MoMA

Oddly enough the MoMA ended up being one of the most disappointing museums I’ve been to. Perhaps my expectations were simply too high. On the other hand, I think the MoMA says far more about American culture and the American approach to museums than the collection itself.

It was way too crowded. I figured the whole point of advanced online booking was to limit the number of visitors, and this is why even the most popular Dutch museums aren’t completely packed to gills. The flip side is that you have to book anywhere from days to months in advance at popular exhibitions in Holland.

There was no story. Especially the temporary exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum do an amazing job at explaining the context of the art and giving a wider view of how it influenced other artists and society.

For me, a good exhibition is about having some sort of deep connection to what’s being displayed. In that sense, the overall experience is far more important than seeing a couple of big name pieces. Quality over quantity. The Van Gogh Museum’s exhibition about the last three months of Van Gogh’s life was profoundly emotional, drawing on letters, photographs of where he was staying, and showing his how descent into melancholy was visible through his art. Seeing The Starry Night at MoMA was impressive, but it simply didn’t carry the emotional, even spiritual weight of a well organized exhibition of pieces that aren’t household names.

So in that sense, MoMA felt like a disjointed list of greatest hits rather than a curated collection with each piece building on the others. Yes, I know I’m making a wildly sweeping generalization, but that’s the key difference to much of American vs. Northern European culture. The Americans like a few big name, power pieces. The Europeans prefer curation and a larger narrative. Individualism vs. a collective culture.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had many years ago at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The Russian elite tried to buy their way to Europeaness with paintings, operas, and high-brow culture without ever really becoming European. American art snobs give off a similar air, whom I picture rattling off some list of important paintings they’ve seen but never talking about how an artist has moved them and inspired something in their lives.