There's no better place to have breakfast than at the MoMA.
We planned it ahead of time.
Oh, this one's yours.
How did I do that?
This is just a go-to.
You have to come here, you know?
You get refreshed, and get it all figured out, then go on from there.
You know until you walk in front of a piece that suddenly grabs you, you know, you haven't
really experienced art.
I mean there's tons of work.
Not all pieces grab.
But when you find that 1 out of 10, or 20, or that one artist who you really connect
with, it's amazing.
Sometimes when you get up in the morning, you get up, you are thinking about so many
things that you wanna do.
And when you walk into Gallery 9, and you look around you, you look at one side, it
looks dark.
And you look at the middle, you see...you know.
And I went back, I remember a couple of years ago, I was looking into Monet.
And I found out that that this painter actually was dated back to the 20th century.
I think it was 1899.
And then I think Monet died in 1926, if I recall correctly.
It's been a while.
But look at it today, what was painted over a century ago, we're still deriving pleasure,
happiness from it.
Sometimes when something bothers my mind, when I walk to this gallery, sometimes I will
just sit on one of the benches and I will be looking.
And if you look from one end to the other end, you will see something different, and
something that kind of console your mind, something that makes you feel like, "You know what?
This is kind of impressive."
I like the impressionist, Van Gogh, Matisse.
I also like Klimt, but I asked and
they borrowed the masterpiece of Klimt that they have here in MoMA.
So today I'm not going to see Klimt.
I'm upset.
Well, next time.
Well, I was studying a little bit of history of art in my country, Peru.
So I have all my stuff here, and next, I like Calder over there.
I don't like so much but it's good.
Perhaps there are masterpieces that you don't like, but if they make you feel something,
it's okay.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Hi.
My name is Devin Malone, and I'm the public program's fellow in the educational department
here at MoMA.
Welcome to #ArtSpeaks.
#ArtSpeaks is a day of community where staff members choose works of art on display,
and discuss how they resonate with those works.
And then we follow it up with Q&A.
It occurs every last Tuesday of the month.
Today I'm introducing Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of architecture and design
here at MoMA, and the director of research and development.
And she'll be talking about the hoodie.
Thank you, Devin.
It was a great introduction.
And it's true.
We pick objects that resonate with us as human beings, not only as curators.
And more than resonating with me, I live with this object as we all do.
So, let me give you first a little bit of introduction about this exhibition.
You are in an exhibition that, you know, is called "Items."
And it's about 111 items of clothing that had a strong impact on a New York-centric
world in the past 100 years.
It is an exhibition about people.
And it's an exhibition about how garments and fashion interact with people and enable
people to express themselves and to live in the world.
So there are many different examples in the show of everyday items like the white t-shirt,
like the Levi's 501, or any kind of sneakers.
And then there are examples of high fashion from Yves Saint Laurent to Kawakubo all the
way to Armani.
So there's a little bit for everyone.
I like the stone in the water.
And they have a new sculpture over there.
Well, I haven't been, I just arrived.
Yeah, yeah.
This sweatshirt, I just bought it just in Ogunquit, in Maine.
I saw it there, and what I like about it is that it's faded, you know?
And I thought it was another great statement for what's happening in this country.
I came here with Ford.
Ford?
1976.
I went through Reagan, and Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, and Obama.
And I thought it was a great country to live in.
I'm not sure any longer.
And this is my way of expressing my thoughts.
I'm not good, now I’m good.
I think I'm gonna stand here, because we like this one, and I like that one.
Yeah.
My name?
Kar-Lai
And he don't have English name.
Gé Yôu Yuán, his Chinese name.
I come from Beijing, and I'm a actor.
We met each other in America, but we have a similar experience with China, because we
work in Beijing, and I had been to Beijing a lot of times.
And our hometown in China is very close to each other, only around four hours by driving.
We just met each other on the street, is that okay?
Art can change our life especially...it depends on how you treat art, and how you
treat the art in daily life.
You can think more.
Same thing, you will think more than the other people.
My name's Manish Engineer.
My last name is actually Engineer.
My father was an engineer, my grandfather was an engineer, and I work in the IT department.
And so now you are all here to hear me talk about art.
So, hopefully this will go well.
Thank you for coming.
And we're gonna talk about this Franz Kline painting, "Number 2," that he did.
And why did I pick this painting?
So for me, this was kind of the start of my journey into art.
In junior high, I took a school field trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and I saw
this painting there, not this painting, a painting by Franz Kline there, and it was
just unlike anything else I had ever seen.
And I thought it was beautiful.
It wasn't like a realistic painting.
It looked kind of like Japanese calligraphy.
And the color was different, the brushstrokes were just so big and different.
I was just captivated by it, and I thought it was beautiful.
I think I was about 16 or 17 at the time.
Around that time at 17, I had a very, like, life traumatic experience.
I had this open heart surgery.
It was, like, a big thing.
And afterwards, I was just thinking about it, and I told my dad, you know, I wanted
to go back to the museum and see this painting.
And I went there with him.
And I walked up to the painting, and I see it, and I'm staring at it.
And there's this woman in a wheelchair next to me, and the two of us were staring at this
painting, and she just says to me, "It's very powerful, isn't it?"
And I felt like we were on the same page, and we shared this moment, and it was just beautiful.
And just looking at these paintings, they kind of, like, draw you in.
And I just fell in love with the work.
And then of course, my dad eventually made his way there.
And as I said, he's this mechanical engineer, a very practical guy.
And I'm like, "Hey, Dad, here's the painting."
This is like this beautiful work of art, and my dad of course goes, "No, not good.
I don't like it."
And we, like, walk throughout the museum, and we got to a painting of George Washington.
And my dad goes, "See?
This is a good painting.
It looks just like George Washington."
And because of that, it like made me like this abstract expressionism even more.
The fact that my dad hated it, you know?
It's the kind of thing when you're a teenager, you wanna rebel.
The title is either "Black Widow" or "Spider."
I think it was done in 1959.
But just the concept is not actually that abstract, like when you look at it, it's pretty
clear what it is.
I do wanna go kinda into it.
Obviously, I'm not that tall.
I think people are like, if they don't know enough, then they feel they shouldn't experience
it or they won't experience it properly.
And I think it's whatever you get from it.
And if you get a good experience and you wanna go deeper, then you can go deeper.
But I think that people can relate to it at all different levels.
I may not be interpreting this right the way the sculptor or whoever made it to be interpreted,
but at the same time, I think he knows that whoever will look at it can interpret it whatever
they want from it.