guggenheim

The Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit at the Guggenheim, which I saw this weekend, was a chore. I don't thrill at Frank Lloyd Wright to begin with, mostly because his large-scale planning seems so naive and car-centered. Also, pressing your face up to glass boxes displaying drafting paper to discern the faint pencil markings of an architect's drawing is not the best way to experience architecture.

Halfway up the spiral, I wanted to take a break from the hazy palimpsests, so I stopped at the gift shop. Another woman had the same idea as me, so we paused at the entrance while we tried to figure out who would enter the slim doorway first. She was a light-skinned African-American woman in her mid-to-late thirties, and voluptuous in a motherly way. (I had seen her partner and children go into the gift shop already.)

She gestured to indicate that I should proceed. I responded by bowing and sweeping my hand rightward to welcome her in like a maitre'd. There was a pause.

The woman grabbed my left hand marched us in through the doorway together. We then laughed together, uproariously, spontaneously, and were both in the gift shop. I said nothing to her, but smiled and went off. I bought three postcards and left.

At the top of the spiral, I ran into her again. We exchanged a look that said that we had experienced something funny and surprising together. Her partner and kids were looking at a model of the Taliesin West campus; they had no idea. Nobody had any idea.

Then I buzzed down the spiral out the museum and found my friends sitting in the shade outside Central Park, and I never saw that woman again.