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This NYT article reads like a MoMA PR hack's checklist of all the reasons why the $20 ticket price for the renovated Museum of Modern Art is not so bad, and why they had to do it: More art than ever, more amenities, cheaper than opera, it will induce more to become members (membership prices stay the same), art lovers are rich anyway, students still get discounts, it free on Friday evenings, employee salaries and benefits have been increasing, 9/11 caused insurance premiums to rise but attendance to fall, endowments underperformed after the stock market crash, the new building will cost more to "heat, cool and protect"...
But the article leaves the biggest reason for the price hike to an artful quote:
"Even for New York, it's very high. It's going to be a barrier for some people," said Ruth Berson, deputy director for programs and collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "I wish them well with it. And I'm sure they have a lot to make up," she added, referring to the cost of the renovation.
"But - whew!"
Which inexorably leads to a question the NYT should have asked MoMA directors but didn't: Who forced you to renovate? I always found the old MoMa on 53rd to be perfectly delightful and up to the job; if it was more room MoMa needed, they demonstrated it can be found cheaply in Queens. I think they blew it by opting for pricey prestige instead of spreading the love and permanently locating an annex or two in the outer boroughs, in an instant turning non-desript neighborhoods into some of the world's most important art destinations, while keeping costs down. Such thinking would have made sense even before 9/11.
Put a fork in the city it's done. Overdone.
My ONLY GOAL as a kid EVER was to move to Manhattan and live in the village (and become a writer). I did it. It was the Manhattan of Woody Allen, Sydney Lumet, Turk 187, Jacqueline Onassis, Peggy Gugenheim, Klaus Noami, Keiko Bonk, the Bonsai Babies, Dicky Heck, Samo, and Keith, Keith and Kenny and Mickey -- goddam him, goddam you Mickey, you and your motherfucking heroin -- and a whole bunch of us teenagers and such living on the UWS and East Village -- a jewish, italian, puerto rican, southern, ukrainian sandwich -- on next to no money, plenty of dope and -- for the slutty girls, a carful of cocaine from those yellow-tied bankers. You could eat Grey's dogs, kick back in the museum all day and at Club 57 all night with your drummer b/f. You could eat at Hubert's with your stockbroker b/f and bring him to the Mudd Club. NO TRUST FUND NECESSARY. But it's over, over, so over.
Come the first day of spring all the writers, mechanical artists, illustrators, and editors, you know the "creatives," quit their jobs so they could spend the summer hanging out at at Cafe Orlin becoming Karen Finley or whatnot and there was always Julian Schnabel to laugh at.
New York is the new Palm Beach or Springs or wherever rich white old people, their horrifying spawn, and their cadres of servents are enclaved.
After 30 hard years, born and bred, I raise the white flag. The rats, the roaches, the h, the works, the no hot water, the no water, the stabbings were nothing compared to this. Double the price of the fucking museums, who the hell can afford them anyway.
Posted by: la depressionada on September 26, 2004 02:48 AMHere's the lede from another section of the same day's New York Times:
It was as frenzied as a Manolo Blahnik sample sale. Michele Kleier, a broker at Gumley Haft Kleier, put the prewar, three-bedroom apartment on the market two weeks ago, then stood back and watched the hordes that descended for her first and only open house. "We must have had 100 people in two hours," she said. The seven-room co-op at 88th Street and Madison Avenue went into contract above the $3.45 million asking price in a four-way bidding war.Fact is, the kind of people who sit on MoMA's board and who make these kind of decisions are precisely the kind of hordes who will descend on $3.5 million UES apartments in hope of a bargain. But I'm glad to see that it seems as though at least the exhibitions won't cost extra. People were paying $20 already, remember, once the extra cost of going to see Jackson Pollock or Andreas Gursky was added to the general entry charge. My only question: if movie admission is included in the price, how are they going to deal with popular movies? Are people going to start queuing hours in advance to be sure of getting in? Posted by: Felix on September 26, 2004 03:13 AM
By the way, in case you have no idea what the hell the last two comments are about, you might want to look here.
Posted by: Felix on September 26, 2004 04:15 AMI really wouldn't use that name. The Google referrals are murder.
Posted by: Sterling on September 26, 2004 04:15 AMStefan, the answer is easy. MoMA thinks you are a rube.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on September 26, 2004 02:12 PMOh, and here's the serious marketing guy answer: The memberships didn't go up that much ($10 if my memory is correct). I heard Max Andersen (formely of the Whitney) claim that gate receipts were typically less than 20% of yearly operating income (though I hazard this is an industry standard and the big names probably do better). They are taking the gym membership approach, and figure people will look at that number, and think, "oh, I'll definitely go to at least three shows this year and the membership is convenient (it is), and I can go see a show I like a couple times", etc. And then they plunk down $75 bucks and go twice, and gate receipts are now double per head. As for the out-of-towners, what are they going to do, take the Felix Salmon guide to Tom Otterness and walk down Broadway?
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on September 26, 2004 02:19 PMLa D,
Turk 187, now that's interesting. Just curious why you mention that movie in particlar since one of the screenwriters was the father of a classmate who wrote at least one episode of Greatest American Hero back in the eighties.
As for Mickey Rourke, I do have at least one story from a security guard at Christies who had to politely ask Mr. Rourke and a somewhat less dead Tupac to leave the premises after detecting an aroma of cannabis coming out of the mens room. The guard described them as a couple of nuckleheads.
Gherm
Posted by: Gherimiah on September 26, 2004 05:26 PMSterling -- indeed.
Gh
I wasn't talking about Mickey Rourke; I was talking about Mickey Ruskin. Turk 182 why? I have no idea. That whole thing made me remember how some people thought they were famous then -- as famous as some "famous bloggers" and Williamsburg denizens think they are now -- it's hilariously funny to compare.
La De,
Mickey Ruskin? My mistake, I'm a bit newer to this town than you. Anyway, I don't particularly see the Moma gouging tourists to see the Monsters of Modern Art as anything other than a test of what the market will bear.
As we live in a culture that ravenously eats its own only to spew forth it's half digested remains to the lips of the next generation, there is a chance that some of these people you are laughing about may well be canonized. Life's funny like that.
Writing and other creative endeavors are in part a rather public expression with onanistic overtones, I see no need to pop everyone's balloon when it comes to fame. Bloggers if they are different from writers by virtue of the medium are getting a first crack at a new technology. As novelty is often given a footnote or two in history, well, you never know.
Sadly I seriously doubt any of this could be applied to Turk 182.
Gherm
Posted by: Gherimiah on September 27, 2004 04:35 PM"there is a chance that some of these people you are laughing about may well be canonized. Life's funny like that."
Yes. You are newer to New York and indeed newer in general. Hesiod is a footnote in history, you think bloggers stand a chance? Canonized? Like Saint Augustine? Uh no. More like Turk 180-something. Bitter pill.
Also, I'm not laughing, just bemused. I mean everyone thinks they are going to live forever, see e.g. the movie "Fame."
Posted by: la depressionada on September 27, 2004 04:46 PMAlso re: 20 bucks. It's the continued mummification of New York city. New York will soon be a city of the dead -- a rest home for the really rich and an amusement park where one can view the antiquities -- think Florence, Italy. It's not really a city is it? You think it can't happen? It's already over.
Posted by: la depressionada on September 27, 2004 04:53 PMLa D: I've always use the Isle de St Louis; it may take a while, but we'll get there. TriBeCa certainly has (as well as Battery Park City -- it's just not as attractive). Far deader than Florence.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on September 27, 2004 05:22 PMLa Dep,
In terms of history, I was thinking more along the lines of something like say "The New Journalism" and writers like Breslin, Mailer, Capote, Plimpton and well Wolfe. If you buy the fact that what they were doing was decidedly different from previous writers together (I'm not saying you have to agree) will be remembered historically in some literary canon, in part because they were doing something original.
If that doesn't work for you, then perhaps they will be celebrated as latter day Joseph Pojels.
New York has been exclusive and white and somewhat elderly in the past, just look at some of the floorplans of early buildings. The guilded age produced some of the cities most beautiful and civic minded Zoos, Parks, and Museums. White, rich old art collectors bought paintings at an Armory show in New York that brought us in the sad predicament of shelling out 20 bucks to see modern art.
Not that I'm crazy about being priced out of Manhattan myself, but it's wrong to say that rich white old people are only capable of turning a neighborhood into a mausoleum.
When you mentioned New York as the new Florida, I was reminded of the film Midnight Cowboy. Part of which was about the fact that the dream was no longer in New York. Ratso Rizzo looks to the future, to Florida. But New York was supposed to be over in 1969.
Gherm
Posted by: Gherimiah on September 27, 2004 07:17 PMI still don't think so. You know, you have to live in great times to be great. Those guys were lucky. America post WW2, Viet Nam, the 60s -- "canonical" times perhaps. But for me, canonical is a little strong for that crew.
No. New York was never exclusively privileged and white the way it is becoming now. Certainly the nouveau money of industrialists created the edifices to which you refer; rich people are always influential, but they weren't alone in Manhattan. Edith Wharton's New York world was homoogeneous, but not the city itself.
Yes, NYC was supposed to be over in 1969, and it was. Crime, decay, the flight to the suburbs, abandoned housing, the city's subsequent teetering on bankrupcty created cheap inner city housing that led to this boom. But, I maintain the very thing people are moving to the city to be part of is destroyed. What happens when Manhattan is the most expensive housing development in the country?
The Corsair, a blogger whom I enjoy greatly, refers to the poem Ozymandias today. It's going to be an apt metaphor for Manhattan over the next 1/2 century or so.
Maybe saying NYC is over is excessive, it's certainly, with people's constant and obssessive discussions of real estate and money, intellectually and creatively stagnating.
Posted by: la depressionada on September 27, 2004 08:04 PM99
Ile St. Louis still has great ice cream. With any luck at all, NYC will be able to produce something of equal value in the coming 1/2 century.
Posted by: la depressionada on September 27, 2004 08:09 PMAs befits the issues of scale difference involved, I think Nobu is going to be good as it gets. And that, to be fair, is pretty good. As a matter of accessibility -- not so sure. I was there only in November, and I wonder if the summer is similar to trying to get to Magnolia the week after it was featured on SATC (a not too pleasant aside: waiting for a worker to clean up after a particularly thoughtless patron, I asked if working there made one hate people; she asked if I was being serious and I assented, and she replied: "Absolutely". A better answer would have probably been "How could it not"?). But anything I muster is going to have the same limitations. There's a lot of people on this island.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on September 27, 2004 10:13 PMI can't tell you how much your little story cheered me. One ex-husband once upon a time cheated on me with a Nobu slut, err, waitress. It was no small comfort that I was a Nobu diner not server. Oth, I don't go there so much anymore.
Posted by: la depressionada on September 27, 2004 11:15 PM