A Rant about Museum Memberships featuring MoMA, the Met, the Morgan Library and Fotografiska NYC NaBloPoMo 13

 It felt auspicious when I went to renew my membership at MoMA. A lovely gentleman in the member services booth noticed that we both have the same hometown and he gave me a discount. I don't think museums often realize the loyalty that is generated by random acts of kindness such as this. I often let my MoMA membership lapse. Maybe I won't next year. 

MoMA- All new with no member lounge.

However: MoMA needs a member lounge. Super bizarre that they rebuilt their whole joint and didn't include a member lounge. I never let my Met membership lapse because damn I love a lounge that not everybody can get into. And when I say "not everybody" I mostly mean the tourists. 

Don't get me wrong, in general, I have nothing against tourists. It's just that they mostly have no idea what they are doing or where they are at any given moment. Sometimes, you just don't want to get bodyslammed *again* by someone abruptly spinning around in the middle of a crowd and charging the other direction with their head down. This is what happens when a person is staring at their little dot on the google map on their phone and realizes they are walking in the wrong direction.

These are usually very nice people, I get it. They do not mean to be hazardous to the elderly or anyone else who can't dodge out of the way like some kind of capoeira martial arts legend.

Anyway, it's nice to have a members lounge.

I really wish the Morgan Library would get their membership act together. I'd totally renew every year there but I do not largely out of principle. I do not want to reward them for their membership department's crappy choices,

Morgan Library where one goes by oneself.

What do I mean? Well, I'll tell you just like I've told a lot of other people in odd segues that many have a hard time following:

The Morgan, and I'll say this about Fotografiska also... these are tiny museums with a few exhibitions. While this small scale is kind of lovely from an exertion-required standpoint, it also means that if you go once a month you are very likely to see 90% the same things from one month to the next. So then you go twice a year or something and at that point, why do you need a membership?

I'll tell you the only reason why you'd want a membership, if you're me at least. It's so you can take a friend and this friend gets in free because a) hashtag awkward if you invite someone to come with you and then the friend realizes you paid for them to go and also b) you already paid for a membership and now you're paying an entrance fee (for someone else but still) every time you go. 

OMG I'm getting all annoyed just thinking about this so let me get to my main point:

If you take a friend to a small museum, you can go see the same exhibit multiple times. It's fun actually. Every time you go with a new person, you get a different perspective depending on who you're with. 

Right?! 

Also then you go have lunch with your friend and maybe even get to eat tiny sandwiches on little plates. 

 As you may have suspected by this whole rant, the Morgan Library and Fotografiska have pretty expensive memberships that do not include a +1. 

Fotografiska at least gives you two guest tickets (like two for the whole year) but that is insufficient and takes way too much work to remember to bring the guest cards, to not lose the guest cards, to ration the guest cards only to someone(s) of great importance since you only have two for the entire year. The stress is unsurmountable.

Fotografiska has a gorgeous building, no question.
Anna Delvey has good taste.

Anyway, despite their lack of member lounge, MoMA allows a +1 or even +3 sometimes so even though there was no member lounge to pop into for coffee after seeing the Wolfgang Tillman exhibit for the second time with Claudia, it's fine. I'm satisfied. My NPS is higher than 7. But if anyone from MoMA is reading this, you should put in a member lounge.