MoMA and Alto: Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

I played hooky from work yesterday (OK, I took a vacation day) to take advantage of Restaurant Week and visit the Museum of Modern Art for the first time.

Restaurant Week, which I only found out about last fall, was our impetus for the trip, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see the Pixar exhibit while so close. We arrived at the museum about 30 minutes prior to opening and spent some time in the store. Our plan was to see the Pixar exhibit in the morning, leave the museum for our noon lunch reservation at Alto, and return in the afternoon to see the rest of the museum, but nowhere on MoMA’s website could I find any information on their same-day re-entry policy. I asked for clarification when we bought our tickets and were assured that, yes, we could leave and return to the museum as often as we wanted during the day so long as we showed our tickets. So our plan worked out.

The Pixar exhibit consists of concept drawings, models and storyboards from every stage of the film development process, and provides remarkable insight into the efforts of a company that seems bent on making “their best film ever” every time. My favorite discovery was the existence of ‘colorscripts’, which are poster-sized strips sequentially detailing the colors of each scene in the film. I liked the Incredibles colorscript so much that we got the poster.

We left MoMA a little before noon to make the block-and-a-half walk to Alto and were right on time. I’ve only eaten at a top-shelf place once or twice before, and right from the “It’s good to see you, Mr. Schuster” I received from the host, I felt out of place. It’s nothing that the staff of the restaurant did, just the feeling that I don’t quite fit into that world, but I was much more comfortable by the end of our meal (largely because of the friendly and not-at-all condescending manner of the staff).

My meal (three courses for US$24.07—restaurant week is awesome) was possibly one of the best I’ve ever eaten in my life. I started with an appetizer of fricasseed mushrooms served over a polenta in a truffle reduction. I ordered it because it seemed to be the best of a difficult choice among those, scallops or beets, but I ate every bit in the bowl and, quite honestly, probably could have stopped there. My entree was rabbit ravioli (with a cheesy foam sauce, mustard seeds, and currants). Dessert was chocolate ganache served with vanilla gelato and blood oranges. Any attempts to describe the flavors would result in my using made-up words like scrumtrelescent, so I’m going to stop now and urge you in the strongest possible terms to eat there if you can stand to drop $75/person on dinner (or, of course, wait for the summer restaurant week).

We trekked back to MoMA and worked from the top-down: two floors of paintings and sculpture, followed by photography and drawings, industrial design, and finally, contemporary works. The Met is still my favorite NYC museum simply because of its sheer size and the history associated with the building itself, but MoMA was worth the visit (even if US$20 does seem a bit steep). A few highlights:

• Monet’s Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond. I’ve never been to a modern art museum without seeing a version of Monet’s pond, but this one is different: it’s 42 feet wide. Must be seen to be believed.
• The Jackson Pollock room. I don’t know why I like Pollock so much, but ever since I saw one in person at the National Gallery for the first time, I get excited about his work. One: Number 31, 1950 was my favorite yesterday.
• These awesome salt and pepper shakers MoMA info.
• Edward Ruscha’s OOF (MoMA does not seem to have any information on its site about this work). I got a postcard to put up at my desk.
• The unequivocal high-point of the day (for both me and Amanda, I think), was when we wandered into a room with forty speakers arranged in an oval around a bench, each speaker turned way down low with some inaudible conversation running. I sat down in the middle and Amanda walked over to me to say, “It’s like a Robert Altman film: I can’t tell what anybody is saying.” Just then, the music started. Honestly, this work alone may be worth the $20 admission alone. Others have said what I want to say better than I could. The Forty-Part Motet is more beautiful that I could ever hope to express.

Update: The Forty-Part Motet was reviewed in Newsday today, and I put up a few pictures from yesterday.