MOMA OVERVIEW

Right now there's a electric fan blowing in the big atrium of the Museum of Modern Art. It's hanging from a long cord, and swinging in (what I believe is) a semi-predictable pattern. It's simply fascinating—that is, fascinating in a simple way. And it's probably much more interesting than it would've been had the artist, Olafur Eliasson, used an air conditioner instead of an electric fan.

I'm not sure I qualify as a big fan of Eliasson's work at MOMA, but it was fun to sample it. Aside from the fan, I liked the hallways that he saturates in light that makes everything look like it's in black-and-white. Another work is a circular enclosure (right) that changes colors—make sure you look out from within the enclosure, because the colors inside the enclosure somehow change one's perception of the color of the outside area. Got that?

The online Olafur Eliasson exhibition is here.

Elsewhere in the museum, there's a bunch of small shows worth tracking down. George Lois: The Esquire Covers offers a glimpse of how Lois, a cover designer with attitude, was able to get okays even when his edgy work was at odds with the internal copy.

And Focus: Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko offers another of MOMA's well-presented rooms of art.

But that's not all: The photo exhibition Bernd and Hilla Becher: Landscape/Typology presents industrial images in groupings that encourage appreciation of their similarities and differences. I love this kind of thing and dream of one day doing something similar with post offices.



















Images courtesy of Museum of Modern Art