A True New Yorker

On my recent foray into the city I met up with my good friend Ms. X for a walk, some talk and to enjoy some art. Ms. X is an artist and is one of my favorite companions for museum visits in no small measure because she has an encyclopedic knowledge of every current show running in all five boroughs and which ones I will enjoy the most. Often, she recommends an exhibition I might not have noted, or even heard of at all. In fact, this was exactly the case when we met up for our walk in Central Park. I had thought that the Dada exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art would be fascinating, and she agreed, but then mentioned that Kara Walker had a solo show up at the Met. She began to describe Walker’s work with paper cuts and how she explores the legacy of slavery in her work, while at the same time employing artistic techniques and allusions to American and British art from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I was immediately intrigued by the potential historical underpinning of her work and eager to see how her work fit within larger conceptions of the legacy of slavery and the African diaspora.

We entered the Met with few items so that we could bypass the coat check and get in quickly. At the admissions counter I noticed I had forgotten my faculty ID. Ms. X was also treated to the grand shakedown because her student ID lacked a “current” registration sticker. Additional difficulties were created when it was discovered that my student ID had no registration sticker at all, (instead, it is valid for five years and that date is printed on the card. Apparently this type of academic foresight on the part of an academic institution is unacceptable). At this point the indomitable Ms. X reached in her purse, stretched out her hand and said to the clerk behind the counter, “Honey, please accept this donation on behalf of both of us as our admission to the museum today.” I glanced down and noted that the clerk had given Ms. X a receipt for her records to document her donation of .25¢ to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The quick thinking of Ms. X saved the day and impressed this postmodern superheroine with its deft deployment of politeness and creative re-conception of a social situation. I admired greatly Ms. X’s lightning quick assessment of the problem and ability to seamlessly appropriate a different class scenario to resolve an issue that should never have been raised in the first place. The fact that the Met still has a pay as you wish policy makes this type of egregious shaking down and economic shaming of students patently ridiculous. In spite of mayor Bloomberg’s shortsighted desire to market New York as a “luxury product” New York owes much of its vibrancy and excitement to the eclectic mix of people and ideas in the city and in public spaces of all sorts, including museums.

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