PICKET TICKETS: MOMA MIA!

Has the Broadway strike shut you out of the global smash hit Mamma Mia? Get over it...and see if you can console yourself over at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), which is hosting some excellent exhibitions through early January 2008.

For those unfamiliar with the museum: If you don't show up during the free admission hours from 4-8 pm on Fridays, normal admission to the museum is crazy high at $20 for adults...but that top price is still much lower than what people usually pony up for Broadway shows. (And membership can offer its own rewards to frequent museumgoers.)

As for what's hot at MOMA (aside from the permanent collection, which is filled with works by Chagall, Gauguin, van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, Warhol and even some women artists), I've heard great things about the big Seurat Drawings exhibition, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Give yourself lots of time and try to go when the museum is relatively uncrowded, is my advice for that one.

The other major exhibition features the wonderful and, in some cases, very large, sculpture of a relative unknown, Martin Puryear. Scoboco has already covered the two floors of Puryear sculpture in some detail, so I'll limit my own remarks. I loved the use of materials, especially the trees, and Puryear's utilization of tapering, with dwindling lengths seeming to fade into thin air. Anne C drew my attention to some craft and technical issues that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise, including the seemingly gravity-defying wall mounting pictured here, in a shot of a work that you might think bears some resemblance to a snail or a lever or an Untitled, but which is quite obviously either a dinosaur or a Loch Ness Monster.

You can see the online exhibition is here, but the experience of actually moving amidst, around, and above and below the assembled work is very worthwhile. Indeed, the use of the extreme vertical space in the second floor atrium is a possible breakthrough for the museum, and the experience of initially viewing that floor's arrangement from a fifth floor perch, and then observing it from lower vantage points on the way to the second floor, was mindblowing at first and then uneven but still very worthwhile.

Also on the fifth floor is a tiny, well-curated Alexander Calder exhibit including this object—

























Alexander Calder. (American, 1898-1976). Spider. 1939. Painted sheet aluminum, steel rod, and steel wire, 6' 8 1/2" x 7' 4 1/2" x 36 1/2" (203.5 x 224.5 x 92.6 cm). Gift of the artist. © 2007 Estate of Alexander Calder / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

—which is called a spider but which is really a turkey. Or a peacock. Or maybe a chicken.

Online samples are here, but once again attendance has its own rewards and possible surprises. Not only can you watch the mobiles move (Anne C seems to recommend bringing your own straws), but you can also appreciate the cunning placement of the exhibit between displays of Mondrian and Miro works, which have clear links to Calder's colors and shapes.

The more I think about that kind of placement and well-arranged exhibits such as the long gone Full House at the Whitney, the more I think we can (and should) expect to see curator-based museum exhibits in the times ahead. Not just retrospectives of artists or artistic movements, but artful presentations of works by curators able to make original associations that might not be noticed otherwise. (Perhaps gallery expert Eric is already on top of this possible trend.)

Yet another intriguing offering at MOMA is the New York premiere of Arturo Ripstein's Mexican take on Medea, Así es la vida (Such Is Life), introduced tonight by the director. Says the museum: "The barely controlled rage of the screenplay, the intensity of a uniformly excellent cast, and the fearless theatricality of the direction build to towering emotional impact." Sounds about right for Ripstein, a prolific onetime associate of Buñuel.


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Photo of MOMA: David Marc Fischer