his fingers.

Jasper Johns’ Flag (1954-55) (Gallery 18; # 420C/39K) is often considered one of the most the most well-known usages of the Stars and Stripes in a work of art in modern times. He got the inspiration for the painting after having a dream that he ‘painted a large American flag… and the next morning [he] got up and [he] went out and bought the materials to begin it’. This painting served as inspiration for future bodies of work completed by Johns. There are also other pieces of work by the artist also on display.

Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) (Gallery 19; # 40K) played off the advertising images of the thirty-two varieties of soup offered by Campbell’s Soup Company. It is a classic example of Pop Art.

Nearby is Warhol’s Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times (1963) where the artist repeatedly silkscreened the image of a fatal car accident from the front page news. There are a number of other pieces of work by Andy Warhol on display. (Note: There is some Andy Warhol work on the second floor – see below.)

Roy Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl (1963) (Gallery 19; # 446C/84V) – Lichtenstein’s works drew inspiration from comic books. This piece was influenced by the work Run from Love! published by DC Comics in 1962. He “manually simulated the Benday dots used in the mechanical reproduction of images”. There are also other pieces of work by Lichtenstein also on display.

These are only some of the highlights that I recommend you visit while on the fourth floor. There are also pieces of work by Williem de Koonig, Lee Bontecou, Ellsworth Kelly, Marisol Escobar, Yayoi Kusama [particularly Accumulation # 1 (1962)] and many more.

Third Floor

The third floor is comprised of a portion of the permanent collection, as well as galleries for special exhibitions. There are three galleries dedicated to architecture and design, one to drawings and another to photography. Special exhibits are primarily connected to the same mediums. One of the highlights of the third floor is Arthur Young’s Bell-47D1 Helicopter (1945) (Architecture & Design Lobby, 3rd Floor, #315C/43K). Its design was revolutionary, and its use during the Korean War as an aerial ambulance as part of M.A.S.H. (Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals) units made it a memorable method of military transport during this time period.

Second Floor

The second floor is packed with a variety of different galleries. A large portion of the floor is dedicated to contemporary galleries from 1980 to present time. There are also galleries for prints & illustrated books, media and an area for special exhibitions. Also on the second floor are MoMA Books and Café 2, an Italian cafeteria style restaurant.

In the Prints & Illustrated Books Galleries are two more iconic pieces of Andy Warhol’s Pop Art available for viewing. There is his Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962) (# 411C) that was made shortly after Marilyn Monroe committed suicide in August 1962. The silkscreen is one of his first and earliest celebrity works. “Warhol canonized and eulogized Monroe as a goddess of popular culture.” Since its original showing in November 1962 this iconic image has been imitated by other artists after him and has been reproduced so many times that it’s print has become a staple poster amongst art-history undergrad dorm rooms.

Also on display at the museum, but not in this article is Warhol’s Roll of Bills (1962). In the early 1960’s he was pursuing a career in fine arts, but this piece began the transition into Pop Art, and his use of highly recognizable, mass produced and easily consumable ideas. Shortly after its completion he gave up drawing for over ten years. Warhol was quoted in 1975 saying, ‘I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall’. What an idea!

Finally, Cai Guo-Qiang’s Borrowing Your Enemy’s Arrows (1998) is an interesting installation hanging from the ceiling of a large boat covered with arrows. Its message and connected mythology is “rooted in Chinese philosophy and expressed in the Western vocabulary of the readymade.” It’s a powerful piece of work.

Returning to the First Floor

Once you return to the first floor, there are a number of other interesting pieces you may want to visit depending on your time table. You may also want to return to some of the special exhibitions on other floors if you did not yet visit them.

Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World (1948) (Lobby Area; #573C/17K) – The painting captures the artist’s neighbor in Maine who was crippled with polio lying in an open field with a barn and other buildings in the background. It was done with great attention to detail in the magic realism style where “everyday scenes are imbued with poetic mystery”. (I apologize I forgot to take a photo.)

If the weather is nice you can access the Sculpture Garden. There are a number of works on display most notably Auguste Rodin’s Monument to Balzac (1898) and Joan Miró’s Moonbird (1966). On a side note, I don’t think I ever noticed Hector Guimard’s Entrance Gate to Paris Subway (Métropolitain) Station, Paris, France (c. 1900) (# 106C/48K), but now that I have visited Paris, I will make sure to take note of it on my next visit.

After your visit, you can proceed through the same doors that you entered to exit the museum. You’re in Midtown! Your options are almost limitless, butt here are a few suggestions at the end of this article.

Source: All quotes came from the MoMA Application.

Conclusions

New York’s MoMA is one of the premier contemporary arts museums on the planet. The museum allows you to view the works of many talented artists across a vast array of modern and contemporary artistic movements. The museum has something for people of all age groups and the app even provides a children’s tour. If visiting museums are high on your travel list, then you should add the Museum of Modern Art to the top of your NYC museum list. It’s actually smack in the middle of my Top 5 Museums in New York City. Across the East River is the MoMA’s P.S. 1 in Long Island City, New York that is also worth a visit if you like modern art. They really push the limits over there. I hope this helps and the MoMA app allows you to better plan your visit and enjoy the museum.

Tourist Information

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street (between 5th & 6th Aves)
New York, NY 10019

Admission: Adults $25.00, Seniors $18.00, Students $16.00, Children 16 & under Free. Tickets can and once again to save time should be purchased online in advance.

Free entry from Friday 4:00pm – 8:00pm, but is often extremely crowded.
Tickets for these hours are not available in advance.

Hours: MoMa is open 7 days a week 10:30am – 5:30pm
(The museum is closed Thanksgiving and Christmas.)

Subway Information:
Take the E or M train to 53rd Street & Fifth Avenue (or)
Take the B, D, or F train to 47-50 Street Rockefeller Center

Nearby Attractions

There is so much to see in Midtown Manhattan I couldn’t even begin to list them all. Here are some of the places I passed on the way to and from the museum. Radio City Music Hall is down 6th Avenue between W50 & W51 Streets. The NBC Studios are around the corner on W50 Street. At the corner of 6th Avenue & 53 Street are three bronze sculptures of Venus de Milo in ascending height by Jim Dine. On 5th Avenue between W50 & W51 Streets you can find St. Patrick’s Cathedral & the Atlas Statue across the street. All of the Instagram photos have geotags.