New Museum, can I have my 8 dollars back?

I understand that it is recommended for us to speak and review shows as Donald Judd did, but there aren't many words I can use to what I saw at the New Museum. I'm going to try and make this sound like less of a rant, but it will be hard.

I know it wasn't a requirement for us to see the show last week, we could have seen it over the weekend as soon as we were dismissed from class, but even under blue skies, I'd have rather saved my 8 dollars. I had to pay to for some sort of sanctuary which I wasn't pleased with to begin with, and to top it off, I wasn't overly impressed, or impressed for that matter with the work in the museum.

The best thing about the New Museum is the building itself, and I understand that they will have more shows in the future, but my first thought is, why assign us to this show? I can kind of understand in the way that each artist had a specific theme for their individual show, but it was so over done with the same work, by the time I finally saw Dororthy Ioness's work (which I thought was the best), I was bored.

My first stop was Emory Douglass.


Black Panther charged artist. On his little snipit it said that he was the Minister of Creative something something for the Black Panthers. Honestly, I'm going to be blunt about this, too much of the same shit. I had got the point after looking at the first wall of politically charged pieces. The best thing about them was how old they were, and the fact that the medium it was printed on has held up this long. Spare me the video, I didn't even want to bother. After seeing the same piece a million times, I wanted something else.

David Goldblatt

I liked the direction he was coming from, but again, too much of the same shit. The size of the prints themselves were awesome, and the fact that they kept the same sharpness at that size without losing any detail was amazing. Still though, too much stuff. Some black and white photos here, with some colored photos here. Even with the size of the photographs there was still so much. But I was definitely a lot more pleased with this showing than the previous one, especially when walking upstairs to the fourth floor. I liked the use of space with the jail cells, I personally thought that was a nice touch.

Dorothy Ioness

So playful and fun. Had I seen this work first and then the next two after, I would have been more disappointed. He work was put in a small area, meaning less work. Thank God. After seeing a billion pieces from the first two artists, I needed something that didn't insist upon itself and had fun looking at. From the giant paintings on the walls, to the smaller pieces done on cut outs, I enjoyed it. But I was over it.

To be honest, I reached the top floor and fell asleep during the video that was being played there. I know it's fucked up, but I was bored and I had only been in the city for less then two hours. This won't ruin my New Museum experience forever, but next time I'll try and make sure what I'm getting myself into when I can just go to Chelsea and see the same shit there for free. I'm just glad that I didn't have to pay the 20 dollars round trip ticket.