Thursday, March 24

I lived in New York for five years in my twenties. I was working as an advertising copywriter for the agency Benton & Bowles, and my office was on the 12th floor of the steel studded Tishman Building, 666 Fifith Avenue. The side entrance of the building was on West 53rd Street, diagonally opposite the entrance to MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, and sometimes at lunch times I would slip across the street to sit in the room lined with Monet’s mesmerizing paintings of the waterlilies at Giverny.

I was at the very beginning of my career as an artist then, taking my first life-drawing classes ever one night a week with John Groth at the Art Students League of New York, and never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that one day my own work would be exhibited in the self same museum.
The opening night crowd at MoMA

That moment arrived, last night, with the opening of Impressions: Prints from South Africa 1965 to Now, curated by MoMA’s Judy Hecker. My 1990 piece, For Thirty Years Next to his Heart has never been hung better (a perfect grid) and ephemera included postcards, a magazine project and the Freedom Charter T-shirt.

The snowy view from my bedroom this morning

Unseasonal snow and hail prevented many people from making it to the opening, but faces familiar to South Africans included Petra Mason, Jann Cheifitz and Tony Karon, Julie McGee, Jack Shainman, Gabi Ngcobo and John Peffer.

A wonderful evening.