Since there was a blog post that was due soon, my friend and I went to MoMA PS1 on Friday October 6th, 2017. We chose MoMA PS1 for two reasons. One was because it was free if we showed them our NYC ID card and the second reason was because it was closer to go to MoMA PS1 then going all the way to Manhattan. When we got there, we were told that we were not allowed to freely roam/ walk around by ourselves. We had to attend a tour and follow the tour guide because it was still in it’s installation period. While we were touring the place, the tour guide gave us a lot of interesting facts about MoMA PS1, facts such as why there’s a PS1 after the name, the history to the building, as well as some intriguing art pieces that were in the museum. MoMA PS1 used to be a elementary school, hence the PS1 after MoMA and the boys and girls were separated. They entered through different doors and there were 2 stairs that went up/down to the same place but was separated by wired fence. That was cool because it was mind-blowing to know that the 2 stairs cases lead to the same place but it was facing opposite directions. We were also shown the boiler room and was told that 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. As we walked around, I found that artwork can be very odd. One artwork was a red colored in square on a gray granite wall. I didn’t get why it was considered art because it was basically a hold in the wall. The tour guide explained how the square was colored in; the square was colored by the artist leaving instructions for other artists on how to color it in and finish his work. The instructions came with crayons and the artist coloring in the square would press the crayon to the wall until it was crushed on the wall leaving a mark. There were other artwork that we saw such as the open hole in the ceiling of a room. Inside the room, it was warm and it felt nice to be able to feel the fresh air and the suns rays from up top even though we are inside the building. After the installations are complete, I would like to go back and see what is other pieces are available and hopefully understand why such small and odd pieces of artwork are worth a lot more than it seems.
