Knowing that there was a blog post due on Tuesday Oct. 10, 2017, my friend and I went to MoMA PS1 the Friday before. We chose MoMA PS1 because one, it was free with our NYC ID and two, because it seemed like a cool place to go. When we got there, we were told that because it was an installation period, we could only attend the tour and were not allowed to roam around freely ourselves. BUT THAT WAS OKAY because on the tour, I learned a lot about the long installment pieces that we got to see. The tour guide also spoke about how the building used to be a public school- hence the PS1 following the MoMA. In it, we were shown the boiler room and learned some interesting facts about the building itself. For example, for a couple of years, there was no heat in the building since the boiler was built and installed a few years after the building was built. Imagine a winter in NYC without heat… Through many of the artworks, I realized that less is sometimes more. One artwork was very minimalistic. It was a red colored in square on a gray granite wall. However, as the tour guide explained how the square was colored in, I realized why it was considered of a piece art. The square was colored by the artist leaving instructions for other artist on how to color it in and “help” finish his work. The instructions came with crayons. the artist coloring in the square would press the crayon to the wall until it was crushed on the wall leaving a mark. This artwork was focused more on the process of art and how art did not always have to be an object. Something I noticed during the tour was that there were two staircases separated by a wired fence but were next to each other. The tour guide explained that it was because in the 1800s and 1900s when the building was a school, the girls were to go up one staircase and the boys were to go up the other. The male and female students had their own separate entrance. This really linked with the topic my English class and Anthropology class discussed this week. I really had an amazing time at MoMA PS1 and I’m excited to go back once the installations are complete.
