The New MoMA

The fabulously renovated Museum of Modern Art reopened almost a year ago, but yesterday was my first chance to see it. I went at opening time, 10:30 a.m., and stood in line for about 25 minutes until I got inside and bought a ticket ($20). This was especially disappointing because I'm here at a conference, so I knew I had to leave the museum by about 1:15 p.m. to get to a session I really wanted to attend. In other words, I was playing hooky for the morning.

I went straight up to the fifth floor because the map makes it clear that most of the paintings are on the fourth and fifth floors. I have missed those paintings very much. The friends of my youth, MoMA's paintings gave me my education in modern art in my teens and 20s. I have spent hours standing in front of the same Picassos, Pollocks, Klees and Miros.

Now everything is different -- in New York as well as MoMA. Yet the paintings are the same. I couldn't help but think of Walter Benjamin again and again as I turned a corner and saw Van Gogh's Starry Night, or Leger's Three Women, or Chagall's I and the Village. Even the ones I don't like very much -- such as Monet's huge Water Lilies and Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950 -- gave me a feeling of homecoming, or unexpectedly meeting an old friend on the street.

Walking in the new MoMA building felt almost as delightful as seeing the paintings again, but it was the delight of discovery, of surprise, instead of the delight of familiarity and recognition. There are openings and windows and bridge-passages everywhere in the new building, and these have the effect of a sudden fresh breeze, or a little dip in the road when driving that makes your stomach leap.

One thing is missing, of course -- Picasso's Guernica. I got to visit that unforgettable painting again in June 2004 in Madrid, in another wonderful museum (Museo Reina Sofia) -- but its absence in MoMA does still seem to leave a hole in the collection. Not that the painting does not belong in Spain -- surely it does. But in my memory, it has pride of place in MoMA, the first place I ever saw it.

I only had enough time to see the fourth and fifth floors (all my favorite paintings are on the fifth floor), with a quick cruise of the second-floor bookstore at the very end. Next time, the photography -- always a wonderful part of a visit to MoMA. I'm so glad the renovation turned out to be so beautiful.

Radio Is Dead

How interesting it is (I thought today) that as soon as Morning Edition ends on the local NPR station, I immediately turn off my radio and open up iTunes radio, where I can select from a wide array of commercial-free stations that actually play MUSIC that is NEITHER (a) classical (I'm sorry, WUFT-FM, but I do not like it, and opera in particular is the absolute pits) NOR (b) repetitious pop-rock garbage (I'm not even going to bother apologizing to Rock 104; there's no excuse for that).

And whenever I hear a song I like on iTunes radio, what do I do? I go to Google, or often directly to Pitchfork, and look up the reviews. Then I go to the iTunes Music Store and sample a few more tracks from the album. If I like them, I download the entire album. If I don't, I download the song.

I love this. I absolutely love this. Everything fits and works together so well.

Audio Recording

We hate MiniDisc recorders. But we use them. The screens are impossible to read (tiny text, and with bad or no backlighting). The insane tiny controls (which are like a very lousy joystick, and smaller than your thumbprint) drive everyone nuts. You can't find the recording levels because they are buried about four menu levels down -- and yes, you must use that wonderful joystick control to get there.

Then it comes time to transfer your audio to a computer so you can edit it. Ha! The new Sony software (SonicStage 3.2) is sure better than the previous versions, but that's like saying the current version of battery acid tastes better than the old versions.

In short, MiniDisc bites.

So last week I was at the Florida Times-Union, in Jacksonville, Fla., and one of the photojournalists there showed me this Olympus voice recorder.

Oh, YEAH! Check out that built-in USB-2 connector!

The photog had a professional mic jacked into the unit, and with headphones, the playback sounded great. The only thing I didn't try was editing it.

I have a tiny IC recorder that I always use for interviews, but even with a good mic attached, it does not produce audio quality that can be used on the Web. I guess the compression it uses to record to the memory card (in that case) is too much, and so the quality is too low. It's great for just checking quotes for myself, but you can't post the audio files.

Another multimedia journalist told me that sometimes the external mic does not actually override (or shut down) the built-in mic on these small solid-state recorders. That means you get a lot of unwanted noise, and again, you can't publish the audio you get.

So ... I'm gonna get one of these little ones and try it out. Maybe next year I can kiss the MiniDisc goodbye!