Museum a Month - Guggenheim

I admit that before today, I had never been inside a New York City museum. On past trips here with friends, if they suggested a museum, I suggested we split up for the next few hours - "You go to the museum, I'm going tooo...go walk around." I reasoned with only a few days here, there was SO much more I'd rather see of New York than just the inside of a building. And my excuse for not going in the last 18 months of living here? "Oh, I live here. I can go anytime."

Maybe it was the Bush twins' letter urging me to "Go", or it was the start of a new year and new habits, or it was the question of how long will I live here that made me finally resolve to explore the inside of these museums I've paraded past for years. This year I will go to one museum a month - the "Museum a Month" club of which I'm currently the founder, president and only committed member.

Not having a museum whose works I most wanted to see, I picked the Guggenheim as my first stop because it has the most unusual architecture and layout (and I did check its website to discover a new exhibit began this weekend.)  

I invited a friend along to make the trip 50 or so blocks north to the museum. We hopped off the bus, walked a few blocks and arrived at the museum with faces flushed from the cold. We navigated through the tourists crowding the lobby, paid the entry fee, and picked up head phones for the audio tour. Meredith opted for no head phones - a decision she would later regret when she wanted to talk to pass the time but I was listening to the monotonous droll - I mean, informative descriptions of the pieces.

We began circling the floors of the Guggenheim - art displayed in rooms and nooks off the spiraling ramp that is the interior of the building - its layout a piece of art in its own rite. The bottom floors were interesting and just what I expect of a museum - Monet's, Renoir's, other artists who I didn't recognize but appreciated nonetheless. But the higher we circled, the crazier the art became. The dream room of buzzing noises and flashing lights? The guy who hypnotized himself to be his mom and wrote descriptions of family pictures as if he was her? The cut out slice of wall with debris piled neatly on the floor in front of it? Maybe I was weary from the climb, or maybe the air was thinner on the higher floors and thus adversely affecting my ability to process what I was seeing as "art", but the untraditional pieces definitely entertained, and we spent the last ramp laughing and calling to each other, "Oh my gosh - you will not believe this one!"

But at the end of the climb I realized that - in the end - not believing something is what art is - a creation designed to be viewed in beauty or wonder or confusion. One person's thought or vision given life for others to see and question or believe as they will.

One museum down - 11 to go!