MOMA MIA

Here’s a triple play that will thrill your optic nerve to its quick. A super show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (11 W. 53rd St.) and two at the American Craft Museum across the street.
 
Take the E train from New York’s Penn Station ($1 in change, no bills like in Philly) and get off at the Fifth Avenue stop—the third stop on the way to Queens. You’ll see the banners flapping in front of MOMA when you emerge from the bowels of 666 Fifth Ave.—a building I dubbed the Jules Feiffer Tower when it went up in the 1960s because, architecturally, it is “sick, sick, sick.” (You grizzled ones will get the gag: let the inexperienced look it up in the Village Voice archives.)
 
Exhibit One: “Vito Acconti: Recent Work” (MOMA, through May 3) exemplifies his recent allegation that folks who go to museums expect to be destabilized but that people in the street have no such expectations. Site your sights accordingly. Provocative.
 
Exhibit Two: After lunch at MOMA (my regular is the soup du jour and a small bouteille of wine to relieve fatigue), cross the street to the Craft Museum to giggle your way through the Higher Goofy of “Ohio Boy” Jack Earl, a faux naïf whose aorta beats as one with mine (through April 24).
 
Exhibit Three: At the Craft, also glory in the splendor of “John Prip: Master Metalsmith” (also over April 24). In these drear days of the MFA-ification of crafts as “fine” art, it’s distinctly positive to have well-made alternatives to the abounding crapola.
 
From Welcomat: After Dark April 20, 1988