Marshmallows, Beatles and Modern Art

NEW YORK—Aside from serving as an NGO member of the Philippine delegation to the 58th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), my other great motivation for this trip was the chance to visit with my daughter Miya, who is pursuing her Master of Arts degree here. As a cousin commented on our “selfie” in Facebook: “It’s the season for parents to check up on their children!”

Well, it’s not so much checking up as catching up, since our children have long passed the “age of majority” and are perfectly able to fend for themselves and pursue their own goals. But it is true that parents—mothers in particular—still feel the urge to check on their children, whatever their age.

With the CSW sessions suspended for the weekend, we took the chance for some family bonding, albeit missing the other half of the family unit, with husband/father and son/brother (with his wife) staying back home.

On top of my agenda for this New York visit was to drop by the Guggenheim Museum, that iconic structure that spirals up from the ground along “Museum Mile” in Manhattan. The Guggenheim was the only institution I hadn’t visited in my previous trips, and this time I was determined to finally make its acquaintance. On my daughter’s agenda was to watch “Veronica Mars the Movie,” of which she was, thanks to a $5 donation, one of the producers. “Veronica Mars” was made after fans and supporters raised over $5 million through the crowd-funding site Kickstarter, to get the ball rolling on production and promotion.

Miya is what the trade calls a “marshmallow,” an avid fan of “Veronica Mars,” which began life as a TV series and ran for three seasons until it was canceled. The movie is the expression not just of the devotion of “marshmallows,” but also of the dynamics of new media and its potential.

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But on the way to fulfilling these twin goals, we paid homage to The Beatles.

One of the theaters showing “Veronica Mars” happened to be found near the Lincoln Center, as well as the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts which is featuring, until May 10, an exhibit commemorating the visit to America of the Beatles, and the band’s lasting impact on popular culture and lore.

Called “Ladies and Gentlemen…the Beatles!” the exhibit traces, through photos, pieces of memorabilia, vinyl records, video footage, musical instruments and even discarded song drafts, the booming phenomenon of Beatlemania in the early 1960s.

There is even a full-blown replica of a “typical” teenager’s room in suburban America replete with souvenirs of young people’s devotion to the Beatles. This one looked much too neat for a “typical” teenager’s room, but you get the idea.

It was a nostalgia trip for this “50-something” avid Beatles fan, but more surprisingly, for my 20-something daughter as well. Which just goes to show, I suppose, how the Beatles, despite the passage of decades, still unite the generations in a common love for good, compelling music. As the exhibit guide declares, the Beatles’ visit to America “(began) the greatest, most fertile period ever of American pop and rock.”

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To my daughter’s surprise, I found myself enjoying “Veronica Mars.” You could tell you were in the company of “marshmallows” as the audience in the theater collectively gasped when a familiar (if older) character made an appearance, laughed at inside jokes and sighed at classic lines (“our love was always epic”) made enduring by the TV show.

Veronica Mars is something of a girl detective, a contemporary Nancy Drew, who set off on that path after the mysterious death of her best friend Lily. In the movie, Veronica has escaped the stultifying confines of her hometown Neptune, and is embarking on a promising law career when her old flame Logan calls for help after he is implicated in a murder.

But the sleuthing and snooping is just the framework on which the story of Veronica, which explores the themes of social division, adolescent angst, the search for self. Not bad for a crowd-sourced project!

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It took us more than an hour, standing in a queue that wound around the Guggenheim, in the biting wind, before we could enter the museum. This was because we timed our visit on a Saturday afternoon in which the museum is open to the public on a “pay what you wish” basis, although the “suggested” amount is a $2 donation. Otherwise, adults pay $22 each.

This may also explain why the crowd we joined included students, senior citizens and tourists from all around the world who filled the Guggenheim’s spiral halls with a babble of languages.

The Italian Futurists are the focus of the Guggenheim’s present exhibits, but I found that the art and literature on display left me cold. I thought that it wasn’t even very good, although what do I know, right?

Still, there were other offerings at the iconic institution (the famous spiraling tower was created by Frank Lloyd Wright) to warrant the long wait. Photographer Carrie Mae Weems is the subject of a retrospective, tracing her 30-year career devoted to a “contemplation of race, gender and class.” She is best known for the “Kitchen Table Series” that presents, through a series of photographs set before a kitchen table, a woman of color’s (Weems is her own model) journey through life, including friendship, marriage, motherhood and impending old age.

I most enjoyed though the excellently curated permanent exhibit of pieces from the collection of Justin Thannhauser. A mere stroll through the pieces brings one on a face-to-face encounter with the “greats” of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and the avant garde, including Cezanne, Gaugin, Manet, Monet, Picasso, Pissarro, Renoir and Van Gogh. It’s a humanities course in the course of a single afternoon!