Media Macaroni

Yesterday we decided to spend our last day of holiday vacation visiting the Tim Burton show at MOMA. I was eager to take Olive to this show because I figured that the cartoonish nature of the show would be right up her alley. It was, from the moment we entered the huge monster mouth swallowing us into the show.

It’s great to see a creator like Tim Burton this kind of high-brow treatment. His style is remarkably consistent, and always imaginative. After working your way through a corridor of animated shorts, you enter a glow-in-the-dark paradise with a rotating carousel full of amazing creatures. Olive wanted to stay there and talk about each one until we’d settled on our respective favorites.

On entering the main galleries, you’re greeted with a world of monsters and robots and bizarro human caricatures. The walls are stuffed to the gills, showing just how prolific Tim Burton is. Some of the displays feel akin to a visit to the Smithsonian: the Batman mask, Ed Wood’s sweater, Large Marge’s eyeballs, and the flammable figurines from the chocolate factory. The Catwoman suit is less stunning lying on display than I’m sure it was on Michelle Pfeiffer.

Olive was in love with the little statues and figurines throughout the show. She’d jump from one to the other: “Mommy, look at that!” or “Mommy, look at this one!” She was particularly keen on looking inside a Christmas house where the character Stainboy seemed to be part of a murder scene. There’s something odd about this creepy mix of kid-appeal and violence. Olive was, of course, unphased by any of this weirdness.

While I completely applaud MOMA for creating their most kid-friendly exhibition since Pipilotti Rist, I scold them for the space choice. Is it possible that the choice was solely dictated by having the right place to put that monster entrance? Inside, the galleries were the narrowest that the museum has to offer, a huge problem when a video is a wall facing another wall with about 100 drawings to look at. It was impossible to move through the space. In fact, I’m almost reluctant to recommend going to the show because the crowd ultimately put my family in such a foul mood. Timed tickets do nothing to help, and cause some to miss the show altogether. I asked around at MOMA and was told that the best bet is to get there right as doors open on a weekday morning. Seriously, MOMA? How about doubling the space for the show?

I will say, though, that if you can’t make it to the show, there’s lots of goodies on the exhibition website. If you do go, hang in there and tell yourself it’s worth it.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Museums and Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.