Went to see the brand-spanking new MoMA (the original one, in NYC) outpost in Queens today. As you probably know, the original MoMA in Manhattan is going through a $860 million renovation. Yes, that is the number apparently. I liked the steel cage renovated look of the new museum, stuck out in the middle of a subway line and a number of low rise manufactories.
The architects very carefully constructed a space that would provide maximal space for the paintings and installations on view. However, the artsworks from the 80s and 90s left me cold, except for a very nice Polke. While the 2 Mark Rothkos and the same-size early and late Willem De Koonings were beautiful facing each other with longing abandon, the room of clocks by Andrea Zittel et. al. was remote — it reminded me of something that once would have stood at PS1 — a few blocks away — but no longer.
In any case, not far from where Ms. Zittel lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is Pierogi Gallery (full disclosure: I have some works in the flat files there), which currently features about 10 artists whose work jumped off the walls. From the intensely pop Bic-pen doodle-drawings of Dawn Clements, a friend, to this incredibly beautiful landscape by an artist I had not seen to another small landscape made of small cuttings from postage stamps, the show is a stopper in a summer of artshow oddities.