Ethnographic Essay: The Museum Of Modern Art

The location I chose for my ethnographic essay was The Museum of Modern Art, commonly known as the MoMA. I traveled to the museum on Saturday, March 6th, 2017 and arrived at 3:11 pm. Surprisingly this museum was quite small at least in comparison to the grand museums I’ve visited in the past. The exhibit that I focused on was their ongoing collection gallery that displayed art from the 1880’s through the 1950’s. I chose this particular exhibit because whilst walking through the museum that this was by far the MoMA’s most lively area. The entire exhibit consisted of four different rooms, each displaying at least one iconic work of art along with other not as well known, yet mesmerizing, works of art. As for the demographic of the museum’s attendees
on March 6th, most of them came in smaller groups consisting of two to four people. The majority of the attendees were younger people, many in their teens or early twenties. A large sum of these pairings seemed to be on dates, I could tell because of hand holding, although one teenage couple clearly had no qualms about public displays of affection. A few middle-aged couples were also in attendance, however, they were definitely in the minority. There seemed to be people of many different ethnicities no single group seemed to be more prevalent than any other. A lot of people were dressed casually yet nicely. Many women were in skirts and dresses and men were in cargo shorts despite the fact that the weather report stated that it was going to rain later.
In the collection gallery’s room furthest to the left, Roy Lichtenstein's “Drowning Girl” was the focal point.
As it is a picture that has circulated Tumblr for years, many girls, either teenagers or in their early twenties, were photographing this picture for their snap chats. I overheard one girl exclaim to her other female friend that she posted this picture on her blog previously and was excited to actually see it in real life. Other than that not much conversation was held in this room. For the most part, people simply took pictures and quickly left, without really giving the work they just photographed a second
glance.
The middle room exhibited two extremely iconic pieces by Andy Warhol. The first was “Campbell's Soup Cans” and the second was “Golden Marilyn”. Out of all four rooms, this one was the most crowded. The majority of the crowd swarmed “Campbell’s Soup Cans”. Many people were trying to get a picture with this piece rather than just snapping a photograph of the art alone like what occurred in the room with Roy Lichtenstein's work. I overheard one woman tell her companion that she didn't understand the piece but she admitted it was decent to look at. She said something along the lines of “I don't know why someone would spend so much time drawing cans of soup, and what makes even less sense is that people come in herds to look at it.” Even though she contributed to the same statistic she was complaining about, her companion laughed and agreed. A short while after I realized that nearly everyone, or at least every younger person who attended the museum on the day that I went, did not care much for the real works of art that were right in front of them.
For the most part, everyone was just taking pictures and uploading them to social media, despite having some of the most famous works of art mere inches away from them. Those two previous conversations were the only two that were slightly related to the actual artwork. Understandably in a museum, not much audible conversation is held, but from what I overheard the vast majority of the MoMA’s attendees were discussing topics that had no relation to any of the art. One group of friends, all male and most likely in their teens were talking about John Cena and whilst doing so they just walked through the exhibit without taking the time to look at the art they probably paid an admission to see. During the time that I spent at the MoMA I was quite shocked to see the behavior everyone was exhibiting, however, looking back it’s understandable or more so expected to see a bunch of city-dwelling millennials being utterly captivated with what is going on on the internet and prioritizing keeping their Instagram and Snapchat accounts active, rather than truly taking in what is happening in their immediate
environment.