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a snowy day in MoMA
Saturday, January 17 2026
location: Room 1708, Pestana Times Square Hotel, Midtown Manhattan, New York
[REDACTED]
Gretchen wanted bagels this morning, though she wasn't sure where they should come from. We went out on the streets, where a light snow was falling, and walked to the nearby bagel place. But Gretchen didn't like what the options looked like there, so we continued to a bigger place called Best Bagels down closer to Madison Square Garden. Best Bagels was a joy to behold. It's a well-oiled machine, which an assembly line of staff, all of whom are great at their jobs. It was fun just watching the woman who does the final hand-off snapping open paper bags to put the bagels in and then shouting out the number of the order.
We walked back to the hotel and ate our bagels there while Gretchen had an old episode of the Office on our room's teevee. I'd put tomato and avocado in my sesame seed bagel in addition to vegan cream cheese, and as I ate it I realized I should've gotten jalapeño instead of avocado; my bagel contained too much bland creaminess.
After checking out of the hotel at 11:30 am, Gretchen and I walked northeastward to MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, where the other big cultural experience for this weekend was to happen. We were going to see a retrospective of the art (most of it sculptural) of Ruth Asawa. Gretchen had a QR code borrowed from her friend David that allowed her to impersonate a MoMA member, which meant that it cost the two of us only $5 to get in. We also got to use the members-only coat check, which was important given the heavy snow-dampened winter coats we were wearing. Unfortunately, the line for that was only being handled by one staffer (as opposed to the four staffers handling the more numerous non-members) which meant that our line was actually going more slowly.
The Asawa exhibit was up on the sixth floor and had been cleverly arranged, with only modest examples of her amazing wire sculptures at first. But then you'd enter a big room and see bigger and crazier sculptures, with surfaces that folded into each other like nested weaver-finch nests. They'd all been made with a similar knit-wire technique, where the the loops of an earlier row were grabbed by the loops of a subsequent row. In the initial works, the curving surfaces of the knit wire enfolded each other but didn't touch. Later though, she experimented with more complex designs, where sheets from one layer plassed through another layer, an easy thing to do given how porous the layers were. There were also plenty of works of flat art, often featuring the same sort of obessive regularity.
Asawa was Japanese and had even spent time in an American internment camp for people of Japanese descent during World War II. Later, she had to wait for California to abolish its laws against interacial marriages before she could marry her college sweetheart from Black Mountain College. We also saw other documents from Asawa's life indicating that her being Japanese was never far from people's minds; when Asawa got Buckminster Fuller to write a recommendation for her to the Guggenheim Foundation, he couldn't help but write, "I consider her to be one of the most competent artists I have met. Going far beyond her innate Oriental dexterity and industry, her work shows comprehension of those ramifications of industralizing society which may respond to the artist keen enough to discover them."
In the last large rooms of show was a collection of Aswa's dendritic wire art. Unlike the knitted forms from earlier, these featured bundles of wire that regularly broke into branches and then twigs, just like a tree. Sometimes they were completely symmetrical, like an uprooted tree with a root mass. I wondered how these sculptures were transported without being damaged.
For some reason my lower back started aching after an hour or so of slowly walking through the galleries. Gretchen was also getting uncomfortable, so we'd take occasional breaks, sitting on some of the provided furniture.
After we'd seen the Asawa show, we checked out the galleries of the permanent collection, getting to see some famous works familiar from art history books. There were several large and amazing paintings by Picasso; I especially liked the chonky earth-toned "Three Women at the Spring."
After we'd been in MoMA nearly three hours, Gretchen wanted to check out the shops. I waited for her while she visited the conventional museum shop on the first floor but was glad I accompanied her across the street to the MoMA Design Store. Usually museum stores all have similar things, and there is nothing I haven't seen before. But the Design Store was full of futuristic gadgets that I didn't know exisited, many of them for making music. For example, there was austere box that received radio broadcasts or bluetooth connections and featured a small interactive wheel that turned in sync with the music. If you grabbed it and spun it forward or backwards, the sound you were hearing did the same thing. This is technology I fully understand, but I'd never seen it implemented before, and it seemed fun. Of course, that device was expensive, and could be had for more than $600. If I wanted something cheaper, I could've ordered a colorful classic telephone handset with a coiled cord terminated with a USB-c connector, allowing me to use a cellphone like a classic cord phone, and that was only $40. (I'd seen this sort of thing on Hackaday.com, so it wasn't as impressive.) Still, that store is fun, like a toy store for adults. Hopefully some of that stuff ends up at the Tibetan Center thrift store some day.
A heavy snowfall we'd been watching from within the museum ended by the time we were walking back towards the west side of Manhattan. It had left a half-inch accumulation on the roofs of cars and on patches of greenery, but not more than that. Over on 9th Avenue, though, the microclimate must've been more suitable for snow accumulation, as there was persistent slush on the sidewalk and an inch on untrammled surfaces.
Our last stop in Manhattan before the bus ride back to New Paltz was the Mercury Bar, the place we'd visited last night. Today we got seated in a back corner as a soccer game and several college basketball games were visible on the various screens. At some point a couple came in to take their reserved table in front of a screen that would be showing today's NFL showdown between the Denver Broncos and the Buffalo Bills. They asked if we were Bills fans like them, and of course Gretchen said we were, since being in a room with other Bills fans was reason enough.
We ended up ordering a vegan sampler plate with two Impossible sliders, quesadillas, faux wings, and various dips, and we also got an order of fries, since we couldn't remember the last time we'd had them. I also got some sort of IPA followed by a margarita. We had an hour and a half to kill, and it was pleasant enough to be sitting there with our food rooting for a team we couldn't give a shit about. Near the end of our time there, Gretchen ordered a vegan chocolate brownie sundae. It was delayed somewhat by the need to go out and get more brownie, but Gretchen thought it was amazing.
The bus ride back to New Paltz didn't seem to take any time at all, and when we got to our car, we were amazed by how much snow was on it. The accumulation was something like three inches there, and we had to clear all the windows before we could drive it. When we picked up our dogs at Ray & Nancy's house, the snow there was closer to five inches.
Dug Hill Road was plowed well enough for us to climb the hill, but the ridge of snow blocking our driveway was too deep to drive through. So I parked in the entrance to the Farm Road (it have been plowed) while we quickly shoveled out enough snow to park our car.
The view across 39th Street from our hotel room this morning. We're looking east. Click to enlarge.
The view east from our hotel room this morning. Click to enlarge.
The recommendation letter Buckminster Fuller wrote for Ruth Asawa to the Guggenheim Foundation. Click to enlarge.
Typical Ruth Asawa wire art. Click to enlarge.
A whole gallery of Ruth Asawa wire art. Click to enlarge.
An example of Ruth Asawa's dendritic wire art. Click to enlarge.
"Murder in the Jungle," by Haitian artist Wilson Bigaud. Click to enlarge.
A gallery of mistreated stuffed animals by artist Mike Kelley. Click to enlarge.
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