La Nación / An almost deserted MoMA reopens its doors in New York

In almost total solitude, visitors enjoyed the works of Monet, Picasso or Van Gogh to their heart’s content, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) became the first in the city to reopen its doors after almost six months of closure due to coronavirus.

With temperature controls at the door, use of a mandatory mask and a capacity reduced to less than 25% of maximum capacity, MoMA welcomed its first visitors with the large “I love New York” logo of the great designer Milton Glaser painted in the entrance.

Visitors must book their tickets online, and since the museum only allows a maximum of 100 people per hour, it is not easy to get there. But when they do, they can stay in the museum for as long as they want, and enjoy the works like never before, in solitude, without tourists or telephones.

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“It’s a bit sad that all this was necessary to recreate the experience of coming to MoMA in my youth, before the tourists, before the expansion. It’s incredible, “Alan Orenbuch, a 66-year-old retiree who is a member of the museum, told AFP. After admiring the works, he sat in the garden reading the newspaper, among sculptures by Rodin, Picasso and Giacometti.

“I like it when galleries are not crowded, and people don’t talk, and people don’t take photos (…) Before, MoMA only attracted people interested in seeing art. In recent years, it attracted people who had the museum on their list of places to visit when they come to New York, ”he explained.

Visitors wandered through the almost deserted galleries, absorbed for long minutes before Picasso’s “The young ladies of Avignon” or Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.”

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Sonya Shrier, director of visitor relations at MoMA, celebrated that the museum can offer “a place to reflect and come together safely.”

“This is an excellent time to visit the museum, there are fewer people,” he said. The reopening of MoMA “is a symbol that New York is returning to be itself,” he estimated. The largest of New York’s museums, the Metropolitan, will reopen on Saturday, with the rest planning to open between September and early October.

New York City was the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States in April and May, registering more than 23,000 deaths due to the virus. But in recent weeks the authorities have managed to control it, and the current infection rate is less than 1%.

Yureeah Kim, a 29-year-old Korean who has lived in New York for six years, visited MoMA with her sister to say goodbye, since in two weeks she will move to her country due to the pandemic. “I wanted to come to MoMA one last time. We really enjoyed it, we are so lucky to be here, ”he said. “The best part is that it is empty.”

Source: AFP.

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