The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City is one of the largest and most influential modern art museums in the world. There were two pieces I was really excited to see in the flesh: Water Lilies by Claude Monet and The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. 

I worked my way slowly through the gallery, stopping to look at any pieces that grabbed my attention on the way and skipping the rest. I’m a firm believer that you should never look at anything boring in an art gallery. If you force yourself to appreciate every painting in an art gallery, you’ll just end up hating art galleries.

I took a few photos, of paintings and their plaques, as I found interesting artists and artworks that I wanted to remember later. I don’t think there’s much point fussing over photography in a gallery of paintings – a quick snapshot is a small memento but nothing compares to the real deal.

On the way to the paintings I was looking for, I spotted other iconic pieces from Roy Lichtenstein and Gustav Klimt and found some paintings by Henry Rousseau which I really liked. They also were hosting a great photography exhibition celebrating the work of two avant-garde photographers who made an impact in the 1920s-1950s, Argentinian Horacio Coppola and German Grete Stern.

Finding Monet’s Water Lillies

The Water Lilies at MoMA are one of more than forty large paintings in Claude Monet’s ethereal Water Lilies series, which he painted between 1914-1926 at his house in Giverny, France. Water Lilies can be found at three museums in Paris, two in New York and a handful of others across Europe and America, including unlikely homes in Kansas City and Cleveland. Somehow, none made it to the Southern Hemisphere.

When I was studying in Paris in 2012, I visited the tiny Musee de l’Orangerie and saw several Water Lilies paintings for the first time. They were wrapped along the walls of a white, oval shaped room, overwhelming the stark space with flutters of lilac, blue and green. The Louvre had been lost on me but here in this tiny, silent gallery, I felt like I finally got what all the fuss was about with art galleries. The viewing room was silent – the museum’s rule for viewing Water Lilies

Water Lillies were hard to find. I felt like I was on a wild goose chase as security guards dotted throughout the museum pointed me towards the next room, and the next and the next. Finally, I found them tucked away in a small, separate room. The three painted panels spanned the long side of the room, making it necessary to stand against the opposite wall to take them all in. There was a bench to sit on, so I sat and drank it in.

The room was empty when I’d found it but seconds later it was flooded with tourists. The noise was deafening. Half of the people in there didn’t even seem to be aware that there were paintings on the walls, until it was time to pose for a selfie. They hollered and howled and screeched and squealed and generally performed their best impersonation of bulls in a china shop.

The shimmering Impressionist paintings have an otherworldly quality that whispers, not shouts. Unfortunately, unlike Paris, New York is a city of shouters, not whisperers.

Art is special for the way it makes you feel. The soft, tranquil effects of Water Lillies was lost in the chaos of MoMA.

MoMA Mania

Obviously MoMA is always going to be busy, but the crowds here were particularly irritating. It might been because after I finally waited a few minutes in the queue to see Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, a woman walked up right in front of me, standing so close to me that she actually stood on my toes, and whipped out her iPad.

Maybe it was because MoMA was one of the last museums I visited in New York that my fuse was shorter.

Hardly anyone seemed to actually look at the artwork in front of them, without the filter of their camera, iPhone or iPad lense. They rushed around playing museum bingo, stopping only to snap a photo before dashing to the next piece. I seriously doubted whether they’d every sit and pore over their snapshots from a museum if they didn’t know what they were seeing in the first place.

The beauty of brushstrokes is lost in pixels. Would people take half as many photos if there wasn’t a social media account to share their cultural escapades on?

I could hardly see a painting by Salvidor Dali because two women stood centimetres away from the painting, obscuring the entire thing with their big cameras. They had no qualms about walking up to it when people were clearly admiring it from a few feet back and a security guard had to ask them to stand back to avoid damaging the painting. They inched back, and continued to hog the painting.

I found a painting that wasn’t surrounded by people and settled in. A guy in his early twenties asked if he could take a photo with me in front of one of the paintings. He didn’t introduce himself, or comment on the painting or make any attempt at a normal conversation and at the request for a photo my walls went up. I don’t know why I agreed – probably because it felt too awkward to say no – and I chose a particularly depressing one by Henri Rousseau. He asked if I’d prefer the cheerier one beside it, but I’d made up my mind. I made my best attempts to vanish once he’d taken the photo and naturally, he continued to pop up all over the museum.

An impressionist-inspired reality check

Once I’d stepped outside, away from the circus, I realised that I needed to be more open minded. To me, people rushing around art galleries snapping photos and selfies without actually looking at the beauty in front of them is the equivalent to nails on a chalkboard. But who am I to tell people how to visit a museum? Art is for everyone.

Considering most people were tourists, I should have kept in mind that, like me, they could have travelled a long way to see this art. I might have been happy to sit and enjoy it first, but they might have been swept up in the “importance” of visiting and a frantic trip schedule, and were trying to squeeze as much “must-sees” in as possible.

Finally, the most obvious: what I consider rude behaviour is not everyone’s idea of rude behaviour. Tourist traps exacerbate cultural clashes. I’d been in New York for nearly two months and I was tiring of the New York mentality of every man for himself – even though, without realising it, I was starting to slip into it myself. Inside the museum, it was no different. There were a million different mentalities from all around the world crammed into a small space.

At home in Australia, I enjoy a pretty large bubble of personal space (except on the peak hour tram). Most people are careful not to infringe on someone’s personal space or ruining the experience of a shared public space. I can’t believe how much these minor breaches of my own social norms got under my skin, but this is what makes travelling so interesting.

Notably, people being loud and in my face didn’t bug me as much as I walked around the chaotic streets of New York City because I was expecting the unfamiliar as part of travelling. Once I’d paid for my MoMA ticket and set my eyes on the prize, my expectations changed.

Being tolerant of people who think and act differently than the way you do is easy when you’re spending the day walking around a fascinating city, keen to rub shoulders with the locals and experience another way of life. It’s amazing how quickly tolerance falls by the wayside when you’re squeezed together in a small space, squabbling over resources. Even when those resources are just oil on canvas.

Despite my grumbling, I really enjoyed wandering through MoMA’s magnificent collection. Seeing my favourite paintings in the flesh was a genuine delight and later in the day, I discovered a smaller, less-popular exhibition with artists that I’d never heard of, who absolutely inspired me (more on this soon). Visiting MoMA allowed me to dip into a wealth of cultural treasures and it also pushed me to examine my own attitudes and beliefs, and think about how that applies a filter to my experiences. My morning at MoMA is why I love travel in a nutshell: it’s a chance to draw the outside in and to bring the inside out.

How has travelling made you change the way you see yourself? What have you learned in unexpected places?